“Since I’m off-limits now, you might as well call me Thea,” she said, fanning dust away from her face. “That’s my real name, after all.”

Paulinus blinked. “I didn’t know that.”

“Of course you didn’t. Men don’t talk to their mistresses. Only to their friends.”

“So the Emperor doesn’t talk to you?”

“Well, he does.” Athena—Thea—sounded reflective. “But he’s different, isn’t he?”

“He is,” Paulinus agreed.

“And he values you very highly.” Thea propped her elbow against the plum silk cushions. “You haven’t had many breaks from Dacia these past few years, have you?”

Paulinus shrugged, feeling the red plumes nod on his helmet. “I’m just a watchdog.”

Thea smiled, her lapis earrings swinging against her throat. “He uses you hard, doesn’t he?”

“Yes,” Paulinus said seriously. “But it’s a great trust.”

“I suppose it is. Trusting you with his wars and his women . . . One doesn’t think of Emperors having friends, but he’s made a friend out of you, hasn’t he?”

“No.” Paulinus smiled down at his horse’s dappled neck. “You can’t be friends with a man like him.”

“Why?” Curiously.

“Oh, he’s just—” Paulinus fumbled for words. “If you could see him at the front, you’d understand. He’s not like those generals you see droning heroics over cups of warm wine and never getting close enough to smell it. He’s right there in the thick. The legionnaires, they’d do anything for him. He’s one of them. A soldier.”

Thea cocked her head. “People say he’s a god.”

“Maybe he is. If there’s any man on earth who’s a god, it’s him.” Paulinus looked sideways at her. “What do you think?”

“Oh, I’m a Jew,” she said lightly, fanning herself. “We only believe in the one God. Anyway, it’s strange to think of sharing a bed with a god, like Leda or Europa.”

“I—well, maybe it’s none of my business, but—” Paulinus felt himself reddening, and looked down at his horse’s mane.

“Paulinus.” The low, rich voice was amused. “I will never tell the Emperor that you used to visit me for anything more than my music.”

“That wasn’t what I was thinking of.” Though it was something of a relief, no doubt about that. “It’s the rumors about him. Don’t believe everything you hear.”

“. . . I see.”

“The rumors about his niece,” Paulinus burst out. “Filthy rumors, and he just snorts and says that gossip lives on no matter how many people you execute. But people shouldn’t talk about their Emperor that way. Just because he was kind to her—”

“Did you ever meet Lady Julia?”

“Not since I was a child. By the time I got my appointment as Prefect, she was living in Cremona, for her health. She was mad, you know—I saw the reports from the previous Prefect, who kept files on everyone in the palace. She went about muttering nonsense, starving herself, crawling off to the Temple of Vesta to try to sleep under the altar . . . Even when I knew her as a child she was strange. She’d scare herself to death with the things she dreamed up out of her head. She wasn’t—wasn’t normal, although I’d never tell the Emperor that. He won’t hear a word against her. He never had any children of his own, you see, so he took her as a daughter instead.”