Livia was awake when Arthur entered the room, which should have been good news.

Unfortunately, she looked ready to murder someone.

She lay on a narrow bed in Lucius’s house, pale from blood loss and wrapped in enough bandages to make moving a terrible idea. That did not stop her from trying. The moment Marcus stepped through the doorway, she pushed herself up on one elbow and immediately regretted it.

Lucius appeared from nowhere and shoved her back down.

He did not do it gently.

Livia hissed something at him.

Lucius answered with the calm anger of a man who had spent his life being ignored by stubborn patients. He pointed at the bandage around her side, then at the bed, then at her face.

Stay down.

Even Arthur understood that.

Livia glared at him anyway.

Arthur decided he liked Lucius more with every passing hour.

Marcus placed the small piece of wax on the table beside her bed. The name scratched into it looked rough and ugly in the morning light.

Aelius Varro.

Livia stared at it for a long moment.

The anger faded from her face.

That worried Arthur.

He had already seen Livia irritated, suspicious, and in pain. Those felt natural on her. Silence did not.

She reached for the wax, but Lucius caught her wrist before she could move too far. The old physician said something sharp. Livia ignored him and took the wax anyway.

Arthur stood near the doorway, feeling very aware of how little he understood.

Livia read the name again.

Then she looked at Marcus.

The two exchanged a few quiet sentences. Marcus’s voice was low. Livia’s was weaker than usual, but still sharp enough to cut. Arthur caught pieces, not enough to follow the whole conversation.

Aelius.

Grain.

Gaius.

Wrong.

That last word stood out.

Wrong.

Arthur stepped closer.

Livia noticed immediately. Her eyes moved to him, large and bright despite the feverish shine beginning to creep into them. Her red curls were loose now, no longer pinned neatly as they had been in the office. A few strands stuck to her damp forehead. She should have looked fragile.

Somehow, she still looked like she was judging everyone in the room and finding them disappointing.

Arthur held up both hands, then pointed at the wax.

Aelius Varro.

Then he pointed toward the records hidden beneath a folded cloth near the table.

Livia understood.

She shook her head.

Not exactly.

Arthur frowned.

That was the problem with communicating through gestures. People could disagree with you very clearly, but explaining why took much longer.

Livia said something to Marcus. He hesitated, then retrieved the bundle of tablets from the corner of the room and placed it within her reach. Lucius made a noise that suggested he strongly disapproved of this entire situation.

Nobody listened.

Livia selected one tablet with slow care. Her hand trembled slightly, though she tried to hide it. Arthur noticed. Marcus noticed too, but neither said anything. Pride, Arthur was learning, had survived quite well in the ancient world.

She pointed at a line of numbers.

Grain shipments.

Arthur recognized the pattern from the day before. Missing amounts. Altered weights. Entries that did not match. He nodded.

Livia tapped the tablet once.

Then she shook her head again.

Not the point.

Arthur leaned closer, trying to follow. She turned the tablet around and pointed to a mark near the bottom. Not a number this time. A name. Or part of one. Beside it was a short note, written small enough that Arthur had to squint.

He did not understand it.

Marcus did.

His expression changed.

Arthur hated when that happened.

He looked at Marcus, then at Livia.

"What?" he asked. "What does it say?"

Neither understood the words, but both understood the frustration.

Livia took a clean tablet and stylus from the small table beside the bed. Lucius immediately objected. She ignored him again.

With careful movements, she wrote three simple words.

Not in English, of course.

But Arthur knew enough Latin by now to understand two of them.

Grain.

Men.

Wrong.

He stared at the tablet.

Then at Livia.

Then back at the tablet.

The meaning arrived slowly.

They had been asking who stole the grain.

Livia was saying that was the wrong question.

Arthur felt the room grow colder.

He pulled the records closer and began searching through them again. At first all he saw were numbers. Shipments. Dates. Weights. Warehouses. The same dull records that had nearly put him to sleep in another life.

But now he looked differently.

Not for missing goods.

For names.

They were there.

Scattered in the margins. Attached to deliveries. Assigned to labor crews. Marked beside warehouse entries. Arthur had dismissed them before because the quantities had seemed more important.

He found one name repeated twice.

Then another.

Then a third.

Each appeared near irregular shipments.

Each disappeared from later records.

Arthur’s mouth went dry.

He checked again, hoping he had misunderstood.

He had not.

The pattern was faint, but it was there. Men assigned to warehouse work. Men attached to transports. Men listed as present one day and absent the next. No explanation. No transfer. No death notice. No clear record at all.

Just gone.

Arthur sat back slowly.

