Sabina went back to her book then, wanting to savor the last verses where Ulysses dealt with his wife’s suitors, wishing Homer might have written just a little more about Penelope in her husband’s absence. But the large sandaled feet in front of her didn’t move, and Sabina glanced back up at the russet-haired visitor who looked so out of place in the quiet vine-veiled atrium. Vix’s lurking grin flowered into something cheerful and lewd, and she laughed. “Fortuna be with you, Vercinget-orix.”

“I make my own luck,” he bragged.

“Do you? That’s a nice trick, if one can manage it.” She wandered away, finding her place in the scroll again and reading as she walked. She didn’t have to glance over her shoulder to know that Vix was looking after her.

VIX

The inn Senator Norbanus had directed me to wasn’t bad. The innkeeper wasn’t happy to give me a week’s free rent, but he grunted at the senator’s seal. “Maybe you could help around the place,” he added. “I could use a big strong lad like you. Customers, it gets late, they like having someone with a knife see them home safe.”

“That pays well?”

“Not bad. Pays even better if they turn down the guard and you can hold ’em up in an alley.”

I quirked an eyebrow. “I want half.”

“Ten percent.”

“Ten the first week, and thirty once I’m paying my own room.”

“Done.”

The room had lice, but at least it had a bed that didn’t rock back and forth like a river. As I flopped down I saw a serving maid creak down the stairs outside. Spotty skin, but breasts like melons, and she gave me a sidelong glance as she trudged by with a basket of blankets. Maybe the day wasn’t such a loss after all.

I didn’t think about Sabina. Why should I? Just a patrician girl I probably wouldn’t see again after she’d walked away from me in that atrium with her light brown hair swaying against her narrow back. Girls like her were off-limits, and anyway, she had small breasts. Figs, say, rather than apples. I liked apples. Or melons… I eyed the dank hall where the serving maid had gone.

If I’d known the trouble that small-breasted off-limits patrician girl would make for me, I might have choked her to death in the middle of that atrium rather than watch her walk away.

CHAPTER 2

PLOTINA

“Vinalia.” Plotina pronounced the word disapprovingly. “A disgusting festival.”

“It’s harmless.” Her husband’s voice was muffled as he dragged a tunic over his head. “Just a little celebration of the wine harvest—”