Empress of the Seven Hills

by Kate Quinn

  Titus couldn’t imagine anything more horrifying. Mud? Marching? Fighting? I’d rather be eaten by wolves. But he couldn’t say that to his tall, well-built Emperor, vigorous and sun-browned in his plain tunic and short military haircut, the laugh lines radiating out from his eyes as he looked down so kindly at his least important guest. His Emperor, who at forty-nine could have been ten years younger and looked ready to leap off his couch at a moment’s notice and charge right into any fight that presented itself. “Caesar,” Titus said brightly, and Trajan laughed and addressed some question to Senator Norbanus. Titus had observed before that you could get through most conversations with powerful men simply by repeating their names (in varying inflections) and looking respectful. Thank the gods, no one else spoke to him in the course of the meal. Titus ate his oysters and sipped his wine, content to be ignored, and it wasn’t until the fruit and nuts had been cleared away that the fight broke out.

  Titus had already left his couch, gone to watch the moon rise in the open roof of the atrium, but he heard the chorus of shouts and followed the noise out into the shadowed garden, where lamps had been lit along the pillars. One of the Norbanus household guards brushed past him, sword leaping halfway out of its scabbard, and Titus put a hand on his arm. “I think it’s just guests,” he said, eyeing the dark figures lurching and grappling across the raked paths. “Not thieves.”

  Two of the Emperor’s young tribunes had quarreled over Sabina, it seemed, each claiming her silver earring as a favor, and in the process knocked over a vase full of orchids, and Emperor Trajan had taken them by the scruff of their necks like puppies and tossed them outside. “Settle it like soldiers,” he yelled after them. “Take it out on each other, not your hostess’s house! Lady Calpurnia, I apologize for my men—” But Lady Calpurnia was laughing, and more guests were spilling out of the triclinium into the fresh-scented darkness of the garden to watch the two tribunes, who had drawn swords and sworn a good-natured bout to first blood. “And it had better just be a scratch,” the Emperor shouted at them, flinging himself down on a marble bench with his elbows on his knees. “I’ll need both you young sods when I go back to Dacia next year, so I won’t have you killing each other.”

  Dacia? Titus wondered. Dear gods, I hope Grandfather doesn’t decide to send me to war. He could hear the words now: “A stint of military service is most useful in toughening the young.” No use at all to protest if you were the young person in question who didn’t particularly want to be toughened.

  More of the guests had gathered now. Titus could see Marcus Norbanus standing beside his daughter, amused, and Sabina rolling her eyes at her suitors, her single earring glinting. The tribunes fell on each other with loud shouts, but even to Titus’s eyes they were too drunk to make it much of a contest. Some noisy clacking back and forth, an awkward stumble or two, and then one managed more by luck than skill to knock his opponent’s blade to the ground. “I win,” he proclaimed, waving his sword unsteadily up at the night sky. “Lady Sabina, I claim my prize—your earring, a token of—hic—token of love—”

  “Not for a display like that,” she teased. “I like my tokens going for some show of genuine skill, please. I’ve got a household guard here who could mince you up like tripe within half a minute.”

  “Do not!” the tribune bristled. “I could—hic—take any common bodyguard—”

  “Let’s see, shall we?” she said, and Titus wondered if he’d seen a gleam of satisfaction in her eyes as they scanned the crowd. And then she was saying, “Care to show these professional soldiers how it’s done, Vix?”

  The young guard who had told Titus to bring violets instead of lilies never hesitated. He tossed off his cloak, swung his arms in a quick limbering stretch, and was already unsheathing his sword as he shouldered his way through the drunken hoots of the crowd. “Don’t mind if I do, Lady.”

  The tribune whooped and put up his sword. His friends applauded mockingly. Titus bent to pick up the guard’s fallen cloak, and by the time he straightened the tribune had been disarmed.

  Titus blinked, brows shooting up.

  “That wasn’t fair,” the tribune protested.

  The guard—Vix, Sabina had called him—crooked a finger in invitation, and his smile gleamed like a knife’s edge. “Come again, then.”

  “This is not a proper display for a dinner party,” Empress Plotina was complaining. No one listened to her.

  Titus managed to follow the fight that time, what there was of it. Pass, counterpass, feint—and the blade was on the ground again.

