Sabina had been kept safely away from the matter at hand. That was the important thing.

“It was quite funny, really,” Plotina assured her husband. “My little deception about your will, I mean. Like a mummer’s farce—you’d have laughed. And I did carry out your wishes, you know. You would have chosen Dear Publius as heir in the end. I know you were annoyed with me about my little efforts in that direction, but I knew what I was doing. If you’d simply let me explain, I’d have made you understand.”

Trajan’s drying lips were beginning to peel back from his teeth, as if he were snarling at her. Plotina reached out a hand to smooth his face. “Don’t growl, dear. I’m not angry with you anymore, in spite of the things you said to me in Antioch. It’s all worked out for the best.”

Really, it had. Juno’s hand, no doubt, reaching down to save her sister. Plotina had felt more frozen with every narrowing mile of water between the trireme and Rome. Disgrace, scandal, ostracism—would Trajan go so far as to divorce her, after all her hard work and initiative? On the word of that little snake Titus Aurelius, whose reward would apparently be Dear Publius’s birthright? What can I do, what can I do? Frozen panic had been giving way to pure terror when Juno acted. “You should be proud,” Plotina told her husband. “Only the queen of the heavens could strike down a god like you.”

A knock sounded at the door. Plotina started, then rose hastily and pulled the bed curtains to mask Trajan’s still body. “The Emperor is not to be disturbed.”

“I’m sorry, Lady.” A young secretary entered hesitantly, twisting a scroll between diffident hands. “I didn’t mean… how is he?”

“Resting now.” Plotina gave a brave, distant smile. “He pushed himself so hard, giving us his last wishes. I think it will not be long now.”

She had fed him an extra mix of sleeping draught at the end, just to make sure. A dicey business, really: giving him just enough to keep him unconscious but not kill him, and in the end—his real end, which had come in private just after she shooed everyone out—perhaps she’d given him a bit too much. Really, how tiring. One moment you’re trying to give a man a peaceful death, and the next you have to pretend he’s alive again!

“See, that’s where I’m confused, Lady,” the secretary was hedging. “It surprised me that the Emperor changed his mind. He dictated a letter to me—”

Plotina took the scroll from his hand before he could proffer it. “Did he, now.”

“Yes, his list of heirs for the Senate… as I said, it seemed odd he’d changed his mind.”