Empress of the Seven Hills (54 page)

The man looked indignant. “See here, Lady Faustina never said anything about being accused—”

“No one’s accusing you of anything.” Faustina gave his shoulder a cajoling pat, leading him to a chair. “Just sit a moment, will you, while I talk to Titus Aurelius?”

“I knew this would happen,” the man muttered. An Imperial freedman, Titus judged from the neat toga and ink-stained hands. A young secretary from Greece, perhaps, making a living off tidy handwriting and a knowledge of languages. “Open my mouth, and soon I’m the one with my hands nailed on a board for being a thief—why did I ever listen to you, Lady?” the man wailed.

“No one’s nailing anyone’s hands anywhere,” Faustina soothed, and dragged Titus off to the opposite corner. “Try not to make him nervous,” she whispered. “I had a demon of a time getting him here at all.”

“If he’s not our thief, then who is he?” Titus lowered his own voice.

“Well.” Faustina cleared her throat as if preparing an oration. “We thought your thief might be a steward or official in the Imperial household, someone with access and oversight, but I knew you hadn’t had any luck finding out who.”

“No, not much.” Every trail Titus had followed over the past months seemed to lead to a tablet that had just gone missing from the public archives, or a surveyor who had just been transferred to Africa. Or an official who went red-faced and tight-lipped and refused to say a word even after Titus offered gold. “I feel like keeping my head on my shoulders, thank you,” one fat little praetor had told Titus shortly, and left without waiting to be excused. The trail had gone inexplicably cold.

“So,” Faustina said, off-hand, “I thought, why not go to the source?”

Titus eyed her in growing trepidation. He looked at Bassus, then back to Faustina. “What did you do?”

Ennia reappeared with a knock, making the freedman jump nervously in his chair. “Cold mulberry infusions,” she announced, handing Faustina three chilled goblets. “Make sure Dominus drinks his, Lady. Healthful on a hot day like this. Dominus, I’ve canceled your afternoon session with the Aurelii clients.”

“You didn’t have to—”

“Take all the time you need,” Ennia interrupted, and thumped out emphatically.

“I like her.” Faustina looked after Titus’s housekeeper, speculative. “Is she your mistress?”

Titus spluttered. “Now, really—”

“What? I’m not shocked at all. Mother always said she wished my father had had the good sense to keep an in-house freedwoman for a mistress when he was in between wives. If he had, his house and his laundry might have been in a little better order when Mother moved in.” Faustina patted the immaculate folds of toga at Titus’s shoulder. “I can see Ennia keeps you
and
your house turned out in immaculate fashion.”

“This is
not
a matter for discussion!”

“Nothing interesting ever is.” Faustina handed a goblet to the nervous freedman with another reassuring pat, then brought the other back to Titus. “Here, drink your mulberries. Now, I go to the palace quite often—Empress Plotina invites me to the palace to help with the weaving, you see. Mostly to tell me which of my suitors I should choose, and hint how much she wishes I’d been the one to marry Hadrian instead of Sabina. Ugh, perish the thought. But last time she got called away for a moment, and I was alone in her rooms, and I just happened to see where she keeps her private accounts. Well,” Faustina amended, “I rummaged through her things until I found where she keeps her private accounts.”

Titus choked on his drink. “You spied on the
Empress of Rome
?”

“
Spy
is such an ugly word.” Faustina’s voice was airy. “Let’s just say that thanks to good fortune, an empty room, and some concerted snooping, I stumbled upon some interesting information in her files. You know she keeps records on everyone who works in the Imperial household?”

Why?
Titus couldn’t help wondering. Public matters like judicial cases and lists of public appointments were hardly within Plotina’s purview. Why would the Empress of Rome need to keep her own record? “What did you find?”

“Nothing.” Faustina shoved aside a stack of scrolls so she could lean against his desk. “That was the odd part. The Empress doesn’t buy a yard of linen without recording the cost from her personal accounts—and suddenly huge sums are coming in, but there isn’t one word to say where they come from. I couldn’t take anything away with me, but I copied down these entries—”

“Hardly indicative,” Titus pointed out as she produced a handful of jotted scraps.

“I know. Which is why I spent another week poking among the Empress’s freedmen, and finally I found Bassus. One of Plotina’s undersecretaries, and when I asked him about these entries he went white as the moon. He refused to say a word about it to me, but I finally persuaded him to come have a talk with you.”

