Many of the aqueducts and sewers were in urgent need of repair. The public granaries were closed. Many monuments and statues had been looted and violated—indeed, people stole stone from them either for building projects of their own, or simply to burn the marble for lime. The drainage of some of the fields beyond the city walls had failed, and they were degenerating into swamps. Sometimes you would see dead cattle drifting down the swollen waters of the Tiber, and starvation and disease routinely stalked the poorer parts of the city. Many of the rich had fled to the comparative comfort of Constantinople; many of the poor had died.

Regina was dismayed, but she had seen it all before. It was Verulamium or Durnovaria writ large. But still the Forum and the markets swarmed; even now it was a great city. And this was Rome; even now she was sure its mighty lungs of concrete and marble still swelled, and the city would recover.

And as Regina approached the imperial palace on the Palatine Hill, even seventeen years after arriving in the city, she was awed.

Itself three centuries old, the palace had been the residence of emperors since Domitian. It sprawled across the whole central portion of the Palatine, a complex of buildings several stories high, roofed by red tiles and coated in decorative stones of many colors. The imperial residence itself was said to be the size of a large villa, with baths, libraries, and several temples—even a private sports stadium—and yet it was lost in the greater maze of buildings. The palace was like a small town in itself, a sink toward which the resources of a continentwide Empire had once flowed.

She was met by a retainer in the Via Sacra, to the northeastern side of the complex. She held her head up, ignoring the nagging pain inside, determined to show no weakness. She was led through two great arches, dedicated to the memories of the emperors Titus and Domitian, and found herself in a large paved area. It was the Domus Flavia that was her destination, the wing of the palace where official work was done.

The Domus Flavia was built onto a large platform set on top of the hill. It consisted of several rooms set around a huge peristylium. The walls and floors were decorated with mosaics and imported stones; the colors were bright yellow, crimson, and blue, the lines of the rectangular patterns sharp. There was much business being done here, she saw; men walked this way and that, arguing earnestly, bearing heaps of papyrus scrolls or wax tablets. Despite the bustle, as with much of Rome there was a sense of shrinkage, of emptiness, as if these busy men were smaller than their ancestors. She wondered how it must have been two or three hundred years ago when this building really had been the hub of the whole world.