Lady of the Eternal City

  I’m happy, I thought. How long has it been since I’ve been happy? Happy beyond some momentary flash of comfort when I held Mirah in my arms, or some thrum of physical satisfaction as I finished my sword drills or a good meal? Happy like this; a bone-deep and mindless contentment?

  I couldn’t remember.

  When twilight fell on the Night of Torches, Antinous put a hand on my arm as I picked up my breastplate. “Don’t,” he said. “It would offend the gods.” I padded out barefoot in a plain tunic, just like the rest of them. (Though I did toss my lion skin over one shoulder to hide my gladius. I wasn’t so far gone in happiness that I was about to go completely unarmed.)

  Sabina had been trying to retie the acolyte’s ribbon about her wrist, but she looked up and gave me the same sparkling glance she’d given me on the edge of the sea with the water sliding down her naked shoulder. “Tie this for me?” Holding up her wrist with the ribbon coming loose, she glanced at my lion skin. “You look like Hercules.”

  “You look about twenty,” I said, truthfully, because she could have been the girl in Dacia all over again. She was still trim as a spear, thanks to her lifelong habit of marching with legions and scrambling after adventure instead of staying at home breeding children and eating sweetmeats. And the shorn hair had an oddly boyish effect on her pointed little face. I suppose she had a few lines around the eyes, but at least she didn’t cake on powder trying to cover them up, like Balbilla.

  “I feel old sometimes,” my Empress confessed, arching her back in a long stretch like a cat. “Old and used up.”

  “Don’t look it to me,” I said. And then I glared at Antinous because he too was looking at her admiringly as she stretched.

  The Night of Torches is the center of the Mysteries, which is probably why I didn’t understand a thing. I’m not sure anyone understood it, but maybe you weren’t supposed to—the priests were passing around a lot of that kykeon drink. Sabina said it was made of barley and pennyroyal, but I guessed there was more, some draught to confuse the senses, because as the stars came out and the rites began inside the temple, I heard cries of grief and terror among the mystai, and the rites weren’t at all terrifying. More like absurd. (A stalk of wheat? Really, that was supposed to be a mystery?) I didn’t drink any of the kykeon, but Hadrian shivered under its effects and I saw the black in Sabina’s eyes expanding to swallow the blue as the Mysteries advanced. Everyone stared and moaned, watching the priests, while I just sat with my mind wandering peacefully through shield drills.

  There was some sort of play going on among the priestesses, and I don’t have to hide the details because I don’t remember them. But I glanced to one side and saw Sabina sitting with her narrow fingers linked about her knees; tears were sliding down her cheeks. “What is it?” I asked. On her other side Hadrian gave a great shudder, staring blind into the dark, and then he stumbled to his feet, chest heaving. “Caesar—”

  “He is seeing the void,” Suetonius whispered. Suetonius, like me, had not imbibed. “Whatever it holds for him!”

  “So beautiful,” Antinous murmured. He looked awed, as though gazing on something of unimaginable loveliness, but Hadrian wasn’t seeing anything so peaceable. He stared around wildly, every muscle quivering. The hierophant struck a great gong, and the whole crowd surged to its feet with a great cry.

  Hadrian’s cry came loudest of all. His head jerked wildly from whatever dark visions danced before his eyes—and before I could rise, he was gone into the madness.

  ANTINOUS

  Later, Antinous thought that the kykeon must have given wings to his feet as well as his soul. Half a dozen men chased after the Emperor when he gave his great shout and fled the temple, but they soon fell behind and lost themselves in the shadows of the trees. Antinous skimmed behind as the Emperor panted and stumbled, never losing him for a moment. “Caesar,” Antinous called softly.

  Hadrian jerked to a violent stop, staring about with glassy eyes, and then he gave a hoarse scream. Why do you scream when the world is so beautiful? Antinous wondered, his thoughts gliding as dreamy as silver fish through deep water. The world was stars overhead like a carpet of pearls; shadows all around like the warmest of cloaks; moss underfoot as plush-soft as a comforting bed. A place of wonders, and Antinous wanted to weep from the joy of it. He smiled instead, reaching out to touch the Emperor’s heaving shoulder, thinking as he did so that his own flesh seemed to sparkle in the moonlight. “There is nothing to fear here,” he said in the same soothing tone he had once used on the Emperor’s wounded dog. “Nothing at all.”

