Her sharp-nailed little hand dug into my arm. “What do you mean? You don’t know the Emperor!”

“Oh, but I do. He’s devoted to me.” I smiled, planting every word like a dart and raising my well-trained voice to carry. A group of nearby lictors glanced over. “Hadn’t you heard? Athena, the Emperor’s new songbird? His new mistress?” I twirled, spinning my gold veils. “Me.”

Her face turned green. I’d never seen anyone’s face turn green before, and I watched with interest. Just like an unripe cheese. Lepida opened her mouth, closed it, opened it again. I cut her off, loosing my last and biggest dart. Everyone in the atrium was staring now. “In fact, when the Emperor retreats to his villa in Tivoli for the summer, he’ll be taking me with him. Alone.”

I smiled again, fondly, into her gaping face. “Do feel free to call before I leave for Tivoli. We have so much to say to each other. Oh, and you needn’t feel embarrassed about calling on a common singer. I get so many distinguished visitors now . . . Have a lovely day, Lepida Pollia.”

A beautiful moment. Oh, what a beautiful, perfect moment. But as I proceeded out of the palace and down the street, glee gave way to puzzlement. The Emperor was taking me to Tivoli. Where he took no one.

Why?

“Time to pay me off?” I’d asked him crisply, threading my way through the usual bustle of slaves, pages, and secretaries in his tablinum. Perhaps if his farewell present was generous enough I could buy my freedom from Larcius . . .

“I’m not paying you off yet,” he said disinterestedly, sealing up a scroll and handing it to a slave. “I’m taking you to Tivoli for the summer. We leave in five days.”

I must have looked quite comical, standing there with my mouth open. He looked up in some irritation, but then he rose and walked around the desk toward me, his mouth flicking upward into one of its rare, charming smiles. “No, Athena, I rarely joke.” He picked up my hand, surprising me again. Outside of “bed-wrestling,” he rarely touched me. He lifted my fingers to his lips as if to kiss my hand, but then he leaned down quite suddenly and bit the side of my palm.

“Pack light.” Without missing a beat he resumed dictating to one of his secretaries, who gave me an awed look as I left the room in a daze and bumped into Lepida.

I blinked the image away, looking down at the little crescent of pink marks on the side of my palm. Barely visible in the sunlight.

Well. I really had better be getting home. If I was leaving for Tivoli in five days, I had a lot of preparations to make.

Eighteen

SO what is a high-powered government official like Praetorian Prefect Norbanus doing escorting his master’s mistress to an assignation?” Athena teased. “I hope it’s not a demotion.”

Paulinus laughed. “I think I’m the only person the Emperor trusts to get you there without trying to seduce you,” he said cheerfully. In a smoke-blue stola with lapis lazuli combs holding her dark hair, reclining in an Imperial litter curtained in plum silk and borne by six impassive Nubians, Athena looked every bit an Emperor’s mistress. Paulinus felt a moment of faint envy—he’d enjoyed her company long before the Emperor, after all . . . not that Domitian knew that. He banished the thought, steering his horse up to the litter’s side. The road had been cleared before them, dew already drying. His cohort of Praetorians chattered easily behind, hoisting their spears across their shoulders and swearing amiably at the spring mud underfoot, glad as Paulinus was himself of a pleasant ride on a sunny blue morning.