The Water Thief by Ben Pastor

Author:Ben Pastor [Pastor, Ben]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Historical Fiction
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Soter’s house was one of those that had been carved out of the small uphill space between the baths of Titus and the massive walls of those Trajan had later built. It had been an elegant city home, Aelius had heard, once a consul’s residence. Small in plan but three-storied, with no land around it, and not much light, its door had opened about three hundred paces from the amphitheater, though one could not see it due to the house’s recessed location. Aelius saw immediately what peril the fire had caused to the neighborhood, judging by the houses across from Copper Alley, whose wall had been visibly tongued by flames and smoke.

Under a clearing sky of swift clouds, very little remained of Soter’s property. The bricks and concrete fallen into the street had been duly removed; collapsed beams, caved-in walls, and unrecognizable rubble cluttered the site of the house itself. The real estate agent happening to survey the site brightened up when Aelius walked up to him, and quickly came to business. “New to the district, Your Excellency? There’s much you can do with the place, you know. Get some able crew out there, and—”

“I can see the state it’s in.”

“Ah. Well, then—you can see that it’s the land you’re buying, basically.”

“Basically? I’d say. All the few square feet of it.”

“Still, it’s the location, you know. Close to everything.”

“Stuffed between two public baths. I bet one couldn’t hear oneself thinking most of the time. And the entrance to the Titian Baths looks ready to fall onto the street, which means half of the hill will go with it.” For all that, Aelius saw the immediate advantage of appearing as a prospective buyer. He straddled a broken rafter to enter what had been the atrium. “I might want it as an investment, that’s all, or decide to do nothing of the kind. I hear a man died in the fire, so I doubt that buyers are lining up to take it off your hands.”

“Well, you are welcome to survey the place. In case you decide it suits you, you can send for me down at the corner.”

Once alone, Aelius could hardly make out the space that had been Soter’s studio. The ceiling and part of the roof had collapsed into it, and although the fire brigade had cleared a path through the rubble to recover the body, still beams, blackened tiles, charred stumps difficult to decipher—probably furniture—occupied most of the floor. The pavement itself was sooty, streaked; from it and from the rubble there rose the acidic odor of wetness on burned objects, a sour cindery smell. Here, as far as Aelius could tell, where the opening of a window was indicated by gnarled remnants of its grill, had sat the desk, along the south side of the ground floor. Aelius recognized the metal claws of desk and chair, knobs and tarnished hinges. Paper and parchment, wholly combusted, left no other trace than a flimsy veil-like layer, mixed with remnants of the shelves in the wide bookcase niche.

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