Tarsus was the lowest of the lowborn. He had a low-given name. Even the street peddlers of Pago would not name their children so. The slaves of the outer city, Fugi, had more honorable names.

The boy did not remember his parents. They had abandoned infant Tarsus when they had fled Pago during the floods of 221 ND. He was found on the steps of a temple of Aion. That was how Empousa had recounted his past.

Old man Empousa was a middleman trader in the southern suburra of Pago and ...