“Vengeance is evil. I should forgive my enemies.” He was back in control of himself. “Otherwise the wounded strike the wounded, and so the world is chained in suffering. I should be glad for my sister and my brothers: they are leaping from a moment’s pain into eternal glory. I am confident that Christ will give them strength and bring them home.”
There was another minute of silence. I thought about the kind Lucilla, doomed to die in the arena; about the Pictish prisoners we had taken; about the druids imprisoned in this very city. I thought about Tirgatao’s death.
“So,” said Eukairios, after another minute of silence, “they’ve given you the Roman citizenship.”
I nodded. “Tell me, Eukairios, should I refuse it?”
“No!” he said, in astonished disbelief. “Of course not!”
“I do not want it. The gods know, I do not love Rome.”
“But you’ve risked so much to defend Roman power!”
“I had a choice between that and joining its enemies, who seemed to me much worse. I was not offered the choice my heart would make; one never is.”
“What choice would that be?”
I was silent for a long time. I did not want to be a Roman, but I already knew that I was no true Sarmatian anymore-and I still had no clear idea of what the Britons were like. What world would I choose, if I had my freedom?
“A world without hatred,” I said at last.
Eukairios looked away, into the fountain. He reached over and stirred the stagnant water with his hand. “You’re right,” he whispered. “That’s not a choice we’re ever offered.”
I touched his shoulder.
Pervica came into the garden and hurried over to me. I stood up, balancing on one foot, and let her take my left arm. “Facilis says he can arrange for us to be married today,” I told her. “Eukairios can draw up the contract, and Marcus will take it to the archives this afternoon.”
“I went to see Publius Verinus, the camp prefect here,” she replied, “and he says we can have a guest room in the commandant’s house, despite it being so crowded. He was very pleasant when I told him we wanted to get married, and wished us joy.”
Her face, turned up to mine, was flushed and radiant. I smiled into it. In that part of me that was neither Roman nor Sarmatian, I kicked shut the doors of all the worlds that offered, and chose the one that no one would give me, the way to the Jade Gate, where I could never go.