by Kate Quinn
But Marcus just looked up at her through curly dark lashes, disapproving. “What did you do this time?”
Annia blew out a rebellious breath, running her finger along the stone window ledge. “It was just Brine-Face again.”
Pedanius Fuscus, whom she saw almost as often as Marcus, and who at a brutish eleven was turning into the bane of life. A year ago he’d nearly drowned her in the atrium, holding her down in the central pool to make her stop calling him Brine-Face, and every time he hauled her up she’d spit it out through her teeth while coughing up water. He hadn’t gotten in trouble, of course. When his grandfather came along, Pedanius made it look like he was pulling her out of the pool and not pushing her in. Old Servianus had reprovingly told Annia (still coughing up water, as Pedanius gazed on virtuously) that she was behaving like a barbarian.
And two days ago had been something even worse.
“He said something awful,” Annia told Marcus briefly. “And I hit him. Brine-Face is off to Greece now, but I’m still supposed to stay in my room until I apologize to his grandfather, and I won’t.”
Her father had been angry with her, and that hurt. “Your mother is feeling quite fragile enough without your misbehavior,” he said shortly, and took Annia’s mother off to Baiae. “Just the two of us, Faustina,” Annia had heard him murmur into her beautiful hair. “We’ll look out at the sea and read poetry by the brazier—and perhaps make another son.”
And Annia’s eyes pricked because even if she had another brother someday, she wouldn’t stop hurting for the one who was gone. The brother she’d walked all over the house with his fat feet balanced on top of hers and his tiny fingers clinging to her thumbs.
The brother who was dead—and who Brine-Face had laughed at.
“What did he say?” Marcus asked as though he’d read her mind. He did that sometimes.
“He said the gods killed my brother because of me. Because I was already such a boy, there wasn’t room in the house for two.” A slow breath full of rage. “And then he laughed. That’s when I hit him.”
She hadn’t told anyone what Pedanius had said, even when her father demanded to know why she’d behaved so badly. She hadn’t wanted to see her mother cry again. So she was stuck in her chamber, in disgrace and craving honey cakes she couldn’t eat.
Marcus looked up at her, thoughtful. “Wait there.”
“Where are you going?” Annia called. He didn’t answer, just flapped a hand. He was back in a few moments, looking vaguely guilty. To Annia’s surprise, he reached for the vines along the wall under her window, and began to climb.
“You’ll fall,” Annia warned, but he kept coming. He was skinny but strong. Annia leaned down and extended a hand to pull him up onto the ledge, where he sat with feet dangling.
“Here.” He produced a handful of honey cakes from his tunic, only slightly squashed. “You’re right—you don’t deserve to be punished this time. Pedanius gets other people punished for what he does. He does the same thing to me, and everyone believes him.”
Annia grinned, dividing the cakes and handing Marcus half. “Can you be my brother?”
He smiled. He had thin cheeks, but his smile was nice. “Why?”
“I still want a brother,” Annia confessed around a mouthful of cake. “Very much.”
He considered that, nibbling much more politely. “I’d like being your father’s son. But I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“If I were your brother I couldn’t marry you.”
Annia stared at him. He’d said that before, but it had been a long time ago, and it sounded just as stupid now as it had then. “What?”
“I’m going to marry you,” he said as if it were self-explanatory, still nibbling. “Once we’re old. Twelve or—wait!”
Annia got up from the window ledge.
“Wait, I’m coming in—”
Annia slammed the inside shutters with a howl of outrage, leaving him sitting on the ledge outside.
Marcus’s voice floated through the shutters, plaintive. “What did I say?”
VIX
I didn’t bother with Roman stoicism when Antinous arrived in Mysia. I grabbed my boy in a vast hug, crushing him against my breastplate. “Hell’s gates, did you fly all the way from Rome?” I’d hesitated about having Antinous join the Imperial entourage, considering why he’d left it in the first place—but it was so long since I’d seen him! I hadn’t admitted to anyone just how much I missed my son.
