“Dragons? How interesting.” Sabina rolled up her book. “I’d better go see my father. Nice to know you’ve joined the household, Vix.”

She drifted out just as her stepmother bustled in. “Give me those scrolls, Vix—I know he told you to hide them from me—”

I surrendered my armload with a salute and went to look for the steward, feeling suddenly more cheerful. “Where do I sleep?”

“You’ll share with one of the other guards. Do you realize you’ve got a black—”

“I know.”

CHAPTER 4

SABINA

Sabina liked the terrace of the Baiae villa. On fine evenings she had the steward pull out the couches so dinner could be served outside, wrapped in warm summer breezes with the shadows lengthening across the tiles and the expanse of blue sea glittering beyond. She looked over the bowls of grapes sometimes and imagined that she was seeing all the way beyond the horizon to the great promontories at the mouth of the sea. Hadrian had been born in Hispania; he’d described those promontories to her with hands flying and eyes aglow. The Pillars of Hercules, salt spray flying about them, with the wide ocean and the wider world beyond.

“So wonderful to have a little vacation all together,” Calpurnia was saying, balancing little Linus against her arm as she tried to split a pomegranate one-handed. The last baby had given her a passion for oysters, but this time around it was pomegranate seeds. “Marcus, promise me you won’t go back to Rome for at least a month. You need the rest.”

Sabina nibbled absently on a strip of roast goose, eyes still on the horizon. What lay beyond the Pillars of Hercules? North, of course, lay Britannia. But what lay west? What lay all the way west? Hadrian didn’t know, and wasn’t much interested. “Wild places,” he’d said dismissively. “Why worry about the world’s wilderness, Vibia Sabina, when the civilized world has more than you could ever explore in a dozen lifetimes?”

“I can’t stay here all summer,” Sabina’s father was protesting. “I’m working on a new treatise.” So many senators, Sabina had often noticed, looked uneasy and vulnerable out of their togas, like turtles suddenly missing their shells. But her father, even when relaxed on the dining couch in a plain tunic with little Faustina curled under his arm, looked like an emperor.

“The treatise can wait,” Calpurnia was insisting. “We can all go to the sulfur pools; it’ll bake that foul city air right out of your lungs.” She pressed a pomegranate seed into his mouth with pink-stained fingers, stilling his protests.

“You know the rules, Father.” Sabina grinned. “One month here for every pomegranate seed you’ve eaten. Just like Proserpina and Pluto.”

“Oh, good, that’s one month.” Calpurnia plucked out more seeds. “Two, three, four—”