Lady of the Eternal City (45 page)

“Why?” Annia couldn’t help asking. He clearly wanted to, and that gave her a different kind of pang—because he’d never looked at Annia’s hips like he had the slave girl’s, with that flash of something hungry and hot. She gave her dusty dress a tug, feeling like a street urchin.

He sat for long moments with his lips clamped shut as the crowd roared for the upcoming gladiator bouts. Annia waited. Marcus could never resist the urge to pontificate, even if the topic was one to make his ears burn.

“Just because one has a passion doesn’t mean one should give in to it,” he burst out suddenly in that pedantic tone he still couldn’t shake when he was nervous. “It is a principle at the very core of Stoicism: control of one’s baser thoughts and emotions. Look at the way people still laugh about Antinous—because the Emperor didn’t control his passions at all. His love
or
his grief.”

“Anybody would grieve for Antinous.” Annia could see his statues all through Rome, and every one made her furious, because even the finest marble didn’t have life in it. Didn’t have that vivid laughing expression she remembered from the very last time she had ever seen him—the night he’d hauled Brine-Face off her and Marcus, and then cuffed him for spitting insults about the Emperor . . .

“But one’s passions should never gain control over one’s life.” The gladiators had begun their slow purple-cloaked parade around the arena, the crowd roaring and surging to their feet, but Marcus argued on, oblivious. “An emperor’s bedmate deified? That’s why people laugh when the Emperor isn’t listening.”

“They laugh because Antinous was a free man of Rome,” Annia pointed out. “But bedding a slave isn’t base. You could do it if you wanted to.” The slave girl was wending her way back with two myrtle wreaths over her arm, hips moving as fluid as a snake. Annia gave her dress another tug.

“Putting a pretty slave in a boy’s bed isn’t what makes him a man.” Marcus was the color of a pomegranate. “It takes more than a moment’s friction and sweat to do that.”

“What does make a man, then?” Annia crammed her myrtle wreath down over her unraveling braid.

“When I think of the man I want to be,” Marcus said seriously, “I look to your father. He said he would sponsor me when I put on my toga next month—if I could be a man like him . . .”

“He is wonderful,” Annia agreed. “Do you really put your toga on so soon?”

Trumpets blared as the gladiators disappeared below, and Marcus had to raise his voice to be heard. “My grandfather wanted to put off the ceremony until the Emperor returned, but he’s still sieging Bethar. Thank the gods. Emperor Hadrian terrifies me.”

“But all through his travels, he wanted those reports on your studies. He likes you.”

“I wish I knew why.” Marcus grimaced. “I know I’d never get through my first speech in a toga if I had him staring me down.”

“Well, now you don’t have to.” Annia grabbed hold of his hand, impulsive. This was the Marcus she liked best, not the one who preached about proper behavior. “If you get lost in your speech, just look for me.”

Marcus looked at her strangely. “Things will change, you know. When I’ve put my toga on, I can’t be running about with you anymore.”

Annia blinked. He’d dropped her hand like it was a dead frog. “Why?”

“After I’m a man, I won’t have time for such things.”

“You really can be insufferable, you know that?” Annia whipped her gaze back to the arena, clamping her teeth on more hot words. Two Thracians had been matched for the first bout, and everyone was shrieking for their favorite—she was damned well going to watch. Pedanius gave the signal to begin, looking lordly, and Annia wished she could see him on the arena sand.
I wouldn’t be satisfied with first blood then
, she thought.
I’d put my thumb out for a death blow.

Most bouts only went to first blood, but there was one death that afternoon. A
secutor
with a heavy shield raked his blade across a trident fighter’s gut, and it should have been a shallow cut, but the man didn’t retreat fast enough. He fell with a scream, blood spilling through his fingers, and the
secutor
didn’t wait for the signal from the crowd. He made a fast thrust through the heart and then saluted his fallen opponent, full of somber pride, and the screaming crowd hushed a moment in reverence.

“I don’t like this,” Marcus said. “It’s barbaric.”

Annia watched the victor’s proud strut through the Gate of Life. Before now she’d stayed seated as the rest of the Colosseum stamped and roared, but now she found herself on her feet with everyone else, banging her hands together. “It’s terrible.”

“Then why are you smiling?”

