I tied my sandals, collected my lyre, and slipped into the hall. Behind me the lamplight outlined the Emperor’s harsh-cut nose, the half-folded eyelids that camouflaged the sharp Flavian gaze. The “bed-wrestling,” as he called it in his more jocular moods, was done. He was already busy with his scrolls.

An easy man? No. A likable man? Not even that.

But not a boring man.

I was rarely summoned to the palace in the morning, but when the freedman knocked on my door after breakfast I didn’t argue. To my surprise I was shown not into the bedchamber but the tablinum, where my Imperial lover was half-hidden by a mountain of paperwork. “Come in,” he said, stamping his seal ring at the bottom of some document or other. “Close the door.”

The interview, where I received the first shock of the day, was brief and businesslike. A smirk hovered around the freedman’s mouth as he ushered me out, and I knew that soon everyone in Brundisium would be whispering that the Emperor had paid off his whore at last and what did you expect with a common singing Jew. I drew a fold of my veil over my head and hurried through the atrium, threading through a crowd of slaves and hangers-on. I bumped squarely into the second shock of the day—a shock wearing a ruby-red stola and smelling of musk.

“Watch where you’re going,” she snapped, and pushed past me.

“Lady Lepida?” I said.

“Yes, what?” She turned and looked at me for the first time. I pushed the veil off my face, and as her skin flushed a mottled red I felt an obscure gladness that I was wearing my new gown of spangled amber silk banded in gold around the hem.

“Thea?” Her eyes darted over the amber beads around my neck, the chunks of topaz in my ears, the inlaid gold circlet that caught up my hair. “What are you doing here?” I could see her mind whirling, fast as the wheels of the chariots around the circus.

“I’m working.” I made a vague gesture that showed off my gold rings. “What are you doing here in Brundisium?”

“Visiting my stepson—he’s just come south from Germania, not that it’s any of your business—”

“Oh, but Paulinus isn’t here just now.” I set my earrings dancing with a small toss of my head, feeling a swell of savage satisfaction in my middle. “Some business at the Praetorian barracks, no doubt. Come back tomorrow?”

“How do you know? What are you doing at the palace, Athena?” Lepida glared, groping for her calm. People about us were beginning to stare, and she lowered her voice. “Prefect Norbanus is a close personal friend of the Emperor’s, and if he hears how you’ve spoken to me—”

“Well, Paulinus is a close personal friend of mine, too. I’m sure he’ll forgive me.” I used my superior height to look down my nose at her, a trick that worked just as well now as it had in the past. Maybe a little better, since now my gown was just as fine as hers and my jewelry finer. “And the Emperor, well, he’ll forgive me anything these days. You weren’t hoping to see him? He’s very busy with the harbor plans just now. The pressures of his position are infinite.” I sighed, getting into the spirit of things. A stout matron in a plum silk stola looked at us, whispering behind a beringed hand to her husband. “Infinite pressure, but my poor darling bears up so well. Better luck tomorrow.” I turned on the heel of my gold-trimmed sandal as if ready to swirl past.