“No, you won’t,” Titus said. “Because if you do—if some sudden accident should befall me—the information about your misdoings will be made public anyway. You think I would come to see you today without making certain I could walk out alive afterward?”

He left quietly, closing the door with a faint click. Plotina opened her mouth in a silent shriek, her head clamped in a huge vise of agony. No. She strode back and forth, blundering into the furniture. No, no, no. A box of linens tripped her and she kicked it away, showering neatly folded tunics over the floor. He will not, he will NOT—

Plotina took herself to Juno. She ordered the worshippers of the temple out in a whisper that had them fleeing for the doors, and unburdened herself to her sister. Juno listened, stone-carved and sympathetic as Plotina wept and raged and tore at her hair.

“He’ll pay,” she said at last, in a voice hoarse from screaming. “No one speaks to a goddess that way.”

Juno agreed.

“If he thinks he’s stopped me, he’s a naïve little bumbler. My Publius will be Emperor. He’ll be Emperor, and then I’ll see that interfering little wretch’s corpse on the floor.”

Juno understood.

“I’ll go to Trajan. Make that journey to Antioch after all, and right away. He’ll hear how I was slandered. He’ll believe me, not that interfering boy. I am his wife.”

Juno sympathized.

“You’ll help me, won’t you?” Plotina leaned her aching head against Juno’s marble skirts, spent and drained. “You’ll help me dispose of him?”

Juno would.

SABINA

“I thought your physicians told you to rest, Caesar.”

Trajan leaned back on his elbows against the couch cushions, and a slave refilled his goblet. “I am resting.”

“This is hardly what I would call peaceful,” Sabina said, amused. Trajan’s return from Hatra to Antioch had been marked by an immense banquet: visiting dignitaries in striped eastern robes, senators and governors in snowy togas, legates and tribunes in their armor. Trajan’s usual crush of wine, noise, cheer, and above all informality. No one was keeping to their couches, the dancers barely had a chance to finish their performance before being dragged off to join the party, and a pair of drunken legates had volunteered to carve up the roast ox with their swords. Trajan had laughed until Sabina had to pound him on the back.

“Gods’ bones, don’t you nag me now,” the Emperor warned as a team of lithe Parthian acrobats began their drumbeat-backed tumbling. “I’ll get enough of that when Plotina arrives.”

Sabina groaned. “She’s coming soon?”

“Took ship from Rome not long ago, and I hear there’s been fair winds.” Trajan waved a hand over the hilarity in the hall. “I’ll have to tone all of this down a bit while she’s here.”