“Very rude eyes. He’s always glaring at me.”

“Then look the other way.”

“You’re in a temper tonight, Lord and God.” I rolled over, propping my chin on my hand and letting my hair fall in a wave over my eye. “So you keep the astrologer for his precious eyes. Why do you keep Athena’s beastly brat of a son?”

That, of course, was what I really wanted to know.

“Do you really want a reminder of her underfoot everywhere you go?” I persisted when an Imperial silence answered me.

He turned a slate over, working rapid figures on the back.

“Lord and God?” I dandled my fingers along his wrist.

He jerked his wrist away. “Go home. And send in my secretaries.”

Crossly I slid off the bed, tugging my gown over my head with fingers still sluggish from the drug. I stalked out with my most enticing sway of hips, but he never called me back. Well, he was prone to odd little moods. More of them than usual, since the rebellious Vestal’s execution . . . but never mind that. Next time I’d make him forget all about it.

“Watch where you’re stepping,” said a voice at my feet.

I jumped. In the marble corridor outside the Emperor’s apartments, Thea’s son sat cross-legged on the mosaics. He rolled a pair of grubby dice in one hard palm, and he cocked his head back up at me. “Roll?” he suggested.

From the corner of my eye I saw the usual hovering freedmen and courtiers, pricking their ears at the sight of the Emperor’s two favorites. “Why not?” I said sweetly, taking the dice and dropping them as fast as possible. No doubt they were crawling with street-urchin diseases.

He whistled, looking at the dice. “Bad luck, Lady Lepida.”

“What would you know about luck?”

“I’ve got my mother’s luck,” he shrugged. “All Jews are born lucky, or we wouldn’t any of us still be alive.”

“But what about your father? Didn’t you inherit half your luck from him?” I smiled. “Perhaps gladiators aren’t so lucky as Jews.”

We regarded each other. For the benefit of the audience—an Emperor’s favorites always have an audience—I patted his head. He snapped at my fingers like a dog, and I took a step back. It wouldn’t do to be careless. Not with a boy who had been fathered by a man called Barbarian.

I took a quick look back over my shoulder, and Thea’s son put two fingers in his mouth and let out a piercing whistle that made every slave, freedman, and courtier within fifty yards spin around. “Better hope your luck changes, Lady Lepida,” he shouted. “Or you’re screwed, screwed, screwed.”

One or two titters reached my ears.

MARCUS?” Calpurnia slipped through the door of his library, smiling. “Why are you sitting in the dark?”

“Enjoying a pretty sunset on a spring night.” He smiled. “Enjoy it with me?”

“Of course.” She took a stool. “Though the sunset’s that way, and you’re turned away from it.”