She hadn’t realized she was. She looked down and realized her palms stung from clapping. “I don’t know. I don’t really like that I’m enjoying this part, but I am.” She tried to make sense of it as she sat down, watching another pair begin to circle each other. “I didn’t like the prisoner executions, or the animal bouts—it’s not like the animals or the prisoners have any chance. But the gladiators . . .”

“You’ll watch a gladiator die, but not a few gazelles? That makes no logical sense.”

“Well, most of the gladiators don’t die, do they?” The trident fighter below took the bout in a thrilling sweep of net, spilling his opponent to the ground and then raising a fist to the sky, giving his victory to the gods. “They’re brave,” Annia said, and felt a fierce thrill curl through her like a flame. “I like to see courage.”

“Most of them are slaves. Just as helpless as those prisoners earlier.”

Maybe
, Annia thought. But at least the gladiators were dangerous. You couldn’t be utterly helpless if you had a sword in hand and the skill to use it.
I wish I could use a sword.
She curled a fist and imagined it, a blade like a natural extension of her arm.

“You’d be down there if you could, wouldn’t you?” Marcus looked disgusted. “A gladiatrix with an Amazon helmet!”

“I would.” She leveled her imaginary
gladius
at Pedanius in the Imperial box, as though they faced each other across a stretch of bloody sand. “Annia the Amazon! Annia the Barbarian—”

Marcus snatched her arm down. “Must you make such a spectacle of yourself?”

She yanked away. “If I embarrass you so much, why are you here?”

“Duty,” Marcus bit out, and that stabbed. Annia looked back at the arena, ostentatiously sliding away from even the brush of his sleeve, and Marcus stared too. Brine-Face was shouting up in the Imperial box, myrtle wreath cocked over his head at a rakish angle.

“Look,” Marcus said at last. “I’m taking you home.”

“No.” She still didn’t look at him. “There’s another
secutor
fight. I think I like them best.” Maybe she’d lay a bet, too. Everyone around them was busy arguing odds.

“This isn’t proper for you to be seeing at all.” He took her hand, tugging her up.

“You’re not my father, Marcus Catilius Severus.” She pulled away. “No matter how hard you try.”

Marcus gave her a cold look. “I’ll leave Theodotus to see you home safely. I have more pressing matters at hand than watching men bleed and trying to get you to behave.”

“You’re a pompous ass,” Annia said.

“You’re a silly child,” he returned.

“And you’re not a man yet!” she shouted after him as he went stamping off down the marble steps, slave girl swaying along behind. Her and her hips. He’d probably give in to all those passions he was so proud of controlling, and take her to his bed. “Go ahead,” Annia muttered. “She’ll tell you you’re wonderful, and you’ll get even more pompous than you already are.”

Brine-Face was still whooping in his golden chair.
I kicked you in the groin
, Annia thought.
I put you on the ground screaming.
But what did that matter? She might have won the battle that day, but Brine-Face would still win their war. He would always win, because he was a man and because he was going to be Emperor.

Annia put her head down on her knees, ignoring the surge of shouts as the gladiators flew at each other.
Antinous
, she thought, somehow.
It all started with you.
Antinous died and Emperor Hadrian went mad, and ever since then it seemed to Annia like the whole world had gone mad with him. Marcus had grown into a stranger, Pedanius Fuscus would grow up to be Emperor . . .

And what will he do to me then?

SABINA

A scream brought the Empress of Rome bolt upright in her litter. She had been half dozing, on her way back from a late banquet after yet another temple dedication, sliding into a dream of Antinous’s golden hair in the Egyptian sun—
how did you die, please tell me
—but she brushed the dream’s threads away and drew back the litter’s silk curtain. “What was that?” she called to her bearers.

“Just a brawl, Lady.”

Another shout came, stifled this time in a groan of pain. Sabina heard gasping, the thud of what sounded like booted feet against flesh. She squinted into the darkness—a half moon lit the broad street, and she could just make out five or six hulking shadows buffeting and kicking at a limp shape. “Run them off, Centurion.” Sabina’s official uses might now be limited to dedicating temples and dispensing charity, but the Empress of Rome was not about to glide past in her litter as murder was done.

The thugs ran at the first sign of lowered Praetorian spears. Sabina slipped from her litter and crossed the stones to the young man huddled in a bundle of bloodied toga. “You poor boy, how badly are you hurt?” she began as her Praetorians rolled him over. Then she blinked recognition. “Pedanius?”

