“Yes.”
“And even if we could get Vix away, Domitian would find us. Wherever we ran.”
“Yes.”
“So he’s got to die. That’s all there is to it.”
“I’ll kill him,” said Arius quite calmly. “You and Vix flee Rome.” He wanted to live, but if it was the only way—
“No.” For the first time her body trembled. “No.”
“But—”
“I said no!” She turned in his arms, taking his face hard between her hands. “There’s a man I know—we’ll go to him. He’ll manage something.”
“Thea—”
She crushed her body fiercely against his, and for a while there was no more talk.
W
HAT’S on your mind, Paulinus?” Marcus asked as soon as the library door closed behind his son. Sabina had been very poised through her first games, not crying or wincing at the blood-shed, but she’d unexpectedly had a seizure in the litter on the way back, and Calpurnia was tending her now. Marcus would be tending her himself, if his son hadn’t stridden unexpectedly into the atrium.
“Paulinus?” Marcus paused. “I’d have thought you would be at the palace.”
“The Emperor already had me take Vix back.” Paulinus’s hands bunched at his sides.
“The boy?” Marcus grimaced. “Children fighting in the Colosseum now. Barbaric.”
“Oh, the boy’s all right.” Paulinus jerked. “Shaking, doing his best not to cry. Said he’d kill me if I laughed at him. Never felt less like laughing in my life.”
Paulinus’s eyes skittered over the pool in the atrium floor, the columns about the roof. Marcus regarded him a moment. “Perhaps you’d better come into my study, Paulinus.”
“Yes,” Paulinus said in a rush. “I must talk to you. I need your advice.”
“What is it?”
Paulinus came to parade rest. “Sir.” He fi xed his eyes on the wall over Marcus’s shoulder, and recited in the tones of a reporting legionnaire. “I have come to the conclusion that Emperor Domitian is unfit for the office he holds.”
Marcus blinked. He lowered himself into the nearest chair. “Go on.”
“He exiled his niece Lady Flavia Domitilla and executed her husband and children, all without just cause.” Eyes still fi xed stonily on the wall. “I have reason to believe him guilty of torturing his mistress Athena, and his niece Lady Julia. Julia he—he also murdered without cause. I believe he is a monster.”
“Perhaps,” Marcus said mildly. “But he is a good Emperor, is he not?”
“A monster can’t—”
“Of course a monster can be a good Emperor, Paulinus. Domitian’s personal habits may leave much to be desired, but there is no doubt he is a good administrator, a fine jurist, and a capable general. We have enjoyed stability under his reign. Stability, and boring peaceful things like a balanced economy and historically low corruption levels.” Marcus rotated a pen between his hands. “You may be too young to remember the Year of Four Emperors, Paulinus, but many who do may be willing to balance a little monstrosity against stability.”
“I’m not one of them.” Paulinus looked him square in the eye. “I believe Domitian must be removed.”
Marcus wondered how much blood those words had wrenched out of his son’s heart. “Why ask my advice, then?” Quietly.
“Because you’re a man of principles. Maybe the only one left. If you tell me Domitian is not worth his office, that’s good enough for me.”
Another pint of heart’s blood
, Marcus judged.
Fortunate that he has so great a heart to spare it.
He opened his mouth—and the door crashed inward.
“Marcus,” said Calpurnia. “Paulinus. There’s someone here to—um. Here’s Lady Athena. And this is—?”
“Arius,” the big man said. “You’ll know me.”
“Who?” Marcus said politely.
“Never mind.” Thea crossed the room, her eyes burning Paulinus.
Marcus looked at Calpurnia. “If you don’t mind, my dear—”
“Oh, I’m leaving.” She raised a hasty hand. “Whatever it is, I don’t want to know.” As she shut the door—“I’ll just go keep the slaves quiet.”
“Good girl.”
“Paulinus.” Thea stopped before Marcus’s son. “We need you.”
Paulinus looked at her, and his gaze didn’t slide away. “You want your son back.”
“I want my son back,” said Thea. “And I want the Emperor dead.”
Marcus spoke. “We all do.”
Thirty-one
D
IVORCE?” Lepida perched on the edge of Marcus’s desk, raising her penciled brows. “Really, Marcus, why should I do that?”
