A fountain set in the center of the peristylium was dry, its bowl mildewed, evidently long out of action. It made her think of her own long-lost childhood home; the fountain had never worked there, either.

“Madam. I am Gratian.” The man who greeted her was tall, his hair white as British snow, with a thin, strong-nosed, elegant face. He was actually wearing a toga, a sight rarely seen nowadays. Gratian walked her toward one of the great buildings. It was a throne room; he called it the Aula Regia. “We will sit in the shade, over wine . . .”

Gratian was a senator, a close adviser to the Emperor—and a close relation. He was one of the cabal of rich and powerful men who actually controlled the imperial administration: though the Emperor Romulus Augustus bore two of the mightiest names in all Rome’s long history, he was but a boy.

If the complex as a whole was impressive, the throne room was startling. The walls and floor were covered with a veneer of patterned marble, gray, orange, brown, green. The walls were fronted by columns, and in twelve niches stood colossal statues carved of night-black basalt. The room was covered by a vaulted concrete roof, and was oddly chill even in the heat of the day. The floor was warm, though, evidently heated by a hypocaust. At one end of the room was an apse where the Emperor received embassies and gave audiences. Today it was empty.

Gratian led her to a series of couches set in a semicircle, where they sat.

“If I am meant to be impressed,” she said, “I am.”

Gratian actually winked at her. “It’s an old trick and not a subtle one. Rome herself has always been the emperors’ most potent weapon. Do you know the history of the palace? The Emperor Domitian made his great platform on top of the Palatine by leveling earlier buildings, or filling them in with concrete. It is as if this mighty complex has used whole palaces as mere foundations! . . .” His talk was smooth and practiced.

“Perhaps,” she said. “But this is power projected from the past, not the present.”

He was apparently surprised at this sally. “But power even so.”

A girl brought them wine—from Africa, Gratian said—and olives, bread, and fruit. She took a little of the wine, but watered it heavily; wine seemed to go to her head these days, perhaps because her blood was drawn by the thing in her belly.

“I take it,” she said dryly, “that Romulus Augustus will not be receiving me today.”

“He is the Emperor, and a god, but also a boy,” Gratian said gently. “And today he is with his teacher of rhetoric. Are you disappointed?”

She smiled. “Is he?”