Lady of the Eternal City (59 page)

“The Emperor,” she gasped, “there is a plot against the Emperor—I am his
niece
—”

But she didn’t look like an emperor’s niece, she looked like a beggar woman, and the Praetorian just chuckled. “And I’m Queen Cleopatra.”

Annia pivoted around the grip turning her elbow numb, bringing her free fist up in a clip that glanced off the guard’s forehead. “Let me
go
—”

The chuckles stopped, and her knees hit the marble with a slam that brought a howl of agony surging up her throat into the gate of her clenched teeth. A guard wrenched Vix’s
gladius
off her back. “Come for the Emperor armed, and you think we’ll let you through?”

The
gladius
was gone, and she had a hand at each elbow wrenching her arms out of her sockets and dragging her away, but Annia filled her lungs and screamed, “Marcus!”

Dear gods, please let him be alive.

Silence from the tiny moated villa, and for one horrific moment Annia envisioned him dead already, slumped beside Emperor Hadrian with a knife in his heart or poison curdling his veins. Dead, dead, and all her speed wasted.

“MARCUS!”

And he was there, coming quick and alarmed out of the tiny
tablinum
, tall and straight in his immaculate toga, which did not have one drop of blood on it. Not one, and Annia released a sob of relief. And then, joy. Because the Emperor was coming out behind him, Emperor Hadrian who had obviously been preparing for his bath because he was barefoot and stripped to a tunic. The Emperor, very irritated and very, very alive. “What is the meaning of this?” he demanded, and Annia saw herself as he must see her: a tall girl slumped between two Praetorians, made unrecognizable by mud and blood, lower than the lowest dirty slave in this entire gracious villa.

“Just a half-mad slave girl, Caesar,” one of the guards began, but Annia straightened as much as she could while hanging between them, and summoned Sabina’s Empress voice. That imperious ring of steel that could drop grown men to their knees. “I am your niece, Caesar, and I have come to bear witness to a plot against your life. Enacted by Gnaeus Pedanius Fuscus Salinator.”

“Absurd!” another voice harrumphed before the Emperor could do more than look puzzled, and Annia’s breath froze in her exhaustion-withered throat. Ancient Servianus, wizened as a turtle in his toga and waving an agate wine cup, came stumping out of the
tablinum
behind the Emperor—and he was leaning on the arm of his grandson. Pedanius’s eyes met Annia’s across the narrow moat that the Emperor had filled with Nile water in memory of his beloved. And Antinous’s killer blanched white.

“The girl slanders my grandson,” Servianus was trumpeting, and somehow Annia was being marched across the wooden footbridge by one of the Praetorians who still held her by the elbows. “She may come from a noble family but she is a known whore and liar—”

“It’s true,” Pedanius said quickly, eyes still darting over Annia in disbelief. Marcus was staring at her too, but she couldn’t rip her eyes from Pedanius, his hair glinting in the sunlight, his immaculate toga with its touches of Imperial purple. The same one he’d worn when Annia saw him enter her aunt’s atrium—dear gods, could it only be a few short hours ago? Not a drop of blood on him. Annia saw a sick flash of Empress Sabina clutching at her ravaged breast, and felt a wave of hatred so strong she nearly vomited.
I will rip you apart with my bare hands
, she had time to howl inside the furious confines of her own skull, even as another panicked part of her was shrieking,
Why, why is he here?
His plan had been to wait a safe distance away as the Emperor was killed, wait in conspicuous innocence for the news to arrive.

But the plan had gone wrong, and of course Pedanius wouldn’t have a plan in reserve. He’d just go running to the villa in a panic to see if Hadrian was dead yet. See if his grandfather had killed the Emperor. Because of course it was Servianus. Just because a man was ancient and withered didn’t mean he couldn’t kill.

But Hadrian wasn’t dead. Somehow he was still alive—and he was listening, however impatiently, as Annia was dragged to stand before him. “Caesar,” she said, and she swayed in her exhaustion like a spear-shot gazelle, but she had to make him believe her. “Caesar, I come from the Empress. Pedanius Fuscus has already made an attempt on her life, and now he has come to—”

“I have been here with you, Caesar,” Pedanius interrupted quickly. “I joined you and my grandfather while cousin Marcus here was making his report!” He clapped Marcus on the shoulder as though they were the best of friends. “Forgive me, but your niece lies. She has hated me ever since I refused to consider marrying such a dishonest slut, and she seeks to slander me—”

