Empress of the Seven Hills (2 page)

“Move along,” he growled, and helped me down the street with his spear haft. Praetorians: no sense of humor.

I spent a little longer staring up at the vast marble roundness of the Colosseum. Not the first time I’d seen it by any means—but I’d forgotten the sheer looming menace of it. No place on earth looms like that one, with its arches and plinths and statues in niches that stare out with blind arrogant eyes. That stretch of sand inside held all my father’s nightmares, and a few of mine. I’d never told him that, but he knew. Anyone who’d ever fought for their life in that place knew.

It’s many years later now, and I’m well into middle age. I’ve been in more fights than I can count, but none of them come back to me in my sleep like the ones that happened in the Colosseum. I’d killed my first man on those sands, back when I was just a child. A big Gaul who hadn’t really wanted to kill me, and maybe it made him slow enough so I could kill him first. Not much of an initiation into manhood.

I stared up at the arena a while longer, fingering the little amulet my father had given me and wondering how men could build such fantastical places just for the purpose of mass killing—and then I shrugged and wandered on toward the Capitoline Hill. A quieter place, the streets smoothly paved, the women in silk rather than wool, the slaves wearing the badge of one illustrious family or another as they hurried about their errands. I passed the massive Capitoline Library, where a half-dozen senators in togas hurried in and out with distracted frowns, and I slowed my steps. My mother had said the house was somewhere around here…

“Yes?” A slave in a neat tunic looked me up and down dubiously. “Can I help you?”

“Is this the house of Senator Marcus Norbanus?”

“No beggars here—”

“I’m not a bloody beggar. Is this Senator Norbanus’s house or not?”

“Yes, but—”

“Good. I’m here to see him.” The slave was big but I was bigger, and I shouldered past into a narrow hall where a dozen marble busts stared down at me in censorious disapproval. “Quit your squawking,” I told the slave, who had flapped after me. “The senator knows who I am.”

Ten minutes of arguing got me shown to a small atrium to wait. “It may be a while,” the slave sniffed. “The senator is very busy.” One last dubious look, as if the slave were wondering whether it was safe to leave me alone with the valuables, and he finally backed out.

I tipped my head back and surveyed the place. Sunlight poured through the open roof, the floor had a mosaic pattern of rippling vines, and a quiet blue-tiled pool was sunk in the middle of the room. A carved nymph looked over her shoulder at me from the corner, and I’d been long enough without a girl that even her marble breasts looked tempting. I slung my pack on a marble bench and dropped to one knee, plunging my hands into the pool and splashing my face. I looked up to find a pretty little girl gazing at me, clutching a carved wooden horse and sucking her thumb.

“Hello, sprat.” She looked four or five, the same age as my own little sister. “Who are you?”

She gazed at me solemnly through a fringe of blond hair.

“Don’t suppose you belong to Senator Norbanus?”

She inspected her little thumb for a moment, then went back to sucking on it.

“Could you get me in to see your father?”

Sucking, sucking.

“Could you at least tell me where the
lavatorium
is? I could use a piss.”

“There’s one down the hall,” a voice said behind me.

I turned and saw another girl, this one about my own age. Thin, brown hair, blue dress. “I’m waiting for Senator Norbanus,” I said.

“There’s time.” She picked up the little girl, parting her gently from the thumb, and moved down the hall with that blind confidence all aristocrats seemed to have, not needing to look back to know that I would follow. I followed her to the
lavatorium
.

“There’s water if you want to wash,” she said, and I took the hint. Romans took a lot more baths than anyone in Britannia. I used a basinful of water and washed the shipboard grime off my face and neck.

“Better?” The patrician girl smiled as I came back into the hall.

“Much, Lady.” I tried my best bow, rusty since I hadn’t used it in a while. Not many baths in Britannia, but not many people to bow to either. “Thank you.”

She studied me a moment longer, then smiled suddenly. She had small teeth, a little crooked but nicely so. “Ah,” she said.

“What, ah?”

A sturdy blond woman in yellow silk came swooping down the hall, bearing a baby on her hip. “Sabina, have you seen—oh, there she is.” She swung the little girl up onto her other hip. “Faustina, you’re supposed to be with your nurse! Who’s this?” The woman gave me a distracted glance, juggling the two round-eyed children.

