“Don’t you dare walk away from me, you insolent little slut!” Tullia screamed after Diana.

“Oh, we’re not walking, Tullia,” Diana called back over her spiky shoulder. “We’re running. Fast as we can.”

“Mind if we run along with you?” Marcella caught up, still towing Cornelia behind her. Rain poured in a sheet through the square opening of the atrium. “Cornelia needs sanctuary. She was trying to commit suicide. So will I, if I stay in this house any longer.”

“Where are you going?” Tullia cried behind them. “My party—”

“I don’t want sanctuary.” Cornelia burst suddenly into tears, hot drops mixing with the cold rain already blowing into her face from the open roof. “Oh, why did you have to come home early? Why?”

“—finally get some work done today,” Marcella added in a mutter, ignoring her. “Six words—”

“What a fuss, eh?” Lucius wandered past, looking idly at the rain. “Marcella, will you have a word with the slaves about my togas? Too much starch.”

Marcella looked her husband in the eye. “Lucius,” she said levelly, ignoring Cornelia’s tears and Diana’s tapping foot and Tullia still fuming at the other end of the atrium. “You made it perfectly clear the other day that you are never going to make me mistress of my own household. So I am a guest here, just like you, and if you don’t like how your togas are being pressed then you can damn well talk to the slaves yourself.”

And she dragged Cornelia out into the rain.

DEAR gods, not those blankets—I wouldn’t give them to a dog.” Lollia wrinkled her nose. “Do we have anything in the storerooms?”

“They were given out yesterday, Domina.”

“Horse blankets, then. If they’re clean and warm, no one will care if they smell like horse.” Lollia wheeled around, back toward the culina, and the stewards and the slaves wheeled after her like a trail of ducklings. Flavia trotted at her heels, curly and unconcerned, but everyone else wore frowns.

“Domina,” the pastry cook began in aggrieved tones as Lollia swept into the culina, “this is beneath my position! I have made pastry for emperors, for kings—and now you have me making flatbread for plebs?”

“Pastry isn’t much use in a flood.” Lollia peered through a crack in the shutter to the courtyard outside. Nothing but huddled, patient shapes waiting in line, heads bowed under the rain. “Heavens, it isn’t letting up at all, is it?”

“But Domina—”

“Oppius, I know you’ve probably never even seen anything as awful as barley flour before, but this is an emergency. You’re providing a great service to our tenants, and I’ll see you get a bonus for it.” She patted his flour-dusted shoulder. “Flatbread, please—and as much as you can turn out.”