“I am not lying!” Annia shouted, even as Marcus said quietly, “She doesn’t lie.” But Servianus was thundering again, and the other Praetorian was presenting the Emperor with Vix’s
gladius
—“She came armed, Caesar”—and Pedanius was protesting his innocence at the top of his voice. “The ring,” Annia tried to shout, “he has Antinous’s
ring
, he killed Antinous—” but they drowned her out with their noisy outrage. Marcus was trying to defend her, and the Emperor was tapping his foot and clearly ready to have them all tossed out of his presence. Annia could have sobbed with fury. It was all for nothing: Pedanius Fuscus and his hateful grandfather stood there impeccable and virtuous in their pristine togas, and she was a filthy, lying barbarian of a girl. She might have unmanned Pedanius Fuscus, but she would never beat him—because the Emperor would never believe her.

Make him listen
, Vix had said.

The Praetorian’s grip on her arm had loosened. She was the Emperor’s niece, even if she was a lying slut, and he didn’t want to hold her too roughly. Besides, she was just a girl, and girls were no threat to anyone. She tore her elbow out of his hands and made a desperate lunge, barreling past Servianus. He reached for her and she batted him aside, knocking the agate wine cup from his hand and hearing it shatter on the marble. Twelve miles she had run, and yet it was the final twelve feet that mattered. Annia summoned the last breath in her chest, the last burst of strength in her body, the last drop of speed in her blood, and flung herself at Pedanius Fuscus. The Praetorians snatched at her, Servianus stretched out his arm, Pedanius twisted to get away, but they were all too slow. She came at him like a burst of desert wind and rammed the heel of her hand toward his broken mouth. Even as he dodged, her other hand darted snake-quick for the pouch at his waist. She tore it loose and hurled it toward the Emperor in one fluid motion. And prayed.

Please let him still have the ring.

The pouch seemed to fall slowly, bouncing at the Emperor’s feet. It fell, disgorging a rattle of small things: a few sesterces, a token for the bathhouse, a whetstone . . .

And a gold ring with a gleaming topaz.

Everything seemed to stop at the sight of that ring. Pedanius Fuscus opened his mouth, but his voice choked in his throat. Servianus’s ancient wattles quivered. Annia flung her head back and stared at the Emperor, her chest heaving like a bellows . . . And Hadrian stared, slowly turning wax-pale. He was still holding Vix’s
gladius
, which the Praetorians had stripped from Annia, but now he passed it to Marcus standing beside him and bent to gather the ring into his cupped hands. Annia had never heard such a silence.

Marcus broke it. “Caesar,” he said, and his voice was cool and quiet. “By the name Verissimus, the nickname of Truthful One which you yourself gave me, I bear witness that Pedanius Fuscus showed me that ring and swore he killed the man who wore it.”

“And I bear witness as well,” Annia rasped before Pedanius could ever,
ever
drown her out again. She strode forward over the lake of spilled wine from Servianus’s shattered cup, feeling the broken shards cut into her lacerated feet, but the pain was nothing. She crushed the broken pieces underfoot, striding blood-shod toward the Emperor, where she went to her knees before him. And somehow—around the roar of agony through her lungs and her feet and her whole pain-racked body—she found the right words. The words to make an emperor listen. “I bear witness for Empress Sabina, who this moment lies bleeding at the hand of Pedanius Fuscus, that this ring belonged to Antinous.”

Hadrian’s eyes dragged slowly from the ring. Annia could see the burning weight of his gaze like a heap of red-hot stones, as his head turned slowly toward his great-nephew.

Pedanius let out a snarl and made a panicked lunge.
To flee
, Annia thought from her knees, but he lunged toward Hadrian, not away. His hand flashed beneath his toga’s folds, and she saw the dagger appear in his fist. A dagger with a blood-dark blade, Empress Sabina’s blood dried to crusted streaks, and it scythed toward Hadrian. One lunge—perhaps Pedanius still thought he could win it all if he just swung fast enough. Perhaps he thought it was still possible: Emperor Gnaeus Pedanius Fuscus Salinator.

But the Praetorians shouted, yanking the Emperor back out of reach, thrusting their armored bodies in front of him, and Marcus darted forward to intercept the blood-dried
gladius
. “
Marcus
,” Annia screamed, trying to scramble to her feet, but her legs finally failed her, gave out useless and spent. She would never reach him, and the blade was coming down, and Pedanius’s face was a rictus scream of hatred. For the Emperor, or maybe just for the rival who had taken so much from him: the Salian priesthood, Hadrian’s favor, Annia herself.