Her husband’s great-nephew looked like a slab of meat on a butcher’s table. Both eyes were purpled, his nose flattened and smashed, and his mouth—his mouth was a gory mess of broken teeth and torn lips. “Lady,” he managed to splutter through a mess of bloody spittle and tooth splinters.

“Don’t speak,” Sabina ordered. “Don’t move, either. Praetorians, be gentle.” She had him lifted into the litter; they weren’t far from his grandfather’s villa. “Let me see . . .” She prodded carefully under the folds of his toga as the overburdened litter rose beneath them. She was no medicus, but no one could travel with so many of Hadrian’s hunting parties and legion inspections without knowing something of cracked ribs and smashed noses. Poor Pedanius groaned in pain as she touched his ribs—something broken there, very likely—but he didn’t seem to have been stabbed. The blood was all from his nose and his destroyed mouth. “You’ll live, never fear!” She smiled reassurance at him. “I suppose they followed you home from a wine shop to rob you?” One didn’t usually see gangs of street thugs in this refined quarter of the Palatine Hill.

“Set on me,” he mumbled thickly, and she heard his outrage even through the slur of his blood-filled mouth. “Set on
me
!”

“I’m afraid Imperial blood is no protection against fists and boots.” Sabina eased a cushion under his head. “Better to learn that, if you ever do become Emperor.”

Her litter-bearers bore Pedanius into his grandfather’s house. Servianus was busy thundering, “Sad times we live in, when an emperor’s heir can be robbed and beaten in the streets!” so Sabina gave orders for the Imperial physicians to be called. “I will visit again tomorrow,” she promised as the slaves dabbed at the boy’s bloody face, and took herself off feeling rather invigorated. Gods knew she wished no harm on poor Pedanius, but it felt good to do something
useful
for a change. Lately her days had been nothing but waving to crowds or brooding alone. Even reports from her ancient freedman and his net of informers provided no distraction, because all those discreet inquiries about those who might have wished Antinous harm had led exactly nowhere over these many months.

It felt satisfying to deal with something as straightforward as a bloody nose and a boy’s comfort.

Poor Pedanius still looked like a butcher’s mess the next morning, but he rallied his gallantry as the sight of Sabina. “You are very kind, Aunt,” he said, or at least Sabina thought that was what he said. He had been bandaged and splinted, but there was no splint for his mouth; his front teeth had been knocked cleanly out, and the remaining teeth splintered so badly they looked like broken road markers.

“
Four
broken ribs, three broken fingers, broken nose—” Servianus shook his head.

“But he’ll be mended soon enough,” Sabina pointed out. Antinous had been pulled from the Nile perfect and smooth-skinned as a statue, and yet his soul had flown. “I’ll visit again soon, I promise.”

“Perhaps you might bring your niece, Annia Galeria Faustina? The sight of her would cheer my grandson. I hope for a marriage there, of course—”

Astounding to think that her daughter was old enough for marriage. Annia had grown abruptly in the past few years, not so much lengthening in height but growing into the height she already had: skinny limbs turning sinuous and firm, bright hair darkening to a coppery russet. She moved with a light-footed swagger, shoulders swinging and hair flying, either scowling her black glare or shouting her raucous laugh, but never still. Not what girls of good birth were supposed to look like, smooth-haired creatures like Ceionia Fabia with their meek smiles and downcast eyes. Annia was something far better than that, something made of flame and wind.
My daughter.

“—but it is not just an alliance I think of,” Servianus was saying. “My grandson is
quite
infatuated with the girl.”

Sabina raised skeptical eyebrows. “With Annia, or with her lineage?”

“Her lineage makes her my choice as a wife for him,” Servianus said without embarrassment. They both knew how the game of alliances was played. “But Pedanius wants the girl for herself. I see the signs; his eyes follow her constantly. I tell you, he is in love. Perhaps you might speak to your brother-in-law . . .”

Pedanius Fuscus and Annia?
Sabina mused on that as she went home. The boy had been all eagerness-to-please during those months he traveled in Egypt. Perhaps a bit puffed up, but he had cause to be: birth, charm,
and
good looks (at least before he lost those teeth). If Pedanius had the sense to admire Annia for her fire as well as her lineage, perhaps he warranted more consideration . . .