“How did you pull that off?”

“Because no one can say no to me,” Faustina said candidly. “And because I may have pointed out that you’re one of the richest men in Rome and can pay a lot for the information.”

“So you’ve promised gods know how much money out of my purse for gods know what kind of testimony?”

“That’s about the long and short of it.” Faustina dimpled up at him: fresh and rosy in her airy pink silks, looking as innocent as a newborn lamb. Her dark eyes danced.

Titus closed his own eyes. “Tempted into crime by a slip of a girl,” he murmured. “Well, I’m in deep now. Let’s hear what your freedman has to say.”

Bassus was sweating openly when Faustina led him over. “I don’t want trouble, sir,” he mumbled. “I just want out. Back to Athens where I can get a post copying lectures. I tell you what I know, and I have to be gone afterward. You understand, sir?”

“A ship to Athens and a purse to keep you there a full year,” Titus said. It still astounded him that he could snap his fingers and dispense such sums without even blinking—that he could simply throw money at a problem until it was solved. “What do you have to tell me, Bassus?”

The freedman’s eyes slid sideways. Faustina squeezed his arm, giving the kind of smile that had probably served Helen of Troy well when persuading a decade’s worth of Trojans to march to their death on her behalf. Bassus gulped.

“The things I’ve seen,” he blurted. “It’s not just your bathhouse fund, though that’s certainly been milked for all it’s worth. Money comes in from a hundred different places, sir, and it goes right back out. Bribes, gifts, loans under the table. Posts being promised or traded or outright sold. People being blackmailed, and there’s more than one been banished outright. Lady Faustina’s notes; I can show you—”

“Who?” Titus cut in. “
Who
is doing this? The stealing, the bribing, the blackmailing?”

“Haven’t you figured that out, sir?” Bassus looked blank. “Empress Plotina.”

VIX

Hatra was a hellhole. I cursed the minute I laid eyes on it. A dusty citadel squatting on the eastern road toward Babylon; nothing but sand and buffeting winds stretching around for miles. The men were bitching about the flies before they even had their tents unfolded, a hot and furious summer rain poured down amid cracks of thunder just long enough to get all the kindling wet, and the legionaries I saw in their camps looked like desiccated mummies with their parched lips and the scarves they’d wrapped around their noses to keep out the blowing sand.

“The legate’ll be glad for the extra men,” the First Spear told me when I made my report. “But I hope they brought their own water. Hardly a drop to drink anywhere in this pile of sand.” He squinted at me—one of Trajan’s brand of officers, I could tell. The kind who still looked fit in a breastplate, and spoke Latin no more refined than mine. “You’re Vercingetorix the Red, aren’t you?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Heard that name. Lusius Quietus says you aren’t completely useless in a fight.”

“He mention I saved his life a few times?”

“Berbers, they need saving. They’re all crazy. Go make your report to the Emperor; he’ll want the updates about Seleucia directly. He’s out watching the latest cavalry attack fail miserably.” The First Spear let out a short bark of laughter. “Welcome to Hades. I’ll wager you didn’t think it would be
this
hot.”

I hadn’t seen my Emperor in some months, and I had to control my expression when he turned on his horse in his cluster of Praetorians and staff officers and greeted me. Trajan had deep new lines about his mouth, his eyes seemed sunken, and one corner of his mouth dragged downward in a permanent small frown. I remembered hearing a rumor that the Emperor had suffered a collapse a few months before and had
been kept to his bed for a week, fuming all the while. I’d brushed it off as idle gossip. Trajan, ill? The man who could still walk a full day’s route march and then drink an entire legion under the table? Impossible.
He looks ill now
, I couldn’t help thinking as I got off my horse and saluted him. But his grin as he waved me up was as warm as ever.

“Vercingetorix! Just the man to join us on our little siege. What do you think—easier than Old Sarm?”

I squinted at the walls, which seemed to be rising out of a haze of dust. Roman cavalry were making a halfhearted attack on the gates, and I heard the distant thrum of arrows. “I’d say harder, Caesar.”

“Me too,” the Emperor said. “No pipes to break this time.
That
was easy.”

“That was my idea, Caesar,” I volunteered. “Breaking the pipes? I had Titus present it for me.”

“Did you, by Jove? Good fellow, young Titus Aurelius. One of the few honest men in Rome, if I’m not mistaken. Doesn’t hurt that he’s now one of the richest either.”