“This is Vercingetorix,” the girl in blue said tranquilly, and didn’t
that
give me a jolt. “He’s waiting to see Father.”

“Well, don’t keep him long,” the woman advised me. “My husband works very hard. Faustina, Linus, it’s time for your bath—” She moved off in a bright spot of yellow, the children crowing over her shoulder.

“How did you know my name?” I demanded as the girl in blue moved back into the atrium.

She glanced back over her shoulder. “You don’t remember me?”

“Um…”

“Never mind.” She brushed that away. “Why are you waiting to see my father?”

“I’m just back to Rome from Britannia. My mother said he’d likely help me—look, how did you know—”

“You were right to come here. Father helps everybody.” She summoned the steward and spoke a few quiet words. “I’ll jump you to the front of the line.”

And just like that, I was in.

Senator Marcus Norbanus was the kind who puts you on your best behavior. My father had the same effect on people, but mostly because
you knew he’d knock the head off your shoulders if you got on his bad side. Senator Norbanus didn’t look like the knocking type—he was nearly seventy, and he had gray hair and a crooked shoulder and ink stains on his fingers. But he had me sitting up straight and minding my language inside the first minute.

“Vercingetorix,” he mused. “I’ve often wondered how you and your family were faring.”

“Very well, Senator.”

“I’m glad to hear it. You’ve returned to Rome for good?”

“It’s the center of everything.”

“It is that.” He rotated a stylus between his fingers. His study was cheerfully cluttered, pens and parchment and slates on every surface. He had more scrolls than I’d ever seen in one place in my life. “What were you planning to do here in Rome?”

“Thought about the legions.” All I’d wanted once was to be a gladiator, but I got over that fast enough once I had a taste of it. Gladiating aside, there wasn’t much else for a boy with a talent for weapons except the legions. Besides, even a slave-born boy could rise in the Roman army…

“I wonder if you’re aware of the commitment one makes in joining the legions.” Senator Norbanus laid his stylus aside. “How old are you?”

“Twenty,” I said.

He looked at me.

“Nineteen,” I amended.

He looked at me some more.

“Nineteen! In a couple of months, anyway.”

“Eighteen, then. I assume you plan on advancement through the ranks?”

I snorted. “Didn’t plan on being a common soldier for life!”

“Plan on being a common soldier for the next twelve years, because you cannot even be made a centurion until you reach thirty.”

“Thirty—?”

“Even then, it’s no guarantee. You will need patronage to make centurion, and I may not still be here in twelve years.” The senator ran a rueful hand through his gray hair.

“Well”—I tried to regroup—“I might not stay in the legions till I’m thirty. There’s other jobs.”

He looked at me, exasperated. “The term of service for a legionary is twenty-five years, Vercingetorix. Sign up now, and you will be forty-three by the time you are allowed to think of other jobs.”

“Twenty-five
years
?”

“Didn’t you bother to learn anything about the legions before considering them as a career?”

I shrugged.

“The young,” Senator Norbanus muttered. “I don’t suppose you know the pay rate either? Three hundred denarii a year, if you’re curious. Minus your weapons, armor, and rations, of course.”

“Hell’s gates,” I muttered. “You Romans are cheap.”

“I don’t suppose you know about the laws concerning legionaries and marriage either. Soldiers cannot marry, at least until they make centurion. Even then, they cannot take their wives with them on march. Legion posts, I might add, can last many years far away from Rome.”

“Don’t want a wife,” I said, but my enthusiasm for the legions was definitely waning.

“Think on it,” said Senator Norbanus, his exasperation with me fading a trifle. “I don’t mean to discourage you from army life, but at least know what you’re getting into. There are other options.”

I was already thinking about them. “Like what?”

“Bodyguarding, perhaps? Good guards are always in demand, and I seem to remember you had a way with a sword even as a child.”

“Maybe.” Not much glory in bodyguarding…

“Do you have a place to live, Vercingetorix?”

“Just got off the boat.”

“A client of mine owns a small inn in the Subura. He’ll be willing
to let rent slide for a week or two, until you find some work. I’ll write you a letter.”

The stylus scratched busily for a moment, and I contemplated the future with gloom. Twenty-five years. Who would sign up for
that
?

