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think you’re doing?” he demanded.
    “What’s it look like?” Bitucus asked, swiping a crust of bread through the meat juices and popping it into his mouth, chewing noisily.
    “It looks like you’re betraying everything we stand for, you stupid shit.”
    Bitucus shrugged and poured a cup of wine. “I’d betray every one of my fucking ancestors if it means a full stomach for a change.”
    “Stupid son of a bitch.” Trogus glowered at Aculeo one last time before limping out of the tavern.
    “Give him a chance to cool his head,” Gellius said, filling his plate with more food. “He’s a proud man. This whole mess hit him hard. It’s hit all of us, of course, but him most of all I think.”
    “Your wife left you I heard,” Bitucus said abruptly, more a statement of fact than a question.
    Aculeo shrugged and nodded. “She took Atellus back to Rome for a while.”
    “My wife and daughter went to Antioch to stay with her sister,” Bitucus said, chewing thoughtfully. “I’m planning to join them as soon as I have the passage money. Say, you wouldn’t happen to …?” Bitucus gave him a pleading look.
    “Hardly,” Aculeo said.
    Bitucus sighed. “I feel like I’m going mad these days, living here like this. After my family left, Gellius and Trogus kindly took me in. We hoped to climb out of this mess together.”
    “More like drowning men clutching onto one another in a storm,” Gellius said. “We’ll likely all drag one another down in the end.”
    “An unfortunate analogy under the circumstances,” Bitucus mused.
    “Tell us what you know,” Gellius said, putting a hand on Aculeo’s arm. “Please.”
    And so he did.
    Aculeo had joined up with Corvinus over a decade ago after his father’s death. A former associate of his father, some had intimated that the man had only wanted to use Aculeo’s family name and status to further himself, for Corvinus was only of the equestrian class after all, but it had mattered little at the time. Aculeo’s father may have been of more noble blood but the inheritance he’d left behind was barely enough to cover his funeral. So Corvinus had stepped in and extended a hand, lifting Aculeo from that mess, teaching him the grain business, encouraging him, helping him invest in his own small fleet.
    Corvinus, a rotund little man with a sparkle in his eyes, a rapid patter, ready laugh and a thousand filthy jokes to tell, always made anything seem possible. And so it had been for well over a decade. Over the years they’d financed many of the great ships that transported grain shipments to Rome to fill the permanently gawping mouths of the always growing empire. The tremendous returns on their investments had swelled everyone’s purses.
    They’d started with half a dozen two-sailed vessels and done quite well even before they were awarded a prized annona contract to Rome. That had led to rapid expansion, building a fleet that included a pair of massive freighters, each over 100 cubits in length and capable of carrying over 120,000 modii of grain in their vast holds. In just eight years, Aculeo had managed to turn father’s inheritance of a handful of tarnished brass into something truly phenomenal, spinning grain into a mountain of gold.
    Not that they weren’t always looking for private investors to fund the expansion of the fleet, anything to keep it growing and out of the hands of the bankers and grasping moneylenders like Gurculio. What did we have to lose? Nothing. Nothing at all. It was easy money … or so it always seemed. You could trust Vibius Herrenius Corvinus after all.
    And so, of course, when Corvinus came asking that last, fateful time, Aculeo could hardly have said no. He’d borrowed the necessary cash as had many of the other investors. Iovinus, their negotiatore, had arranged everything, borrowing from various moneylenders, Gurculio foremost among them. And while Aculeo had to mortgage virtually everything to cover the loan, he’d done so