“He’s a good sort,” I agreed. “I didn’t mind he got the credit for my pipes.”

“Hadrian tried to claim it,” Trajan snorted. “Now, tell me about Seleucia.”

“Shouldn’t we retire, Caesar?” I heard another thump of an arrow. “We’re within range, one lucky shot—” And the Imperial idiot wasn’t wearing his helmet. His bare head gleamed under the harsh sun like a burnished silver coin.

“Don’t be ridiculous.” The Emperor waved my fears away. “Seleucia! Tell me.”

Trajan wore armor like a common soldier on campaign, but someone else on the walls of Hatra must have recognized that magnificent gray head. Halfway through my report on the sacked city of Seleucia, I heard the thrum of an arrow much closer. A hoarse gurgle sounded, and the cavalry officer on the horse beside Trajan’s, who had been fanning himself with one sweaty hand and complaining about the flies,
was trying to talk around the shaft in his throat. He pitched over, and I saw blood drip down on the sand.

No time to yell. I lunged forward, grabbed Trajan’s arm, and in one ferocious yank tugged the Emperor of Rome out of his saddle. A streak of fire shot through my shoulder, but I paid it no heed as Trajan came tumbling down on the ground. I hurled him flat and flung myself over him, and then I could hear shouts and stamping hooves as Praetorians rallied around us. Someone pulled me up, three guards surrounded their Emperor with protectively drawn swords and hastened him back toward the lines, and in the middle of it all, Trajan was laughing. I took a step after him and felt a bolt of pain in my right shoulder. Looking down, I saw that I had an arrow in my shoulder just at the edge of my breastplate. “Wonderful,” I snarled. Three and a half years in Parthia, in and out of the hottest fighting in the region with never a wound, and now I’d been winged on my first day in Hatra. I gritted my teeth and yanked the arrow out. Blood began to spurt down my arm. Shield practice was going to be great fun tomorrow.

“Vercingetorix!” I heard someone call, and looked up to see my Emperor. No more deep lines around his mouth; he was grinning like a boy. “That was a well-timed tackle of yours, I must thank you—”

“
Sir
!” I cut him off in my harshest centurion’s growl. I took a deep breath, trying to control myself as the Emperor blinked and his officers stared at me in surprise.
Do not shout at the Emperor of Rome
, I told myself, and then I bellowed, “HOW MANY TIMES DO WE HAVE TO TELL YOU TO WEAR YOUR BLOODY HELMET?”

The Emperor opened his mouth, but I wasn’t having any of his excuses. Jaws dropped further in the circle of guards and officers behind him (and hands hovered over sword hilts) as I jabbed a finger into Trajan’s chest and told him at the top of my lungs that he was an idiot. An idiot to get that close to the enemy, and an even greater idiot for getting that close to the enemy during an active attack. When I ran out of things to tell him I just cursed. When I ran out of curses, I just
glared. The Emperor of Rome gazed at me in silent amusement, and when I finally trailed off, he patted my wounded shoulder.

“There, there, boy. Don’t excite yourself.”

“EXCITE MYSELF?” I shouted, and that probably would have started me off again, but even that gentle pat had sent a bolt of pain through my arm, and I clutched at the wound with a stifled oath.

“Go get that patched up,” the Emperor told me.

“Yes, Caesar,” I muttered, still scowling.

“Then come see me in my tent. I want you and your men here with me until I take Hatra, but after that I’m dispatching you back to Germania.”

“Germania?”
Rage faded abruptly. I started after him as he turned at his usual brisk pace and strode off. I loped to keep up, still holding my shoulder.

“Those Dacians are stirring up trouble again,” Trajan said, not slowing. “Probably think I can’t keep my eye on them from all the way out here, the bastards. And I have been borrowing a bit heavily from the legions back in Germania; they’re stretched thin. You know Dacia, you were there the first time around, so you’ll take your men and the rest of the detachment back, take command of the legion, march on Dacia, and restore order. Congratulations, Vercingetorix.” He thumped me on the unwounded shoulder. “The Tenth Fidelis is yours.”

Mine?

“For—” I heard myself floundering like a boy and saw the other officers exchange glances, looking just as startled as I felt. “Giving me a legion—just for pulling you out of that archer’s way? I didn’t—I mean, I didn’t plan—”