  Hadrian’s fist lashed out, catching Antinous square on the chin and snapping his head back. He felt the blow as if from a distance; it did not hurt at all. “Well,” he conceded. “I did hit you once, Caesar, so I suppose we are now even.”

  Hadrian gave another cry and fell to his knees, swatting at the air around him. “Back—all of you, back—” Publius Aelius Hadrian: ruler of the world, marble face of countless statues, crawling on hands and knees quaking in terror of a beautiful world. He looked like a cringing dog about to be beaten, and the sight stabbed Antinous to the heart. He squatted down beside the Emperor, stroking one burly shoulder just as he might have stroked a whimpering dog. Hadrian was ice-cold, drenched in sweat, and at Antinous’s touch he flinched violently. “Ssshh,” Antinous said. “Don’t be afraid.”

  “Get away—” That deep voice that had called the bear hunt with such splendid authority was hoarse from sobbing. “Faces, faces in the mirror—”

  “Ssshh,” Antinous crooned again, smoothing his hand back and forth across that trembling back. They were quite alone beneath a great overarching oak that seemed to have tangled the moon in its branches. Other mystai flitted through the woods around them—he could see the flash of their torches. More than that, he could feel them; they were all part of the same moon-drenched dream. The Empress was lost in it too, crying just like her husband, but for something else. Who knows what? She would be safe; his father was with her. But the Emperor had no one here but Antinous. “Take my hand,” he told the Emperor.

  Hadrian lashed out at him again, fists doubled. Antinous ducked this time. Even if the blow to his jaw hadn’t hurt, he knew it would in the morning—Emperor Hadrian had fists as hard as Mars; Antinous had seen that on the bear hunt when his hands had clenched and unclenched so helplessly, watching his dog bleed. He ducked those fists as they swung at him, came under the Emperor’s arm as Hadrian blundered at him snarling, and then Antinous laughed softly as he doubled the Emperor up from behind in a wrestler’s hold.

  “Faces,” the Emperor was babbling, “in the mirror, dear gods, the mirror—”

  “My grandfather taught me this hold,” Antinous told Hadrian, locking those sweat-drenched arms behind him. “When we were in Britannia. He used to be a gladiator, and he said you could follow this up with a nasty gouge and take a man’s eye out. I think I’ll just sit you down instead . . .”

  Antinous kept talking, low and lulling, as he put his back to the great oak and slid down to the moss, taking Hadrian with him fighting all the way. “Don’t struggle, not much use fighting a hold taught by Arius the Barbarian himself . . . Calm yourself, Caesar. Calm. There are no faces. There are no faces, and you are safe.”

  The Emperor went still all of a sudden inside Antinous’s locked arms. The muscles of his broad back were drawn stone-hard against Antinous’s chest. “Mirror,” he said hoarsely, still staring at nothing, and Antinous felt a great leap of pity. This man he had feared for so long in the abstract, a shadowy demon capable of anything—and then the bear hunt had come, and he had turned from a demon into a man, a man who could fling a spear better than anyone Antinous had ever seen, and then reduce himself to tears over a dog . . .

  And now he wasn’t a demon or a god or even the Emperor of Rome anymore. Just a man in terror.

  “Mirror,” Hadrian whispered again, and he trembled insi
de Antinous’s arm-lock and began to weep.

  “Mirrors reflect good things too, you know.” Antinous risked letting go of the Emperor’s wrist, pausing to make sure he wouldn’t lash out again, then put a hand to the Emperor’s ice-sweated forehead and pulled it gently back, directing that glassy tear-dimmed gaze up at the sky. “Stars, see? The mirror is full of stars.”

  “Stars,” the Emperor whispered in a cracked voice. Then his head fell against Antinous’s shoulder, and he wept like a child. His face was contorted in agony, utterly naked in its grief, and it gutted Antinous. He pressed his lips to the curly hair, feeling tears in his own eyes.

  “You poor broken soul, how long has it been since you’ve wept?” His arms tightened around the Emperor, and he felt Hadrian’s tears slide warm and damp down his shoulder. He pressed another kiss to the Emperor’s forehead, as the stars wheeled and the world turned and his fellow mystai reveled. “Weep your eyes dry and be at peace, Caesar. You are safe with me.”

