“My father isn’t tall either. But half a dozen Emperors have leaned on him.”

They walked arm in arm, well away from the crowds now, Trajan’s retinue trailing obediently behind. A few citizens paused to recognize their Emperor, and Trajan had a cheery wave for them all. “No smile?” he said, glancing down at Sabina. “Don’t tell me that dreadful play made you mopey.”

“No, it’s not the play. Just memories.” Time was, she and Hadrian would have walked home from the theatre together and argued the whole way about which actor was the better speaker of verse and which one had wooden gestures. Then Sabina would have declaimed the best speech in the play, and Hadrian would have interrupted her midway through to do it himself.

“Memories can ambush you,” Trajan agreed, and tugged up the hood of his cloak. “Gods’ bones, I am getting old. The wind saps me more than it used to.”

Sabina tilted her head up at him as they walked. Trajan’s hair had gone from gray-sprinkled to entirely gray, and his nose was sharper. Years of campaigning under foreign suns had graven deep lines about his eyes and mouth. He is sixty, Sabina realized with a start, and he looks it.

She took a deep breath. “May I ask something of you, Caesar?”

“Ask away. I’ll even give it to you if it’s reasonable.”

Sabina redirected their feet away from the street, toward the Gardens of Antony, which wound beside the Tiber, and the Praetorians trailed obediently behind. They passed a row of spruces gracefully pruned to offer glimpses of the silver river, then a marble Diana in full sprint with her hunting hounds, as Trajan looked amused.

“Out with it,” he said at last. “You want an emerald necklace? A house in Capri?”

“I want a divorce.”

He paused midstride. “What?”

“I am thinking of divorcing my husband.” The idea had danced at the edge of her mind for weeks now, ever since Faustina had suggested it at the bathhouse… and especially since Hadrian had announced his intended destiny. Having the words out made Sabina almost giddy. “If you please,” she added.

“Well, it doesn’t please,” the Emperor of Rome said shortly. “The answer’s no.”

Sabina blinked. She’d heard Trajan’s military voice before, on the rare occasions he got irked with droning bureaucrats or stubborn senators. But that snap of impatient authority had never been directed at herself. “May I ask why, Caesar? I didn’t think you were so fond of him.”

“And you need fondness all of a sudden in marriage? Who needs that? Plotina and I—” He broke off, looking irritable. “I may not have given Hadrian a legion in Parthia, but I’ll need him in the invasion, make no mistake. Hardly fair to kick the man out of my family, then ask him to run my supply lines.”

“Perhaps not. But—”