Titus shrugged ruefully and applied himself to his food. Until the day finally came when he was no longer inevitably the youngest fellow at the party, he supposed he was bound for a good deal of silent nodding while other men held forth. He ate his smoked oysters and spiced sea urchins and listened to the conversation flowing easily between the couches. It was Trajan responsible for that, Titus thought—he might be Emperor, but he clearly felt no need to monopolize the talk. He urged others to speak as often as he did himself, and listened raptly to what they had to say. He even cast a kind eye over at Titus once and said, “Well, boy, you’re a quiet one. I knew your father; we were tribunes together a hundred years or so ago. You planning on a stint in the legions too, young Titus?”

Titus couldn’t imagine anything more horrifying. Mud? Marching? Fighting? I’d rather be eaten by wolves. But he couldn’t say that to his tall, well-built Emperor, vigorous and sun-browned in his plain tunic and short military haircut, the laugh lines radiating out from his eyes as he looked down so kindly at his least important guest. His Emperor, who at forty-nine could have been ten years younger and looked ready to leap off his couch at a moment’s notice and charge right into any fight that presented itself. “Caesar,” Titus said brightly, and Trajan laughed and addressed some question to Senator Norbanus. Titus had observed before that you could get through most conversations with powerful men simply by repeating their names (in varying inflections) and looking respectful. Thank the gods, no one else spoke to him in the course of the meal. Titus ate his oysters and sipped his wine, content to be ignored, and it wasn’t until the fruit and nuts had been cleared away that the fight broke out.

Titus had already left his couch, gone to watch the moon rise in the open roof of the atrium, but he heard the chorus of shouts and followed the noise out into the shadowed garden, where lamps had been lit along the pillars. One of the Norbanus household guards brushed past him, sword leaping halfway out of its scabbard, and Titus put a hand on his arm. “I think it’s just guests,” he said, eyeing the dark figures lurching and grappling across the raked paths. “Not thieves.”