Empress of the Seven Hills Read online

  I shall tell him tomorrow, the Empress thought happily. I shall tell him I’ve found her.

  VIX

  I don’t much like patricians, and it’s fair to say they don’t like me. Jumped-up thug, they tend to mutter when I’m around, just loud enough for me to hear, but I ignore them. They’re a fairly useless lot, with a few exceptions—and you have to watch out for the exceptions. Senator Norbanus was an exception, a good one. As for the bad exception, he’s the man I should have kept an eye on from the start. Bastard.

  The day already hadn’t started well. I’d gotten my lip split by what should have been an easy mark: a rich boy ducking his tutors and his father to go hunting for whores in the Subura, which was the last place anybody should ever hunt for whores. He found one, and probably a case of something nasty that would be itching him within weeks, and then he found the inn where I now lived and a good many tankards of bad wine. The innkeeper gave me a nod as the boy reeled out, and I slid out after him. Only midmorning, but it was Vinalia and everyone was getting drunk early. The boy was still reeling when I pulled a dagger on him in an alley and demanded his purse, and he was drunk enough to hit me instead of just handing it over. I got my lip split, but I got the purse too, and sent the boy home with his nose broken in two places. “Consider it a mark of manhood,” I called after him as he fled wailing. “A better one than the pox that whore gave you.”

  There were a good many coins in that purse, and of course I skimmed a few off the top before I handed the rest over to the innkeeper to count my percentage. “Mop that lip up and keep your eyes open,” he ordered. “Lot of easy marks on festival days.”

  “Get someone else to hit them,” I said shortly. “I’m going out to celebrate like everybody else. Hail to bloody Venus and hail to the bloody wine harvest.”

  “Listen, boy—”

  I made an obscene gesture at him and thumped out. A grimy urchin darted under my feet; I booted him out of the way and his mother screeched at me. I made an obscene gesture at her too, and slid moodily into the cheerful crowds. Truth was, this wasn’t what I had planned when I’d dreamed of coming back to Rome. Oh, it was easy enough—after a month I had a room of my own, food that didn’t have too many bugs in it, coins for the bathhouse or the theatre whenever I had a mind to go. It wasn’t hard taking purses off wild boys and rich tradesmen, and I even had a little side business stealing goods off vendors in the Subura and reselling them to vendors in the Esquiline. An easy enough life. But it wasn’t quite…

  The Colosseum had been thrown open to the crowd for festival day, and games were planned. No doubt a thousand lions would be slaughtered by spearmen, five thousand exotic birds by archers, and a few hundred prisoners by guards, and half the unlucky bastards sentenced to the gladiatorial fights would get dragged out on hooks through the Gate of Death. I ducked the Colosseum and turned toward the Circus Maximus instead. Not that the chariot races couldn’t get bloody when a team went down, but it was better than the games. Plus, at the circus the women weren’t walled up in their own section of seats, so you had a decent chance of finding a girl to take home.

  God, the time I spent back then trying to get girls to go home with me. Well, I was eighteen.

  The tiers were already packed to the skies, families waving little colored banners and already cheering their favorite teams. The Reds, the Blues, the Greens, and the Whites—I’d never backed one faction or another, but in my red tunic I was automatically hauled along to a section of seating packed with Reds fans. “A Blues bastard do that to you?” a big gap-toothed fellow demanded, pointing at my puffy lip. “Bloody bastards, those Blues.”

  “Right,” I agreed. Never argue with a racing fanatic.

  “The Blues’ll take all the heats today, you wait,” a woman in blue face paint screeched down from the tier above.

  “They’ll be dead bloody last!” the gap-toothed man roared, and a brisk shoving match broke out. I squirmed out of my seat and went looking for another, eyeing the cooler tiers and private boxes where the patricians and equites seated themselves. Maybe I could sneak in…

  “Vercingetorix?” someone said behind me.

  I turned—a girl in a red dress, with a wreath of festival poppies in her light-brown hair. “Lady Sabina.” I remembered to bow. “You’re in the wrong section. Patricians are all up there.”

  “I know. My aunt Diana has a box. But I’m ducking a suitor.”

  “I’ve got a seat,” I said promptly.

