“Hush, my love,” she whispered, just as she’d whispered to me in Dacia after I killed a king on a solar disc. I’d gripped her then, drowning, and she held me now as I drowned again, howling into her linen shift. Mirah would have tried to comfort me, told me not to weep, told me Trajan would go to the next world and be happy there. Sabina just held me. She sank down where she stood, sitting on a fallen column, and she gripped me tight as I sobbed into her lap like a heartbroken child.

My tears went eventually, but I stayed where I was, huddled numbly in the arms of a woman I used to love and used to hate. The sun set, the moon rose; warmth was gone and chill had replaced it. How could the world just go on as though nothing had changed? Everything was changing.

“Stand up, Vix. It’s getting cold.” Sabina tugged me to my feet with gentle hands. I stood there dumbly, an ox waiting for the sacrificial knife. I was a soldier of Rome; we didn’t go anywhere without orders. Who would give me my orders, once my general was dead?

“Come with me,” said Sabina, and I took her outstretched hand and followed her obediently. Those orders would do for now.

The house where Trajan—that house was still deathly quiet, a ring of Praetorians keeping the hovering onlookers at bay. Soldiers paced outside, some weeping, some white-faced, some blank with shock. They should be inside, I thought. Trajan belonged with his men in his last hour—not with his sour bitch of a wife, crouched like a vulture on her death watch.

Sabina skirted the crowds, leading me to another house that wasn’t much more than four crumbling stone walls and a roof. She got a bedroll from somewhere, laying it out with the expert neatness she still remembered from her days with the Tenth. She eased me into it, covered me up, took my hand in hers, and curled herself against the wall. She was still there when I woke in the morning.

Which was when we found out we had been locked inside.

PLOTINA

“Well done.” Plotina extended a gracious hand to the stocky Praetorian guard in his red-and-gold armor. “You were most convincing. You certainly fooled them all.”

“I don’t like fooling people, Lady.” The guard shifted from foot to foot, uneasy. “You’re sure it was necessary?”

“Essential.” Plotina gave her most reassuring smile. “Rome owes you a great debt, and so do I.”

“If you say so, Lady.”

“I do. And so would the Emperor.” Plotina picked up her husband’s cold hand and stroked it. “The former Emperor, that is. The new Emperor will thank you himself upon his arrival.”

“Yes, Lady.”

“You may go. Not a word, now.”