“Here.” The senator sealed the letter. “Stop for a meal in the kitchens before you go. And if you have further thoughts on your future, do come back. I owe your parents a debt, and it will easily encompass any help I can give to you.”

“Thank you, Senator.”

“And speaking of your parents—” His eyes met mine, suddenly cool. “I trust you are not stupid enough to mention their names to anyone? Or Emperor Domitian’s. They are all dead, or at least officially so, and it’s best they stay that way.”

“Yes, sir.” Damn him, I
had
been planning to do a little modest trading on my father’s name. There were still some followers of the games who might remember him, maybe give me a job in his name—but the senator looked stern, and I did my best to look innocent.

“Fortuna’s luck to you, then.” He held out the scroll. I took it, bowed, and thumped out, wondering what in hell I was supposed to do if I didn’t join the legions. The only skill I had was fighting.

SABINA

“Did you get what you wanted?” Sabina asked, looking up from her scroll when the tall boy came slouching back into the atrium. He was scowling blackly, running a rough hand through his shaggy hair.

“Not really.” He scuffed to a stop by the pool, toeing one foot along the blue-tiled edge. “Thought your father might get me into the legions, but now I’m not so sure I want that.”

“Why not?”

“Don’t see why I should sell my soul just for a job.”

“Oh, Rome always wants your soul. Didn’t you know that?” Sabina marked her place in the scroll with one finger. “But most people seem to think it’s a fair bargain.”

“
I
don’t.”

“You could always be a gladiator,” she suggested.

He jumped, and looked at her again.

“You really don’t remember me, do you?” She’d known him at once, even after four or five years. He looked the same: russet hair and brown arms, big feet and big shoulders and a lot of loosely bolted limbs between them that hadn’t quite caught up. The same, just larger.

He was looking at her warily now. “Should I remember you?”

“Maybe not,” she said. “It was a memorable day, all told.”

“So who are you, Lady?”

She stood up, discarding her scroll, and stepped close against him, putting one hand on the back of his sunburned neck and standing on tiptoe. Inches away, she tilted her head and smiled. “Remember now?”

She could see the click in his eyes. “Sabina,” he said slowly. “Lady Sabina—right?”

“Right.”

“Didn’t know you without the bruises. Otherwise you haven’t changed much.” He looked her over. “First girl I ever kissed.”

“The Young Barbarian? I’m flattered.” Sabina felt his arms begin to sneak up around her waist, and stepped back. “All the little girls loved the Young Barbarian. The year you had your bouts in the Colosseum, your name was on schoolhouse doors inside hearts all over Rome. I told my friends I’d met you, and none of them believed me.”

“You tell them I kissed you?” He took another step toward her, a grin starting around the corners of his mouth.

“I think I was the one who kissed you, actually.” Sabina retrieved her scroll and sat down on the marble bench again. “What’s next for you, if not the legions?”

“Not a gladiator’s life, that’s for damned certain.” He leaned up
against the pillar, folding his arms across his chest and cocking his head down at her. “I suppose you’re married now?”

“Gods, no.” On her seventeenth birthday last year, her father had given her a pearl necklace and promised her reasonably free rein in the choice of her husband. Sabina valued the promise more highly than the pearls.

“I thought that baby might be yours.”

“No, that’s little Linus. He and Faustina are Calpurnia’s—she’s my stepmother.”

Sabina went back to her book then, wanting to savor the last verses where Ulysses dealt with his wife’s suitors, wishing Homer might have written just a little more about Penelope in her husband’s absence. But the large sandaled feet in front of her didn’t move, and Sabina glanced back up at the russet-haired visitor who looked so out of place in the quiet vine-veiled atrium. Vix’s lurking grin flowered into something cheerful and lewd, and she laughed. “Fortuna be with you, Vercinget-orix.”

“I make my own luck,” he bragged.

“Do you? That’s a nice trick, if one can manage it.” She wandered away, finding her place in the scroll again and reading as she walked. She didn’t have to glance over her shoulder to know that Vix was looking after her.

VIX

The inn Senator Norbanus had directed me to wasn’t bad. The innkeeper wasn’t happy to give me a week’s free rent, but he grunted at the senator’s seal. “Maybe you could help around the place,” he added. “I could use a big strong lad like you. Customers, it gets late, they like having someone with a knife see them home safe.”