“I came by Imperial trireme.” Antinous pushed down the sleek black dog who bounced about our feet barking. “If Empress Sabina’s on board—down, boy!—the gods send nothing but fast winds.”
I pulled back enough to look him over. Nearly two years since I’d sent him packing to the paedogogium. He’d grown taller, but it was more than that. The last awkward lankiness of boyhood had given way to broad-shouldered, slim-hipped leanness; his childish freckles had been replaced by sun-bronzed silk-smooth skin; the uncertain fits and starts of motion had become lithe, well-trained grace. “Look at you,” I said. “I send a boy away to Rome, and you come back a man.”
He flushed. “You think so?”
“I know so.” We hadn’t marked Antinous’s manhood by any of the usual ceremonies, largely because Mirah and I couldn’t decide which to employ: the toga virilis where Roman youths marked the end of childhood by donning a toga for the first time, or the blessing by which Jewish boys announced their status as men. I’d argued for the toga virilis, and Mirah argued for the blessing, and neither had seemed quite right for our mismatched household where a Greek boy had been raised by a Jew and a barbarian.
Besides, I didn’t reckon manhood came from any ceremony. I’d marked myself a man when I made my first kill. At least my son had reached his manhood more gently than that. “You make many friends at the paedogogium?” I asked. “You weren’t one for details in your letters—”
Antinous ruffled a hand over his dark-honey curls. “I don’t have your knack for making friends. I hang back, and people think I’m haughty. Or I smile, and they think I’m fawning or flirting.”
I guessed it was that face of his that made it hard for him. When Antinous stood unsmiling he looked so marble-carved that people just gaped like he was a statue on a plinth. When he smiled, the marble statue came to such radiant life that people began stuttering. He wasn’t haughty and he wasn’t ingratiating, he was just shy sometimes; but a face like that didn’t allow him to be shy because it made men jealous and women ignite. I guessed it hadn’t been an easy two years for him in the ranks of all those spotty ambitious boys.
Antinous was prowling through my quarters with his dog at his heels, giving a hoot at the piles of slates on my desk and the dirty tunics I’d left on the floor. “You live worse than a beggar when you haven’t got a wife around to keep you tidy!”
I smiled. “How is Mirah?”
“Full of fire. Goes to the scribes every other day to dictate letters, for her mother and Uncle Simon and the rest of them in Judaea.”
“A great believer in letters, your mother.” Even out here on the edge of the Empire, Imperial messengers brought me a stack of missives every day: reports from my informers, updates from Prefect Turbo in Rome . . . and scrolls with Mirah’s words in a scribe’s neat script. She couldn’t write, but that didn’t stop her sending me letters.
“I thought she’d come with me,” Antinous was saying as he emptied his pack. “She made me read every letter you sent out loud, till it fell to bits. She misses you.”
“And I miss her,” I said briefly. “But she’s tired of traveling. The girls need a home to settle in.”
That was only part of it. It wasn’t even our prickly discussions about going to Judaea or freeing Judaea or whatever came in her uncle’s latest rants. A year ago when we were about to depart Hispania, I’d woken one cold morning to find Mirah w
eeping over her monthly blood—heavier than usual, and she insisted it must have been the beginnings of a child.
“Maybe,” I’d said, putting my arms around her. “We don’t know, do we? Far too early to be sure.” I’d been trying to comfort her, but she’d flared up at me.
“It was a child. It was, and it would have been a boy. One of our own—”
“Not that again—”
“—and for once someone would have looked at my son instead of Antinous!”
“Well, I’m not one of those arses who tosses a woman out if she can’t push out sons,” I’d said irritably. “So stop fretting. And quit bringing Antinous into it, because it’s not his fault we don’t have a boy of our own blood!”
Her blue eyes were bitter. “You love him more than your own blood.”
I’d picked up my helmet and greaves and slammed out. Gone through my day with a black scowl, and when I came back Mirah wound her arms around my waist and I murmured into her hair with the taste of guilt thick and sour on my tongue. Because I tried to hide it; I tried to keep it from her that Antinous was the one I loved most. Mirah thought it was because he was a boy, but it wasn’t that. I didn’t know what it was. I just knew that I loved him best—and Mirah knew it, too.
