Plotina tugged her predecessor to a halt, feeling quite breathless. “You had a hand in seeing your husband become Emperor of Rome, surely. How much of a hand? I model myself on your example in all things, my dear Marcella, so I would model myself in this as well. How much can I do for my Publius?”

Empress Marcella looked her over with a long cool stare. “More scheming empresses,” she said at last. “Marvelous.”

“Hardly scheming,” Plotina smiled. “I merely wish to know if one should… help. Assist. Under the circumstances, which seem very—”

“Since you seem to want my advice, here it is,” Marcella interrupted. “No scheming. No plotting. No kingmaking.”

“You don’t need to put it like that,” Plotina said, nettled. “It’s for the good of Rome.”

“Fortuna save me, a moralist,” the former Empress muttered, giving a shake of her veiled head. “At least in my day, I never pretended I was scheming for anyone’s benefit but my own. I didn’t want to save Rome; I wanted to be a kingmaker. And for all your fine words, so do you.”

“I do not—”

“Don’t try to outscheme a schemer, my dear.” Marcella patted her successor’s cheek. “I’ve been at this longer than you, and far more effectively. My schemes landed more than one Emperor in his grave, but they also nearly landed me in mine. Now that I’m old, I’ve given up kingmaking. I advise you to do the same, before you even begin, and let your Publius sink or swim on his own.”

“I only asked—” Plotina felt herself floundering. Me, floundering! She never floundered. “That is—”

“I don’t wish to know.” Empress Marcella held up a hand. “These days I confine myself to the politics of the past rather than the present. I’m writing a history of the Republic, and the only scheming I concern myself with is on the page and at least a hundred years concluded. Give my regrets to the Chief Vestal; I don’t believe I will stay for the selection after all.”

She turned and glided away unhurriedly from the sunny pillared atrium to the round unadorned room that was the Temple of Vesta. Plotina could only hasten after, swallowing a host of hot words. A trip to visit the statue of Juno was going to be necessary today, but not for sacrificial thanks—for commiseration. Not a true daughter to you, Juno, oh no. How you must have suffered under Domitian’s reign, without a true empress to guide. Those rumors are true, aren’t they—that she slept with actors and gladiators, that she had her own husband murdered. I am your only true sister, your only equal. Schemer indeed!