“Then I really like it.” Vix’s gray eyes flicked over Sabina briefly, from her deep-green silk dress to the band of jade around one ankle to the powdered malachite she’d used to line and wing her eyes. “You look well, Lady.”

If I’d known you were going to be here, I’d have worn that one-breast dress I used to give Plotina fits. “You look well too,” Sabina said. “Wearing armor at a party, though…”

“I’ve got duties to attend to after this. No point changing into a synthesis, not when the Emperor doesn’t care what his soldiers wear to dinner.”

“It suits you.” To say the least. From that brash boy with the inarticulate glower to this: Vix’s russet head loomed a hand-span taller than any other man in the room; his feet were planted over an aggressive measure of space that dared anyone to encroach on it; his eyes moved keen and restless over the crowd, missing nothing. In his tattered lion skin and his spotless battered armor he looked broad and powerful, sunburned and deadly. They should carve you in granite and put you on display in front of every legion recruiter in Rome, Sabina thought. They’ll fill the ranks in a heartbeat, just by telling envious boys that someday, maybe, they could be you.

“It’s just as well armor suits him.” The woman at Vix’s side broke the little silence. “I hardly ever see him in anything else.”

“I do apologize.” Sabina shifted her eyes to the woman. “I should have introduced myself. I am Vibia Sabina.”

“Mirah,” Vix said abruptly. “My wife.”

The hand that pressed Sabina’s looked small and capable. The woman had reddish hair, a good match for Vix’s. Taller than Sabina, with a smoke-blue gown and pearls swinging in her ears. “You have a fine husband, Mirah.” Does he still snore like a saw going through a tree?

“I do have a fine husband.” A dimple flashed unexpectedly in Mirah’s chin. “Lady Vibia Sabina—the Emperor’s great-niece? Vix, you’re always talking about the Emperor but you never said you’d met the Imperial family too.”

“Long time ago,” Vix said at once. “Very long.”

Eight years, since they had last spoken face to face? At a party very much like this one, in fact. “Vix was a guard in my father’s house,” Sabina explained to Mirah, who was looking puzzled. “Long before he joined the Tenth.”

“I can’t imagine Vix without the Tenth.” Mirah’s smile turned a little stiff.

“Well, he was very young. Big feet, like a puppy. And always starting fights in the street.”

“I need to speak with you, Lady Sabina.” Vix spoke even more abruptly. “Now.”

“If you like.”