Eventually, Uncle Paris’s voice broke into the discussion. “Go away, both of you,” he said without looking up from his chisels. “You’re distracting me.”

Sabina realized they’d been talking loudly, enthusiastically, and for more than an hour. Hastily she bundled up the little figurine of Atlas. “We’re going, Uncle Paris.”

“I’d meant to commission a bust of Emperor Trajan,” Hadrian recalled. “Carved as Alexander—”

“Boring,” said Uncle Paris, and shut the door of his studio.

“Don’t mind him,” Sabina said as they came out into the street. Her litter-bearers straightened hastily, having taken advantage of her absence to flirt with a cluster of slave girls on the way to the market. “Uncle Paris carves for himself, you know, not for his living. You’d better make your commission interesting, or he won’t take it.”

“A true sculptor.” Hadrian fingered his short beard. “I envy such men. A great talent may be a burden, but it does lighten one of destiny. The talent is the destiny.”

“I was thinking that myself, earlier,” said Sabina. “But you said it better. What’s your talent?”

“I write poetry,” Hadrian confessed. “Elegies in the Greek style. And I have a certain skill for drawing, and I play the flute and the lyre. But I will never number among the great artists.”

“Then you’ll have to find out your own destiny,” said Sabina. “Most of us do, I suppose.”

“I already know what my destiny is,” Hadrian said matter-of-factly.

She cocked her head, interested, but he had lifted a hand and summoned his own litter.

“I fear I must leave you, Vibia Sabina—I would see you home, but I am to dine this evening with my sister and her husband Servianus.”

“Lucius Julius Ursus Servianus?” Sabina asked. “I’ve met him.”

“They say he is the most worthy man in Rome.”

“I don’t like him either.”

Hadrian laughed aloud, taking her hand and raising it to his lips. “What an interesting little thing you are,” he said, and Sabina no longer saw the sheen of boredom in his deep-set eyes.

VIX

I’ll admit I was nervous when I got a summons to Senator Norbanus’s house. “Hell,” I swore when I got the politely worded missive, handed over by a less polite slave. But I went. When a senator snapped his fingers in Rome, unemployed ex-slaves like me hopped like frogs.

“I see you are doing well for yourself.” He eyed the silver chain about my neck, leaning back in his chair. Nothing had changed in the crowded study—the desk heaped with slates and tablets, the cheerful clutter, the shelves and shelves of scrolls. “Have you found any particular work as yet?”

“Odds and ends, sir.”

“I know what sort of odds and ends go on in that side of town. Not what your parents would hope for you, I’m sure.”