Marcella felt rather than heard her sister screaming, fighting inside the band of her arms to get at the bundle of bloody rags that was Piso. Densus fell, dragged down with the Praetorian’s body, and he tried to get to his feet again but couldn’t. He gave a dogged shake of his head, his bloody hair dripping, and he tried to lever off his knees but he collapsed. He dragged himself in front of Cornelia and managed to raise his short sword halfway. He couldn’t get it any higher than that, but he knelt shaking on the step, the blade half-raised and trembling in his hand, and Marcella saw the knife hilt still wedged in his side.

Diana slipped down from the pillars with her little knife in hand, lunging to stand beside him, teeth bared in a feral hiss. Marcella hoped she wasn’t planning some desperate attack—the knife would be far better employed slitting Densus’s throat before his fellow Praetorians took him down. The only loyal soldier in Rome didn’t deserve to be torn slowly to pieces by his former friends.

Marcella, trying frantically to soothe her screaming sister, found herself making disjointed calculations. Lollia certainly couldn’t be counted on to stab herself with any degree of competence, but perhaps Diana would take care of that before tending to herself? Just as Marcella would take care of her sister. So I’m the last one who gets the knife; well, at least a blade through the heart tends to be quick. The Cornelii women would die on their feet and by their own hands, not on their backs after being ravaged by a band of thugs. “Hush, Cornelia, hush—”

Dimly Marcella heard Densus’s breath sawing in and out, heard her sister’s screams, heard Lollia’s low moans behind, and over that was the sound of shouting men and breaking glass coming from the Forum—but here before the Temple of Vesta, all was somehow muffled.

The Praetorian before them shrugged, and Marcella realized in a jolt of shock that he was the last one. Three bodies at the foot of the steps, another beside Piso—and the last one, grimy and chuckling as he lowered his gladius.

“You’re lucky I’ve got better things to do,” he said, and the sound of his voice cut Cornelia’s screaming off like a knife blade. Marcella gazed at him as he turned to squat down by Piso’s silent body. A few sawing strokes of the gladius and Piso’s head rolled free, but Cornelia didn’t make a sound.

“Reckon Emperor Otho will want to see this,” the soldier said. “Might make my fortune for me.”