Lady of the Eternal City (51 page)

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The atrium with its rose-garlanded pillars was mostly filled with muttering senators clustered like hens, taking sidelong glances at the Emperor where he sat looking drawn and irritable in a gold chair, fingers drumming. “His heir,” Servianus was saying, “he must announce an heir soon, his health . . .” And whenever anyone spoke of the Emperor’s health the whispers faded off into even more inaudible mumbles. Servianus was too preoccupied to notice Annia or her ankles, but as Annia stood looking about for her parents—all right, looking for Marcus—her gaze swept right across Pedanius Fuscus, standing with a cup of wine in hand, and his gaze was going up and down her body and then back again.
He didn’t look that hungry when he was trying to rape me
, Annia thought, and a spasm of disgust went through her, coiled around with fear. She stamped down both, putting up her chin.
I’ll die screaming before I show you one drop of terror.

He crossed the mosaics: a handsome young man in a fine synthesis, but somehow not quite the golden boy of Rome anymore. He’d changed since that beating he’d taken. He looked twitchy now instead of confident, eyes sliding off to the side instead of resting firm during a conversation, his smile nervous instead of charming . . . And of course, as soon as he opened his mouth to speak, his new lisping splutter sealed the whole dismal impression. Those
teeth
—Annia wanted to beam whenever she saw those gapped and broken-off teeth that turned every word he said into a hissing mess.

“Brine-Faith,” she greeted him, mimicking his lisp with a lift of her eyebrows.

“You look like a whore.” His eyes slid over her again.

Maybe it was just because Aunt Sabina had been called a whore in her day too, but Annia threw her head back and laughed. Real laughter—the spasm of fear in her stomach was utterly gone. “And you look like an idiot,” she returned. “But you
are
an idiot, and we both know I’m not a whore.”

She patted his cheek and moved off, partly to irritate him and partly because she’d just seen Marcus—lean and serious in his own perfectly pleated synthesis, standing at the Emperor’s elbow. One of Hadrian’s quizzing sessions, probably, where he fired question after question at Marcus as though looking for chinks in his defenses . . . Annia didn’t know if it was the gold dust and flame silk that made her confident, but she slid through the crowd and came right up to Marcus’s elbow. “—no power over what the Fates put in our path,” he was saying in response to some question of the Emperor’s. “But a man does have power over his own mind, and in the end—” He saw Annia and stopped a moment, and her heart fluttered in her chest, but his face never moved even as his eyes traveled her whole flame-wrapped length. “Control over the Fates is impossible,” he said, turning back to the Emperor. “So control over the mind is the best man can hope for.”

“Well put,” Hadrian said, and turned a moment as a steward tugged at his sleeve with a murmur. Marcus gave a little bow, still ignoring Annia, and she narrowed her eyes.
I will get a reaction out of you if it kills me, Marcus Catilius Severus.

She made her own curtsy to the distracted Emperor, looking for a way to slide out of the crowd with Marcus, but some senatorial colleague of her father’s spoke up—“Titus Aurelius’s daughter, isn’t it? The one who runs like a little wood nymph”—and that provoked the kind of slightly derisive laughter that gritted Annia’s teeth. Servianus shook his head nearby.

“A disgrace,” he said, eyes fastened disapprovingly on Annia’s ankles. “Your father is far too indulgent. Girls of good birth should spend their days learning to manage a household! If this is how the daughters of Rome fill their hours—”

“On the contrary,” Emperor Hadrian said, and Annia’s eyes flew to him in surprise. He was surveying her too, not with Marcus’s expressionlessness or Pedanius’s hunger, but with a sort of objective approval. “The women of Sparta ran races to prove their fitness as the bearers of strong sons. The fleetest were prized as wives and mothers alike. Was that such a disgrace?”

“Sparta is not Rome, Caesar.”

“And Rome has always looked to the glories of Greece for improvement. Why not in the standards of our womanhood? I do not see disgrace here.” Hadrian leveled a finger at Annia. “I see a future mother of warriors.”

Annia bobbed another curtsy. “Caesar,” she managed to say, but felt pride in her like a warm bubble as Servianus’s chin jerked.
Take that, you old goat.

“That reminds me,” the Emperor murmured, his gaze sliding past Annia again. “I must speak with your father about you—if the steward will fetch him . . .”