We hadn’t spoken another word about it, just fallen into each other’s arms with fierce kisses and patched things up that way, the best way. But when Hadrian’s entourage moved on from Hispania, that was when Mirah said quietly that she’d take the girls to Rome rather than accompany us east. And I hadn’t tried to stop her.
Antinous was looking at me quizzically. I forced a smile. I wasn’t about to tell him any of it—he loved Mirah like the mother he’d never known. “What’s wrong?” he asked.
“Nothing. Just—wondering when you grew out your hair, boy,” I improvised, and tousled his honey-colored curls. “You’ve got more hair than Empress Sabina. And how in God’s name did you end up in the middle of her entourage, anyway?”
“I met her at the household of Titus Aurelius, and she was kind enough to invite me. Took quite a liking to me, actually. Her chamberlain and her maids were seasick all through the crossing, so she taught me to play latrunculi. She beat me flat most of the time.” He gave a little whistle. “A mind like a general, Empress Sabina’s got.”
“A mind like a snake, more like.”
“Do you trust anyone?” he objected.
“No, and it’s kept me alive long enough to see gray in my hair.” Something that still surprised me, whenever I saw the wavering reflection in my shaving water. I was past forty: I had a son grown to manhood, and gray was beginning to salt my russet hair, and weatherbeaten lines had carved themselves about my eyes. Yet I felt no older than the boy standing before me with his sunny smile and his overflowing energy.
“Empress Sabina likes me,” Antinous was saying as he settled away the last of his belongings. “She says she’ll help me find a position at court, if I want one. Perhaps with the archivists—”
I tilted my head, surprised. “Is that what you want? A court career?”
“It’s what they train you for, in the paedogogium.” It wasn’t exactly an answer, and as Antinous leaned down to ruffle his dog’s ears, I wondered if he was avoiding my gaze. “I . . . don’t really see myself in the legions.”
“Why not?” Antinous sat a horse better than I ever would, wielded sword and spear with a grace that was beyond me, and had won his share of fistfights among the other boys as he grew. “You’d be an asset to any legion. You wouldn’t have to start as a legionary the way I did—I could contact my old friends in the Tenth Fidelis; get you made a tribune.”
He shrugged, definitely avoiding my gaze. “I don’t really like killing things.”
“You like hunting,” I pointed out.
“Hunting’s different. You hunt to stock your table, or to kill something that preys on men, like bears or mountain cats. I can do that, but—” He hesitated. “I think about shoving a sword through a man’s chest, and it sickens me.”
“It should,” I said seriously. “No one enjoys that part, Antinous.”
“You do.” He winced as soon as the words were out, seeing the way my jaw dropped.
“I do not—”
“I didn’t mean that, I meant—sweet gods, I’m making a fumble of this.” Antinous ran a hand through his hair again. “You might not enjoy killing, but you can get past it. You make it mean something. I wouldn’t. I’ve no wish to be a killer.” He took a breath, meeting my eyes square. “Or a legion man.”
I don’t know what look he saw on my face, but he stood with his shoulders braced as if for a blow. “Well,” I began, but couldn’t think what else to say. Are you going to tell him it’s such a shining path, being a hired killer? I thought of the Dacian king I’d watched die on a solar disk—the Parthian rebels I’d killed in Trajan’s wars—the four men I’d had hauled from their cells and butchered at the beginning of Hadrian’s reign. Did I want such memories for Antinous?
“Well,” I said again, forcing a little cheer into my voice. “It’s a good thing you’re not my son by blood, then, or you’d—”
His amber-brown eyes flew to mine, and they looked stricken.
“I didn’t mean it like that, let me finish—” I nearly groaned at myself. Now I was the one making a fumble of things. “I only meant it’s good you didn’t have to inherit my brains. Because I don’t have the wit to be a chamberlain or an archivist or a translator, and God knows you do.”
