by Kate Quinn
Will he? wondered Sabina. Hadrian might have ridden at the Emperor’s back in the parade, but he’d certainly not been singled out from the other legates. Even now Trajan was roaring and backslapping among his tribunes rather than standing, waving, and bowing with his wife and her protégé.
“Wave and smile, Sabina,” Plotina called to her. “It is expected.”
“I doubt the men care if I wave at them,” said Sabina. “They just want to be dismissed so they can go get drunk with their families.”
“Let us hope they spend the day in sober thanks for their victories,” said the Empress.
“You’re lucky if they’re sober for the victory itself,” Sabina snorted. “Much less the celebration after.”
“That dress is very bright.” Hadrian flicked a speck of dust from her shoulder. “And eagles are really better suited for a standard pole than a brooch.”
Trajan came bounding back, raising his arm to another wave of cheers. He spoke a few words of thanks that had the legionaries cuffing their eyes, but not too many words—Trajan, Sabina had observed before, knew how to keep things brief. “Keep your battles short and your speeches shorter,” he often said. Hadrian, observing how well it worked for the Emperor, was now modifying his own speeches to suit.
“Your officials expect to speak with you,” Plotina said the moment Trajan rejoined her side. “Preparations for the celebratory banquet this evening—”
“I’ll be wanting to speak with them as well.” Trajan waved a good-natured hand. “They’re to invite the tribunes to join us this evening as well as the legates. Camp prefects and first centurions too.”
“Husband, surely not. They are very rough.”
“Gods’ bones, at least they’ll liven things up! And we’ll have someone else too—” Trajan spoke a brief word to his aide, who went dashing off into the throng. A few moments later he returned, dragging along a man in a red cloak with a lion’s mane over his hair and a standard pole in his hand.
“Caesar.” Vix dropped to one knee, but Trajan raised him with a wave.
“Here’s the man we have to thank for killing Decebalus! You’ll plant that head before the Senate house at the triumph, boy. With your own hand.”
“I believe the governor requires your attention,” Plotina sniffed.
“Oh, very well. You’ll come to that banquet tonight, Aquilifer—that’s an Imperial order.”
“Yes, Caesar.” Vix grinned, snapping off a salute.
“Good, good.” Trajan held his arm out for his wife. Just before they vanished into the hovering throng of well-wishers, he gave Sabina an approving glance over one shoulder and shouted, “I like the eagles!”
Sabina laughed. Hadrian made a motion to follow the Emperor, but Titus approached, tall and impressive in the toga he had donned the moment he could get out of his armor. He had always been skinny, but a summer’s marching had filled him out to a pleasant leanness. He looked like a handsome young man now, not an uncertain boy.
“Legate, I had just heard news of your governorship.” Titus’s eyes had a brief flick of horror to see Hadrian, Vix, and Sabina all converged together, but his polite mask never faltered. You will make a good politician, Sabina thought. “My congratulations, sir.”
Hadrian nodded his thanks, utterly ignoring Vix, who stood behind the eagle standard doing his best imitation of a post.
“At least on our march we had a chance to pass through Pannonia,” Titus continued, keeping his eyes scrupulously away from Vix. “Very fortunate, sir.”
“I’ve heard the Pannonians wear wolf-skin breeches and sacrifice to horned gods,” said Sabina, “but you can never be sure about these rumors. I certainly didn’t see any horned gods lying around when we were marching through to Dacia. And come to think of it, we heard the same sort of things about Dacians too, and they were all quite civilized. Solar discs and piped water rather than blood rituals and human sacrifices… I can’t wait to see how the Pannonians turn out on a closer acquaintance.”
“You will be accompanying the governor to Pannonia?” Titus addressed her as formally as if they had never shared a wineskin around a campfire in their lives.
“Oh, I wouldn’t miss it,” said Sabina. “New provinces, new horizons. I can’t wait.”
Under the lion skin, Vix’s chin jerked.
“I see,” said Titus, and offered Hadrian another bow. “My congratulations once again, Governor.”
