Lady of the Eternal City (54 page)

But there was no confession, and Vix had become a walking corpse again, and Hadrian would stay one. Because she had been wrong.

ANNIA

A.D. 137, Spring

“I’d rather go to work in a salt mine than spend an afternoon with Ceionia,” Annia said flatly.

“I know,” her mother agreed. “Spiteful little cow.”

Ceionia had come swishing into the atrium yesterday taking precedence over Annia and her mother both as though she were Empress of Rome already. “You must come weave with me in the afternoons, Annia. I’m going to weave my Marcus a wedding tunic. You could make a start on your bridal veil!”

“Just go string a loom with the girl,” her mother advised. “It will be good practice keeping your temper.”

“I’ll have to keep my temper with her the rest of my life, if she’s going to be my sister-in-law.” Annia glowered. “Must I start now?”

“Don’t write off the rest of your life just yet, my love. Little Lucius is only six. He won’t be ready to marry you for at least another nine years, and that’s a long time for things to change. So bite your tongue, and bide your time.” Annia’s mother gave her a shrewd look. “I thought you’d be pleased. You didn’t seem chafing to marry anyone, and at your age most girls are already giving birth to their first child. At least this keeps you unattached a time longer.” Another look. “If that’s what you want?”

What I want is to tear the hair out of Ceionia’s head every time I hear her coo, “My Marcus,”
Annia thought.
Because my wedding has to wait, but she could marry him tomorrow if the Emperor decides he wants it done.

In the end, Annia was glad of the daily trips to weave with her future sister-in-law. Because she always walked; a point of pride after all Ceionia’s little hints about how it was unwomanly—“Imperial women are always above the crush, Annia, you must take a litter!” So Annia started
running
the distance between, just to be as unwomanly as possible, and she was taking a fast jog away from the house of the new heir, wishing she had a fleeter set of slave girls for attendants, when someone fell in beside her.

“The Pantheon,” Marcus breathed, pretending to bump her and veer away. “Tell them you want to pray!” And Annia made for the Pantheon, that cool pillared place where her father had taken her and Marcus when it was being built, her heart pounding in her chest like a beat of thunder. She left her maids at the steps outside with a few coins and ducked into the marble gloom, making for the watery splash of sunlight on the floor where light came in from the space in the coffered dome. She didn’t have to wait long.

“You should see how you glow in here.” The voice came low behind her. “Your hair drinks up all the sunlight from the oculus.”

She turned and looked at Marcus, standing with a fold of his toga pulled over his head and his face somber. She wanted to see him smile, so she said, “What’s an oculus?”

“The opening at the dome’s apex. It allows a source of natural light and drainage for—” Marcus broke off, and that was when she got her smile. “You’re teasing me.”

“Always.” She wished she could take his hand, but there were worshippers all around, hurrying to the statue of their favorite god or goddess. Annia and Marcus just stood, staring at each other. “You don’t have to sneak to see me, you know. We’re cousins—you could just
visit
me.”

“But we’re both betrothed, and not to each other.” Bleakly. “People would be watching.”

“People are already watching me,” Annia said, attempting levity. “Lucius Ceionius, for one. Ever since he saw me in that orange dress, he’s had a light in his eye. He’s just the sort of father-in-law to have wandering hands.”

“He hasn’t—”

“I’m not afraid of Lucius Ceionius. I’ll just smack him off, Emperor’s heir or no.” Ceionia’s father was too insubstantial, too utterly frivolous to frighten Annia in the slightest. “He’s off to Pannonia soon anyway. Imperial business. How are
you
faring, Marcus?”

“The Emperor keeps summoning me.” Marcus nibbled a thumbnail. He had ink under his nails, Annia saw with a little pang of tenderness. “He keeps outlining courses of study with my grandfather. I’m to be made Prefect of the City; that much has been decided. And he’s told me to increase my training with the sword, so he must have some military post in mind at some point. He watched me do my sword drills yesterday . . .” Marcus tore a hand through his curly hair. “I still don’t know what he meant, that I was ‘dear to his heart.’ I’m not—the most complimentary thing he said about my
gladius
work is that I had very little enthusiasm, but a quick wrist! If all I have in my favor is a quick wrist, how can he call me ‘vital to the future’—”

“He’s grooming you,” a harsh voice said, and Annia turned fast, ready to run or strike out or both as Pedanius Fuscus strode forward. Time seemed to tilt, and she remembered him as a sturdy nine-year-old trotting through this same temple at his grandfather’s side, the three of them eyeing each other in the same hostile little triangle. Only now it was hatred, not just childhood wariness. This was hatred leaping thick and silent between the three of them.

