Written for readers who have finished Book 1.
A scroll-copyist in the craftsman quarter of Ephesus, and a specialist in the Ephesia grammata — the famous spell-scrolls the city exported across the Greek-speaking world. He is good at it: a real, unexamined skill, and a sister who keeps the accounts. Whether the formulas actually do anything is not a question his trade has ever required him to ask. Then he begins, for professional reasons, to listen to a teacher in a hired hall.