“Delightful to see anything that isn’t a stone cell.” He looked around the atrium with its square of winter sunlight and glassy pool. His hair, only threaded with gray at the beginning of the year, had gone entirely iron-colored, and he had a bracket of harsh lines about his mouth. “Are you hurt?” Marcella asked, noticing him limp as she waved him to a bench.

“A broken shoulder from my arrest,” he said briefly, releasing Paulinus’s plump little hand and pushing him gently to go play. “The guards weren’t gentle. It was never set properly, and now I find it pulls me off-balance.”

“I’m sorry, Marcus.”

“It would have been far worse without that doctor your cousin Lollia smuggled in for me.” Marcus rotated the crooked shoulder, smiling wryly.

“Lollia sent you a doctor?” Marcella blinked.

“Yes, along with food baskets and jugs of good wine. I hate to think what it must have cost her in bribes. Your sister was also kind enough to visit a few times, to give me news about Paulinus.” Marcus smiled again, fond. “And your mad little cousin Diana came every week, smuggling just about every book I owned under her dress, just to keep my mind from rotting away with boredom”

I suppose I should have thought to visit myself, Marcella thought. Dethroning an emperor had been so time-consuming. Perhaps she could do something for Marcus now, since he was out of prison. He really looked very distinguished in his toga—the crooked shoulder could hardly be seen, and his eyes were as penetrating and intelligent as ever. Senator Marcus Norbanus, descendant of Emperor Augustus . . . such an intelligent man, so respected in the Senate, with a consulship already to his credit at the age of thirty-three. Respected enough that three successive emperors this year had feared his influence. Surely he was bitter about the misfortunes they’d inflicted on him.

I wonder if you have ambitions, Marcus. To be something beyond a senator.

“So everything seems to have gone back to normal,” she remarked brightly. “I wonder if it really has.”

Marcus watched his son, splashing his hands in the atrium’s pool. “One hopes.”

“Four emperors! Fortuna, I wonder what Vespasian will be like.” Marcella fanned herself, artless. “None of them could hold a candle to you, in my opinion.”

“Really?” His eyes still followed little Paulinus.

“Yes, and I’m not the only one to think you might have made a fine Emperor. Certainly Galba and Otho and Vitellius were worried about the prospect. Isn’t it a pity that—”

“Stop,” said Marcus.

“What?” Marcella smiled. “Stop what?”