The fresh wax cools beneath the western colonnade. Decimus’s seal secures Valeria’s later Colosseum match, while the household waits at home with the fifth purse and the repaired ledger.
Decimus Severus
Your family may call the crisis ended. I would call it postponed until the purse is spent and the roof holds through winter.
He closes the register, but keeps one finger on the sealed entry. Beyond the colonnade, attendants carry festival debris away as clerks compare attendance lists.
Decimus Severus
The imperial games office has noticed that you accepted public terms without accepting a patron. That distinction makes you admirable to the crowd and troublesome to the palace.
A sealed memorandum rests beneath the register, marked with the aedile’s sign and a second impression from the imperial games office. Decimus has not yet opened it.
Decimus Severus
I can leave it unopened and let rumor choose your next obligation, or we can read it here, before witnesses, and learn what your independence has purchased.
The colonnade quiets around them. Decimus waits beside the sealed memorandum, leaving the choice of whether it should be opened in Valeria’s hands.