She’d even told him her name. Lapis.
Thrasyllus had never heard anything so beautiful as that word spilling from her full red lips. Lapis. A perfect name. A perfect match for her azure eyes.
The astrologer sighed and peeled himself from her carefully and quietly, slowly rising from the bed. He’d paid for the whole night, but he suspected that one person’s definition of “night” might differ from another’s. He’d had such debates among the other scholars at the Library. While he’d always defined the end of night to be the rising of the sun, he imagined that for the girl the night might end when she awoke. And any sense that Lapis might have really wanted to be with him this night would no doubt be ruined if she was in haste to get up, to get away, to wash herself of him. That, Thrasyllus was certain, would very much break the spell.
Still, even as the astrologer slipped on his simple garments, he found his gaze returning to the sleeping, azure-eyed girl, as if his mind still insisted on reminding itself that he really had spent the night with her. He’d certainly admired her for long enough, watching from the window of his little upper-story room as other men—and a few women, too—came to the corner and took her hand, leading her away after making their arrangements. Sometimes he thought that she had looked up to see him, too: watching him watching her. But he never thought he’d actually do it himself. He never thought he’d have the courage.
Looking down at her sleeping there, knowing how much he wanted to wake her, to hope for another bout of passion—yet fearing the possibility that she’d only reject him without another batch of coin—Thrasyllus frowned. He still didn’t really have the courage, did he? It took knowing that he’d probably never see her again to get the strength to do it. It took this being his last night in Alexandria.
Calm brought clarity.
He was an astrologer. He was also a coward.
Thrasyllus stared at her a minute longer, memorizing shapes, before he turned back to the bare room and gathered the last of his meager possessions into the old leather satchel that his mother had given him when he’d left Mendes so long ago. He wouldn’t be coming back here, he knew. And he wouldn’t be going back to that little Egyptian town. He’d settled all his accounts. He was meant for better things. All that was left now was the waiting boat. He’d sail for Rome. He’d find a new life there.
Quietly he counted the promised coins out onto the bare table. Setting two extra down, he checked once more that he had enough left to cover the passage to Rome. Just enough, he decided, and he wouldn’t have to spend his lucky coin, the only one remaining of those his father had placed in this same satchel so long ago—more than his poor family made in a year of meager earnings.
All for a chance at a better life.
Thrasyllus glanced once more to the sleeping girl, wondering what they would think of him now.
Then, taking one last breath of the night, he went out to meet the day.
Instead, he met two men. One was a small and wiry man with dark, grease-slicked hair. He was leaning against the wall of the hallway, absently flipping a gold coin in his hand. The other was a much larger, broad-shouldered man, perhaps in his fifties, who was sitting down against the same wall of the hallway. He looked up when the astrologer came out, as if he had been sleeping, and the astrologer could see that he was heavily scarred, the wrinkles of his face crossed over with the jagged tracks of countless old injuries, like a doll that had been torn apart and sewn back together.
Thrasyllus closed the door to his room as quietly as he could manage. “Pardon me,” he whispered to the men, pressing himself against the opposite wall to step past them.
Instead of helping to get out of the way, the slick-haired man caught the coin he’d been flipping and then pushed off the wall to block the way. And behind him the older one stood, slowly and seemingly painfully lumbering up to his feet to tower over them both. When the smaller man smiled, he was missing one of his teeth. “Been waiting for you,” he said. His voice was rough with gravel, and there was the stench of smoke on his breath.
Thrasyllus stepped back toward his closed door. “For … me?”
The man nodded, and his smile broadened. He was missing two teeth now. “Have a good night?”
Thrasyllus felt himself blush. “I … it’s—”
“She’s good, this one,” the man rasped. Using the coin in his hand, he pointed toward the door.
The astrologer blinked, almost gagged. “What do you—”
“Money,” the man said. His smile disappeared and he took a single step closer. “I’ll need to be taking some now. Or this brute here will be taking some of your hide.”
Thrasyllus looked between the two men. The slick-haired man’s eyes glinted with hunger, like a rat’s. The other one, whose shoulders reached from wall to wall, had something like anguish on his face, as if he was repulsed by his own behavior, but Thrasyllus was too frightened to think long upon it. Instead, he swallowed hard. “I … I don’t have any,” he managed to say.
“You better be lying.”
“No, I—”
The little man’s eyes moved down to the astrologer’s satchel with a ravenous look. “Leaving town? Then you’ve definitely got some. Let’s see what’s in that bag of yours.”
“Nothing,” Thrasyllus managed. He instinctively pulled the satchel from the front of his hip to his back. “Just books. Papers. Pen.”
“Now I know he’s lying,” the rat-faced man said over his shoulder to the brute.
The door behind Thrasyllus opened, and the astrologer smelled the girl even before he could turn to see her. “Lapis! Get back in—”
The girl’s fingertips raised up to brush across his shoulder. “It’s okay, stargazer,” she said.
“Lapis now, is it?” the little man said from the hallway. He laughed, a coughing, rasping sound. “Good name for a whore. I like it. Might fetch a higher price with a pretty name like that.”
“What is—?”
“It’s okay,” Lapis said. This time she was looking past Thrasyllus. She pulled the door shut behind her and stepped around the astrologer, smiling. The coins he’d left on the table were in her hand. She clinked them together. Thrasyllus, despite his confusion, noted that she was showing only the coins he’d owed, not the two extra. “He paid up,” she said.
“He should have paid more,” the rat-faced man said. His laughter had subsided, and his voice now had a harsh edge of threat.
“Come on,” the girl said. “He’s not enough to bother with. Let’s go.”
The brute remained still, but the little man’s hands had balled into fists. “I want more.”
The girl’s gentle fingers, the tips of which only a moment ago were upon the astrologer’s shoulder, now reached up to run across the man’s forearm. “He’s not worth it.” She smiled at the man, almost seductively.
Thrasyllus stuttered. His heart was frightened and breaking all at once. “I paid what we agreed,” he finally managed to say. “Inside.”
“I want more.”
“I don’t understand, I—”
The little man stepped up, his hand shooting forward in the same movement. It impacted the astrologer’s shoulder, throwing him back against the door.
The world spun for a moment. Thrasyllus saw Lapis turning back. Saw her reaching out for him.
The wiry little rat of a man caught her perfect arm in his hand, yanked her back toward him. Her perfect hair twirled in the air in slow motion, like a thousand dancing black threads.
Thrasyllus saw Lapis struggle and start to cry out. Something in him broke.
The astrologer shouted. Abruptly, an inner instinct—one he didn’t know he had—overrode his cowardice. Despite his own dizziness he lurched forward to try to protect the girl. “Lapis!”