They were still climbing upward, and her arms ached from carrying her medical supplies. Leo must be even more exhausted because he had the heavier boxes, and Simonis carried a bag of clothes.

She stopped and let her case drop for a moment. “We must find somewhere for tonight. At least to leave our belongings. And we need to eat. It is more than five hours since breakfast.”

“Six,” Simonis observed. “I’ve never seen so many people in my life.”

“Do you want me to carry that?” Leo asked, but his face looked tired and he already had far more weight than either Simonis or Anna.

In answer, Simonis picked up her bag again and started forward.

A hundred yards farther, they found an excellent inn that served food. It had good mattresses stuffed with goose down and was furnished with linen sheets. Each room had a basin large enough for bathing and a latrine with a tile drain. It was eight folleis each, per night, not including meals. That was expensive, but Anna doubted others would be much cheaper.

She dreaded going out in case she made another mistake, another womanish gesture, expression, or even lack of reaction in some way. One error would be enough to make people look harder and perhaps see the differences between her and a real eunuch.

They ate a lunch of fresh gray mullet and wheat bread at a tavern and asked a few discreet questions about cheaper lodgings.

“Oh, inland,” a fellow diner told them cheerfully. He was a little gray-haired man in a worn tunic that came no farther than his knees, his legs bound with cloth to keep him warm but leaving him unencumbered for work. “Farther west you go, cheaper they are. You strangers here?”