The bathhouse had no roof anymore.

  Rain came straight down onto the cracked tile floor, forming puddles in the empty pools. Moss clung to the corners, and birds nested in the rafters where once the domes had arched like the heavens themselves.

  Marius sat on a broken bench, cloak wrapped tight against the chill. His grandson, Decianus, played nearby—climbing the worn edge of the frigidarium pool and pretending he was a soldier repelling invaders.

  “When I was your age,” Marius said, voice echoing, “this place steamed like Vulcan’s forge. The floors were warm. The air so thick with mist you could barely see the person across from you.”

  Decianus looked up, curious. “Was it magic?”

  Marius chuckled. “No. Just fire, and men who knew how to move it through the walls. A hypocaust, it was called. But yes. In a way, it was magic.”

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  “Can you fix it, Grandpa?”

  “No,” Marius said gently. “No one remembers how.”

  The boy frowned, poking at a patch of moss with a stick. “Why not?”

  Marius searched for an answer but found only ghosts. “Because the men who knew it are gone. And the ones who taught them are gone, too. And the men who wrote down how it worked...their books have rotted or burned.”

  They sat in silence for a while. Wind stirred the weeds growing between the tiles. Somewhere in the city, a church bell rang—off-key, as though its clapper had been chipped.

  “There used to be candles,” Marius said quietly. “Hundreds of them, during the winter festivals. And music, and laughter, and speeches in the old tongue. And you could walk from one end of the forum to the other without stepping in mud.”

  Decianus laughed. “You’re funny, Grandpa.” He frowned in thought. “What’s the old tongue?”

  Marius tried to answer, but the words came in Latin and caught in his throat. His grandson would never speak it—not really. Not as it had been spoken.

  The boy ran off, chasing a pigeon through a shaft of light; the rain was gone now. Marius watched him go, then placed his hand on the cracked tile beside him.

  Still faintly warm, despite the cold. But only from the sun.