Free Lady of the Eternal City by Kate Quinn Page A

ponderously, “adopted the young men of his own family as sons as well as heirs, training them in his image—”
    “Yes,” Faustina murmured. “And didn’t
that
work out well.”
    “Nevertheless—”
    Hadrian was looking irked, Sabina saw. Everyone else kept silent, but Servianus went blathering on.
Shut up, you old idiot.
    “If you would adopt young Pedanius Fuscus, Caesar, you would discover for yourself his worth. High spirited, healthy—”
    “I will give the matter of an heir my attention,” Hadrian snapped. “In due course.”
    The pretty page boy in the corner whistled softly. Not at them, Sabina noted—at a slave girl who had silently entered to refill the water jug.
To a slave boy, all this Imperial drama is nothing more than background noise.
But Hadrian heard the whistle and gave the boy another glance as Imperial secretary Suetonius came to the couch with a murmur. “Forgive me, Caesar, a dispatch from Rome . . .”
    Hadrian broke the seal in a sharp movement, his bad mood expanding like a storm cloud, billowing almost visibly through the triclinium. Servianus wagged his head sadly. “In my day—”
    “Even in your day,” Sabina said, “surely it was no courteous thing to pester one’s Emperor with trivia.”
    “The matter of an Imperial heir is not
trivia
, Lady. A woman’s understanding—”
    “I said the matter would be settled when I wish it settled.” Hadrian held out his cup to one side. “Wine.”
    The red-haired page was still ogling the slave girl with her water jug.
    “
Wine!
” the Emperor barked, and the boy looked startled. He scurried to the couch with another nervous titter.
Don’t laugh
, Sabina had time to think.
No one laughs in Hadrian’s presence unless he’s telling the joke
— But the thought was a mere flash, as Hadrian turned in a sudden motion and struck the boy. Not with a closed fist, but with the sharp stylus he had used to break the seal on Suetonius’s dispatch.
    The slave screamed. The sound tore through the triclinium, cutting off Servianus’s droning and the soft rustle of the fans. Sabina saw blood splash, bright and shocking against the tiles. The boy doubled over, his scream dying off into a whimper. Sabina’s mind was still frozen on the sight of the red droplets falling so vividly on the mosaic tiles, but she found herself moving, off her couch and past Suetonius, who clutched his scrolls gray-faced. Sabina reached the slave boy, crouched beside him. “Let me see—” And she wished she could unsee, because his eye was ruined and blind, oozing onto his cheek. The other eye fixed with dulled horror on the Emperor, and Sabina felt the same horror on her own face when she looked at her husband.
    Hadrian stared down at the moaning slave boy, and Sabina saw none of his usual masks. Just a strange blank excitement, and something in the bright gaze that heaved and shuddered like a subterranean creature trying to be born. She had seen the same look on his face four years ago, when he ordered Vix to bring him four heads—and on a few other occasions since then, which she mostly preferred not to think about.
    The Emperor gave a small shiver and then he blinked, and as quickly as that, it was gone. He stretched out a hand in a curiously precise movement and dropped the bloodied stylus. Everyone watched it fall, and then Faustina’s hands flew to her mouth with a small sound of nausea and the thickened silence broke.
    “You have an irritating laugh, young man,” Hadrian told the slave in an absent voice, “but I suppose it didn’t warrant blinding. What may I give you in compensation?”
    “My eye,” the boy whimpered behind the wad of cloth Sabina was holding to his bleeding socket. “My
eye
—”
    “You want your eye back? That, I’m afraid, is beyond even an emperor’s powers.” Hadrian snapped his fingers for Suetonius; he had to snap twice before the stunned secretary looked up. “Take him away.”
    Sabina spoke without thinking.