Aemiliana nodded, smiling at Pentalius. "Thank you, Pentalius, for everything you've done for me." She rose on tiptoe and gave him a kiss on the cheek, then turned away so he wouldn't see her blushing. She had pursued Evandrus only because she was expected to, but secretly she'd always admired the wise young man who was now her protector. She remembered when she had first gone to the academy, she had been ten years old and scared out of her wits, and in the first class she'd gone to, beginning oration, she'd been seated by him. He'd shared the notes from the beginning of the year with her and helped her catch up before the first tests, and he'd kept the other students' attention effectively away from her. Realizing that Pentalius had left with a comment about a servant, she decided that now was as good a time as any to take stock of what she had on her. Her purse that had a few coins left in it from her last shopping trip, her notes on reading assignments, and a handful of odd trinkets (sparkly rocks, beads, amulets, and so on); the clothes she wore; the sandals she had taken off downstairs; and the necklace she always kept under her dress. She fished that out from inside her tunic, admiring the charms. Aemilia had taken her on a shopping trip when she was four, and had promptly ditched her at a table of shiny things. She had panicked, and the owner of that table had taken pity on her and given her a tiny marble charm of the goddess Roma to calm her down. A pale-skinned woman with black hair and violet eyes, draped in an elegant violet gown, reaching down as if helping a kneeling person to rise. Then, on her eleventh birthday, she had found an even littler charm on her pillow: One of herself, down to the short undyed tunic and scars on her legs and arms, kneeling but reaching and looking up as if to grasp something. The two figurines hung on her necklace along with a few silver beads and a couple of tiny amethyst crystals. She'd never told anyone, not her sister, certainly not her father, about the necklace. She'd thought they would confiscate it if they knew. She didn't need to hide it anymore; she laid the thin cord on top of her dress. Her search of her pockets done, she went to the orderly row of books on the desk and picked out the first volume of Andromachus's medical encyclopedia, intending to soak up as much new knowledge as she possibly could.