  “Who else?” The guard named Vix turned a circle, spreading his arms. “I’m just getting warm.” He was tall, confident, swaggering, barely breathing hard; the lamplight cut shadows over his bare muscled arms. “‘I sing of arms and a man at war,’” Titus quoted Virgil to himself, and looked down at his scrawny unimpressive self. No one was ever going to sing of his feats, that was for certain.

  Three more tribunes came clamoring forward to try Vix. The first had a sword stroke or two Titus vaguely remembered from the advanced class of swordsmanship but still found himself disarmed on a backhand pass; the second was drunk and stood empty-handed in under a minute; the third made a duel of it. Guests clapped across the circle, calling encouragement as the two battled back and forth across a section of raked garden path. Titus thought he saw a place or two where Vix could have ended the fight, but the russet-haired guard didn’t bother. He moved loose and lazy across the ground, the sword an extension of his arm, and he was grinning ear to ear as he finally whipped the gladius about and clipped the blade from his opponent’s hand.

  The tribunes and their friends were all grumbling, not too pleased to be humiliated by a household guard, but Titus burst into applause and the rest of the guests followed suit, ready to be entertained by anything. Vix gave a grand flourish of a bow, and Titus saw him drop a wink at Sabina. Titus wondered how many years of his life he’d give to be able to swagger and preen for a girl like that. Ten seemed excessive, but five…

  “Didn’t I tell you, Caesar?” Sabina’s amused voice. “He’s good, isn’t he?”

  “Very.” The Emperor’s eyes rested on Vix, friendly and speculative. “You’re gladiator trained, I’ll wager.”

  “How’d you know, Caesar?”

  “All that slash-slash-slash, boy! You look like you’re making hay. Legion-trained, you’d be keeping your arms in close behind the shield and jabbing in short strokes.” Trajan demonstrated. “Keep in close formation behind the shields and use the point. The point always beats the edge.”

  “Fine if you’re in formation, Caesar.” Vix rested the tip of his blade against the gravel. “What if the formation breaks?”

  The Emperor’s arrogance was quite unconscious. “My formations don’t break.”

  Empress Plotina cast her eyes to the heavens, but Titus couldn’t help smiling. Vix smiled too and spread his arms wide, sword still in hand. “That’s because I haven’t tried to break them, Caesar.”

  “Care to try, boy? My way against yours?” Trajan cocked an eyebrow at Vix.

  He won’t, Titus thought. He won’t take him up on it, not the Emperor of Rome.

  But Vix just bowed acknowledgment, and Emperor Trajan vaulted off his bench laughing like a boy. “Somebody lend me a sword.”

  Open whispers now. “Caesar, it is not fitting to your dignity,” his wife reproved, but he shouted her down.

  “Gods’ bones, Plotina, it’s been weeks since I’ve had a good fight. No one’s got a shield, do they? No? Then someone just lend me a sword and we’ll settle this.”

  To Titus the first cuts looked lazy, exploratory. The grin had fallen away from Vix’s face now, replaced by taut focus. Trajan held himself closer together than his opponent, feet planted, head hunched to present as little a target as possible—yes, that was how it was done, as Titus remembered from his boyhood tutors. It was the way the legions were all trained, the way they won their battles across the world against armies of ho
wling savages. Every Roman knew that. Vix moved very differently, spreading himself wide, a tempting target begging to be struck. Trajan’s short sword began to flicker out like a snake’s tongue, darting for a neck, a knee, an elbow. Vix beat the point of the gladius aside and slashed at him, but Trajan retreated in solid order. Vix came after him, swinging, and found himself rebounded off the Emperor’s nearly fifty-year-old but still rock-hard shoulder. They fell back and began to circle again.

  Dear gods, Titus thought. He really means to fight the Emperor of Rome. Fight him properly.

  And the Emperor of Rome was clearly having the time of his life.

  “All this hopping around,” Trajan complained as they circled each other. “You think you have the advantage, making me chase you?”

  “Don’t I, Caesar?” Vix looped another cut at his shoulder.

  Trajan deflected it. “Maybe if you’ve got a whole ring of sand to move around in, but battles aren’t roomy.” He chopped at Vix’s knee, and the guard dodged. “Battles are tight! Tight as a virgin boy.”