  “How kind.” She tucked her hand into my elbow. She was little, hardly up to my shoulder, but people moved out of her way. That patrician thing again.

  “So, you follow the Reds?” I noted a red pennant in her other hand.

  “All my family does. Aunt Diana’s mad for the Reds; she’d disown us if we rooted for anyone else.” Sabina took the seat I offered, tilting her head up. “There isn’t room for you.”

  “Yes, there is. Get lost,” I told the man on her other side, and added a glare. He got lost, I got the seat, and for a bonus I got a smile from the senator’s daughter. Maybe my day was looking up. “Why are you ducking a suitor?” I asked, leaning back on one elbow.

  “He thinks he’s leading the pack, so he’s trying to drive off the others.”

  “You have a pack?”

  “Yes,” she said calmly. “I don’t have my mother’s looks, but I do have her money.”

  “Don’t know about the looks,” I said, but she brushed my compliments aside.

  “The Emperor’s come.” She pointed up at the foremost box, where a flood of royals had just entered. I didn’t have to guess which one was the Emperor—the short soldier’s haircut, the purple cloak, and the beaming face said it all. Emperor Marcus Ulpius Trajan raised his fist, and the crowds exploded.

  The aristocrats in their languid poses, the equites in their self-conscious clusters, the plebeians in their masses all surged to their feet and cheered. The charioteers and stable boys paused in their darting over the arena sand, the horses waiting for entry seemed to toss their heads in salute, and I found my palms stinging and realized I was shouting and clapping with everyone else.

  But Sabina wasn’t. She sat looking over the crowd, thoughtful. “They always do that,” she said as I took my seat again beside her. “Every time Trajan comes out. He goes all over the city without guards, and no one harms him.”

  I watched the Emperor fling himself down in his golden chair, raking a hand through his hair and roaring with laughter. A long ways different from the Emperor I last remembered sitting in that box. “Long as Trajan doesn’t give black parties or make people call him Lord and God, I’ll find him an improvement.”

  “Sshh, they’re starting.” The roars mounted through the tiered seats as the first of the chariots appeared, a quartet of blacks with green plumes dancing over their heads. Two more teams for the Greens, then a team for the Blues. Sabina hissed as they went by in a flash of blue wheels, and I laughed.

  “The Blues are utterly fucking evil,” she explained, bland. “Or so I’ve been told since a very young age.”

  I laughed again, eyeing her in surprise. The Reds came by last, a Gaul flourishing his red-beaded driving whip to make his team of chestnuts prance, and Sabina waved her pennant. I put two fingers to my lips and let out a piercing whistle that had all our neighbors wincing.

  “How interesting,” said Sabina. “Show me how to do that!”

  I showed her how to double up her tongue behind her teeth. She regarded me with unblinking attention, put two fingers to her own lips, and had it on the third try. “Excellent,” she said, pleased. “Thank you, Vercingetorix.”

  “It’s just a whistle.”

  “It’s something new. I try to learn something new from everyone.”

  “What about bad people?” I couldn’t help wondering.

  “Even villains have something worth knowing. Look at my mother.”

  “What did you, uh, learn from her?” I blinked away a certain memory of Sabina’s mot
her, all airy green silks and fragrant black curls, informing me in her low sweet voice that I was a cowardly little brat destined to die in the arena. Yes, I remembered Sabina’s mother quite well. Wondered how much her daughter did, though…

  “My mother dressed beautifully,” Sabina said. “Otherwise, I have to say, she was a spoiled spiteful scheming waste of life.”

  “That about sums her up,” I agreed. “Say, if you’re so interested in learning new things, I can teach you more than whistling—”

  Sabina looked amused but turned back to the arena, doubling her tongue expertly behind her teeth and letting out a shriek of a whistle. “Reds!” she shouted, and Trajan dropped the kerchief up in the Imperial box and eight chariots surged off the line.

  There was the usual jockeying against the spina, a team for the Whites went down promptly in a flurry of hooves and dust and screams, and then the crush thundered away toward the other end of the arena, blue plumes in front with green and red close behind. They disappeared around the hairpin turn on the far end, shouts and cries rippling to the other side of the stands, and I flopped back in my seat again. “So you’ve got suitors,” I said idly to the senator’s daughter. “Any of them leading the pack?”

