“The Empire would be poorer for it,” said Sabina. She rested her cheek on her folded arms, and we sat in silence again. I fingered my row of campaign tokens—the only item I’d officially been allowed to carry over to my new Praetorian armor. Campaign tokens won for territories that would now go back to the weeds and the wild men. I wasn’t supposed to wear my lion skin with the new armor, or any of the precious good-luck tokens from my wife or my father or Sabina. “Praetorians do not drape themselves in superstitious trash,” or so I’d already been told by the Praetorian whom Hadrian had assigned to brief me on my new duties. I’d hit him short and hard in the nose, and he’d howled. I suppose I was out of practice at being told what to do.

“I’ll need to go soon.” Sabina looked down the rocky path toward the abandoned harbor. Even from here, I could see the swarm of activity. “They’ll need me for my new duties. Namely standing like a statue and smiling. There’s a lot of that when you’re an empress. Though of course I’ll have many more important responsibilities once I reach Rome and am installed in the palace. Weaving the household cloth, for example. Overseeing the slaves. Hosting Imperial dinner parties. Those are my duties now, Plotina says. Gods, did I underestimate her.”

“I’m sure you’ll find a way to keep making the bitch miserable.”

“She also wants me to start whelping babies, but thank the gods, Hadrian isn’t so interested in that. He doesn’t seem to care about heirs, at least not from me.” A grimace. “Can you imagine a child of Hadrian’s inheriting the Empire? It would destroy the human race.”

“A child of yours too. Surely it wouldn’t be so bad as that.” Oh, Hell’s gates, my daughters—both of them so young, Dinah just three and Chaya barely out of babyhood, but they’d be Hadrian’s hold on me forever. Hostages to my good behavior, not that they knew it. Did they even know me? If I were to die now, would they remember their father at all?

“Maybe I should get myself pregnant,” Sabina was musing. “Hadrian would know it wasn’t his—he’d have to divorce me…”

“Don’t be stupid. He’d kill you rather than divorce you.”

“Yes, he hates being made a fool of.”

“Make a fool of him anyway.” My voice was savage. “Keep your head shaved, keep your pleb friends, keep hiring street urchins for your maids and wading barefoot in the Tiber and taking lovers who snicker at him over the pillow. Don’t turn into the wife he wants, some perfect marble-carved empress. Keep Rome laughing. Make him sorry he ever married you.”

“Excellent idea,” said Sabina. “Let’s start now.”