Empress of the Seven Hills by Kate Quinn Page A

better. What’s your talent?”
    “I write poetry,” Hadrian confessed. “Elegies in the Greek style. And I have a certain skill for drawing, and I play the flute and the lyre. But I will never number among the great artists.”
    “Then you’ll have to find out your own destiny,” said Sabina. “Most of us do, I suppose.”
    “I already know what my destiny is,” Hadrian said matter-of-factly.
    She cocked her head, interested, but he had lifted a hand and summoned his own litter.
    “I fear I must leave you, Vibia Sabina—I would see you home, but I am to dine this evening with my sister and her husband Servianus.”
    “Lucius Julius Ursus Servianus?” Sabina asked. “I’ve met him.”
    “They say he is the most worthy man in Rome.”
    “I don’t like him either.”
    Hadrian laughed aloud, taking her hand and raising it to his lips. “What an interesting little thing you are,” he said, and Sabina no longer saw the sheen of boredom in his deep-set eyes.
    VIX
    I’ll admit I was nervous when I got a summons to Senator Norbanus’s house. “Hell,” I swore when I got the politely worded missive, handedover by a less polite slave. But I went. When a senator snapped his fingers in Rome, unemployed ex-slaves like me hopped like frogs.
    “I see you are doing well for yourself.” He eyed the silver chain about my neck, leaning back in his chair. Nothing had changed in the crowded study—the desk heaped with slates and tablets, the cheerful clutter, the shelves and shelves of scrolls. “Have you found any particular work as yet?”
    “Odds and ends, sir.”
    “I know what sort of odds and ends go on in that side of town. Not what your parents would hope for you, I’m sure.”
    An itch started to scratch between my shoulder blades, and I had to control the urge to twitch. Twitching looked guilty.
    “Sabina tells me you ran into a spot of trouble outside the Circus Maximus a few weeks ago.”
    Damn it.
I should have known that girl wouldn’t be able to hold her tongue. “No trouble, sir,” I lied. “Nothing at all.”
    “She said you handily saw off a pack of drunken thieves.”
    “She exaggerates.”
    “Rarely.”
    His dark eyes regarded me, thoughtful, and I had the feeling he was seeing clear through to the inside of my skull. A good many aristocrats could do that look, but his took the prize. He knew about the thugs, he knew about me kissing his daughter; he knew all the things I would have liked to do to his daughter given a little more time and a flat spot, and
Hell’s gates, Vercingetorix, this is not the time for any of those thoughts to be invading your thick head
. I averted my eyes over the senator’s ear, fastening them on a bust of somebody who might have been an emperor or maybe just a philosopher, and hoped my face wasn’t reddening. Red faces looked guilty.
    “I would like to offer you a place in my household guards.” The offer came so abruptly, I just blinked. “This is a quiet household, but we have occasional need of a guard at the gate. You would have a room here at the villa, your meals, three new tunics a year. And a salary.” He quoted it—a generous one.
    I breathed easier. He’d hardly be making me any sort of offer if heknew—“Why, Senator? Must be plenty of old soldiers who’d serve you better. I’ve never done any bodyguarding.”
    “I remember a twelve-year-old boy who stabbed an emperor in defense of his mother,” said Senator Norbanus. “What was that, if not bodyguarding?”
    “That was a long time ago.”
    “Six years. Endless, indeed.” His ink-stained fingers drummed the desk. “Bring a little of that verve to protecting my household, and I’ll be well pleased. I have an enemy or two who might be troublesome—not to kill me perhaps, but to prevent me from reaching the Senate house on the morning of some important vote. And my eldest daughter has a habit of wandering off to odd places. A strong arm at her back might be useful.”
    “Did she