Lady of the Eternal City

by Kate Quinn

  “I need your help. Walk with me.”

  “Is that wise?” I could not tell what she was thinking.

  “Hadrian no longer questions the company I keep.”

  “Even me?”

  “Even you.”

  I wasn’t sure I believed her. I started to walk, winter-dry grass crunching underfoot, and she fell in beside me. Go away, just go away. I liked my life numb and uneventful. Nothing Sabina put her cool hands on stayed uneventful for long.

  “What do you think of Lucius?” she asked.

  Of all the things I thought she might have asked me, that would not have made my list. “I don’t think anything about him,” I said finally. “Don’t have to.”

  We passed under another of the ever-present lemon trees, all but alone. “Most of Rome flocks around the rising sun rather than the setting,” Sabina said, noting my glance around the largely empty sprawl of grass and statues. “Lucius’s atrium is very full these days.”

  “Stop doing that.”

  “What?”

  “Reading my mind.”

  “I wish I could read minds,” she sighed. “If I could, I’d have the proof I need.”

  “Proof? Of what?”

  “That Hadrian has made a grave mistake.” She looked at me, breath rising in a white mist on the air. “And if his health continues to decline, he will die before he can correct it.”

  “How do I help with that? You persuade him he’s made a mistake. You two look amicable enough these days.” I saw it, those small touches of her hand to his forehead or his lips to her knuckles in absent greeting. There was something like affection there, and that dumbfounded me. Affection, after everything that had passed between them?

  It was not jealousy. It was incomprehension. It was also no business of mine, so I told myself not to think about it.

  “Hadrian will not listen to me on this,” Sabina said. “He is tired and he only wants the matter settled. He chose an heir; now he’ll put the problem aside as solved and spend his days remembering Antinous.”

  I heard the grief in her voice, lingering like perfume over that name. However I had wronged the Empress of Rome, she had loved my son.

  But her voice when she spoke again was hard. “I want Lucius gone, and to be rid of him I need proof. That is why I need you. Help me question him.”

  “Why do you need me for that?”

  “I need answers. I’ll get them any way I can. If I don’t have your help, I’ll probably have to seduce him.” She looked at me, her gaze straight as a sword. “I’d rather have you.”

  For what? I almost asked, but I wasn’t getting sucked back into an empress’s games. Not again.

  I lengthened my stride, leaving her behind me. “Seduce that buffoon if you want,” I threw over my shoulder. “I don’t care. None of this is my business.”

  “It is your business.” Her voice fell behind me as she halted. “He killed your son.”

  SABINA

  “Lady—” Lucius’s steward greeted Sabina, but she sidestepped him, stalking to the atrium of the vast overdecorated house where the Imperial heir held court in a crowd of petitioners. The walls were lined with page boys in eagle-feathered wings—evidently the tableau of the day was Jupiter holding court in the heavens, for in the middle, the man her husband had chosen as heir reclined in a gray tunic embroidered in lightning bolts. And his smug face grinned out under a fillet of Imperial purple.

  “Empress Sabina!” He came to her with outstretched arms, kissing her hand with the easy intimacy of a friend. Of a family member. “Naturally I am delighted—is the Emperor’s cough troubling him again? Do tell him I will call upon him, some business we must discuss before I depart for Pannonia—”

  Sabina filled her lungs and said, “Out.” And glanced at the man hulking behind her in his most imposing armor. Vix had already seen Lucius’s Praetorians and was glaring them out of the room with a scowl like death. They looked to their master for orders, but he gave a light laugh and nodded.

  “Not contradicting your Empress,” Sabina said as the atrium emptied. “Wise.” And when they stood alone and Vix had barred the doors, she hit the new Imperial heir fast and savagely across the face. Not a woman’s slap, but a tight-fisted hammer of a blow Vix had taught her years before, the kind of blow centurions dealt out to legionaries who had earned a flogging. From the corner of her eye, she saw the savage flare of approval in Vix’s eyes.

  Lucius’s head snapped back. “Lady—” He paused as he fingered his jaw, caught somewhere between indignation and laughter, between brazening his new status or laughing it all off as some odd jest.