A second bow to Sabina, and a nod to Vix in which horror and amusement were blended just about equally. Sabina repressed a smile, but Vix was not smiling.
“You’re going to Pannonia—Lady?” he demanded, barely remembering the honorific.
“Of course.” She waved to someone nonexistent on the other side of the steps, angling them both away from Hadrian, who was perusing his pile of wax tablets again. “My father will probably send me three scrolls on Pannonia’s recent history, a list of recommended reading, and a request that I please check up on the new aqueduct the Senate paid for and tell him if it’s being built on schedule. He says it’s been very useful having a daughter who travels—gives him an extra pair of eyes all over the Empire, as it were.”
“So you’ll be staying a while in Pannonia?” Vix lowered his voice. She could see his big hard fingers tightening on the standard pole.
“I don’t know.” She tucked a lock of hair behind one ear. “Most governorships last a few years.”
“Years—” His jaw hardened. “Never thought to ask me about that, did you? When you made your plans!”
“I didn’t make any plans,” she pointed out. “I only found out about Pannonia two minutes ago.”
“But you were going to stay with the Tenth!” he hissed, barely audible. “With me!”
“Never thought to ask me about that, did you?”
His fingers had fused around the standard pole. Sabina hoped he wouldn’t crack it in half. “You bitch,” he whispered.
“Why?” she asked, puzzled.
“I told you I loved you,” he said in a ferocious whisper. “I went spinning dreams about the future and now you tell me you’re just—”
“Is something amiss?” Hadrian’s voice slid coolly between them.
“Not at all.” Sabina turned her head toward him. “A moment, my dear.”
He frowned, turning to his aide with a list of instructions. She gave a bright social smile to Vix, fading to something truer as she angled herself between him and her husband.
“I love you, Vix,” she said frankly. “But whatever made you think I want to follow your stars, and not my own?”
He stared at her.
“I think you had best go now, Aquilifer.” Hadrian’s hand took possession of Sabina’s arm, and he looked at Vix with cool displeasure. “As little as you are used to ladies of good birth, you must be aware it is rude to stare at them. Your time might better be served in finding a suitable costume for this evening’s banquet, since the Emperor seems so determined to have his… pets.”
Vix’s face had a hard stillness that Sabina recognized. He stared at Hadrian, expressionless, and his eyes were flat, murderous stones.
She stepped between them, fast. “Hardly a pet,” she said lightly, and dropped a congratulatory hand over Vix’s on the standard pole. “A hero of Rome, as we saw ourselves. And likely to be an even greater one, someday.”
“I doubt that,” said Hadrian. “I doubt that highly.”
Vix stared at him over her head for another long moment, the man in the lion skin and the man in the breastplate, and there was something in their gaze that excluded her.
Sabina squeezed Vix’s hand over the standard, warningly.
Another suspended breath, and then the murder banked in his gaze. He jerked his hand from under Sabina’s and turned in a swirl of red cloak, gone into the crowds. Sabina could see the eagle on its long pole marking a swift, brutal path through the throng of revelers.
“I wish you would not flirt with common soldiers,” Hadrian fro
wned.
“I might say the same to you.” Sabina made an effort to speak lightly. “Besides, I’ve known Vix for years. One of my father’s household guards, you know… Why did you suddenly look so black and furious at him?”
“I dislike his type, that is all.” Hadrian flicked a hand as if flicking Vix from his attention. Back to what place in the mental files? Sabina wondered.
“Flirt with the governor of Upper Germania this evening instead.” Hadrian took her arm, following in the wake of Trajan and Plotina. “I will need the governor’s support when I reach Pannonia.”
“Do you think they really wear wolf skins there?”
“I devoutly hope not. Don’t wear yellow tonight.” His eyes swept her. “Or those eagles.”
CHAPTER 16
VIX
That bitch.
That cool, calm, collected, two-faced whore.