“I was hoping you’d meet the whore somewhere more private,” Pedanius told Marcus, jittering a little as he always did now. Tall and nervous in a bright blue tunic, sweaty as though he’d just come from the bathhouse. But it was the sweat of nervousness, not a steam room. “I’ve been following you on and off, you know. Hoping to catch you without all the Imperial slaves and tutors the Emperor has around you most of the time.”

Marcus drew himself up. “And why would you follow me?”

“Because it was you.” Pedanius stepped closer. “It was you who set those thugs on me, wasn’t it?”

Annia drew swift breath to lie, but Marcus spoke without a qualm. “Finally figured that out, did you?” he said in his most overeducated drawl. “Really, you are slow.”

“You made me look ridiculous,” Pedanius hissed through his ruined teeth. “You stole the Emperor’s favor. You’re
always
stealing something from me, Marcus Catilius Severus. First you got to join the Salian priests; then you got the Emperor’s favor; you’ll get Prefect of the City—you’ve probably already gotten this whore’s virginity, too—”

“Hold your filthy tongue,” Marcus warned, dropping the drawl.

“—and you can have all that, but you’re
not
going to be heir. No matter what your thugs tried to do to me. I will see you dead first.”

Annia gave a contemptuous laugh. “He’s not
heir
, you thickheaded lout! Lucius Ceionius is, or were you even listening?”

“Lucius? He won’t last the year. Probably diseased already from all his whores, and even if he isn’t, no one takes him seriously. It’s just a sop for him because he tickles the Emperor’s fancy and his balls. He’s supposed to keep the chair warm for
you
.” Pedanius jabbed a finger into Marcus’s chest. “The Emperor said himself when you were just a whining little brat and he found us all outside his Hades—he said you reminded him of himself.”

“Because I
bored
him,” Marcus said flatly. “I have no Imperial blood, and at best I’ll make provincial governor of somewhere backwater like Pannonia. To think I have any chance at the purple is absurd. And to base such a theory on a few childhood recollections is the act of a poor theoretician.”

“I should have killed you when we
were
children,” Pedanius whispered. “I wish I’d done it in this temple, the day we met.”

“You’re mad,” Annia threw at him. “You really are mad, you know that? Following Marcus about like some crazed dog, following me about just to call me a whore—can’t you find some new pastime, you ivory-skulled ass? Why do you keep tormenting us?”

“Because he stole from me.” Pedanius’s eyes shifted from Marcus to Annia. “But you unmanned me. You know what happened, the day of my manhood ceremony when you kicked me? You burst one of my
balls
.”

Annia’s breath froze in her throat.

“I had to say a horse stepped on me. The medicus had to take it off like I was a damned eunuch, and my grandfather had to bribe him to keep it quiet.” There was a furious shame in Pedanius’s gaze, as though he wished he could stop the words from spilling, but the old rage had burst like a torrent and taken his shameful secret out with it. “I’m half a man thanks to you, you vicious bitch. I lay there under the knife and I swore I’d pay you back—”

Annia wanted to step back from the hate coming off him like boiling black smoke, but she held her ground.
A reason
, she thought. Finally, a
reason
for his unrelenting hatred all these years.
I burst one of your balls.
With one ferocious stomp of a kick. She still wanted to step back, but a bolt of savage vindication shot through her, and she threw her head back and let him see it.

“Come near me again, and I’ll stamp the other ball flat too,” she snarled. “Leave Marcus and me alone. Go plot against Lucius instead, you gelded freak.”

“Oh, I am.” Pedanius smiled. “I’m still taking what’s mine. And when I have it, I will come for you both.”

“Oh, Hell’s
gates
!” Annia cried, borrowing Vix’s favorite curse. Children’s rivalry, escalated to this horror of retribution—where in the name of all the gods was it going to
end
?

When one of us dies
, the thought came whispering back.