Livia watched him understand.

Marcus stood beside the bed, silent and grim.

Lucius, who had clearly intended to throw them all out minutes ago, stopped complaining. Even he seemed to sense that the room had changed.

Arthur pointed at one of the names.

Then at the door.

Gone?

Livia nodded.

He pointed at another.

Gone?

Another nod.

A third.

A fourth.

With each answer, the knot in Arthur’s stomach grew tighter.

People disappeared all the time in ancient cities. That was not hard to believe. Slaves ran away. Laborers moved. Criminals fled. Bodies ended up in alleys, rivers, and unmarked graves. Rome was enormous. Rome swallowed people easily.

But records were different.

Records were how the state remembered you.

If someone disappeared from the records, they did not just vanish from the street.

They vanished from Rome itself.

Arthur looked down at the tablets and suddenly understood why Gaius had kept digging.

A stolen shipment was corruption.

Missing men were something else.

Livia said something quietly.

Marcus answered.

Arthur caught one word.

Servi.

Slaves.

Then another.

Damnati.

Condemned men.

His skin prickled.

So not just workers.

Slaves. Prisoners. People no one important would miss.

Arthur looked at the names again. There were not many on this set of tablets. Maybe a dozen. Maybe less. But these were only the records Gaius had kept close.

How many more existed elsewhere?

How many people had been turned into missing lines?

He stood and began pacing the small room.

Lucius muttered something that probably meant he wanted less pacing near his patient. Arthur ignored him without meaning to.

The thought was too large.

Grain shipments moved through warehouses. Warehouses used labor. Laborers appeared in records. If someone wanted to move people without attracting attention, they could hide them inside the movement of goods.

A cart of grain.

A closed warehouse.

A few altered entries.

A man became cargo.

The idea made him feel sick.

Marcus stepped in front of him and placed a hand on his shoulder. Not hard. Just enough to stop him.

Arthur looked up.

The soldier said something quietly.

Arthur did not understand the words.

He understood the meaning.

Breathe.

So he did.

Once.

Twice.

It helped a little.

Livia tapped the tablet again, drawing their attention back. She pointed at the scratched name from the ring.

Aelius Varro.

Then she pointed to the records.

After that, she made a small cutting gesture with two fingers, separating one idea from another.

Arthur understood.

Aelius was connected.

But he was not the whole answer.

He was part of the road.

Not the end of it.

That was both useful and deeply annoying.

Livia leaned back against the pillow, exhausted by the effort. For the first time, Arthur saw the pain break through her mask. Her lips pressed together. Her breathing became shallow. She shut her eyes for a moment too long.

Then she forced them open again.

Stubborn woman.

Lucius finally stepped forward and took the stylus from her hand.

This time, no one argued.

Livia whispered something to Marcus.

He frowned, then looked toward Arthur. 𝑓𝘳𝘦𝑒𝑤𝑒𝘣𝘯ℴ𝘷𝘦𝓁.𝑐𝑜𝑚

After a moment, Marcus walked to the corner of the room where Livia’s bloodstained belongings had been placed. Among them were the tablets she had carried during the attack. Some had cracked when they fell. Others were smeared with dirt.

He brought them over.

Livia pointed to one.

Not the largest.

Not the cleanest.

A small tablet tied shut with thin cord.

Marcus untied it and passed it to Arthur.

The wax inside was badly scratched, as if someone had written on it, erased part of it, then written again. Arthur struggled with the text. Most of it looked like fragments. Dates. Locations. Names.

Then he saw the line at the bottom.

It was written in a different hand.

Messier.

More urgent.

Gaius’s hand, he somehow knew.

Arthur stared at the words until they settled into meaning.

Quaere eos.

Find them.

He did not need Marcus this time.

He did not need Livia.

He understood.

For a long moment, nobody spoke.

The small room felt very still. Outside, Rome carried on. Carts rattled over stone streets. People shouted. Someone laughed in the distance. The city sounded alive, huge, unstoppable.

Arthur looked down at the names again.

Rome was full of people.

That was what made it powerful.

That was also what made it cruel.

Because in a city of a million souls, a few missing men could vanish without leaving a ripple.

Unless someone looked.

Gaius had looked.

Now Gaius was dead.

Arthur closed the tablet carefully.

He still did not know why he had been brought here. He did not know why he wore Gaius’s body or what force had pulled him across centuries into the middle of this mess.

But he knew one thing.

This was no longer just about surviving.

He looked at Marcus.

Then at Livia.

Then at the tablet in his hands.

"We find them," he said.

Neither understood the words.

They understood him anyway.