“The Emperor is besotted with you, from all accounts. Six months now, isn’t it?” Marcus shrugged. “I thought you might wish to make yourself . . . available.”
“Oh, a man doesn’t want his mistress to be available unless he suggests it.” But Lepida preened a little. “You heard he’s besotted with me?”
Marcus hid a smile. “He must have a stronger nose than I, if he can stand that vulgar perfume.”
“Claws in, darling. I’m not getting rid of you yet. Though if he
does
decide to make me his Empress . . .”
“If.”
She bristled. “Why not? He divorced his wife once; he can do it again. Aren’t I worthy of a crown?”
Marcus looked at his wife: slim and luscious in saffron silk with a collar of Indian gold covering her throat and ropes of scented black hair coiled around her elegant head. “Every inch the Empress,” he agreed. “Let’s hope he lives to crown you.”
“You’ve been listening to gossip.”
“It’s been kept quiet, Lepida, but I caught a whisper—I do keep my ear to the ground, you know. The Emperor asked his astrologer to predict the date of his death, and he got a much nearer date than he liked.”
“Nessus is unreliable now,” Lepida snapped. “Nothing will kill Domitian.”
“Of course. Though the thought must make you nervous.”
“Don’t try me, Marcus. If I ever do become Empress”—a swirl of saffron silk and a jangle of gold bracelets—“I’ll have your head on a spike.”
Marcus smiled as she clicked out of his tablinum in her gold-trimmed sandals.
Nicely planted
, he thought. If Lepida pushed to be Empress she’d be out in a fortnight—out from Domitian’s charmed circle of protection. And if Marcus’s suspicions were right and Paulinus was shaking off her malign influence as well . . .
“Father?” Sabina’s feather-brown head poked around the door.
“Are you listening at keyholes again, Vibia Sabina?”
“How else am I supposed to learn anything?” She slipped in, shutting the door behind her. “Father . . . why did you suggest a divorce? You didn’t think she’d take it.”
“Didn’t I?”
“I know your voice.”
He looked at her. “No.” After a pause. “I didn’t think she’d take a divorce.”
Sabina took a step closer. “So divorce
her
.”
“Should I?”
“She’s my mother. I know I should honor her.” Sabina paused. “But . . .”
“But?”
“She’s beautiful. She’s even sort of interesting, like the way poisonous snakes are interesting. But she’s
awful
. Why didn’t you divorce her years ago?”
“That’s not for you to question, Vibia Sabina.”
“Yes, it is. What happened? Did she threaten you?”
You
, Marcus wanted to say. Paulinus was a Praetorian Prefect, the Emperor’s best friend; no slander of Lepida’s would stick long to his name. But Sabina had no such protection.
“Did she threaten me instead?” Sabina’s question didn’t surprise Marcus. His daughter’s thoughts and his had always run close together. “That shouldn’t have stopped you, Father.”
“No.” He smiled. “But I had thought to see you married first.” Married, grown, out of reach of Lepida’s malice.
“I don’t think I want to get married. I’d rather see the world.” Sabina’s mouth firmed. “Divorce her.”
He looked up at his child, and didn’t see her. He saw a girl grown almost to his own height, her hair coiled on her neck like a woman’s and a woman’s steady eyes gazing into his.
“Gods,” he said. “You grew up behind my back.”
“Think about it?” she pleaded.
He smiled, smoothing her hair. “Yes, I’ll think about it. Now, are you too big to give me a hug?”
She leaned her sleek brown head on his crooked shoulder. “Never.”
THEA
F
OR a moment my mouth hung open like a bumpkin’s. “Athena.” The Empress of Rome glided across Marcus’s tablinum and pressed my hand as if we were old friends. “Lovely to see you, my dear. I haven’t heard a note of good music since you left the palace. And this is the famous Arius? I’ve watched you a good many times, with great pleasure. Paulinus, you don’t look well. Have you been ill? My husband has been worried. Marcus, are we all here?”
It was the most I’d ever heard her say in all the years I’d observed her.
“We should get down to business.” She arranged herself briskly on a padded stool. “Officially I’m dining with my sister Cornelia and her husband, which gives me only a few hours. Domitian still tracks my comings and goings.”
I closed my mouth with a snap. She was a conspirator, too? Domitian’s marble-perfect wife with her emeralds and her good works? The
Empress
?
