Empress of the Seven Hills

by Kate Quinn

  I hadn’t expected to be summoned. Surely a new Emperor had better things to do than demote old enemies? And my record spoke for itself. Hadrian might be a cold bastard, but cold bastards are practical men. Surely he would let me continue the work I’d done so well for Trajan?

  But I remembered the cool murderous gaze Hadrian had leveled on me in a feasting hall in Germania, a gaze I’d given back in full furious measure, and I couldn’t help a shiver.

  Hadrian didn’t seem very interested in me now, though. He wrote something else on a fresh scroll and made a gesture to one of the dashing secretaries, who presented me with a thick packet of sealed letters and passes. “Your new orders, Vercingetorix.”

  “Orders, Caesar?” To have my head sliced off? To strip me of my rank? To toss me out on some barren rock in the middle of the ocean to die?

  “You are to take leave of Selinus at once.”

  I breathed easier at that. If I could just take my men to Germania—well, Germania was a long way from Rome. How much would I have to think about Hadrian, from all the way up north? I’d be fighting Dacian warriors again and running my legion as I saw fit. It wouldn’t matter who wore the purple all the way down in Rome.

  If Trajan doesn’t recover, I heard Mirah’s voice whisper in my ear, you’ll be serving Rome. Not Trajan.

  Trajan is Rome, I’d said, brash and stupid.

  Not forever.

  I shivered again, but I thrust her words out of my head and took the packet of letters. “Take leave to Germania? Caesar?” Belatedly.

  “No.” Hadrian didn’t look up from his slate. “To Rome.”

  “… Rome?”

  “Yes, you are receiving a promotion. I am making you part of my Praetorian Guard.”

  For a moment I couldn’t speak. The secretaries still bustled with their letters, the freedmen still dashed with their baskets, the slaves still hovered with their pen cases—apparently unaware that I’d been turned to stone in the midst of all the activity. “But I have a legion,” I said hoarsely. “The Tenth Fidelis.” My Tenth, mine at last.

  “Not anymore.” Hadrian lifted his slate, scanning it as he held out a hand for a new pen. “We will not be needing so many new commanders, as there will not be nearly so many campaigns planned along the borders. Dacia has proven an untenable drain of resources; therefore it will be surrendered back to the rebels and no longer requires the presence of an active legion. Also,” Hadrian added disinterestedly, “the Parthian campaign is to be halted at once. Armenia, Mesopotamia, Assyria, and all other territories acquired are to be abandoned.”

  If I’d already turned to stone, I now turned to ice.

  Dacia, where I’d killed a king who had the strength of ten and first earned the pride of carrying my eagle. Armenia, where I’d made my mark on my first command. Mesopotamia, where I’d buried Julius by the Euphrates. Assyria, where I’d watched Philip die before my eyes and taken an arrow for Trajan and earned the name Vercingetorix the Red. All gone. All for nothing. Trajan’s ring burned on my finger with its carved title. Parthicus. Conqueror of Parthia.

  “Why?” I croaked.

  Hadrian looked up at me for the first time, and I saw that his dark eyes were amused. “You think I will debate Imperial policy with a guard?”

  That was when I felt the rage start to bank in my stomach.

  “Never fear,” the new Emperor said. “I have taken note of your various talents, and they will be used. You will be a fine addition to my Praetorians. I even have a small matter you can take care of on your way back to Rome.” He tilted his head at his bustling entourage. “Leave us.”

  The secretaries, the freedmen, the slaves filed out. I still stood like a pillar, clutching the bundle of orders that had just eaten my future and invalidated my past.

  Hadrian’s smile vanished as the doors thudded shut. “You will not find these orders in the packet you hold. They come direct from me. There are five men who must be eliminated. Rivals of mine. I will give you the names later. Take whatever men you require to get the job done, but I want those five men dealt with. Then you may return to Rome and take up your new duties as a Praetorian.”

  In answer, I whipped the packet of orders across the room at his head.

  The bastard was quick, I’ll say that for him. One heavy hand lashed out and sent them spinning into the wall before they could touch him.