Annia seized on his nod of dismissal, sliding her fingers through Marcus’s elbow. “Come with me,” she whispered, and stalked (swaggered, Aunt Sabina said she swaggered—did she?) out through the pillars of the atrium to the cool autumn night.

The air in the gardens was dark and lemon-scented from the numberless trees. Annia could see peacocks wandering, and more guests, but she didn’t pay attention. She just led Marcus around a dark hedge until she couldn’t see anyone, and then she turned and arched her back a little in that catlike way she’d seen the Empress do, feeling bold and reckless and altogether heady.

“So,” she said without preamble. “You don’t have to marry me.”

He started. “What?”

“You’ve been saying you were going to marry me as long as I can remember, but you’ve evidently changed your mind in the past year. Since you’re the honorable sort who wouldn’t break your word”—Annia forced herself to shrug—“I release you.”

Marcus’s mouth opened and closed for a moment. “I can’t talk about such a matter with you,” he said finally. “One talks about marriage with a girl’s father, not the girl herself.”

“And now you don’t have to talk with my father,” Annia said. “Never will. Free at last.”

“We shouldn’t be alone like this together, either,” he went on, eyeing her. “It’s not suitable.”

“What, the dress isn’t suitable?”

“Well, you could drop the hem. I can see all the way up to your ankles.”

“Empress Sabina says I have lovely ankles.”

“You do,” he bit off.

“Brine-Face said I looked like a whore.” Annia took a step closer, her heart thrumming. “What do you think?”

His face changed. “Pedanius said what?”

A shrug.

“He needs another lesson.” Marcus’s voice was clipped.

“What do you mean, a
lesson
?”

“We should go back inside.”

“So go,” she challenged. “You don’t owe me anything anymore, Marcus.”

He didn’t move. “You think I don’t want to marry you?”

“You haven’t spoken two words to me since you put on that toga! What was I supposed to think?”

He started to turn away. “I’m taking you back to your mother.”

“No,” said Annia, and she reached out and dragged his head down and kissed him. The first time she’d kissed him—at twelve, over a curse tablet—she’d mostly gotten his nose. This time her teeth scored his lip as their mouths clashed. She wouldn’t have been surprised to see blood by the time they pulled apart. His hands had found her waist, heating her skin through the silk, they were both trembling like leaves, and Annia’s blood roared so loud in her own ears she could hardly hear her own voice.

“I don’t care what your precious Stoics say,” she told him shakily. “Perfect control is boring.”

“You think I have any control at all?” His hands made fists in the silk at her back, and he yanked her against him. Annia felt the prickles of the hedge on one side, the movement of the night breeze on the other, but Marcus was long and warm and hard against the whole length of her, and he was growling something into her hair.

“I’ll tell you how much control I have, Annia Galeria Faustina. I got so angry that day we went to the games—”

“I know you did, I—”

“Shut up!” He gave her a little shake that somehow wrenched her onto her toes and closer up against him. “Not at you. At Pedanius Fuscus, because just the sight of him in the Colosseum made you so bitter and helpless. I went home early, and I counted all the money I had, and it wasn’t enough. So I sold my two slaves—I never touched them, and I never will because I sold them away, and the day after my manhood ceremony I went out and I hired thugs. The expensive kind who won’t get drunk and botch the job. And I hired them to beat Pedanius Fuscus to a pulp.”

“Marcus—”

“I told them to spoil his looks.” The words kept tumbling. “Because it’s what he had, that golden confidence and the looks and the birth to go with it. That’s what made people think he was a young emperor in the making. I told them to spoil his looks, take his confidence, because I thought maybe it would be enough to stop him from becoming Emperor. Hadrian’s as vain as Venus, he’d never choose a successor who looks ridiculous. An heir who can’t give a speech at the Rostra without lisping and spluttering? People would laugh. Hadrian’s too full of pride to pick an heir people would laugh at. At least I hope he is, because I fear for you if Pedanius Fuscus ever becomes Caesar. He hurt you once, and if he’s emperor no one will be able to stop him from doing it again. So
I
stopped
him
first.”

Annia’s throat was thick. She could hardly see Marcus’s face through the melting shadows; she didn’t know if he looked grim or exultant or despairing.
For me.
She reached up and touched his cheek, fresh-shaven and smelling of bath oil and the dye that edged his synthesis.
For me.