Paulinus looked as if someone had just whacked him right between the eyes. Arius’s gaze flicked back and forth between her and me as if drawing comparisons. And Marcus kissed her cheek with the ease of an old friend.
“The usual precautions?” she asked him.
“The usual. I’m supposed to be dining with Lady Diana; we’ve been friends for years, so no one will question it.”
“Yes, Diana will cover for you.” The Empress cast a glance at all of us. “Are they trustworthy, Marcus?”
“What about you?” I stepped forward. “Are you trustworthy, Domina?”
Marcus spoke as formally as if addressing the Senate. “The Empress and I have been working together since Lady Julia’s death, Thea.”
“Then why isn’t the Emperor dead yet?” Arius folded his arms across his chest. “I decide I want a man dead, I don’t wait around six months to do it.”
“See here,” Paulinus began.
“No, he’s right to ask.” Marcus looked at my lover. “The Empress and I took some time feeling each other out—neither of us being terribly trusting.”
“Normally I would prefer to work alone.” The Empress’s fine patrician voice was matter-of-fact. “But I realized it would take more than me to bring down Domitian.” She looked at me, speculative. “I did consider recruiting you, my dear, but I wasn’t sure if Domitian had cut all your nerve out or not. He has a tendency to do that with his women.”
He hadn’t done it to her.
She looked around our little circle. “Is everyone satisfied now?”
Paulinus rubbed a hand through his hair. “Before we go any further,” he said unhappily, “I want to make one thing clear. I won’t do it myself. I’ll smooth the way for you, but I won’t do it. Not if it’s poison, not if it’s a knife.” Looking away. “I owe him that much.”
“We don’t expect it of you,” the Empress assured him.
Arius looked disgusted, and I nudged him. He wasn’t disposed to like Paulinus, probably because he knew I’d once shared Paulinus’s bed. “In another lifetime,” I’d assured him. “I hardly remember it.”
“Don’t think much of your taste,” Arius had grumped.
“And your bed was empty all those years you mourned for me?” I said tartly. He’d at once found something else to talk about.
We sat down, awkwardly, to plan the death of an Emperor. That is, Arius and Paulinus and I were awkward. Marcus and the Empress were quite at ease—and at once, they turned to Arius.
“As an assassin, you are the logical choice,” said Marcus. “Are you willing?”
“Just get me a knife.” Arius’s voice was level, but my stomach jumped.
“He’s a common thug!” Paulinus burst out.
Arius grinned. The Empress looked at him, speculative. “You were the best fighter in Rome once, but you aren’t young anymore. Are you still the best?”
Arius gave her a long contemptuous blink.
“He is,” I said. “It may have been years since he fought in any arena, but he’s as good now as he was then.”
Maybe better
, I added to myself.
Because then he didn’t have anything to love.
“It won’t be easy,” the Empress went on. “My husband may look lazy, but he can still fight with the best of them.”
“He sleeps with a dagger under his pillow,” I added.
Arius looked at me.
“Well, he does.”
“Really?” said the Empress, diverted. “A new development, since my day. Out of curiosity, my dear, why didn’t you ever stab him with it when he slept?”
“Because I wanted to live,” I shot back. “Why didn’t
you
ever stab him while he slept? You had as many chances as I did.” I looked around the little circle. “Anyone can kill an Emperor. It’s living to tell the tale that’s the hard part. So if Arius kills Domitian for you, there had better be a plan to get him out alive afterward.”
“He’ll get out alive.” The Empress produced a neat list and in a cool voice outlined the plan she and Marcus had constructed between them. “Paulinus, I trust you can take care of the guards?”
“Yes, but—” Paulinus looked at his father. “I don’t like it. You’re entrusting the fate of Rome to this—this
criminal
—”
Arius just shrugged, but I stiffened. “He’s not a criminal.”
“But neither is he exactly a model citizen,” the Empress murmured, a gleam of amusement in her eye. If there was one thing I’d never suspected her of possessing, it was a sense of humor.
Marcus was addressing his son in low tones. “Paulinus, assassination is not a pretty business. You knew that when you agreed to join us. You can’t quibble about means and methods. There is
no
honorable way to do this.”
“But he—”
“He has talents we need. So do you. Are you going to contribute them?”