The man’s eyes hunted around the walls of Plotina’s private study. She had stripped away the cheerful woven wall hangings last year to reveal the dark African marble beneath, stark and pristine as any temple. She suspected all that black marble was starting to close in on the sweating little official. “Lady, I assure you—”

“Spare me the protestations of innocence.” She waved a dismissive hand, her wedding ring catching the lamplight. “A cartload of timber here, never delivered; an order of marble there, never arrived. Quite a few sesterces you’ve managed to pocket, Gaius Terentius.”

A bead of sweat rolled openly down his neck. Plotina’s lips curved at the sight of it.

“I shall resign my position at once, Lady,” he whispered. “I shall leave Rome—”

“Now, have I asked you to do that?” The Empress caught a glimpse of herself in the glass hanging behind the little fraud’s chair, and was pleased by her own reflection. She’d got the expression exactly right—aloof, regal, disapproving, yet not without mercy as she looked down from the height of her carved chair. A posture not unlike Juno’s in the Temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus, looking down at her supplicants. Really, all I need is a diadem.

“You may keep your post, Gaius Terentius,” Plotina went on. “I shall require something else of you.”

He fell to his knees before her. “Anything, Lady!”

“A share in what you take from the bathhouse funds.” She allowed just the corners of her lips to turn up at his startled expression. “Shall we agree to half? Running this Empire is so expensive, you know.”

A few more moments discussing details, and the sweaty little official was ushered out. Plotina picked up a separate tablet on her desk and made a neat line through the name of Gaius Terentius. There were other names, but she set those aside for now.

She’d been nervous the first time she tried this. But it was getting easier all the time. And how could it be counted as wrong, to squeeze a corrupt man for a worthy cause? Had she been working for her own benefit, that would have been quite inexcusable. But this was for Rome.

Plotina looked up at the mirror again. “One could say it’s my duty,” she told her own reflection. “After all, it costs a great deal to support Dear Publius in proper style as consul.”

SABINA

Sabina waited until the black-haired Antiochene freedman with the shoulders like Apollo slipped out of her husband’s bedchamber and padded down the hall. Then she struck the door open and walked in.