  VIX

  It was all chaos. Some of the acolytes cried out in terror like Hadrian; some were transfixed by rapture like Antinous. There was dancing and singing, wandering and fighting, and any of the revelers might have trampled Sabina to her death. Because as Hadrian bolted from the temple with Boil and Antinous and the rest of the Praetorians in pursuit, the Empress of Rome lay boneless and weeping on the temple floor. “Empress,” I snapped, shaking her by the shoulder.

  “The world is so large,” Sabina wept. “So large and dark, and she is gone.”

  “Oh, Hell’s gates.” I picked her up and threw her over one shoulder.

  The mystai were fleeing in all directions, seizing torches, buffeting me as they spilled from the temple and ran for the trees. I carried Sabina out of harm’s way, deep into a dense little woods that I judged the kykeon-mad crowd would probably assume was full of demons. There I slung her down with her back against a tree, and squatted before her. “Sabina?”

  “Tree,” she observed. “So much tree.”

  “You’re flying higher than an arrow, aren’t you?” I looked around me for Suetonius or little Pedanius Fuscus or any of the others. They’d disappeared into the crowd, but they weren’t a Praetorian’s responsibility. Hadrian was, but Boil had called the other guards after him. I reckoned my old friend could keep the Emperor from trying to stab himself or take a flying leap off a cliff.

  I sat down beside Sabina, my back against the same tree, the lion skin over my shoulder brushing her arm. At first I saw flashes of white as acolytes darted past, but eventually the sounds of revelry faded away. Maybe they’d charged back into the temple to moan and pray. I don’t know how long we sat there, but my mind was cool and empty again.

  Sabina sat as I’d first placed her, hands limp in her lap, small head tilted back, looking up at the black waving branches overhead. “Dark,” she mused. “So much dark.”

  “At least you’re not crying anymore.” I’d only seen her cry once, after Trajan died, weeping for our lost emperor and her lost freedom both. It had broken my heart. “What made you cry tonight?”

  “The play.” Her voice was quiet, surprisingly lucid. “Didn’t you see it? Demeter searching for her lost daughter Persephone . . . I saw her, wandering in the dark, and whenever I tried to reach toward that beautiful red hair, she was gone.”

  “Who? Persephone?”

  “Persephone, Proserpina, Kore, Annia. She has so many names.”

  “And that made you weep like your heart was breaking?”

  “Yes.” She gave a single bitter laugh. “We’re all supposed to be searching for her—that’s why the priests gave out torches. We’re to search all night; and by morning they’ll ring another gong as a symbol of when she was found and returned to her mother.” A sigh. “The hierophant didn’t say what we’re supposed to do if we already know where Persephone is. Or if we know she’ll never be returned to her mother.”

  “You’re still drunk,” I decided.

  Her head turned, and her eyes caught mine. “Oh, Vix,” she mocked, but her tone was gentler. “So much Vix.”

  “I’m not going to get any sense out of you tonight, am I?”

  “Mmm.” She closed her eyes. “It feels a bit like when I was a child and I had fits of epilepsia. I feel my head contracting in about itself, and then the world goes flying away in shards. Only I’m still awake—if this were epilepsia, everything would go dark until I wake with a splitting headache.”

  “Do you still have those fits?”

  “Not since I was twelve.” She smiled. “You might have had something to do with that.”

  So I had.

  “Here comes the headache.” Sabina massaged her temples, watching the sky for a while, and then suddenly she rose and went to throw up into a distant bush. “That’s better,” she said, wiping her mouth as she came back. “I caught a glimpse of Balbilla—she’s torn her robe off to bare her breasts and is dancing in a Dionysian frenzy.”

  I thought of my duty as a guard. “I suppose we should make sure she doesn’t dance off a ridgetop.”

  “Why bother? She’s perfectly lucid.”

  “How can you tell?”

  “Because no woman lost in actual Dionysian revelry holds her stomach in quite that carefully as she revels.”

  I laughed and offered Sabina my flask of barley water. She rinsed her mouth and then went prowling a little unsteadily among the bushes in the other direction and came back with a fistful of sprigs. “Wild mint,” she said, and began chewing on a handful of leaves. “So my breath doesn’t stupefy an ox.”

  Some of the kykeon must have still lingered, because her legs gave out all at once and she flopped on her back on the moss. “What are you thinking about, Vercingetorix?”

  “Pila drills,” I said honestly.

  “Ah.” She smiled through the dark; I could hear it in her voice. “That manual Hadrian asked you to prepare with Suetonius.”

