“I am far too busy.” Plotina made a careful note on one wax tablet and reached for another. Four slave girls hurried behind her, busying themselves with a pile of silk gowns ready for pressing; two more slaves sat with the mending, and a pair of pages hovered ready to run errands, but the Empress of Rome at her desk in the middle of the bustle was busier than any of them. A statue of Trajan to be raised in his new forum… her winter gowns and cloaks to be unfolded from storage and checked for moths… a certain gentleman among the provincial governors who had recently gotten into debt, and who might be most amenable to throwing his support behind Dear Publius if a tidy loan came with it… spiders getting into the wine stores again… Dear Juno, how much there was to do. The Empress of the Roman Empire was the biggest slave in it!

“He is most insistent, Domina,” her steward persisted. “It’s—”

“I don’t care who it is. I have no time to see anyone this morning.” Plotina scanned the latest letter from her husband—short and courteous, as always, looking like it had been carved out with a sword between battles. Trajan really had no gift for elegant correspondence. Plotina supposed she would have to plan a state visit to see him if this campaign dragged on much longer. She’d made the trek to Antioch two years ago to spend a very official month or two at his side, as a dutiful wife should, but the journey had hardly been pleasant. Eastern fleas, eastern wine, and eastern whores who called themselves Roman ladies and actually expected to dine with her. Perhaps I can put the visit off another year.

“It’s Titus Aurelius Fulvus Boionius Arrius Antoninus, Lady.” Her steward still hovered. “He said it was most important.”

“Is he deaf, or are you? I am not to be disturbed.” Certainly not for the likes of that jumped-up boy whom everyone seemed to regard as quite the coming man. Trajan’s rare letters hardly went a page without praising some action of Titus’s to the skies—the progress on the public baths, the tact with which he had smoothed over some fracas in the Senate. As if Dear Publius hadn’t done far more impressive things, and to far less applause! Plotina had spread a few rumors about this new favorite of Trajan’s—that he was a drunkard, that he worshipped obscene foreign cults like Isis and Ancasta and Taranis rather than good Roman gods—but nothing seemed to stick. The boy was dully, distressingly virtuous.

“I fear it can’t wait, Lady.” A firm voice interrupted the steward, and Plotina looked up to see the boy himself planted solidly before her desk. “I must speak with you, and I would prefer to do so in private.”

“You have no right to barge into my private quarters—”