  I folded my arms across my chest and spat on the floor. “I’m no man’s assassin.” Not bothering with Caesar this time. “Find a common thug for your dirty work.”

  “You are a common thug,” Hadrian said calmly. “But a talented one. I want you at my side, and under my rule you will rise high. You buy that place with five dead men.”

  “If you think I’m going to kill off your rivals for you—”

  “Oh, but you will. You have a wife, I believe, and two daughters, and a boy you keep for a ward? Surely you wish to keep them safe.”

  “I can keep them safe.” I’d take Mirah and the children, disappear so fast into the wilds outside Rome that even Hadrian’s eyes and ears couldn’t find me.

  “What about your men?” The new Emperor’s big hunting hound had risen, eyeing me as my voice rose, and Hadrian scratched it fondly behind the ear. “A Gallic centurion of yours who was part of your contubernium when you first joined the Tenth. An African you just promoted to optio for saving your life outside Osrhoene. The rest of them. The entire Tenth, as a matter of fact—I can order them decimated, on some offense or other. And I will make sure that every tenth man chosen happens to be one you care for. And after that, I’ll disband the Tenth Fidelis altogether, fold the surviving men into other legions. So much for those tattoos I can see on your arms, the X and the eagle. The Tenth Fidelis and anything it ever accomplished will be forgotten.”

  My hand dropped to the place where my sword hilt should have been. But of course it wasn’t. No one was allowed armed into the Emperor’s presence.

  “That’s the spirit.” Hadrian gave an unexpected grin, teeth gleaming white in the darkness of his beard. “Hate me if you wish—think of me when you slit those five throats. And focus on the good rather than the bad. You’ll find me grateful, when I return to Rome. I might even make you Praetorian Prefect. The Senate can be counted on to raise a fuss about the deaths of those five men I’ve named. I’ll make sure blame for this overhasty batch of executions is shifted to the current Prefect. He’ll be eased out and allowed to commit suicide, and if you prove yourself, I’ll allow you to take his place. A sizable increase in pay, prestige, and position. Not a bad reward for a thug like you.”

  Praetorians. The elite, supposedly, but those of us in more active duty knew better. Praetorians were palace guards in breastplates who never saw blood or dust or a sword-dent. Tramping dutifully after the Emperor wherever he went, getting fat and lazy on guard duty. And as for the Prefects? The Emperor’s watchdogs, spending their nights filtering out conspiracy theories and setting informers to spy on the Emperor’s friends. Powerful. Feared. And bored to death.

  “Caesar,” I grated out, “I would rather sink a knife in your back than guard it.”

  “I’m counting on it.” Hadrian tilted his chair back, still aiming that maddening smile at me. “I would rather have an enemy guard my back than a friend any day. Friends expect favors; friends are soured when they don’t get the rewards they want; friends turn on you. Enemies can be counted on to turn on you, so there are no surprises. And I know you, Vercingetorix. I know your record; the things you’ve done in the field. You’ll guard my back against other enemies because you want to keep me safe for your own vengeance.” Hadrian’s smile deepened at my expression. “Trajan liked to be loved by those who served him. I am not Trajan.”

  “You’re not fit to wipe Trajan’s boots!”

  “True,” said Hadrian.

  In an hour full of shocks, that somehow shocked me most of all.

  “Trajan was a good man,” Hadrian went on, rubbing a hand thoughtfully down the dog�
�s long back. “It’s necessary for an emperor to be a good man, if he wishes to last. Augustus knew that—a ruthless despot, really, but he calculated a very nice pose as a likable fellow. Intelligent of him, because ruthless despots get themselves murdered—Caligula, Nero, Domitian. The good men rule long years—Vespasian, Trajan. My name will be listed with theirs. But they were good men by nature, and I am not. I know how to be cruel. I also know how to put on a good show, so few people know it. Hunting helps keep it in check; allowable bloodshed, as it were…”

  I remembered Hadrian killing that stag in Dacia, smiling down at the spray of blood across his foot.

  He shook himself a little, returning to the present. “Make no mistake, Vercingetorix—kindness, for me, is all sham. I tend to revert to form if crossed. Don’t cross me.”