  Sabina turned away. “Legate,” she said crisply, “put him on the ground.”

  Vix came forward, stone-faced and blazing-eyed in his breastplate, every bit the ruthless killer who had flattened Judaea under his boots. Murder came off him in red waves, raising the hair on Sabina’s neck as he brushed past, and Lucius froze like a mouse before a cat. Vix looked at him for a silent burning moment, and then he chopped Hadrian’s heir in the throat with the side of his hand, folding Lucius over gasping. Vix flipped the other man down to the mosaics flat on his back and held him there—then looked up at Sabina.

  “I’ll beat the truth out of him,” Vix had said in Hadrian’s gardens the previous day. “I start smashing the joints in his arms one by one, and he’ll tell everything we want to know.”

  “It may come to that,” Sabina said. “But let me try first.”

  She knew what it cost him to stand back now and let her ask the questions. But he stepped away, clenching the hilt of his gladius and giving her a nod.

  “Lady!” Lucius rasped.

  Sabina ignored him, shrugging off her palla. She returned Vix’s nod and stepped deliberately over Lucius. He tried to rise, and she put a foot on his chest and pushed him back down.

  “You may be heir,” she said, gazing down at him, “but I am still Empress of Rome. If I like, I can squash you like a spider.”

  “Lady—”

  “Shut up. I would be careful, if I were you, what you said to me, Lucius Ceionius.”

  His bearded chin jerked up as he stared at her. “Lucius Aelius Verus Caesar,” he said. “That is my name. By the Emperor’s orders.”

  “You are still Lucius Ceionius to me.” She pressed her foot harder. “We will leave aside for the moment your ridiculous appointment to the purple, and we will leave aside as well the matter of my favorite niece marrying your six-year-old son. Not,” Sabina added, “that I will ever permit that.” Her glorious Amazon of a daughter was going to marry whomever she damned well pleased, whatever lucky boy she’d tripped out to inflame in her gold finery. Not some sniveling child a third her age. But that was a matter for the future. “I am going to ask you a question, Lucius, and unless you want to see your own blood on the tiles, you will not lie.”

  Lucius’s eyes flashed to Vix. “You would not dare harm the future Emperor!”

  Vix just smiled.

  Sabina slid her toe to Lucius’s chin and nudged his gaze back toward her. “Concentrate on me, not him. I want to know how you murdered Antinous.”

  A silence filled the atrium. Sabina heard the splash of water dripping from the roof gutter down into the central pool. Lucius swallowed, his eyes suddenly cautious. “I did not murder him.”

  Sabina looked at Vix. He unsheathed his gladius with slow, ringing menace, and Lucius’s eyes flew to it. “Do not lie to me,” she whispered.

  “I’m not, I—”

  Sabina lifted a finger, and the gladius tip flashed up to Lucius’s throat.

  “You’re mad,” Lucius gasped. “When the Emperor hears—”

  “I am his wife.” Sabina stepped over Lucius, a foot to each side of his waist, and slid herself slowly down over his whip-tense body, eyes never leaving his. “And he lets me do whatever I like
.”

  “He favors me—”

  “I could have you cut to pieces on the mosaics right here.” She pressed her fingertips into his chest right over the heart. Vix still held the sword at his throat, and she could feel the pulse of her old lover’s rage like the beat of her own blood. “If I tell Hadrian it was revenge for Antinous, he would do nothing but thank me.”

  Lucius repeated, “You’re mad!”

  “No. I am Empress. I learned under Plotina. I learned under her predecessor Domitia. You know what empresses are, Lucius? We are plotters. We are schemers. We are survivors.” She smiled. “And sometimes, we are killers.”

  Lucius tried to jerk his head away from the gladius, but he couldn’t jerk his gaze from Sabina’s. “I did not kill Antinous.”

  “You did.” She slid her fingertips slowly up his chest, lowering herself closer. “I’ve had you investigated. You were with the Emperor on the barge that evening, being entertained by a troupe of dancers—and when the party was done, you took two slave girls to your bed with you. Twins, of course. Beauties, the pair of them, and very valuable. So it’s curious you had them sold just two days after Antinous died—not just them, but every slave you had with you.”