Marcus unsheathed Vix’s
gladius
in one motion and brought it up in a swift ring of steel on steel. Annia had time to think how slight he looked against Pedanius’s overbearing bulk, and the bright blade slid away, disengaging from the blood-dark one and coming back in a short thrust. The Emperor himself had noted that Marcus had a quick wrist.

He spitted the would-be Emperor high between chest and shoulder. The same place Pedanius had stabbed Sabina.

Pedanius looked down at the blade, and the expression on his face matched his grandfather’s: utter disbelief. Surely the gods would never allow any harm to come to the golden boy, the prince of Rome, the future Emperor. Neither of them believed it, even when Pedanius stumbled two steps backward and lost his balance on the marble lip, falling with a splash into the Nile-green waters of the moat.

Only then did he scream.

Praetorians were jumping down into the water, Servianus was screeching something, and Hadrian limped forward, but Annia had eyes only for Marcus. He was standing like a granite statue, bloodied sword in hand, staring at the blood spreading in the roiling water. He looked numb, horrified, dumbfounded, and all at once he flowed to his knees. Annia crawled to him, putting her arms around his neck. He clung to her, his breath warm against her cheek, but his hands ice-cold. And he never let go of the
gladius
.

“I love you,” she whispered as they rocked back and forth on the lip of the moat, the world exploding around them in bloody confusion. Annia shut her eyes. Her body was empty of everything but pain and racked by violent shivers; she was suddenly freezing cold and felt every muscle stab like an individual blade—but Marcus was alive inside her arms. He was gripping her so hard she hurt even more, but that didn’t matter. She could have died right there, closed her eyes and happily just died.

“Caesar!” The harsh shout of a Praetorian, grating against Annia’s ears. “Caesar, what do you want to do with this one?”

Annia felt Marcus shudder in her arms. They both looked up to see Pedanius Fuscus sagging in the water between two Praetorians, blood coursing down his chest. He suddenly looked like a child to Annia’s eyes—bewildered, wet, no more dangerous than a half-drowned rat. Yet he had almost killed the Emperor. Might have killed Empress Sabina.
And we know he killed—

“Antinous.” The Emperor’s voice was husky. He was still gazing at the topaz ring in his hand.

The Praetorian waist-deep in the water shook Pedanius back and forth like a bundle of bloody rags. “He’ll live if we bandage him, Caesar. Long enough for a cell and a sword.”

Servianus moaned, crashing to his knees. Pedanius stared up at the Emperor, chin quivering. He let out a choked sob, but Annia could not summon one drop of pity.
You killed Antinous
, she wanted to scream, still shuddering with that paralyzing cold, and now that Marcus and Hadrian were safe, her mind was full of the golden boy she had loved since she was a child.
You killed Antinous.

“Why?” said the Emperor, and Annia thought it too.
Why?

Pedanius opened his mouth, but the only thing to come out from between his broken teeth was a line of spittle as he hunted for words. “Grandfather wanted it,” he finally said, and Servianus let out another moan. “And I—I didn’t like that Bithynian he-bitch. He was just a whore, and he swatted me on the ear like a slave. I was supposed to be
Emperor
, and he—” It occurred to Pedanius all over again that he was never going to be Emperor now, and the tears started running down his cheeks.

Now he believes it
, Annia thought, and still she felt no pity. Even as she watched him weep.

“Shall I haul him out, Caesar?” the Praetorian asked. Pedanius sobbed, and his grandfather clasped his gnarled hands and began begging for mercy. Annia looked up at the Emperor, at those deep-set eyes glittering with tears. Looked at the extraordinary mix of hatred and grief, vindication and vengeance that rippled over that immobile face.

“Drown him,” said Hadrian.

A fierce shudder went through Annia as the guards thrust Pedanius screaming and struggling down into the water of the Nile. He managed a final scream, and then his madly jerking head was thrust under the surface. Servianus was tearing at his own hair, mouth working in soundless agony. Annia felt her muscles spasm in a violent jerk as she watched, not knowing if it was relief or disgust, joy or plain exhaustion. All she knew was that she could not look away.
I owe him that
, she thought, though she couldn’t say which
he
she meant. The dead and beautiful Antinous? The enemy who had told her to get on her knees and call him Caesar? Caesar himself, or Marcus, who held her so desperately tight?