  He rose from the chair then in his immaculate pleated black linens, crossing to pick up the packet of orders I’d flung at him. “You may go.” Offering the little bundle. “I think we will work well together.”

  “And I think you’re a dank spotty little coward,” I said evenly. “You always were. Now you’re just a dank spotty little coward in a purple cloak.”

  Hadrian’s face rippled, like a lake with something powerful and chitinous moving under the surface. His hand lashed up to strike me, but he wasn’t the only one who was fast. I caught his wrist with one hand, throwing it away with such force that he stumbled. The dog growled.

  “You struck me once in Dacia,” I said. “I’ll work for you, Caesar, since you haven’t left me much choice. I’ll work for you, and I’ll kill your enemies, and I’ll even guard your fucking back. But as I told you years ago—you will never strike me again.”

  He straightened slowly, and I should have been afraid. That still, bearded face, those stony eyes, they would have terrified a god. But I’m not a god, just a stupid barbarian who never knows when to back down, so I looked him right in the eye.

  “Go,” Hadrian said at last, in a voice as even as mine. “You have new duties to perform, and I have a funeral cortege to plan. Trajan must be properly mourned. A great man,” he said, and what floored me most was that I could see the bastard meant it. “Will you tell my wife she may enter? She should be waiting outside.”

  I turned to go.

  “That reminds me.” He waited until I turned. “Empress Vibia Sabina. I am told by Dowager Empress Plotina that you and Sabina were much in each other’s company the day Trajan died. And previously.” Hadrian looked up from his wax tablet. “Have you slept with my wife?”

  I remembered Sabina telling me I couldn’t lie to save my life.

  I thought of my men, of Mirah and the children.

  “No,” I said.

  “Then you may go, Vercingetorix.” Hadrian returned to his tablet, the dog curling up at his feet again. “That will be all.”

  A day later and the new Emperor was ready to take sail. He’d ordered the pyre for Trajan’s body built on the beach before the assembled throng, and had already prepared an urn to take the Imperial ashes back to Rome. The abandoned harbor throbbed with activity as the trireme was draped in black, officials jostled for place, slaves ran about frantically loading last-minute items into the ship, and soldiers pressed into position to give their Emperor—their real Emperor—his final salute. A good many were weeping, but even more were gabbling on about Hadrian. Such a fine man, they said. So learned. So experienced. A worthy successor for Trajan.

  I couldn’t stomach it, and fortunately I didn’t have to. I wasn’t to go on the trireme back to Rome, after all. So I wandered up into the hills behind Selinus, up the path overgrown with weeds to the ruined temple where I’d wept for Trajan with no idea what fresh hell was coming for me.

  Sabina was there. She sat slumped on a fallen pillar, already dressed in black for the leave-taking ceremony. A stiff mourning stola, obviously Plotina’s choice, with a gold veil and a wig of false blond plaits very properly covering her cropped hair.

  “Go away.” Her back was stiff too, and she didn’t turn as she heard my footfall. “I’ll come down when it’s time to leave, not before.”

  “It’s me,” I said.

  She turned, and I saw her eyes were red. “I thought I’d given my Praetorians the slip,” she said, eyeing my new armor.

  “Not quite.” I looked down at the whole loathsome outfit: the useless muscled cuirass, the ridiculous red kilt, the absurd fine-woven cloak too flimsy to keep out the rain. “I feel like a damned rooster. Probably about as useful. Can’t lay eggs, can’t go kill Dacians.”

  “No worse than me.” Sabina swept the blond wig off her head and flung it into the weeds beside the column. “We’ve both been promoted. I never saw that happening, did you?”

  When we’d been locked up together on Plotina’s orders for nearly two and a half days, we’d spent a good deal of time speculating what was going to happen to us both. We knew how coups started; it had looked like a likely prospect. Sabina had spent most of our hours either pacing back and forth like her cat or trying to pry answers from the Praetorians outside and being told to keep silent. I’d spent most of our hours calculating just how many of those pretty palace guards I could kill once they finally came in to dispose of me. How wrong we’d both been, because here we were—no longer simply Vix and Sabina, scarred soldier and world traveler, but Empress Vibia Sabina and Praetorian Guard Vercingetorix.