His shoulders relaxed then, relief flowering visibly through his whole body, and the sight made me blink. Had he been dreading this moment, screwing up the courage to tell me he didn’t want to follow my path? It had never occurred to me. All I’d wanted when I was young was my father’s path; he’d practically had to beat me off it with a stick. I’d assumed Antinous would be the same. I won’t say I hadn’t looked forward to seeing him in a tribune’s armor, my son and I both the same rank, but . . .
I pulled Antinous into another rough embrace, feeling him stiffen in surprise. “You’re no killer,” I said. “You won’t have the nightmares and the scars that I do, and that makes me glad, because you’re made for better things. You’re fine and clever and brave, and you speak more languages than I’ve even heard of—we’ll get you the best post in Rome, whatever you want. And you’ll make me proud.”
I gave his shoulder a thump and he thumped mine in return. When we pulled apart, I felt a trifle thick in the throat and he had a grin wide enough to light a legion camp.
“Mind you,” I couldn’t help adding, “I’d rather you found a post for yourself back in Rome! Not here under the Emperor’s nose.”
“I promise I won’t try to break it again.” Antinous’s smile was quick and relieved. “I doubt he’ll remember me.”
“How many people do you think hit him in the face? He’ll remember you.”
“Then I’ll stay out of sight.”
“Start tomorrow. There’s a hunt in the morning—the Emperor’s determined to bag a she-bear he’s been tracking in the mountains. He takes an army on his hunts; you could blend in among the retainers easily enough.”
His eyes lit. “Can I?”
God help me, I didn’t have a single premonition. Not one.
ANTINOUS
“Where’d you get that?” Vix asked.
Antinous hefted the long hunting spear. “Stole it right off some perfumed courtier’s saddle! It clearly wasn’t going to get used even if the bear fell right in the man’s lap.”
“And you’re not using it either.” Vix offered a stern look from under his Praetorian’s helmet, leading two horses through the press of the hunting party. “You’re staying well back of the chase, remember?”
“But my father told me never to go unarmed,” Antinous said, innocent. “And I always obey my father!”
“Don’t get
wide-eyed with me, boy. And are you starting a beard?”
“Everyone here has a beard.” Antinous rubbed a hand over his night’s worth of gold stubble, looking around at the thronging hunting party that had turned out on the wooded slopes of Mysia. Near a hundred men from Praetorians to courtiers, and every one had a beard in imitation of the Emperor.
“Not me.” Vix tossed him a set of reins.
“Of course you don’t!” His father wouldn’t follow the Emperor’s example in anything—if it got about that Emperor Hadrian had taken a great liking for air, Vix would probably try to stop breathing. “But I’m going to be a creature of the court, remember? So I must follow the fashions.”
His father groaned, hauling himself up into the saddle with his usual lack of grace. “I should have forced you into legion life.”
But you didn’t, Antinous thought, rubbing his borrowed horse’s nose, and the relief was dizzying. How long had he had that little dread in the back of his mind, wondering if his father would be disappointed in him once he realized Antinous had no desire to follow in his footsteps? A father had a right to dictate his son’s path in life, after all, and expect obedience. What would he have done, if his father had put that massive booted foot down and stated that he was going to the Tenth Fidelis?
Tried to do it, I expect. Tried to please him.
But after all Antinous’s agonizing, Vix had barely blinked an eye. They’d stayed up half the night pouring wine and making plans instead, debating whether the archivists or the huntsmen or the translators might make a better fit, Vix striding up and down getting excited—“You should consider the law; with that honey tongue of yours, you could wind any judge round your hand like a wet woman!” Antinous had gone to bed with a buzzing head and a smile on his face.
His father’s voice broke his thoughts. “Coming?”
Antinous vaulted up onto his borrowed horse. “Wouldn’t miss it.”
The Emperor came trotting out on his big bay stallion, and Antinous craned for a look. He hadn’t laid eyes on the man since he’d nearly broken the Imperial nose, after all, and that hadn’t been much of a look. Just a terror-filled impression of muddy height and ice-cold eyes. “Doesn’t seem quite so fearsome as I remember.”