"What can I do for you, senator?" she inquired, honoring him again with his new title, her tone more subdued than the question required.

Vespasian leaned his elbow on her table. The wobbly legs had been stabilized for her by a carpenter, who then polished up the whole piece with beeswax. Caenis folded her hands on the farthermost gleaming edge.

He was making no attempt to explain. First he had decided against seeing her again; well, she didn't want to see him. And now he had decided to come back: well!

He said, "I'm trying to get hold of some notes for a decent shorthand system. The ones in the libraries are not for taking away." This ploy was at least novel. Mad humor danced in his face as Caenis tried to resist laughing too. "When I go abroad, if I'm just trailing around after some self-opinionated governor who doesn't trust me to do anything, I may at least manage to learn taking notes properly."

His year as a quaestor would involve traveling out to one of the foreign provinces to be the governor's finance officer and deputy. Unless they happened to have worked together before and had built up a friendship, governors and their quaestors often despised each other. In any case, she imagined Vespasian might make a prickly subordinate.

Delving into the conical basket in which she carried her equipment to and fro, Caenis produced her own battered reference sheets. She had been taught shorthand and several kinds of ciphering long ago. "This is a list of symbols I once made for myself. If you can read my scribble, take it, please."

When taking notes for her own purposes she wrote so quickly her handwriting could be eccentric, but as he glanced through, he nodded. "Thanks." He was just like her; set a document in his hand, and he was instantly devouring it.

While he was still reading she forced herself to say, "I see the Senate has published next year's postings."