“You probably despise me because I should have beaten him up myself,” Marcus finished in a rush. “You would have done it yourself if you were a man. Well, I wanted to. I wasn’t even afraid to try. But I didn’t want to just
try
. I had to be sure—and I didn’t know if I could do it, with him so much bigger and more vicious. In the end, it was more important that he be put down, no matter who did it.

“So, if you want to know how much Stoic control I have,” he finished, “I’ll say it. None. I couldn’t stop thinking about Pedanius Fuscus till I’d put him in his bed with four broken ribs and a broken nose and all his teeth smashed in. And I can’t stop thinking about you at all. I can’t be
around
you at all. Just the smell of your hair, and I want to drag you off behind a hedge.”

“We are behind a hedge,” Annia whispered.

“That’s why I should take you back inside.”

But neither of them moved.

“I’m working,” Marcus whispered into her hair. “I’m working so hard—trying to be worthy. The kind of suitor fathers don’t laugh off, when you turn up and start talking betrothals when you’re nowhere near twenty. Lucius Ceionius says he might be able to get me an appointment as Prefect of the City, and that would be prestigious—I’d be a man on his way, a man with a career. I thought I could ask for you then. But I never stopped
planning
to ask for you.” His fists uncurled from her crumpled dress, one hand curving around her hip, the other sliding up her back. “I’ve been practicing the speech since I was twelve.”

Annia’s voice didn’t work for a moment. Then all she could say was, “How’s it coming along?”

“Fairly well.” His hand was winding deeper into her hair. “Do you want to hear it?”

“I’m going to hear it tonight anyway,” she whispered. “When you approach my father.”

“I’m too young and unestablished for a wife, he’ll never—”

“I’m an Amazon, Marcus. We do things differently. We don’t wait for our men.” Annia took his face between her hands again, yanking him down so close their lips brushed. “If you don’t ask for my hand, I’ll storm in there and ask for yours.”

They were kissing again, kissing and kissing, Marcus’s hands tangled deep through Annia’s hair, her fingers laced at his neck. “We should go in,” Marcus said, and began kissing his way across Annia’s throat.

“Right away,” she agreed, and discovered that she could stop his breath altogether just by nibbling along his ear.

“No, really.” He sounded a trifle strangled as he dropped his lips into the hollow of her collarbone, right where Aunt Sabina had massaged gold dust. “I really can’t take responsibility for what my hands are going to do if I ever get them untangled from your hair.”

“Promise you’ll ask my father tonight?” Annia pulled back just enough to catch Marcus’s eyes. “He won’t say no, he loves you like a son—” And now Marcus really
would
be a son, in a way. Gods, her parents were going to be so happy!
Not as happy as me
, Annia thought, and felt a bolt of pleasure clear down to her toes.

“Tonight.” Marcus pulled back, bumping his nose against hers, giving that smile that lightened his serious face like a shaft of sunlight. “It really is a good speech I prepared.”

They went on kissing for a while and then Marcus groaned. “We really
do
have to go!”

“One more kiss—”

“No, someone’s calling my name from inside!”

They disentangled fast and bolted for the atrium, sliding up the rear entrance into an empty anteroom beside the triclinium. They caught a glimpse of each other and burst into horrified giggles at the same time. “You’ve got gold dust on your lips,” Annia gasped. “Quick, use my hem to wipe—”

“Your hair has thorns in it—”

They pulled and tidied at each other in the deserted anteroom, kissed some more, yanked apart, and slid into the crowded atrium precisely ten heartbeats separate. Annia still thought anybody would be able to guess, looking at them, exactly what they had been doing. Marcus wore an enormous grin like a fool, and she guessed she did, too.
I am going to marry Marcus Catilius Severus. I am going to marry Marcus Catilius Severus . . .

An irked-looking steward found Marcus. “You are late,” he snapped. “The Emperor has summoned you. No time now to speak with him privately, he’s already begun his address—”

Marcus made disjointed apologies, and Annia put a hand up to cover her mouth and went sliding the other direction, through the throng of curious senators as the Emperor began one of his formal, graceful speeches. “Where have you been?” her mother whispered as Annia slid up to her side. “Your father has been trying to find you—one of the Imperial stewards was speaking to him about you. I hope you weren’t off sneaking unwatered wine again!” But her mother didn’t look overly cross; in fact, she was looking over Annia’s dress with approval. “Whatever did Sabina put you in? It’s rather dashing. Though your hair is a
mess
—”