The day was cool but not bitter, and he buttoned the bottom two buttons of his jacket as we hit the street outside the hotel. I supposed that with the couple of layers he had on, he was probably quite warm. I had brought a thin fall jacket, just in case, but honestly, the weather wasn’t anything compared to Minnesota. This was merely brisk.
I followed him down the grey sidewalk as cars rushed by next to us on the road. I looked for a minute at the drivers, on the wrong side of the car to my Americanized mind.
Janus was shrewd enough not to say anything as we walked, and we crossed the street at the next corner. Every one of the buildings seemed to be about three stories high, except for the couple of hotels that jutted out of the middle and ends of the block; they were a few stories higher. The rest seemed to be of roughly uniform height, and I wondered how long they had been there. The fact that they all melded together in a similar style intrigued me. It was rather like housing developments with a complementary look that I had seen back in the U.S.
We came to a Greek restaurant and halted outside the glass facade. It had bold yellow letters across a faded blue canopy that extended over a half dozen tables scattered across the sidewalk. It was blustery enough today that no one was brave enough to eat out there, though, and Janus made a great show of staring at the menu in the window, while keeping his voice low. “Greek breakfast has never been to my taste.”
“Is that because you were a Roman god?”
He gave a slight shrug of the shoulders. “It is true, I did miss the Hellenistic days, having not been born yet when so many of my contemporaries were milking the lands of Greece for all they were worth. It is possible that I did not learn to acquire a taste for some of the foods that were so popular to them, having grown up on more traditional Roman fare.” He gave a short chuckle. “Which is nothing like that which you would consider Roman today. Food is one area where I am thankful for the advancements that technology has brought us. Others of our kind who lived in those days, and even those who didn’t, they act as though it was some glorious time, halcyon days where wine was poured directly into our mouths by beautiful women, where every need, whim and desire was granted without thought or concern for those involved.” He got a far-off look in his eyes. “I don’t see it, though, the romanticism of it all. I lived in those times, and yes, we exercised the vital powers in ways that we no longer do, held sway in the courts of the world in a way that has faded, receded, but the way we lived …” He let his voice trail off.
“I bet it was a real bitch living without flush toilets,” I said, my voice hoarse from my morning’s activities.
Janus gave me a slight smile. “You have no idea. The hygiene … Humans had it easier than us, of course, with our superior sense of smell and taste. When we lived in palaces, I took baths every day, sometimes multiple times per day when it was hot, and the ones who didn’t …” He shuddered. “Bacchus was the worst. He would drink himself into a stupor, soil himself, then never bother to clean up, going back to the alcohol and letting the smell offend the rest of our nostrils, as though he weren’t covered in his own feces.” He gave a small noise of disgust. “I was not sorry the day that Zeus dashed his brains out, though there was more to it than that, of course—”
“What was his power?” I asked, half-listening to Janus and half-studying the menu. The food was beginning to appeal to me a little, the nausea receding. I read the description of the British breakfast, eggs, bacon, tomatoes and baked beans, and wondered a little about the inclusion of the beans. There was a blissful quiet in my mind, a kind of peace that I couldn’t remember feeling in a long while. The peace of no one talking.
“Hm?” Janus looked up at me. “Oh, Bacchus? He was a Persephone-type, but he never wasted his talents for influencing life on mere humans, preferring instead to treat with vineyards, speeding the growth of their vines in exchange for wine. Quite the sot, as they say.”
I squinted at the menu. “Persephones can grow plants?”
“Oh, yes,” Janus said, “quite well. A Persephone can cultivate a field of thriving plants in the middle of a snowstorm.” He frowned and turned to me. “Have you not seen Klementina do that before?”
“You mean Kat,” I said, almost grinding my teeth. “I’ve seen plants respond to her touch, but I didn’t know she was growing them.”
“Indeed,” he said. “A Persephone has a bond with life, influences it with the touch, can augment it, make it grow, guide it in the directions she so desires. I suppose if the Kat … personality, as it were,” he said, almost sheepishly, “did not have much experience with the power, it would probably be somewhat limited. A Persephone with full command of her abilities,” he clucked his tongue and shook his head slowly, “well, it is different from what you’ve seen, I suppose.”