“I’ll forgo the mystic chanting and hand-waving I usually do at times like these.” Nessus’s eyes raced over my palm as matter-of-factly as a clerk reading a scroll. “The past first . . . a hot place, hot and dry. A six-pointed star—ah, indicating the race of David! so the hot place must be Judaea. A city full of death, bodies piled three and four—yes, Judaea does have some unpleasant history. Let’s skip that part. Afterward, new cities and new people; a new name. Music; that’s a constant. Runs through the hand like a gold thread. A few old hatreds. Old loves, too, goodness. A warrior, I see—carved his way deep into this little hand of yours. Applause around him like a cloud; does that mean anything to you?”

“No,” I said hoarsely. “Keep going.”

“After the warrior, a child—oh, don’t stiffen up, I won’t tell. More children, but that’s edging into the future. Yes, a whole mess of children.”

“Whose children?” Not Domitian’s children, not his, oh God, not his. I thought of the Egyptian paste of auyt gum and acacia tips that could block conception; the tinctures of pennyroyal and rue that would end a pregnancy if the paste failed. Whore’s tricks, learned in my time on the waterfront, and I’d use them gladly. No child of mine would ever be Domitian’s.

“Doesn’t say whose children. It’s a palm, not a genealogy. Now, there’s a crown at the base of the finger. We both know who that is. The lines here are cross-hatched—a time of trial approaches.”

“How long?” I whispered.

“I don’t know. Some time, I believe. A period of hardship, outcome uncertain. More than that—” He folded my fingers over my palm and pushed it back at me. “A gnarled past, m’dear, and a gnarled future. I’m sorry.”

“Some time?” I repeated. “How much is some? A long time?”

Ganymede patted my head.

“It’s times like this I hate seeing the future.” Nessus pushed the plate back at me. “Here. Have a bun.”

Nineteen

THEA

GANYMEDE prodded me into going shopping. I visited the more fashionable of Tivoli’s shopping forums, and even with a veil over my face everyone knew me.

“My lady, some perfume?”

“Some rouge from India?”

“Silks to make your skin glow!”

I walked woodenly through the forum, pointing at whatever I wanted. I chose things that would keep their value, gold figurines and ivory ornaments, things small enough to be carried out the door in a hurry. Ganymede trailed at my heels like a patient dog, carrying the growing mound of packages. Pleb women whispered behind their hands at me; patrician ladies arched their plucked brows; a pair of legionnaires elbowed each other. Everyone cleared out of my way.

Jewels. I walked into the nearest shop, pointed at a tray of rings, and before the shopkeeper’s bemused eye began to load them onto my bruised hands. Two or three per finger, gold and silver and pearls—

“Bracelets, my lady?”

“Yes.” I slid handfuls of ornate bands over my arms until I looked like a shackled criminal, then clasped three or four necklaces about my neck. “The Emperor’s stewards will see to your bill,” I said, and walked out with my king’s ransom. The ransom that might buy me a future when the Emperor tired of me.