Sharpie

Well, that wasn't at all what Marcus had expected to hear. He glanced at Azarion, but his face gave nothing away, except grim determination with an undercurrent of sadness. They'd been friends, he thought, as much as a mute trainee charioteer and a kitchen girl could be friends, anyway. "Lucia Safinia. She worked in the kitchens here - a plebeian employee, not a slave. I believe she had gone out shopping for something, though I don't need to know the precise whereabouts of everyone at every moment." He had department heads for the minutiae of things like that, if she was out shopping, it would have been on the direction of the head cook. "I don't know how long she had been out, but I do know Azarion was the one who found her." He sighed. "Her throat had been cut, there was no other injury that I could see - he came to fetch me, I suppose he didn't know what else to do." He looked up at Azarion again. "It was the right decision, and saved time in the long run." If Azarion had fetched anyone else, they would have sent for Marcus and the urgency might have been somewhat diluted by then; it was the near panic as much as anything that had meant he had come with almost no delay. @Chevi @Atrice

Why Gaius was prepared to allow Lucius this, and without putting up much of a fight over it, he couldn't say. Maybe he was just tired of fighting his brother and realised that if he didn't allow it, they'd end up fighting a lot more. Maybe, when all was said and done, he just didn't want his brother to be miserable for the rest of his life, which he would be if he tried to fit into the traditional senatorial career path. "I want - whether you tell me all your findings or not is immaterial, but I want you to really look at this, properly and carefully. Because if you start down this path and hate it, you'll be stuck in your new position in society. Adoption is a serious thing." He could probably find someone who would be willing to take Lucius into their family, though what they would want in return was something Gaius did not want to think about right now. He topped his cup up and held the jug out to his brother. It didn't matter whether Lucius merely wanted to drink to celebrate, Gaius needed the wine to be able to face this whole change. Right now, sobriety was extremely over-rated. @Chevi

"What do I think is important in a wife?" That was a good question, one that Gaius had thought about though not enough to be able to answer it immediately. "Well, the home and children are important, of course, but I don't think that's enough of a foundation for a marriage, not if it's going to last without the husband or wife wanting a divorce or something. It's nice to be able to have a conversation that isn't just domestic, I think. Some sort shared interest helps, though I know it's not really encouraged for women to study history or philosophy or whatever, which is silly. Because if they can't, what's left apart from minding the home and children?" He would like to know what Ovinia did enjoy, apart from music - or was music her only outlet apart from weaving and whatever other feminine pursuits there were. "You said you like music... do you prefer the cithara or the double pipes, or something else?" @Sara

"The... chief? Oh." He must mean the man who ran the faction - Tiranês had some idea that the factions had someone in charge of them, as most organisations here did because working as a collective group was a complete mystery to the Romans. "He's Parthian? Well, then, you are in the right place." His expression grew curious. "Does he know you're Sarmatian?" He wasn't sure how he could, seeing as Azarion no longer had the ability to speak (fucking Romans!) but he had his first tattoo, which might be enough clue for someone from a similar culture and part of the world - Sarmatians and Dacians all traded with Parthia, and there were alliances and treaties. @Chevi

"Well, despite everything and probably against good common sense, I like having you as a brother, too, though gods know you drive me mad," Gaius told him. "If this really is what you want and you do still want it in a week's time, I won't stop you, though probably everyone will expect me to. You will always have access here and if I can't be a brother to you, I can still act like one - you can come here any time you need to talk." He wondered if Lucius would make a better client than dutiful brother. He would not require him to show up for the morning salutatio - that would be a step too far and it would doubtless interfere with whatever duties vigilies officers had. @Chevi

I fucking miss archery. Azarion's expression said everything he felt about not being able to draw a bow again, and Tiranês nodded in agreement. He missed it, too. He looked down at his right hand - after eight years, he was losing the callouses from the bow-string that had been there ever since he could remember. Just another thing the Romans had taken away from him. "Of course you're good with horses, they don't know the first thing about horses here. You're Sarmatian, there's nobody better with horses than a Sarmatian. You could ride before you could walk." He reached across the table to grasp Azarion's hand. "I'm glad you've got the horses, at least." @Chevi

He reached for his wine and downed half the contents of the cup before setting it back down. He supposed even equites had their dignity and didn't want to run around with the plebs and freedmen who made up the rank and file of the vigiles. "You do know most people think very little of the vigiles and you're not likely to be greeted with rousing cheers and accolades everywhere you go?" he said. "You like people to like you and you're not going to get many people liking you if you're a vigiles officer. It isn't all going to be wonderful - they get some pretty grim things to do." He sighed. "I will give you a week to consider. Do some research, find out what they do, what steps you will need to progress to where you want to be, and I will find someone to adopt you into their family so you can. Just remember - adoption is absolutely final, it can't be reversed." Equite, or even a senatorial plebian family would suffice. Probably. If Lucius was serious and wasn't going to change his mind about it. @Chevi