  “I’ve gotten my orders,” I said, and briefly outlined her husband’s dreadful terms. My promotion and demotion, my reward and punishment.

  “All neatly tied up in one tidy little package,” Sabina winced. “How very Hadrian.”

  “You hear he’s pulling back too? Giving it all away, the new provinces we fought for. Armenia, Mesopotamia, Assyria, even Dacia.”

  “We might not have kept them anyway.” Sabina’s voice was gentle. “Could you really have kept all that territory without Trajan?”

  “We had four years of victories!”

  “‘You made a desert,’” Sabina quoted, “‘and called it peace.’”

  “Did Titus say that?”

  “Tacitus first. Then Titus, in one of his letters. Both of them are right, you know. All this”—she looked out over the rocky cliffs, the jewel-blue horizon where all those conquered deserts lay—“we couldn’t have held it. Even Trajan knew he was getting overextended.”

  “So we just give up?” I chafed my sore shoulder, feeling the phantom shaft of the arrow I’d taken at Hatra. “After all that effort? All those lives?” Julius. Philip. The countless other men I’d buried by the Euphrates.

  “I guess we do,” said Sabina.

  “Then what do we have to show for it?” I cried out. “What do I have to show for it?”

  Sabina had no answer for that. Why would she? Aside from a few scars, all I had to show for a life of wandering and fighting were the odds and ends that had collected at the bottom of my pack. A father’s amulet. An emperor’s ring. A wife’s scarf. A lion’s pelt. A string of campaign tokens. A lover’s earring.

  Not very much, when you came down to it.

  I sat down on the other end of the ruined column, swinging my ridiculous new crested helmet by its ridiculous chin strap. Sabina wrapped her arms about her own knees, and we sat in silence for a while. Birds hopped among the abandoned columns, twittering impudently now that there were no indignant priests to chase them out. A bright blue morning, so beautiful.

  “‘Empress of Rome,’” I said at last, tasting her new title. “Who’d have thought?”

  She gave me a wan little half smile. “At the very least, it will be interesting.”

  “That’s the spirit.”

  “Interesting or not, I’d trade it for another chance to go back to being eighteen and stay in my father’s house forever. Never get married at all.”

  I should have stayed in her father’s house too. Stayed a bodyguard, never joined the legions. If I had, I’d still be living my uneventful life walking Senator Norbanus back and forth from the Ca
pitoline Library, not sitting in a weed-choked temple at the arse-end of nowhere.

  “Maybe my father can help.” Sabina’s voice was bleak, and her hands twined each other around her knees. “Perhaps he can challenge this mad charade Plotina put on to get Hadrian adopted…” She shook her head, as if arguing with herself. “Gods, I can’t go to my father. He’s so frail now.”

  I thought of my own father. He’d be Trajan’s age by now, if he was even still alive. The last letter I’d managed to get from my mother had been more than two years ago; all had been well, but a great deal could happen in two years. Was he still rooting ineptly in his garden, with hair as gray as Trajan’s? Or had he too died gasping for breath in bed, before I’d ever had a chance to see him again? Suddenly I wanted to go home.

  Brigantia. Was it even my home? Or did I have a home at all anymore?

  What does it matter? I thought. Wherever home was, Hadrian would never give me leave to go there. My father and mother would die, and I’d never see them again. Not since I was eighteen and I left with so many dreams of glory.

  “All my life—” Sabina’s voice was ragged, and I realized she was weeping. I’d never seen her weep before, not once in all the years I’d known her. The tears slid down her still face and dripped off her little chin. “All my life I thought I could go adventuring, just because I wanted to. I could do my duty, do some good in the world, but I could have the life I wanted doing it. But that wasn’t true, was it? I got to go adventuring because my father let me, and then Hadrian let me, and then Trajan. Any of them could have stopped me anytime they liked, and now Hadrian is stopping me. No adventures for the Empress of Rome.”