  Vix didn’t bother answering, just began to rain blows on him. None at his face, Titus saw—even a boy as rash as this one clearly was didn’t want to be responsible for blinding the Emperor of Rome. But the cuts came fast and hard at shoulders and ribs, and it was all the Emperor could do to keep up. Vix looped a quick cut at Trajan’s outer shoulder, and he brought his shield up to counter—only he wasn’t carrying a shield. The blade opened his arm instead, and the breath froze in Titus’s throat. Blood spilled, glossy in the lamplight, and the guests drew a shocked breath. The Emperor examined his arm, blood trickling between his fingers. Vix fell back a step, gray-faced, and the Emperor’s guards closed suddenly in a taut unsmiling circle.

  Trajan threw back his head and laughed. “Victory to you, boy.”

  “Not really, Caesar.” Regrouping. “If you’d had a shield—”

  “But I didn’t, and I forgot. Bad habit. Victory to you, and welcome.” He waved the guards away, clapping a hand on Vix’s shoulder. “Maybe there’s something to that haymaking style of yours after all. What’s your name?”

  “Vercingetorix, Caesar.”

  People began to descend fussing at the Emperor’s arm, but he waved them off. “A scratch, that’s all, I’ve cut myself worse shaving.” His eyes were on the young guard again, friendly as if they’d just been two friends sparring in a gymnasium. “I take my legions north next year, Vercingetorix. There’s a Dacian king up there who wants a good drubbing. I need good men—always do. You’d be an advantage in my legions. Want to help me make war?”

  “Maybe, Caesar.” Titus could see him wavering. With that hand on my shoulder and those eyes on mine, I’d probably be signing up for the legions myself—me, the boy who would rather be eaten by wolves than be a soldier.

  “Maybe nothing, Vercingetorix,” the Emperor was saying. “I’ll make a Roman legionary of you yet. The point beats the edge, just remember that.” He clapped the sturdy shoulder again and turned. “Anyone else want a crack at this young warrior here? Legate? Young Titus? Maybe you, Tribune Hadrian?”

  “Not him.” Vix’s voice was loud and scornful. “When’s the last time anyone saw him get dirty?”

  Trajan laughed, and the rest of the party laughed with him. “The boy’s got you there, Hadrian,” the Emperor said, sheathing his sword. “Be a man for a change, take a sword in hand!”

  “Thank you, Caesar.” Hadrian, among all the laughers, did not even smile. “I can do more damage with a pen.”

  “My sword, your pen.” Vix raised the blade again. “Let’s see who wins.”

  More laughter and Hadrian opened his mouth, but Titus to his own astonishment felt himself speak first.

  “Maybe you could show me a few strokes,” he offered to Vix. “I don’t mind admitting I’m hopeless with a sword.”

  “That’s the spirit,” Trajan laughed, and flung one arm around Senator Norbanus and the other arm around Sabina as he strode back into the triclinium. Hadrian attempted to move with the Emperor, but was somehow shunted aside… Titus couldn’t help a chuckle at that.

  The gardens were emptying now, the guests exclaiming over the cold now that they no longer had excitement to warm them and moving back inside toward cups of hot wine. Vix had found his cloak, slinging it over one arm as he sheathed his sword, and Titus approached him.

  “You don’t really have to teach me how to use that thing,” he said, nodding at Vix’s gladius. “I’ll always be hopeless. I was just trying to get Tribune Hadrian distracted. He looked ready to cut your heart out and fry it for making them all laugh at him.”

  “Don’t care if that prissy bastard—”

  “You should not have wounded the Emperor, young man.” A female voice sounded behind them, measured and rather deep.

  Titus turned, bowing very low as he saw the Empress. It was the first time he’d ever seen her up close—a statuesque column of a woman in a great many emeralds, almost as tall as Titus, which made her very tall indeed. Her deep-set eyes flicked past Titus who was glad to be invisible as she turned the Imperial frown on Vix. “You should not have presumed to fight him in the first place. My husband may have thought it funny. I do not.”

  She rotated in place like a statue being wheeled out of a temple and glided off.

  “Empresses,” Vix said in disgust. “They’re always trouble, the tricky bitches. Emperors might forgive you if you cross them, but never empresses.”

