Never mind. Plotina had certainly not dropped in uninvited on her almost-daughter-in-law to get distracted by her loose-warped weaving and odd views on guests. Plotina had News, and such News it was. “When is Dear Publius returning this morning? I have a surprise that I believe will please him more than any amount of Greek verse.”

“Oh, I never track his comings and goings. Wine?”

“I do not drink wine, you should know that by now. Barley water, if you please. And let me see that slave girl’s hands—just as I thought.” Plotina gave the slave a frosty look. “Clean your nails before you come back with those cups, girl. Vibia Sabina, I don’t know where you find your maids! Such clumsy untrained creatures—”

“That one came out of a whorehouse on the Aventine.” Sabina nodded after the girl who had just filed out. “I offered her a change of job. So far she’s settling in just fine, though she does get the cups mixed up.”

Plotina blinked. “You aren’t serious?”

“Aren’t you always telling me about a Roman matron’s duty to aid the unfortunate?”

“The clean unfortunate. The moral unfortunate. Not dirty whores.”

“Well, she’s not a dirty whore anymore. She’s learning to weave—eventually I’ll free her and get her a job in a shop. Shouldn’t take long; she already weaves better than I do. You mentioned a surprise?”

Plotina debated a continuation of the lecture but couldn’t hold back any longer with the news she had been storing up all day. “Dear Publius has been appointed legate of his own legion!”

That made the girl sit up. “Legate?”

“Of his own legion,” Plotina repeated with relish. Oh, how much work it had been, so many headaches pressing in at her temples, so many people determined to thwart her, but she had done it. She had done it: his next step upon the ever-upward path.

“Which legion?” Sabina gave her shuttle another yank.

“The appointment has not yet been finalized.” Plotina’s shuttle passed back and forth without thought on her part, an unthinking rhythm as if it had been magicked into perpetual motion. “My husband was not at all eager to appoint him, you know—it took a great deal of persuasion on my part. Dear Publius’s last stint in the legions…” A troubling time. He had run up a great many debts in his idle months as a twenty-three-year-old tribune of the Twelfth Primigenia, and Trajan had not been pleased. “The dear boy could be rather wild,” Plotina temporized.

“Let me guess,” Sabina smiled. “Hunting dogs and handsome young men.”

“That is an indelicate speculation.” The shuttle snapped across with a little more force.