“To calm your fears,” Trajan was saying, “I wasn’t planning on making Hadrian my heir. Or anyone else, for that matter. Not yet, anyway.”

“You’ve made me very relieved.” Sabina paused under a cypress tree, looking out at the sculpted view of the river. It glinted serpent-silver in the slanting light. “I thought that with Plotina pushing…”

“Well, I don’t always take her advice,” Trajan said testily. “You’ll answer something for me now, little Sabina. You might not want to be Empress, but why don’t you want Hadrian to be Emperor, eh? He wants it, and shouldn’t a wife support her husband?”

“I do support him.” That much was still true, she felt. Surprisingly. “I support what’s best for him—and to be Emperor would be the worst thing on earth.”

“Does that matter, girl? It’s what’s good for Rome that comes first.”

“I know. But Hadrian… well, he’s not made for it, whatever his pet astrologer says.”

“Astrologer?” Trajan asked.

“Emperor Domitian’s former astrologer, Nessus. He fed Hadrian a prophecy of how he’d be Emperor someday. Of course he believes it implicitly.”

“I hate astrologers,” Trajan grumbled. “I remember Nessus. He had the nerve to tell me I’d fail the first time I tried to conquer Dacia.”

“He was right, wasn’t he?”

“That’s not the point!”

“Well, he told Hadrian he’d be Emperor, and Hadrian thinks he’ll be right about that too. And Hadrian could be a good Emperor.” Sabina still felt anger curling through her stomach at the thought of her husband, but she couldn’t help being fair. “But it’s not what’s best for him, no matter what your wife thinks. It will bring out the worst in him. Is that why you won’t appoint him?”

“No.” Trajan tilted one burly shoulder. “I just don’t like cold fish.”

“Then who do you like? For an heir, I mean.”

“I’d have picked your older brother, if he’d lived.” Trajan looked momentarily sad. “The best man I ever knew.”

“Me too.” If my big brother were still alive, Sabina thought, he’d pound Hadrian’s bearded face through a wall for trying to whore me out to his enemies. “So if it can’t be Paulinus and it won’t be Hadrian…”

“Jove knows who it will be, girl. Perhaps I’ll die like Alexander, and leave my Empire to the strongest.”

“Look what happened to Alexander’s empire. Broken up to pieces in no time.”

“Let me straighten out Parthia first, and then we’ll see.”

They walked on under the cypress trees.

CHAPTER 20

VIX

“You were looking at that girl,” Mirah said as I pushed a path through the tired and chattering circus crowd.

“What girl?”