“The one in the Imperial box with the Emperor. The brown-haired one—she had a flame-colored dress.” My wife’s voice held a swift undercurrent of amusement, rather than jealousy. She did love to tease me.

“I never notice other girls when I’m with you,” I vowed, playing along. “I was looking at the Emperor. Isn’t he splendid?”

“Don’t change the subject. She must be one of the Imperial family. Doesn’t the Emperor have a great-niece?”

“Don’t know.” I’d seen Sabina up in the Imperial box at once, cheering at the Emperor’s side all through the afternoon. No sign of Hadrian or that stuffy bitch Plotina; Sabina and the Emperor had been cheering away by themselves and talking between the heats. I wondered if Sabina was telling Trajan, “The Blues are utterly fucking evil,” in that polite voice of hers, as she’d once told me years ago.

I wished she’d been able to look down into the vast crowd and pick me out. Me and my wife of two months.

“I wish I had a flame-colored dress,” Mirah was saying. “With fire opals like the Emperor’s great-niece was wearing…”

“Maybe I can’t afford the opals, but I’ll buy you a flame-colored dress.”

“With this hair?” Mirah ran a hand over her chestnut head, rueful. “I’ll look like a gourd.”

“You’ll look beautiful.” I kissed the tip of her nose.

“I’ll be round as a gourd too, soon enough. Round and fat with your baby, and here you’re already looking at other girls!” She smiled, pinching my arm gently, and I smiled back.

Never let it be said I don’t learn from the past. When I came home from a day of aimless waiting at the palace (orders still hadn’t been passed down from the Emperor for me to take back to the Tenth) and Mirah took me out for a walk and told me she might be pregnant, I ignored the leap in my stomach, gulped a little, and said what I should have said to Demetra: “Wonderful.” Then I said I’d take her to the races in celebration. Mirah preferred the theatre, especially if the play was one of those turgid weepers, but she could cheer lustily at the Circus Maximus too, and I felt the need for a little action and speed to get my mind off the flutter of nerves in my stomach. Me, a father.

“I suppose your family already knows about the baby?” I asked as we came out from the marble arches behind a cluster of dejected Greens fans and left the Circus Maximus behind us.

Mirah laughed. “My mother knew before I did. There are no secrets in my family.”