  “Lady—”

  “I had them tracked,” Sabina whispered. “And that did take time. I couldn’t find all your slaves, but I found one of those twin girls. She whored for a priest of Anubis for a while, but he freed her eventually, and I had her brought to Rome. What an interesting tale she had to tell.”

  He swallowed. “What could she possibly have to say?”

  To Sabina, nothing at all. The girl had arrived a month ago, terrified, crashing to her knees at the Empress’s feet. To all Sabina’s questions, she would answer only a shake or a nod of the head, too petrified to speak a word. “You try,” Sabina had told her African maid. “She won’t dare speak against a former master, not to the Empress of Rome, but she might talk to a fellow slave. Wheedle it out of her, and I’ll grant you your freedom on the spot.”

  It had taken most of the month.

  “She told me you went back up on the deck of the barge,” Sabina said. “You took her and her sister with you, one on each side. You saw the Emperor’s favorite on the stern, speaking to a bearded soldier.” From the corner of her eye, she saw Vix’s jaw clench—that soldier had been Vix, of course. The last time he’d seen his son alive. “They embraced, and the soldier departed. Antinous was left behind, standing by the railing looking out at the water. And you dismissed both your slave girls—abruptly—and they went below. Leaving the Emperor’s favorite alone at the rail, and you staring at him.”

  “Did the slut see me push him?” Lucius flung back. “No. Because I did not!”

  “You made sure she did not. And you sold her away before anyone could question her.” Sabina wished there were more—she’d consulted with her ancient freedman, seeing where inquiries might next be directed. But then Lucius Ceionius had been elevated as heir and Hadrian was making plans to send him to Pannonia, and there was no more time for lengthy inquiries.

  Time was, in fact, running out. So she had decided to beard the beast in his den.

  “No one benefited from Antinous’s death but you.” Sabina spoke softly, pressed up against Lucius’s whole length. “There were those who despised him for being the Emperor’s lover, yes, but they wouldn’t have risked Hadrian’s anger harming him—not for mere moral outrage. And everyone else loved him and would have moved the heavens to keep him at Hadrian’s side.” A memory flashed of Antinous’s face, so young and golden and full of light when he smoothed the worry lines away from Hadrian’s brow. “You dared risk it because you saw opportunity. You became the Emperor’s new favorite and you parleyed that into a new name and the Imperial purple.”

  Lucius tried for contempt. “This is all very thin, Lady. You think you can hang an unseen murder about my neck on the word of a slave bitch?”

  “But you weren’t planning to kill him, were you?” Sabina moved her face closer, hovering just over his. They might have been fond lovers pressed together in a bed. “You were hoping Hadrian would tire of him, of course. But you would have been content to bide your time, if you hadn’t seen him unaccompanied that night. He was so seldom alone. What a chance.” Running a fingertip down Lucius’s cheekbone and feeling the film of sweat. The sweat of guilt, or just terror? “Admit it, Lucius. You didn’t plan it. You just stepped from the shadows and gave him a shove.”

  “I—”

  She saw him swallow. “You’ve always admired me.” Lowering her face closer. “You even tried to seduce me. I almost let you.”

  A faint sound from Vix. She wondered what he thought of her for such an admission.

  “I have nothing but admiration for you, Lady!” Lucius had long forgotten about Vix—his panicked stare was all for her. “A very lovely woman—”

  “I liked you, Lucius.” She wrapped her hands about his throat, light as feathers. “But I loved Antinous. You killed him, a boy I loved. And you turned my husband into a walking dead man. But I will be merciful. If you confess that you shoved him into the Nile, I’ll give you time to run before I tell Hadrian. And you can spend the rest of your life running, because he’ll never give up trying to find you. Personally, I’d head north of the wall in Britannia and keep going.”

  Vix spoke. “And I’ll find you even if you run that far.”

  Lucius made a twisting lunge as though to get out from under her. Sabina locked her hands and her thighs both, rolling him. Now she was beneath him, but she reared up snake-fast so her eyes captured his, and Lucius froze. As much from her gaze as from the tip of the gladius Vix poised again at his throat.

