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added Berynus.
    â€œI wouldn’t exactly say that Antipater made a…” I shook my head. What they said was true. If Antipater had written to me openly, I would have broken the seal on such a letter with my guard up, bristling with resentment before I read a single word. The fragment had effected quite a different response; it caught me off-guard and sent me reeling with puzzlement and alarm. If Antipater wanted to elicit my sympathy rather than my suspicion, sending such a contrived document in place of a letter would be one way to do it. But was Antipater that devious?
    â€œEither your old tutor wants to lure you to Ephesus, or someone else does,” said Berynus. “What other result could the sender be hoping for?”
    â€œPerhaps this was sent by someone who cares about Antipater, someone who wants to help him,” I said.
    â€œIn that case, why did this person not write to you directly, and ask for your help?” Kettel shook his head. “No, for such a ‘fragment’ to land in your lap, without any explanation, with no clue as to who sent it or why—someone is up to no good.”
    Had I been as old and experienced as the two retired eunuchs, I probably would have been as cautious and suspicious as they were. But I was still young and not as wise in the ways of the world as I one day would be.
    I looked again at the fragment.
    I am in great danger, I read. I fear for my life every hour of every day.
    I lowered the scrap of parchment and stared beyond the parapet of the roof terrace. At the distant horizon, the night sky met the sea—two endless voids of darkness pricked with countless tiny stars and the reflections of stars. Somewhere in that direction lay Ephesus.
    â€œI must go to Ephesus,” I said.
    Both eunuchs sighed and threw up their hands. Bethesda dropped my feet, which fell to the rug with a thump.
    â€œGordianus, do you not understand the danger?” said Berynus. “You’re a Roman, and there’s no disguising the fact. Your Greek is quite good—for someone who didn’t grow up speaking it. But your Latin accent will always give you away. You know what they say: ‘You can take the boy out of Rome…’”
    â€œYes, I’m a Roman. What of it?”
    â€œDo you not understand the situation in the cities and provinces that Mithridates has liberated from Roman control? In those places, to be a Roman is no longer a guarantee of privilege. Quite the opposite. Across much of Asia, many people hate the Romans and were glad to see them toppled from power.”
    â€œBut not every Greek hates every Roman. Antipater says as much in this fragment. Eutropius, for example—”
    â€œAn Ephesian who hates the Romans less than some, and why? Because you, a Roman, saved his daughter’s life! This Eutropius is hardly a representative example, Gordianus.”
    What Berynus said was true. In my travels with Antipater, many a native Greek-speaker had shown resentment and unfriendliness toward me, for no other reason than because I was a Roman. This anti-Roman sentiment had been especially evident in Ephesus.
    â€œBut not every Roman has been driven out of Asia,” I said. “The Roman legions have been defeated and pushed back, and one hears that many Romans have fled—some of them have sailed here to Alexandria as refugees. But many a Roman citizen, along with his family and dependents, must still reside in the cities taken by Mithridates. All those Roman bankers and merchants, and the Romans who oversee the slave markets, and the Romans who run mines and farms—”
    â€œYes, Gordianus, thousands of Romans, or perhaps tens of thousands, may yet remain in Ephesus and the other cities of Asia,” said Berynus. “But they are no longer in control of the banks or running the marketplaces. Mithridates has stripped them of their power and their possessions. Their situation is quite