I stamped back to the fort in a white rage, kicking everything that got in my path. Fight me, I hoped, somebody pick a fight—but the whole bloody Tenth was in a good mood and no one was drunk enough yet for fights. I saw a centurion hugging his woman in one arm and his son in the other, the boy wearing his father’s helmet—I saw a cluster of shouting swaggering legionaries push toward the nearest tavern and get sidetracked by a pair of admiring girls tossing flowers at them from an upper window—I saw everybody happy, everybody but the bloody hero.
A horribly cheery clerk greeted me at the principia. “The new aquilifer? I’ve heard of you. Yes, you can leave the eagle with me.”
I surrendered her over. She’d live in the chapel now with a permanent guard, keeping her haughty watch over the bust of the Emperor and everything else that the legion held precious. I’d carry her out only if we did a route march or went on campaign again. I looked up at her as she was planted in place, and she stared arrogantly down at me.
Sabina had worn an eagle brooch on each shoulder, with the same proud tilt to their gold heads. Why had she done that?
“Are you the one who killed Decebalus?” the clerk asked, and recoiled at my snarl.
I shoved out of the principia, still glowering. I didn’t want to get drunk, I didn’t want a celebration; I just wanted another fight. No, what I wanted was another war, something long and savage and preferably bloody. My feet took me halfway to my old quarters, but I stopped and realized that they weren’t my quarters anymore. I didn’t have a contubernium now, just an eagle with the double pay and double danger that came with it. I had no idea where the aquilifer slept when at home in the fort.
I contemplated going back to the clerk, but one more look at his cheery face and I’d probably break it, and then that bastard Hadrian would have me flogged. I had another wave of rage as I thought of his cold black gaze, meeting my eyes over Sabina’s sleek head. He’d probably screw her tonight—one of his yearly visits. Turn her over and pretend she was a boy, and then they’d go swanning off to Pannonia together. “How interesting,” I mimicked, and got a puzzled look from the gate guard as I slammed through. “What are you looking at!”
“Nothing,” he said hastily. “You’re lucky, that’s all. Having the day to celebrate. Someone had to draw sentry duty, and wouldn’t you know it’s me—”
“Fuck you,” I growled. A whole city celebrating, and I had nowhere to go. Nowhere to go for years, probably—what other action would the Tenth see, now that Dacia was quiet? Guard duty at the fort, and the occasional route march so we didn’t get rusty. There’d be the triumph first, and I’d even get to go to Rome to march in it with the eagle over my head, but after that it would be back to Mog, to sit in the fort and rot. Had it really seemed possible, just this morning, that I’d be a centurion soon, that I’d even do the impossible and get my own legion someday? What a joke. I was going to rot here in Mog for the next twenty years. I’d taken the oath and signed those years over, and now they yawned before me like a grave.
And no doubt Sabina would be gallivanting around Pannonia, checking out aqueducts for her father and seeing all the new horizons she wanted. I hoped the Pannonians cooked her over a campfire and ate her.
Suddenly I felt absurd in the lion skin. I unknotted the paws about my neck and yanked the mane from my hair. I balled the pelt into my pack, and a handful of centurions brushed by me roaring a filthy drinking song, waving wineskins jubilantly overhead. I couldn’t even get drunk like them this afternoon—I had that bloody banquet tonight with the Emperor’s guests, and even if I didn’t care two shits for any of them, for his sake I’d have to be clean and on my best behavior. Besides, Sabina and her bastard husband would be there, and I’d rather have been cooked and eaten myself than have them think I slunk away. I’d come and stare at Sabina all night till she dropped her eyes for a change. Maybe I’d tell bloody Hadrian whose bedroll she’d been sleeping in the past six months while he thought she was in her own tent.
But I thought of Hadrian’s cold stare and didn’t want to cross it. Maybe the chances weren’t so good I’d ever be a centurion, but they’d drop to nothing if I told my commander I’d been mounting his wife.
I stood with my hands hanging at my sides in the middle of a celebrating city and felt like howling. That calculating little vixen. She’d burned me once, and had I learned? Stupid barbarian, tangling with a patrician girl. No more patrician girls for me. No more clever girls; no more adventurous dreaming girls or girls who talked my ear off deep into the night. Nice simple girls, that’s what I’d stick to from now on. Even stupid barbarians like me knew better than to get burned a third time.
