“No excuse. Bend over.” I got out the worn birch switch, and Vix let out a bloodcurdling scream.

“Vix, for God’s sake, I haven’t even hit you yet.”

“So get on with it.” He grinned.

I gave him a dozen good whacks across his wet rear. He yelled as if I were removing his gizzard with a fork. Not that he was really in agony; he just yelled on principle. I wasn’t really angry with him, either; I just hit him on principle. I had to do something to prove I wasn’t an utter failure as a mother.

“So if you’re the Emperor’s whore, when does it get good for me?” Vix straightened amiably as I put the birch switch away, rubbing his behind. “Will he take you to the games? I could go to the games! Sit in the Imperial box up close—”

“You are not going to the games.”

“Am too! I’m gonna be a gladiator someday—”

“You are not going to be a gladiator!”

My people have an old saying about the sins of the parents being visited on the children. I used to think that was all nonsense. Just imagine.

NOT a bad song,” said the Emperor. “Less banal than usual.” “That’s what I thought you’d say.” I laid my lyre aside.

“Do you care what I think?”

It was very late. The lamps guttered low, casting shadows over the Imperial bedchamber. A plain bedchamber, reflecting Domitian’s plain tastes: no silk hangings on the walls, no velvet cushions on the sleeping couch, no jewels in the marble eyes of the little Minerva that stood in the corner.

I reached for my night robe and pulled it over my head, not pushing back the blanket until I was dressed. He didn’t like to have me lounging naked on his bed. “I won’t have any woman brazening around my chambers like Cleopatra,” he said shortly. “Unless I say otherwise, you’ll keep yourself clothed like a decent woman.”

He was already reaching for his portfolio, light gleaming through the thin spot in his hair. He was sensitive about that thin spot, I’d found. He frowned as he squinted over a scroll, but it was an absent frown; he was in an approachable mood this evening. “Plans for the harbor?” I asked. “Or a new arch?” Everywhere Domitian went, he built: harbors, arches, roads, aqueducts, temples, all rising to the glory of the Flavian dynasty.

“The harbor.”

“It’s going very slowly, isn’t it?”

“The engineers say they need another year. I estimate three.”

“More like four, I’d say. The auspices are pointing toward another flood.”

“You know more about harbors than I do?”

“No, but I’ve lived in Brundisium a long time.”

“And I never take a woman’s advice.”

I shrugged, arranging myself to wait in silence, but after a moment he gestured at me to continue talking.

“I’m not sure what you want me to talk about, Caesar.” Lightly. “Why don’t you tell me a story instead? Your thrilling victory over the Germans at Tapae, maybe?”