“What about the next time you want it?” I rose, dripping all over but not feeling the cold at all. I was never cold in the middle of a fight. “What happens the next time you get the itch you can’t scratch? It won’t be me scratching it. I might be a stupid barbarian, but even stupid barbarians know better than to get burned three times.”

“I don’t think you’re stupid at all.” Her eyes had gone cool as those of a marble statue, and I felt a flick of savage satisfaction that I’d finally cracked that serene shell. “You’re clever enough to keep your options open. Tell me, did your girl take you back—the girl you kept here in town, the one Titus hinted about? You were quite careful not to tell me about her. Making sure you had something to come home to, in case I didn’t work out?”

“She’s beautiful,” I spat, forgetting for a moment that she was also dead. “She makes you look like week-old fruit at a village market.”

“Not beautiful enough to keep you faithful, apparently. Who says I’d hold you any longer? Are you angry I left, Vix? Or are you just angry because I left first?”

I picked up Sabina and dropped her in the pool. Water slopped over the tiled edges, splashing her shoulders, and her white skirts went floating about her wet knees as she stared up at me.

“Better enjoy it,” I said. “That’s the last time I ever get you wet.”

I turned and left her there, stamping back into the noise and music of the banquet, clawing my wet hair back. The bath and the fight had left me stone-cold sober again. A drunken tribune bumped me, staggering past, and I shoved him into a statue of a bathing nymph. The nymph crashed over, and the tribune hiccupped at me happily. Everyone looked happy. The Emperor lay sprawled on a couch with his arm around an adoring slave, pounding his free hand against his knee in time with the music. The lute players banged cheerfully at their instruments, sawing out filthy songs as half the soldiers roared along with the choruses and the other half lay passed out among the couch cushions. Even that bastard Hadrian looked as if he were enjoying himself as he watched a team of boy acrobats tumbling across the mosaics—though the enjoyment disappeared quickly enough as he looked at the door. He put down his wine cup and crossed the room quickly, brushing past me.

“Vibia Sabina, you look a mess.”

“An accident with a drunken soldier and an inconveniently placed fountain,” her voice came behind me from the hall’s entrance. I leaned one shoulder against a pillar, pretending to watch the acrobats but keeping Sabina in view at the corner of my eye. She looked very nonchalant and very, very wet.