  “One or two.” Her blue gaze came back from the arena to me, unblinking. “My father said I could choose whom I liked, within reason.”

  “What’s within reason?”

  “Well, the Emperor has to approve my choice of husband,” said Sabina. “And neither he nor Father would allow me to marry a freedman in a butcher’s shop, or a wastrel with a pile of dicing debts. And my father wouldn’t like it if I chose a man who travels a great deal either.”

  “What’s wrong with traveling?” The chariots thundered around the second turn, a storm of cheers going up as the Reds fought up on the outside against the Blues.

  “If I marry a general or a provincial governor I’ll be gone from Rome, and Father would rather I stayed close. But he’s going to be disappointed on that score.”

  “Why? Got your eye on a general?”

  “No.” Her gaze transferred back to the arena. “I’ve got my eye on the world.”

  “Tall order.”

  “Big world.”

  “I’ve seen Britannia,” I offered. “Londinium’s a sinkhole, but Brigantia’s pretty—that’s up north.”

  “Tell me about it?”

  “Mountains,” I said. “Mountains and sea—and it’s cold, but the mist wraps the tops of the mountains and makes everything funny in your ears—” I talked about Brigantia, and Sabina listened with her whole body, drinking in every word as the horses thundered through two more laps.

  “I’d like to see Brigantia,” she commented when I trailed off. “But I’d like to see everything.”

  “Where’ll you start?”

  “Judaea? Gaul? Egypt, maybe—their gods have animal heads, and I always thought that was interesting. Or Greece—I could visit Sparta and Athens, see which one really is better.”

  “Spartans have the better armies.” I remembered the stories my mother had told me. “Or they did, anyway.”

  “Yes, but what else have they got?” Sabina looked thoughtful, and the horses whirled past again in a cloud of dust and cheers. “Might be worthwhile, finding out.”

  “You know how they get married?” My mother had told me the story. “They take all the girls up into the mountains at night, give ’em a head start, and send all the boys after ’em. Everybody’s naked, and whoever catches who gets married.”

  “How fortunate we don’t do that in Rome. I’m a terrible runner.”

  “I’m not.” I looked her over. “Run you down in a heartbeat, I could.”

  “But would you want to? There’d be some hardy Spartan girl you’d fancy first. Much better for a legionary.”

  “I’m not going to be a legionary.”

  “Aren’t you?”

  “Twenty-five years’ service. Not bloody likely.”

  “Hmm.” Her eyes turned back to the arena again as the cheers redoubled—in the fifth lap, the Reds had pulled ahead of the Blues. “Oh, good. They’re winning.” She waved her pennant politely.

  “Hey!” I stared slit-eyed at the man sitting behind Sabina, a big bearded man who had edged forward swearing at the Blues. “Keep your knees out of her back!”

  “Maybe she liked it,” the man jeered, looking Sabina up and down.

  “Take that back!” I reared up, grabbing a handful of his tunic. I was just in the mood for a scrap.

  “Are you going to fight?” Sabina said, interested.

  “Not much of a fight,” I said, after bloodying the fellow’s nose. He slunk off swearing, and I shook out my hand. “Maybe he’ll come back with some friends.”

  “I rather hope he does. I’ve never seen a fight before.”

  “You saw me in the arena, didn’t you? My second bout, when I was thirteen and got my shoulder speared.” I still had the scar.

  “Yes, I saw you. You were quite good too. But you weren’t fighting for me. I’ve never had anyone fight for me before. I can see why girls get all excited about it.”

  “You’re an odd one, Lady,” I couldn’t help saying.

  “Do you think so? I think I’m quite ordinary.”

  “At least we’ve got room to stretch now.” I leaned back, extending one arm casually along the line of her shoulders. She looked amused but let it stay there.

  The Reds came in tops by a length, red plumes tossing in triumph over their chestnut heads, and the red-clad portion of the circus exploded into cheers. Three more heats followed as the sun descended into the heat of afternoon. There was another victory for the Reds and two for the Greens, and I was starting to get restless. “Food?” I suggested. “There’s only so many times you can watch horses run in a circle.”

