The Debt

The auction smelled of sand and money. Livia had come for neither.

She raised her hand at the third call because her husband, three seats down, had raised his at the second, and because the man on the block was looking at the crowd the way a tired god looks at weather. Nobody bid against her after that. Nobody ever bid against her.

“He’ll be delivered tonight, domina,” the auctioneer said.

“He’ll walk,” she said. “He has legs.”

---

He found her in the library, which was the first surprise. The second was that he did not stand where the slaves stood, by the door with his eyes on the floor. He stood by the shelf of Catullus, and he was reading.

“You can read,” she said.

“I can do a great many things.” He closed the scroll with a care she had never seen anyone use on anything of hers. “Most of them you didn’t pay for.”

The lamp hissed. Somewhere in the house her husband was laughing with someone who was not her, and for the first time in seven years she found she did not care to listen.

“Then tell me,” Livia said, “what I did pay for.”

He smiled, slow, as if he had all night. As it turned out, he did.