Cornelia climbed into the litter, tugging Paulinus into her lap, and the city pressed in on them through the rose silk curtains as the bearers began their trot toward Uncle Paris’s small house on the farthest slope of the Palatine Hill. Rome was full—that was one disquieting thing. None of the patricians left that summer for their summer villas. First everyone was too petrified by news of Otho’s defeat to move, lest it be construed as flight. And when Vitellius arrived in the city he stayed despite the heat, consolidating his position, and everyone stayed with him. So the summer games that saw the arena seats only half full in normal years were packed to the sky, the Circus Maximus was filled to bursting for every race, and the Domus Aurea spilled over every night with parties. Not Galba’s dour dinners with their sour wine and droning discussions of Rome’s economy; not Otho’s elegant gatherings of beautiful people saying witty things. Parties where common soldiers drank side by side with senators and the senators strove to drink like common soldiers; where an Emperor boasted that he wasn’t too proud to curry horses for the Blues; where a common legionary commander like Lollia’s husband had become a kingmaker. It was summer, it sweltered and burned, and the world was upside-down. A new Rome, just as Lollia had said . . . and Cornelia didn’t like it at all.

“Juno’s mercy—” She gazed in disapproval at the entry hall as they all came into Uncle Paris’s house. Scraps of marble and chisels lying everywhere, dust on everything else, and the slaves idling in corners chattering to each other and not even pretending to look busy. “Uncle Paris,” Cornelia scolded as Lollia threw open the door of his studio. “Doesn’t Diana do anything to keep the house in order?”

“She’s busy,” Uncle Paris said absently, working at a scrap of marble with a polishing cloth, white-blond hair falling in his eyes. Faces surrounded him, faces in marble and stone and clay; everyone from slaves to senators to family members. “Some savage from Britannia is teaching her to drive a chariot. I saw him once; wonderful face. I’ve got to carve it.”

Lollia giggled, but Cornelia sighed. “Uncle Paris, you should stop her.”

He blinked. “Who stops Diana doing anything?”

“But she could be doing something very unwise. I doubt it’s just driving a chariot.”

“So do I,” Lollia laughed. “I just hope it’s fun too.”

“Little ones,” Uncle Paris regarded Flavia and Paulinus, who both stood gazing up with round eyes. “Who do you belong to? Never mind, just keep your hands off my mallets. Didn’t I promise one of you a carved dog? Let me see . . .”