  We hadn’t spoken so cordially to each other in a long time. I’d hardly spoken more than two sentences to her in years—since the wall in Britannia, where we’d stood under another moon like this one. A moon not quite round, but full of promise.

  “You’re taking notes for your manual already, aren’t you?” she asked me. “Really, Vix. Millions have waxed lyrical about the Mysteries of Eleusis, and all you can do is scribble pila drills!”

  “Suetonius said the same thing,” I admitted. “But he’s cross at me. This manual of mine will take him away from his latest treatise.”

  “He’s writing a treatise? I shall make sure I sponsor it, so it does well.” Sabina linked her pale arms behind her head in the grass. “Is it like the treatises my father used to write?”

  “Nothing like. Those were serious works. Suetonius, well, he’s got a mind like a gossip trap. The most rubbishy collection of rumors, omens, portents, and stories you’ve ever heard.” I grinned. “He’s very cross with me, thinking he’ll have to put his next book aside to take my notes on improved training regimens.”

  “He’ll live.”

  “Sabina . . .” I hesitated, winding my fingers around each other. “Why did Hadrian ask a common legionary to assist with legion reform? The Senate won’t like it.”

  “He doesn’t care. Don’t you know him by now?”

  “Nobody knows him.” I still felt that, very strongly. “And I still don’t know why he picked me.”

  She turned on one side in the dark, propping her cheek on one hand. “Because he thinks you’re the best man to do it.”

  “But he hates me.”

  “You’re still useful. He never lets a little thing like hatred get in the way.”

  “He threatened my children,” I said. “And he threatened to have me held down and then fuck me till I bled.”

  A small breath in the dark. “Ah,” Sabina said quietly. “It sounds like him.”

&
nbsp; I didn’t know why I’d told her—I hadn’t told anyone. It just came out of me like poison from a lanced wound. “He made it clear I was dirt,” I said. “That he could turn me into one of his bum-spreading whores if he wanted to. And now he hands me power.”

  “And you’re flattered.” Sabina’s eyes were just a gleam in the inky shadows. “Aren’t you?”

  I ruffled a hand across my hair. “Look, I don’t hate the bugger any less than I ever did. But these changes he wants to make?” I wrestled with my own words. “If I’d gotten the Tenth Fidelis, I’d have shaken everything up, trained the men my way. And I don’t have the Tenth Fidelis. But if the Emperor likes my notions of legion reform, every soldier in Rome will be trained my way. Do you know what that means?”

  “It means you’ll do it,” Sabina said.

  “God help me, yes.” I flopped on my own back beside her. “On the wall in Britannia, you told me he could be a great man. I didn’t believe you. And I’ll still say it—he’s not a good man, not by any means. Not like Trajan. But when he’s on a tear like this and out to change the world . . .”

  “You can’t look away,” Sabina finished. “Because, as bad as he can be, you want to stick around and watch, just see what he’ll do next. Don’t you?”

  No. I dropped an arm across my own eyes. Yes?

  “So . . .” Sabina’s cool fingers touched my shoulder, slid down to my hand, and she tugged my arm away. “You’ll help him in this? Help him be the Emperor he can be?” Her fingertips glided like butterflies over my palm. “The way I asked you on the wall in Britannia?”

  “Quit trying to seduce me into it.” I raised myself on one elbow opposite her, aiming a glare through the shadows. “I’ll help. All right? So don’t lie there looking so damned pleased with yourself.”

  “How do you know how I look? It’s pitch dark.”

  I always know how you look, I almost said. Always have. Always will.

  I had a past that came before Mirah, and Sabina ran through that past like a blue ribbon, sinuous and maddening. Of any woman in my life who wasn’t my mother, I’d known Sabina the longest. We’d met as children inside the marble reaches of the Colosseum, a slave brat and a pearled doll, awkward and already fascinated with each other, and here we were more than thirty years later in a dark grove, a sleek empress and a battered guard. No longer awkward, maybe, but still fascinated with each other. I couldn’t deny that, not in this sacred place where the absurd but gripping truth of the Mysteries still held me fast. I knew Sabina better than any woman alive. I didn’t need to see her face, so close to mine in the dark, to know that her mouth was curved in a faint half smile, that her elegant shorn head was cocked toward me, and that her narrow fingers lay on the moss between us waiting to be touched.