“It went out the window,” Augustus managed, pointing his finger. Agrippa crossed the room at top speed, placing himself beside the window frame. He angled his eyes cautiously downward, scanning for threats.

All he saw was the clay-daubed hut of Romulus, founder of Rome. The emperor had built his house in order to be near the landmark. The hut was his special prize.

“Is someone concealed there? Tell me where he is,” Agrippa whispered.

Augustus did not answer for a moment, and Agrippa shifted, grasping his sword more tightly and raising his shield to barricade the window.

“She,” said Selene. “It wasn’t a man.”

“No,” Augustus interrupted. “It was nothing. Take the child away. I did not sleep well, and I scared her. I thought I felt a serpent in my bed. I thought I saw someone climbing out my window.”

“I saw it, too,” Selene protested.

“Take her to her chamber,” Augustus insisted. “She does not belong here. This is a conversation for men, not children. This is a discussion of war.”

The Psylli took the child from the room, looking over his shoulder at Agrippa and Augustus. A breeze stirred the girl’s hair, and in the emperor’s room, the curtains blew suddenly out from the window.

In the hallway outside the chamber, Auðr stood against the wall, trembling. She had felt the line of Cleopatra’s fate slithering into the residence, and shifted the emperor’s fate just in time, pulling Selene’s thread to bring her past the bedroom door. Now she would pay the price of working such magic without preparation. She felt as though she were drowning. The Psylli gave her a sharp glance as he passed, noting the distaff in her hand. He nodded tightly at her.

“There is no enemy out there. There is only Rome,” Agrippa said, his voice terse. He’d spent an infuriating night, first walking the corridors and then consulting with a group of legionaries who reported a strange intruder in the Circus Maximus. The men were at a loss to describe what the intruder had done, insisting she had been able to run more quickly than they, that she’d leapt from street to rooftop with ease, that she’d seemed one moment an animal and the next a woman.

Agrippa accused the men of drunkenness, not unusual after a return from a long sea voyage, and sent them back to their quarters. But only moments after their departure, the screaming had started.

Augustus looked up, startled, as his general slammed the chamber door and threw his weapons down upon the stones.

“What exactly is it we seek to war against?” Agrippa roared. “Why do you have me dealing with the blackest creatures in the world? Why do you insist that such things stay in your own house? You will tell me what all this means or I will be gone from you.”

His friend looked up at him, and sighed. Agrippa noticed that Augustus’s face had developed new lines. His eyes were grimmer than Agrippa had ever seen them, the whites streaked with red. Though it was early morning, there was wine on Augustus’s breath. Wine and something else, something herbal and caustic. He’d lost weight in the past months, and his hair had the ragged look of a badly shorn sheep. In Alexandria, he had sent false messages. Now he called for witches. Perhaps the guilt over the sabotage of Mark Antony had made him ill.