Tiranês clasped his hands around the pottery cup he was holding. "I didn't think there were any good Romans, but he might be. He's very thoughtful. I mean, not considerate but... he thinks a lot. He's very serious." He'd gone through a lot. Maybe not as much as Azarion and Tiranês had, but still, a lot, and at the hands of people who should have been friends or on the same side anyway. "He's not bad," Tiranês allowed. He wasn't wilfully cruel and didn't inflict petty humiliations like some Romans did to their slaves. "He let me come to see you, to see if it was you." It was frustrating and rankled that he needed to ask for permission to go and see a friend or family member, but that was a relatively minor thing overall. "What's it like, being a charioteer?" Azarion probably didn't have the signs for all the nuances and everything, but that didn't matter. What mattered was this time together for the first time in eight years - being able to speak his own tongue was another thing that had been taken away, simply because Tiranês had nobody around him who could understand it, which meant he was confined to Latin even when speaking with other slaves. Not with Azarion, though. It felt so good just to talk in Sarmatian again. @Chevi

Gaius sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose, leaning back in his seat with his eyes closed. "What is the career path of a vigiles prefect, pray tell?" Naturally, Gaius had no knowledge at all of what such a career path might look like, and why should he? His own path was clear, and his brother's would be equally clear if he was anything like Gaius and every other patrician in Rome. Lucius would be giving up his rightful position as a member of gens Vipsania to do this. There was no way at all for a patrician to hold such a rank and do such a job - there were several such positions open to ambitious equites, but they were all barred to patricians. Gaius had heard such ambitions voiced before and in a similar serious tone, but never by his brother, and never with reference to something only open to members of a lower social order. It was... interesting to hear it in Lucius' voice and Lucius' words. @Chevi

One of the Whites' general dogsbodies knocked on Marcus' door, stepping in with his hands folded and lowered eyes to say deferentially, "The boy Azarion is asking to see you, Domine. He's got a visitor with him." Marcus looked up, puzzled. At least Azarion had followed protocol this time, instead of barging straight in while Marcus was closeted with a guest. That was something, he supposed. And it wasn't as though Marcus was in a meeting right now, either. "You may show them in." Azarion, with his watchful eyes that took in probably far too much, and an older man. Too heavyset to be a charioteer, but who carried himself in a similar fashion. Interesting. "I am Marcus Eppius Parthenicus, the head of the Whites. How can I help you?" @Chevi @Atrice

"He. Gave. You. Orders." He found another pen to throw at his brother. "You are a patrician. You would rather take orders from a vigilis you don't know than become the leader you should be by right of birth?" Had he gone stark staring mad? Had Gaius gone stark staring mad to have allowed his brother so much licence this was where they'd ended up? "I suppose I can thank the gods you at least have enough ambition to want to be vigiles tribune and not one of the rank and file vigiles. There's only one way it can happen, though." If Gaius were to allow it to happen at all, which he didn't need to. Though Lucius had animated when telling his story, and not in the overly jocular way he usually did. He'd been serious, for once, and alive, and it was a side of his brother Gaius hadn't seen before. He wished Lucius could have felt that way about something more appropriate to his rank, but he wasn't going to make his brother happy by forcing him into something he just wasn't suited for. @Chevi

Gaius wryly noted how Lucius moved the seat away from the desk, setting it at an angle before sitting down to tell his story. Well, whatever else Lucius was, his brother really did like helping people. It was one of his saving graces, and there were few enough of those. "You went into a burning building, with a man you didn't know, to save more people you don't know?" He found a reed pen to hand and threw it at his brother. "You could have died, you.. you..." Apparently, Gaius did love his brother. Even if he was the cause of a great deal of the stress Gaius felt at times. "You just went in? Please tell me you didn't just go in, without thinking things through." @Chevi

Tiranês shook his head. "I wished they had. I thought you were dead, or going to die soon, it was horrible. Anyway. They dragged you off and then one of them thought it would be fun to cut my hair off, they'd just been holding it. Well. Twisting their hands into the braids till I thought they were going to tear out by force." He hadn't had braids since, he'd never been able to grow it long enough even to start braiding it again - anyway, after that day, he didn't feel worthy enough to wear a warrior's hairstyle even if his captors had allowed it. He managed a wry grin. "You can, though. Being a charioteer. Don't they let you get away with things like that?" "There isn't much else to say, really. They put me in one of those neck rings - you know, the long slave chains with neck rings every so often, to chain a group of slaves together? Several of us were taken to one of their towns, I don't know which, and sold there, to another slave dealer who brought me to Italia. I ended up on a farm or something, somewhere. No horses, but I still had the sky, at least." He sighed. "And somehow someone in the imperial family saw me and wanted me, and he gave me to Tiberius, and here I am now." Stuck as a slave in the middle of a city that didn't move, without any sort of horizon at all to speak of. Even on the Palatine, what horizon there was was filled with roofs and temples and hills. He desperately missed the wide open steppe, as well as everything else. "He came to the race the other day, and brought me, and I saw you. I wasn't sure it was you, at first - I thought you were dead." @Chevi