“Know something else—when I come for you both, I’ll do it myself.” Pedanius fished in the pouch at his waist, taking out what looked like a ring. A flash of gold that he twisted slowly onto his middle finger. “Marcus here had to hire someone to beat me to a pulp. Me? I do my own bloody work.”

“Then I won’t be caught alone again,” Marcus said, infuriatingly mild, and took Annia’s hand. “Come along, Annia. We have no time to yammer about childhood slights.”

Pedanius’s fist shot out toward Marcus. But Marcus was already moving, and Annia was yanking him backward at the same time, and the ringed knuckles only grazed Marcus’s nose. Annia tensed, ready to swing, but Pedanius only aimed the one blow.

“I killed a man with this fist,” he whispered. “Killed him. Took his life and took this ring off his dead hand. And next I’ll kill you, and I’ll take something of yours.” He pointed at Annia. “I’ll take her. And she’ll make me a man again.”

“Try,” Annia grated. Marcus squeezed her hand, so hard her knuckles ached, or she might have flown at Pedanius right there in the middle of the Pantheon among the crowd of oblivious worshippers.

Marcus touched his own face. The gold ring had drawn a single drop of blood. “The only blood of mine you’ll ever get,” he said calmly, flicking it to the floor between Pedanius’s feet. “Good day.”

“Well,” Annia breathed as they retreated outside, trying to slow her thudding heart. “That was a surprise.”

“That he means to see us dead? Not really.”

“No, that I cost him one of his balls.” Vicious satisfaction was still curling through her stomach at the thought.

Marcus frowned, too distracted to reproach her for foul language. “Do you think he meant it, that he’s killed before?”

“I wouldn’t put it past him.” They’d stopped under the pillared portico leading to the outside, people pushing all around them.

“But why would he carry that ring about with him? Sheer idiocy—”

“It makes him feel like a man,” Annia guessed. “Because killer or not, he’s still a half-gelded coward.”

“Don’t underestimate him,” Marcus warned.

“If you’re so wary, why did you admit you were the one who had him attacked?” She could have groaned, hearing him say those words. “Why didn’t you lie?”

“We’re bound by Fortuna.” Marcus shrugged. “All three of us. Somehow. We should accept the things that the Fates bind us to, even Pedanius Fuscus. He might as well know as not—it doesn’t make any difference to fate.”

“You’re an idiot.”

Marcus smiled faintly and smoothed a lock of hair back behind her ear.

“He might be right, though,” Annia said, trying not to curl her cheek into his hand. Her maids were standing at the other end of the portico, and they were definitely peeking. “Maybe Hadrian
is
grooming you. Maybe he does want you as heir—you to follow Lucius Ceionius.”

Marcus shook his head. “Lucius will want his own son to be heir. You’re more likely to be Empress than me to be Emperor.”

“I might be Empress,” she said flatly, “or you might be Emperor. But not each other’s.”

They looked at each other for a while. There were clouds gathering, shadowing the street. Another spring rainstorm on the horizon. “Have I mentioned how much I dislike Ceionia?” Marcus said eventually. “She tells me she’s weaving me a tunic with her own hands, and she looks offended if I don’t comment at once on her wifely diligence. And every time I express an opinion, she agrees with it. I have deliberately stated two contradictory opinions in a row, just to catch her out, and she agreed with both. Women should make themselves agreeable to their husbands, but not that agreeable. I cannot
stand
her.”

“Good.” Annia felt a little bloom of relief. Ceionia was very pretty, after all, and very suitable. “I hate her, too.”

“Well, her father is in no rush to see us married.” Marcus blew out a breath. “I think he believes she can do better, once he’s emperor. Thank the gods, whatever his reason. We’ve got time . . .”

Annia leaned against him, not caring if the maids saw, and buried her nose in the hollow of his throat. Marcus’s arms went around her, and they held each other desperately tight for a moment.

“I will never, ever weave you a tunic with my own hands,” Annia whispered.

“Good.”

VIX

“Odd to see you so idle,” Titus observed as spring melted toward summer. “I could get a different post for you if you wanted it. Another legionary command somewhere, if you don’t wish to return to Judaea?”

“No.” This was all I had left in my life: quiet days while I waited to become an old man. I’d found brief, furious purpose in the thought of bringing my son’s killer to justice, but there was no killer. That business was done, and so was I.