Demetra.
I hadn’t thought of her in months, at least not for longer than it took to shove her right back out of mind, but now she filled my head. Her dark-honey hair, her gentle mouth, her slim body. Her wide brown eyes, always so admiring when they looked at me. Her sweet voice, when she chattered on and on about laundry and the market and the day’s baking…
Hell’s gates, she was beautiful, but she’d bored me.
I wondered if she’d had the baby yet. My child. It was six months since I’d last seen her. She might be swelled up like a melon, or maybe she’d have something small and screaming on the breast. Or maybe she’d seen sense and done something to empty her belly out before it got big at all.
Hadn’t I told Demetra I’d marry her when I came back?
I groaned aloud but kicked my feet into moving. Baby or no, I wasn’t getting married. Just because I’d gotten burned by a scheming patrician snake of a girl didn’t mean I was going to run right back to Demetra. I’d pay her a visit, take a dutiful look at the baby, leave her some money—maybe get a bounce in bed for old times’ sake…
The street looked no different than it had when I’d left. More riotous, with soldiers drinking or dicing or swaggering past every third door, but the same. I pulled my lion pelt back out of my pack and draped it over one arm. Demetra wouldn’t want to hear war stories, but she’d be impressed I made aquilifer. Her eyes would shine admiringly. Sabina never looked at me like that—she just looked at me like she knew me, right down to my bones, and that had been damned uncomfortable sometimes.
I didn’t want to think about Sabina.
“Who are you?”
I blinked at the face that answered my dutiful knock at the door of the bakehouse. An old woman’s face, thin and sour. “I’m looking for Demetra?”
“Never heard of her,” the old woman snapped. “No trollops here for soldiers, you be on your way!”
I jammed my foot in the door. “The girl who lived over the bakeshop—a Bithynian girl? Long blond hair?”
“That one died last week when she birthed,” the woman said. “Woman across took the child.”
She kicked my foot aside and slammed the door. I stared at the panels just inches from my nose, stunned.
“Aquilifer, fancy a drink?” a drunken voice shouted from a passing party of legionaries. “Heard you killed the Dacian king; is it true he had horns?”
I shoved through them, kicking blindly across th
e street. I hammered on the door of the tenement opposite Demetra’s. Another woman answered the door, tired and gray, a dirty child on one hip and another at her skirt. “Do I know you?” she asked, vague-eyed.
“Demetra,” I said. “Where’s Demetra?”
“That hag across the street didn’t tell you? She’s a worse neighbor than your girl, I’ll say.”
“Where’s Demetra?” My heart thudded.
“Dead,” the woman said. “The baby came early. It happens.”
I winced. “The hag said you took it.”
“The baby? No, that died too. I took her other one, the little lad.”
“Was the baby a girl or a boy?” I’d never wanted it, hadn’t thought about it for months—but suddenly I had to know. I had to know if my child had been a son or a daughter.
“How should I know?” Indifferently. “I wasn’t there.”
Would I ever know? Did it even matter? Boy or girl, it was dead.
My firstborn.
I found myself wondering if it had had my reddish hair, or Demetra’s blond.
“I don’t much mind taking the other little ’un.” The woman bounced the child on her hip, and for the first time I noticed Demetra’s boy. “He’s quiet enough, and what’s one more when you’ve already got five? Besides, he might grow up as pretty as his mother, and that could be useful.”
I shoved some money at her and got the hell out of there.
PLOTINA
“I don’t mind telling you, my dear boy, that I shall be ecstatic to leave Germania,” Plotina confided to Dear Publius. “Crude, cold—and these slave girls they sent to wait on me are all thumbs! Sticky thumbs at that; I’m sure they’d steal anything I turned my back on. You may go,” she added to the girl brushing her gown.
The flat-faced German maid left the Empress’s quarters, muttering darkly, and Plotina reached behind her own neck to fasten the clasp of her amethyst necklace. “Very regal,” Dear Publius approved from his corner where he sat keeping her company as she finished her dressing. “Very regal indeed.”