  “I’m not finished with you yet,” she said, fingers locked hard about his throat. “Try to flee again, and I’ll begin to scream. And every sycophant in your atrium will rush in and see you trying to rape the Empress. That I can get you arrested for.”

  “I’ll bear witness,” Vix agreed, gladius never moving.

  Lucius stopped struggling. He looked as though he’d been mesmerized by a snake. “I didn’t push that boy into the Nile.”

  Sabina pulled him slowly down against her, fingertips digging deeper around his throat, grinding her hips under his. As terrified as he looked, she could feel his body responding against her, and she gave a benign little smile. She doubted this was how he’d ever envisioned himself entwined with the Empress of Rome. “Convince me,” she whispered, and reached down to grab him where it would hurt the most if she squeezed hard.

  “I admit I told him stories!” Lucius’s voice scaled up in a yelp. “I’d hoped he’d leave the Emperor’s side, maybe commit suicide—he was starry-eyed enough to believe that nonsense myth about sacrificing yourself in the Nile for a loved one, when I told it to him—”

  Vix made a low sound like a growling cat. Sabina squeezed her fingers just enough to make Lucius gasp. “You’ll regret that. But do continue.”

  “I did not push him.” Tears were starting to spring up in Lucius’s eyes. “I will swear any oath you please, Lady. I saw him on that night, and I even thought about pushing him. Which is why I let the slave girls go below. But I didn’t lay a hand on him—didn’t think I could get him over the railing unseen, truth be told. I saw an opportunity when he turned up dead, and gods know I used it, but that is all!”

  Sabina looked at him a moment longer, evaluating. She looked up at Vix. Vix was staring at Lucius, eyes like slits, but he spoke to her. “I believe him, Lady. I tortured men in Judaea—I know what the truth looks like.”

  Sabina looked back at her husband’s heir, trembling teary-eyed over her. She nodded, and Vix’s gladius withdrew. “Get off me, Lucius.”

  He scrambled up. Sabina extended a hand. He helped her to her feet, bowing almost double. She took some time brushing off her stola before she gave him leave to rise from his bow. “Apologies,”
she said, no apology in her voice. “But I had to be certain, and there are times an empress must be ruthless. Emperors, too. Remember that, if you follow Hadrian.”

  She turned to go, tugging her palla over her hair, when she heard his quivering voice rise behind her. “Assault a man of Rome, the Imperial heir, for a catamite?”

  Vix whirled, his sword coming a hand-span out of its scabbard before Sabina’s fingers caught his wrist. He could have flung her off like a feather, but his knuckles just clenched until they went white. She waited until she was sure he wasn’t going to spill Lucius’s guts across the floor, and then she turned a smile on the Imperial heir that made him take a step backward.

  “Something else you should know about empresses,” she said. “We never forgive an insult. Call Antinous a catamite one more time, and I’ll come back and finish the job I started.”

  She could hear his gulp behind her as she stalked from the atrium. The crowd of his well-wishers outside took one look at her face and fell into bows, heads dropping when she passed as though they had all been scythed.

  “He was telling the truth.” Vix sounded tired. “God damn him, he was telling the truth.”

  “I know.”

  Vix glanced at her. “You were terrifying.”

  “I know.” But the grim amusement of Lucius’s fear had faded away, leaving a taste in her mouth like ash. So much time, so many inquiries—she had been so certain, and it was all worth nothing? If not Lucius, who? No one else had profited by Antinous’s death; no one. Sabina came to a halt on the steps before Lucius’s vast house, and suddenly she wanted to lay her head against Vix’s breastplate and weep. “How did I get it wrong?” she cried. “I was certain!”

  “Your evidence looked likely.” Vix’s voice was flat and lifeless again, as it had been for months whenever she heard him talking with Hadrian. “But it didn’t add up to piss. My boy drowned himself, and there’s an end to it.”

  “I hoped—” She swallowed disappointment. “What a thing to hope for. Hoping he was murdered . . .”