Well, Tiranês didn't need Azarion to speak to understand 'come with me' and then a moment later, 'tell me everything that happened in the last eight years'. Where to start!! He found himself seated on a rough bench with a cup of wine and his cousin's sharp eyes fastened on him. "Well. You don't want to hear everything, do you?" He sighed. "They made me watch, you know. When they..." he indicated Azarion, with a shudder, the meaning clear. "They had me kneeling in the grass and one of them had a hand in my hair and a sword to my throat. I couldn't.... I couldn't stop them, I tried." How desperately he had tried! "And they call us barbarians," he added bitterly. @Chevi

Gaius set his cup down, pushed his paperwork aside, moved his chair back enough to give himself room and dropped forward enough to allow his forehead to contact the desk. What had he done to deserve a brother like Lucius? Which god had he angered and could he appease that god? Probably not. He let out a long breath, trying to regain his equilibrium before pushing himself upright again. "You think?" merda, that had sounded sarcastic. Not what he was going for. "Well, let's start at the beginning... What made you decide on the vigiles?" He tiredly indicated the seat across from him; at least Lucius had showed enough sense not to risk sitting down until invited. This time, anyway. @Chevi

Marcus could tell from the horses' behaviour even as they moved away from him down the length of the track that Azarion was holding his pair of horses back and not letting them have their heads and go all-out just yet. He nodded, deeply satisfied; whatever he had been or done in his life before, the boy knew horses in the way that Marcus did, in a way that was in the bones. If he was not Parthian, he was something very like it indeed. Whatever the outcome of today, he was going to have another conversation with the boy - one-sided as such conversations might be, he had a face that was as easy to read as a scroll. Mostly it merely read contempt, especially when he was asked a question that he thought revealed your stupidity more than most, but occasionally it read something else. Sheer amazement when Marcus had promoted him to trainee charioteer. That was an expression he wasn't going to forget in a hurry; the memory of it still made him smile. His smile grew broader as Azarion nimbly steered around an opposing chariot that had tried to take the turn at the far end too sharply and hit the spina. He couldn't see the outcome of that, but would get a proper report later from Varica - he hoped! He'd ask the kid himself if he thought he stood a chance at understanding the nuances of his gestures. He might ask anyway; even those drivers who didn't labour under such a handicap used their hands to illustrate positions and manoeuvres, after all. @Chevi @Járnviðr @Sarah @Atrice

Teutus felt more than a little obvious and rather ridiculous with an entourage of three slaves and his mother, and as they headed up the Esquiline after their lunch, he drew his mother to walk next to him, however much she might feel uncomfortable at doing so. The last time they had seen each other, Teutus had been a slave too, so hopefully it wouldn't feel too uncomfortable for her. "I missed you, Mama," he told her quietly. He had spent the last eight years or so with half a parent rather than two full parents - his father was more his master than his father and even though Tertius seemed to be trying to mend that now, it was far too little, far too late. He had never felt like a father to Teutus, whereas his mother had always been his mother. @Sarah

"Are you sure?" Rufus relaxed a bit at the pronouncement, but he couldn't relax completely. Medicines were expensive, bandages and wine a lot cheaper but even they weren't free. He watched the medicus going about his work, always curious about other people and their work - though even with someone as friendly as Theo he didn't feel comfortable initiating conversation. It wasn't his place to ask questions or start talking about anything, something that had been instilled in him from the cradle. He supposed a sprain would be the least of the injuries this man dealt with on a regular basis. @Chevi

"Stop that," Tiranês said, batting his younger cousin's hand away from poking too hard at the slave tablet he wore. "Sort-of chief, the way the Romans do it. The son of the old chief and the adopted brother of the new one." Sarmatian didn't have a word for 'emperor' either, naturally. "I'm the body-slave of Tiberius Claudius Sabucius, not that the name's going to mean anything to you." It hadn't meant anything to Tiranês when he'd been informed of his new master's identity, after all. The Sarmatian word he used was 'shield bearer' rather than 'body slave', their people did not have personal slaves the way the Romans did, personal servants were young warriors given the responsibility of looking after an older man's weapons and armour and learning from him. That the Romans gave such an important role to mere slaves just showed what a backwards sort of people they really were. At least it wasn't Azarion's current owners who were responsible for the brand and all the various scars Tiranês could see on his arms. He would be willing to bet he had a good collection of whip scars across his back, too. @Chevi

