She laughed aloud, mocking herself. Such purple language from a historian!

Lollia’s grandfather beamed in the atrium, welcoming senators and charioteers and giggling ladies alike with open arms, happy in everybody’s success because he owned shares in the Reds. Also, Marcella knew, in the Blues, the Greens, and the Whites, because he was careful to back all sides. No wonder he’s the richest man in Rome. He’d gone from an ex-slave running the low-rent district in the Caelian Hill to a trader with so many tentacles of business that he could marry into the patrician class and deal with emperors . . . Lollia was already pleading prettily with him in a corner, doubtless angling to get rid of Old Flaccid. Of course she’d succeed—her grandfather might be hard-nosed in business, but he was clay in the hands of his only grandchild, whom he’d raised as his own when her mother and father died in that boating accident. If Lollia wanted a new husband, a new husband her grandfather would get for her—just as he’d gotten his jewel the ponies, the dolls, the dresses, and the pearls when she was little. She had all the best toys back then, Marcella thought. I suppose she still does.

At the center of the raucous crowd was Otho, leading the guests in a toast to the Reds, cheering the return of good times in the cold onset of December. Marcella saw his brilliant smile as a Praetorian approached to whisper in his ear. “Apologies to all!” he called gaily. “But Emperor Galba summons me to the palace. Dear gods, I wonder what I’ve done wrong?”

“Why did Galba invite him?” Cornelia wailed to Marcella the next day.

“Because he’s handsome?” Marcella suggested. “Galba does like a strapping handsome man, one hears. I always thought that might be why he likes your Piso so much, but if Otho is more to his tastes . . .”

Her sister wasn’t listening. “—Piso and I were supposed to be the only guests! Otho just lay there all through dinner making jokes at Piso’s expense. And why Otho got assigned Praetorians too, I’ll never understand—”

Marcella slanted a brow. “I think you do understand, Cornelia.”

“Never mind.” Cornelia smoothed her hair with both hands, and her expression with it. “It doesn’t change anything. Piso is Galba’s cousin, after all. He’s descended from Pompey and Crassus, and he’s a serious man, not some frivolous perfumed sophisticate. Those are the things that matter.”

“Maybe so. But guess who has more money to sprinkle around in bribes? Guess who can charm the birds out of trees? And guess whose name the crowd was screaming after the races?”

Three

Three