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never tried to tell his sister how to behave. There were plenty of brothers who tried to be stricter than their fathers were, she knew.
    Alphena didn’t feel that she owed Varus support in this silly poetry business, but it would be stabbing him in the back if she came to his reading and then walked out in the middle of it. He cared about his poetry, though Juno knew why. Insulting it publicly would be the worst thing she could do, and he didn’t deserve that.
    What was wrong with Corylus? Alphena pressed her thigh against his again, but it was like hitting a padded wall. He didn’t even feel warm anymore. His eyes had narrowed to slits, and his breathing was so light that she had to watch carefully to see the tiny flutters of his chest.
    â€œThe earthborn monster blazed with rage,” Varus said. “He was a stranger to fear and had never before known pain.”
    He recited like he was running through the list of vegetables which he’d been asked to return with from the family villa just east of Carce. His eyeswere open and staring, but he’d stopped turning the scroll forward. His body was as rigid as that of Corylus here on the bench.
    Why
doesn’t Corylus notice me?
Alphena had seen the way he looked at Hedia out of the corners of his eyes when they happened to meet. When Corylus realized Alphena was watching him watch her stepmother, he blushed. He trotted toward the gymnasium so quickly that he trod on the heel of his own sandal and almost fell.
    I don’t care about Publius Corylus!
    She went white with rage—at herself, though she was imagining Corylus strapped to a wooden colt so that she could flog him bloody with a switch. With her own hands!
    Pandareus was seated at the left end of the front bench. Alphena leaned forward so that she could see him. He was jotting notes, using a brush and a notebook of thin boards. His outer garment was a light cape instead of a toga, because he wasn’t a citizen of Carce. He’d hung a miniature inkwell fashioned from the tip of a cow’s horn to the broach pinning the neck closed.
    Varus stumbled. His recitation had been so dull that his stuttered “horny-hoo … horny … horny-
hoofed
—” almost passed unnoticed. The audience was asleep or lost in a world where this wasn’t happening.
    Varus released the book’s take-up wand. The tension of the coiled papyrus made the glistening roll spring closed. He stopped speaking.
    Alphena glanced around the hall. Pandareus looked quizzical, his brush poised; no other member of the audience appeared to have noticed the change. Corylus remained in his silent reverie.
    â€œComes Surtr from below,”
said Varus, his voice suddenly thunderous.
“With him comes Fire, which sings in the forest!”
    Members of the audience came alert, mumbling in surprise. The hall had been uncomfortably warm with the press of bodies, but a clammy breeze made Alphena shiver.
    A short freedman wearing a simpler toga than most of those present stood and pushed toward the door. Sweat gleamed on his high forehead.
    Varus gripped the top and bottom of his scroll and twisted. The winding sticks crackled like the bones of a strangled chicken. One of the gold knobs popped loose and rattled to the floor.
    â€œSurtr’s sword is drawn,”
said Varus. Or at least the words came from his mouth. His eyes were wide and staring, and veins stood out on his throat.
“Like the sun it shines!”
    The room shuddered. It was dark as night save for a sort of yellow-green fox fire which came up from the earth itself. The doorway was a blur and the light sconces had become dull sparks as though their wicks were starved of oil.
    The air was cold. At the edges of her consciousness, Alphena was aware of watching figures.
    Alphena heard an angry squeak. The central image of the wall panel to her right was a sphinx no larger than a clenched fist, painted in the same delicate gold as the