Diana halted in the entrance of the Blues stables, putting her hands to her knees and panting. “Bassus!” she called the Blues faction director, but her voice echoed unanswered. A broken length of blue-dyed rein was trampled forgotten in the straw, and a bucket rolled disconsolately by the water troughs. She saw a guard or two, Praetorians by their armor, and a few souls wandering at the end of the passage, but no one halted Diana. Just refugees looking for a place to hide from the rampaging soldiers. The Blues director and the horses were clearly long gone, and Diana’s heart eased. The Anemoi were safe. She came to the first set of blue-painted stalls where they had been installed with such hateful pomp, looking over the first gate—and froze. Her fleet-footed Zephyrus was there, looking at her through his red forelock with a calm liquid eye. Notus put his head over the next stall, and in two more steps she saw that Eurus and her savage Boreas were there too, and beyond them the famous team of blood bays. The Blues had fled in panic, and they’d left all their horses behind.

“Oh, you bastards,” she gritted out and spun toward the shed where they kept the harness. Another few hours and the horses would all be gone, claimed by grinning legionaries who knew what a good horse was worth. The blood bays would be split up and led off by four new owners, sold or traded a dozen times by morning, never to race together again. But that wouldn’t happen to her Anemoi. “You, help me,” she called to one of the slaves she saw edging about at the end of the passage, but he just stared at her.

She dived into the harness shed, coming out with a pair of bridles thrown over each shoulder, and swung into Boreas’s stall first. “Come with me and no biting,” she started to say, but then she halted and the first bridle fell into the straw at her feet.

“Hello, girl,” Emperor Vitellius said softly.

He sat in the corner of Boreas’s stall, arms resting limp over his massive belly. Manure stained his purple robe, and he picked at it idly. A wineskin lay flat and empty at his side. A guard stood in the corner, nervously fingering his gladius as he looked at Diana, but Vitellius jerked his double chin and the guard edged around Boreas and tramped out of the stall.

“Caesar,” Diana said. “Gods’ wheels, what are you doing here?”

“I was going to my family’s home on the Aventine, but—” Vitellius shrugged. “There’s fighting around there. You know there’s fighting?”

Diana stepped closer. “Why aren’t you in the palace?”