Written for readers who have finished Book 1.
A small scroll-copyist's workshop in the craftsman quarter of Ephesus, with the living rooms above it and an inner stair between. One high, narrow window keeps the street's dust off the bench and lets the morning in over a working man's shoulder. It smells of dry papyrus, iron-bite ink and the cedar oil brushed on finished scrolls to keep the worm out — and under all of it, the harbour, a city breathing in ships.