  “It does start to look the same after a while,” Sabina agreed. “Where shall we go?”

  I could think of a few places to go, most with convenient flat spots and none having anything to do with food, but this was a senator’s daughter. “There are vendors about.” I bulled a path in the crush, and Sabina followed in my wake.

  “Sausages?” she suggested, pointing to a little stand.

  “Better not. More likely dog than pork.”

  “I wonder why we don’t eat dog,” she mused. “We eat geese and pigs, and they’re just as domesticated. We eat eels and lampreys, and they’re too vile-looking even to contemplate in their natural form. But we don’t eat dog, not unless we’re really desperate.”

  “You want to try?”

  “No, I confess I don’t. But I wonder why?”

  “You wonder a lot of things.”

  “Don’t you?”

  “I wonder where my next meal’s coming from. Or I wonder what I’ll be doing a year from now.”

  “I already know what I’ll be doing a year from now.” She tucked her hand into my elbow. “Perhaps that frees me up to wonder about the odd things.”

  “What will you be doing a year from now?”

  “I’ll be married. What else is there?”

  I got her fried bread and strips of some lean roasted meat that at least wasn’t dog. We watched the fifth race from the stands, munching, and when the Blues won I taught the senator’s daughter a few colorful curses to hurl down at them.

  “Die slowly, you Blue whoresons,” she yelled down at the track where the Blue chariot wheeled in triumph, and I grinned as she added a few more choice phrases. Then, behind us, I heard a cool patrician voice.

  “Lady Vibia Sabina, are you lost?”

  “Not a bit.” She turned, her hand still tucked into my elbow. “Are you, Tribune?”

  I’d have known him for one of the well-born even without the rank Sabina gave him. Only the rich and powerful wore a toga that snowy clean, and wore it without tripping over the heavy folds like us commoners. This tribune was a tall man, perhaps twenty-six; not as tall as me but broader. Dark hair curling closely over a massive handsome head;
broad calm features, deep-set eyes. Bearded, which wasn’t usual for Romans. He held the folds of his toga against his chest with one large ringed hand and looked down at Sabina with calm disapproval.

  “You should not be here, Lady.”

  “Why not?”

  “Your father has a box. Far safer for a girl.”

  “I’m safe enough with my escort here.”

  His eyes shifted to me. Just one quick glance and I knew he could describe me in detail a year from now, from my worn sandals to my shaggy hair to the amulet about my neck, which, from the twitch of his heavy eyelid, he clearly thought barbaric.

  “Vercingetorix,” said Sabina. “Meet Publius Aelius Hadrian, tribunus plebis.”

  “What’s that?” I asked, not bowing. “A legionary officer?”

  “No, that’s a different kind of tribune. Hadrian’s kind is a sort of magistrate. The first step toward becoming a praetor.”

  “There are other responsibilities.” Hadrian’s eyes swept me again. “And who is this?” he asked Sabina.

  “A client of my father’s.”

  “Ah.” Faint surprise. “Senator Norbanus always did have odd clients.”

  “He does,” Sabina agreed. “I like them. One learns so much.”

  “You have strange tastes, Vibia Sabina.”

  “Doesn’t she?” I said. “I think it’s sweet.”

  The tribune’s eyes lingered a moment on my arm, where Sabina’s hand was still tucked, then dismissed me. “If you will not be escorted back to your box, Vibia Sabina, I will take my leave. I dislike the races. Too many horses die, and I hate to hear them scream.”

  Another bow to Sabina and he moved off in blind confidence, rippling a path in the crowd for himself. “Stiff patrician bastard,” I growled.

  That was the first time I met Publius Aelius Hadrian. What a lot of trouble I’d have saved if I’d just killed the bastard on sight.

  SABINA

  How nice, Sabina reflected, to have someone large and male on hand in a crowd. She followed easily behind Vix as he shouldered through the delirious crush of Reds fans—the Reds had taken the final race and won the day’s majoity. “My aunt Diana will never forgive me if I don’t come congratulate her,” Sabina shouted over the roar of applause as the Reds completed their last preening victory lap, and let Vix bull a path down into the sea of red now crowding the arena.