Gaius wasn't entirely sure what to think, or to feel, at his brother's announcement. It wasn't some sort of stall-holder in the Forum - Jupiter had been merciful enough to spare Gaius the sight of his brother hawking olives or takeaway food or some sort of tourist tat ('my friend went to Rome and all I got was this lousy stylus') but on the other hand... "Aren't the vigiles merely a collection of freedmen?" he asked. Freedmen and probably escaped slaves calling themselves freedmen. "Is the tribune a plebian or an equite position?" It had crossed his mind that his brother might prefer to be adopted into a family of a different social rank, but it hadn't been a serious thought. Apparently it should have been. Gaius was going to find an amphora of his best wine later and try to discover what the bottom looked like after it was drained dry. @Chevi

Aulus rolled the simple demonstration model caltrop in his palm, demonstrating the attribute that Tiberius had already noted (he was very astute!). With a different set of three straws on his hand, a different one poked up. "They are cheap and easy enough to make, and to deploy. If done carefully, they can block a road or a path or an entrance. They can be cleared away easily enough by a friend - or a foe who realises what is going on, though he will then potentially expose himself to attack while his attention is on the obstacle. If these raids persist for long enough, it is entirely possible that the locals will end up fortifying their villages. I would be surprised if they have not already done so, living in such a volatile area. Defending grazing flocks and herds is another matter, of course, and I fear that is what these raiders are after. They are highly likely to be armed with bows - doubtless you have heard of the infamous Parthian shot - and bowmen can be formidable against lightly armed or unarmed labourers and herdsmen." He did not think either the Roman or Parthian empires would benefit from outright war between themselves; they were too strong and too well-matched for either to easily conquer and subdue the other, and their territory too large to subsume into the other empire, no matter which might be victorious. @Sarah

"O Jupiter Best and Greatest, I render thanks that my brother has finally come to a decision." He poured his brother a cup of wine and after a moment's reflection, poured one for himself as well. Whatever this decision was, he was probably going to need it. He consciously let go of the frustration his brother raised in him and nodded. "Very well, you have made a decision regarding your future. By the sounds of it, you think I am going to disapprove, so I take it that was your good news. What is the bad news?" Slave dealer? Gladiator? Actor? Male prostitute - he rapidly discarded that idea, Lucius was too old and not that way inclined. Gaius hoped, anyway. @Chevi

So Azarion told him to go swivel. Tiranês - he was Tiranês here, with his cousin, even if nobody else cared to bother remembering he might have had a name before the Romans sold him - grinned. "Careful, you don't want to lose fingers as well now, do you?" The horse huffed into his hair and he shrugged, gently blowing into her nostrils the way he'd been taught as a boy to let the horses get his scent, to know he wasn't going to harm them. "No. I got a prince, but no horses. Maybe in the future, he's going to be some army officer or something, but right now..." he shook his head. "This is the closest I've been since..." He didn't need to say since when. That day was burned into both of their memories like the brand was burned into Azarion's arm. Or the wolf was tattooed on Tiranês's arm. The former was the more apt comparison, though. "Do they treat you all right, here, though?" @Chevi

Not friendly. "Neither are you, usually - don't get all emotional on me, for Api's sake. You dropped this." He bent to retrieve the brush, being very careful of the horses' hooves - they could do some damage, especially shod the peculiar way the Romans did, confining everything into iron and stone instead of letting their horses run as the gods intended - wasn't that why their hooves were iron-hard? They didn't need additional iron hammered on. "You are a beauty, I hope my cousin has been taking care of you, though he's probably forgotten everything he learned at home," he told the horse, speaking softly, the musical Sarmatian being the only tongue one should ever address horses in, wondrous gifts of the gods that they were. @Chevi Going on precisely 0 research, I felt the Sarmatians may not have shod their horses in this period because it felt right for them not to.

"Why did you think we're out of garum?" Gaius let out an exasperated sigh and threw down the stylus, which rolled unheeded to land on the floor with a tiny clatter. "Because, Lucius. Because this is you, and I might as well get the report from the kitchen from my brother as any of the slaves who actually have chores to do there. And knowing you, that might just be the bad news and you're about to recommend me the most amazing garum I've ever tasted sold by your best friend Gaius Something-or-other who just so happens to have several amphorae he can't wait to offload on an idiot patrician who doesn't know he's being charged ten sestertii for something that costs perhaps five asses at most." He pinched the bridge of his nose. "If it isn't women or slaves, or slave women, or garum, enlighten me." @Chevi