A moon was rising in the frosty purple sky by the time they fought their way out into the streets. Rough and jubilant crowds shouted on every street corner and in every forum, and Marcella was glad of the guards Vitellius had distractedly assigned to escort them home. Anything for his little pet, even now.

“Wait.” Diana stiffened for a moment, craning her neck, then slipped out from behind a pair of Praetorians. “What are you doing here?”

A man paused, looking down at her. Iron-gray hair, a bronze torc, breeches—yes, the rebel’s son, Llyn ap Caradoc. Marcella remembered how resentful she’d felt at the games earlier this spring when he’d ignored her questions about his father’s rebellion in Britannia. Why was I so interested? she wondered. A failed rebellion twenty years ago certainly isn’t as interesting as a simmering rebellion under my nose. Especially when I’ve done so much to help it simmer!

“You shouldn’t be out in the streets, Lady,” he was telling Diana. “I heard there was killing before the Capitol.”

“There was.” Diana rubbed the back of her neck tiredly. “Vitellius tried to abdicate. He didn’t know how to do it, really—there’s never been an emperor who abdicated before. So he offered his dagger to the crowd and made a speech, but he was drunk and it didn’t go over very well.”

Marcella thought of Vitellius’s bravado as he went out to make his abdication speech, his terrified eyes over a wide smile as the crowd roared his name. “Well,” he said, coming back inside and spreading his rough horseman’s hands, “I suppose I’m still Emperor. They seem to want me.” There had been a mix of horror and courage in that reddened, food-bloated face.

Llyn’s eyes gleamed like two pieces of steel. “Is he dead?”

“No,” said Diana, “but his soldiers ran wild. They went looking for Vespasian’s son to kill, but they couldn’t find him. So they found some inoffensive brother of Vespasian’s and tore him to bits instead.”

Marcella wondered absently if Domitian would survive the next few days. The Moesian legions who supported his father’s claim were rumored to be camped just ten miles away . . . still, Domitian wouldn’t live to see their arrival unless he found a very safe place to wait out the danger. I’m certainly not going to hide him under the bed if he comes crawling to my door.

Diana was looking at Llyn critically now, and her eyes came to rest on the long sword he wore strapped against one breech-clad leg. “I’m quite certain you’re not supposed to have that.”

“Are you?” Amused.

“That’s no Roman sword,” Marcella interjected, interested despite herself. “Too long for a gladius. Surely it isn’t the sword you had in Britannia? They’d have disarmed you and your father the minute you were captured.”