“I imagine they already know what I noticed at the Campus Martius just now,” Marcella said. “That there are Praetorians massing.” She hadn’t liked the look of them: tight-bunched in their red-and-gold breastplates, gesturing fiercely at each other under the low gray sky.

“The Praetorians are always grumbling. What of it?”

“Perhaps they’re grumbling a little worse than usual.” Marcella thought of the latest rumor—that Piso had tried once again to get Galba to pay his soldiers their bounty, and been refused.

And then there were the slaves she’d seen at the Campus Martius. Wearing, Marcella was certain, Senator Otho’s badge.

The air was stifled from so many bodies in one room. Marcella cleared a path back to a niche where a jade-and-silver lamp had somehow avoided Galba’s auctioneers. The crowd swirled, and for a moment she saw Galba himself, wrinkled as a tortoise in his toga, Old Flaccid at one elbow and Piso at the other. Piso looked worried but stalwart; Cornelia clung to his arm with a crease showing between her dark brows—then the crowd swirled again and hid them.

Marcella felt a little tendril uncoil in her stomach—excitement this time, rather than unease. “Isn’t it rather thrilling?” she couldn’t help saying. “To be right in the thick of it all like this?” Not just forever stuck in the background, waiting for news.

“If I want thrills, I go to the races.” Diana looked out over the nervous crowd. “I think it’s Senator Otho.”

“Otho isn’t here, Diana.”

“No, but he’s somewhere else. Causing trouble.”

Of course Marcella had long since arrived at that conclusion. Diana never sees anything unless it’s waved under her nose. They found a slave to bring some wine—passed a few more idle speculations—waited an agonizing, finger-tapping hour before the hysterical messenger brought the news.

The Praetorian Guard had proclaimed Otho as Emperor and were carrying him shoulder-high through the streets.

It was all a great confusion after that. Marcella tried to see everything, take note of everything, but for once her mental pen was overwhelmed. Too much was happening for notes.