  “And how many empresses have you known?”

  “You’d be surprised,” said the guard who had just sent the Emperor of Rome away with a bloody arm, and loped off whistling.

  VIX

  “I saw you fight the Emperor,” Gaia greeted me when I ducked into the kitchens. “I don’t see how you dared—the Emperor, isn’t he splendid—”

  Yes. Splendid was the word. The friendly growl of his voice, the strength behind the blows we’d traded, the muscles of his left arm broader than his right because that was one old soldier who still practiced with a heavy shield, Emperor or no. That hand with its Imperial seal ring had rested on my shoulder like I was a friend. And it was a rare Emperor who laughed off a wound as a joke.

  Hell’s gates, it had been good to feel a sword in hand again. The easy flow of feet back and forth, the comfort of muscles working warm and smooth, the flash of the swords and the whisper of steel as blades crossed and touched and crossed again. I’d missed that: the pleasure in a good fight. I’d been having too much fun to lose; not to those patrician boys, not even to Trajan. He might be good, but even the Emperor of Rome hadn’t been lucky enough to be trained since the age of eight by Rome’s greatest gladiator.

  The old restlessness stirred in my chest again. Sabina had stilled it for a while—nothing like the pleasures of the flesh to distract you at nineteen—but it was still there. My eyes fell on the other two guards, grousing amiably at each other over dice in the far corner of the kitchens. Would that be me in thirty years, getting fat and ogling the slave girls and telling the same old story about how I’d once crossed swords with an Emperor?

  “Let me have some wine,” I said abruptly to Gaia.

  “Oh, now you want a favor?” She raised her eyebrows. “I thought you were too good to mingle with the slaves these days, Vix. Certainly haven’t seen you hanging around my door lately.”

  I got free of her, stole a dish of honeyed cakes and a flagon of wine, and thumped back to my own chamber. I could still hear the guests in the atrium, chattering in their long patrician drawls, but I had no more desire to watch the festivities.

  Tribune Hadrian’s distinctive deep voice came clearly to my ears as he droned on about something, showing off for Sabina and anyone else who would listen. He’d been at the other guards earlier, pressing coins into their hands and asking if Sabina favored any suitors over him; if her father disapproved of him and was that why she hadn’t accepted his suit yet. “Her father thinks you’re a long-winded bore,” I’d volunteered unaske
d. “Here’s some advice, Tribune—give up on Lady Sabina. She’ll never have you.”

  I’d hoped he would flush or clench his fists, but he just gave me a superior glance. “What do you know, bodyguard?”

  It was on the tip of my tongue to list a few of the things I did know about the girl he was courting—how she arched her back when I kissed the hollow of her neck, how she closed her eyes and gasped when I kissed something else—but I didn’t. I just gave an insolent smile and watched him and his gold goblet and his supercilious gaze move off.

  He looked ready to cut your heart out and fry it, that skinny boy Titus had told me, for making them all laugh at him.

  Hell with him. I wasn’t sorry.

  I munched on the cakes, lying back on my bed and getting honey in my blankets, and watched the moon rise in the window slit. I saw the litters come one by one to take the noble guests away, saw the other guards go through the gardens dousing the lamps, heard the cook grumbling about her blisters as she swabbed down the kitchens for the night. I heard Lady Calpurnia fuming good-naturedly in the atrium, “You would not believe what the Empress said to me!” and Marcus Norbanus’s soft laughter as he led her upstairs. Slowly, the house went to bed. She won’t come tonight, I thought, but an hour or so later a shadow slipped into my room, carrying a pair of silver sandals in hand.

  “My feet hurt,” said Sabina. “I hate these shoes.”

  “Don’t wear ’em.”

  “But they’re pretty, aren’t they?”

  I sat up. “Did you arrange that?”

  “What?”

  “You know what. The fight.”

  “Maybe I did.”

  “Why?”

  “I thought the Emperor might like you.”

  I thought of Empress Plotina and her barbed warnings. “His wife doesn’t like me.”

  “Plotina?” Sabina chuckled. “I expect not. She doesn’t seem to like anybody. Especially if they’re having a good time.”

  “How’d Emperor Trajan end up with a wife like that?” I couldn’t help asking. “It’d be like bedding a marble statue.”