We pushed through the happy throng, and then Titus made a graceful speech of thanks to the Empress and I got away with jerking my head in a bow as the ladies stared at me in idle curiosity. Trajan’s wife in her severe purple stola, a clutch of legates’ wives—and Sabina, youngest of the women there, watching the crowd of guests as if she’d rather be whooping it up with the soldiers than sitting among all the disapproving old women who reclined so stiffly and properly on their couches. Maybe she’d gotten a taste for low fun in the time she’d marched with the Tenth. Her eyes drifted to me as Titus made his graceful introduction, and for a moment I just wanted to flee. But I hadn’t fled the fucking Dacians and I wasn’t going to flee any well-born whore, so I clamped my jaw tight and stared back at her as rudely as I knew how. No more flamboyant yellow like she’d worn at the parade—the Empress had clearly gotten hold of her and laced her into a white dress with a high draped neck. But she still didn’t look right in it, no more right than I looked stuffed into Titus’s synthesis. Her skin had gone dark gold from all the marching under Dacia’s summer sun, and her slim arms were brown and exotic against the prim white. I remembered all that golden skin spread out on my bedroll, and tasted hatred sour and metallic in my mouth. Probably just like the taste in the mouth of Trajan’s immaculate Empress, who was clearly thinking that a stuffy white dress and a stuffy linen synthesis hadn’t succeeded in changing either me or Sabina into anything she wanted at her dinner party.

“Your loyal service is noted,” the Empress decreed with one of her judicial nods, and I took it for a cue and bolted. Not noticing, not noticing at all, the grin Sabina shot at me behind Plotina’s frown.

“More wine,” I said instead, and looked around for the cup-bearer.

“Not unless you promise you can keep your eyes off the legate’s wife.” Titus steered me behind an ivy-draped column, regarding me bluntly.

“Not that it’s any of your business,” I snapped, “but I told her this morning that I was done with her.”

Titus raised his eyebrows. “Good,” he said at last, though his tone was peculiar. “I’d rather not see you dead and her exiled. Which could still happen, if the wrong person finds out what the two of you were up to this summer. Hadrian could kill you—adultery between a married woman and, if you will excuse me, a commoner is not taken lightly.”

“I suppose you could hump her all day and get away with it?” I snarled. “You bloody aristocrats all stick together, don’t you?”