Chapter 2

In the days that followed, Emma did her best to prove to her parents that they had nothing to fear. She knew she had overstepped her bounds by insisting that her father purchase the slaves' freedom, and yet all the while as she watched the spectacular conclusion to the gladiatorial games, the victors laureled and adored and the losers dragged out while boys in bronze collars shoveled sand over the bloodstains, all she could think of was how good that it wasn't them. At the feast afterward in their villa on Palatine Hill, as garum and olive oil and salt and wine and fine white loaves and nuts and cheeses were passed among the couches and torches flickered in the warm summer night, the wind blowing away the stench of the insulae, the commoners' apartments,crowded in the city center. Despite herself, she couldn't help but wonder where the slaves were boarded, and how they bided. Her mother had refused to have them in the house, but nor could they be left to their own devices among the others. I have put them in an impossible situation. Deprived the emperor of his carefully crafted revenge, possibly drawn unwanted attention to her and her family's loyalty among the bitterly competitive and cutthroat world of the Forum, and with no good reason to think she'd saved the men's lives for anything more than a few days. I should have just let them die. They are nothing to me. Or perhaps –

"Emma?" Her father's voice interrupted her grim preoccupations, and the sweet music of the cithara. "Emma, there's. . . there's someone I'd like you to meet."

Startled, and knowing by his tone that it was not merely anyone, she rose, straightened her drapes anxiously, and inclined her head. Indeed, not just anyone. She recognized the man standing beside him at once: most high-ranking bureaucrats wore purple-edged togas, but this one wore one embroidered richly with gold. It was his nickname, Aurum, though that was always whispered behind his back To his face they called him by his name, Gaius Flavius Cassianus, Consul and Commander of the Praetorian Guard – one of the most shadowy and powerful men in the entire empire, rumored to traffic in all kinds of esoteric and occult sorcery. Not a hardened legionnaire, but a slight, unprepossessing man who walked with a limp, he did not look like the sort to strike instant fear into everyone's hearts, but his patronage system was unparalleled throughout the empire. Everyone in Rome and possibly abroad, no matter how important, was his client; it was whispered that Emperor Hadrian himself owed him a favor. In many real ways, this was the man who controlled the crown, and he was here at their villa for. . .?

Emma swallowed down a sudden nervousness, and held out her hand. "Emma Julia Aurelia, Consul. It is an honor."

"No, dearie. The honor is mine." He pressed her fingers to his lips in a brief, dry kiss. "May I be permitted to present my son? Gaius Baelius Cassianus, at your service."

Oh. Emma understood what this was about an instant too late, as a young man with dark curly hair and a crooked smile, six or seven years older than her, stepped forward as well and offered half a bow. "At your service," he echoed, pressing her hand to his lips. "I've heard a great deal about the praetor's daughter. Is it true you stole a chariot once?"

Emma opened her mouth in outrage, intending to demand how in Jupiter's name that was a fit way to begin a conversation. But he was grinning again; clearly he had intended that to be funny, and when she glanced around for their respective fathers, she noticed that David and Gaius Flavius had conveniently melted into the crowd. "I was seventeen," she said stiffly. "And I didn't steal it. What has that to do with anything, Cassianus?"

"Please. Call me Bae. Everyone does." Another of those lopsided grins. He glanced around. "Splendid gathering. Can I offer you a drink?"

"I suppose," Emma said tightly. She didn't like being set up. What was more, her mind was sifting quickly through the countless reams of gossip, trying to match the name with the reputation. Like his father, word had it that Gaius Baelius was not precisely the most upstanding model of a citizen: that he was charming but untrustworthy, that he used his sinecure as a provincial customs collector to pocket profits intended for Hadrian's purse, that he held wild revels for Bacchus and Dionysus with his gang of friends (the Lost Boys, they were called) and more. But to sack a corrupt bureaucrat in the imperial administration would only result in replacing him with a more corrupt one, and as no one wanted all the dirty little secrets controlled by the Cassianii to come out, everyone, as a rule, looked the other way. Even her, she supposed. No matter how smooth-tongued he was or how many drinks he offered her or if he wanted her to call him Bae, the fact remained (she was now well aware) that their fathers were planning, or at least thinking about, arranging a marriage. The consul's son and the praetor's daughter: eminently suitable, powerful, practical. And yet, the thought was not one for pleasure in the least.

Still more, she was well aware that she had just spent all her denarii, so to speak, on cadging her father to buy the slaves. If this had caused them any loss of prestige, any suspicion of their loyalty, it was likely to be incumbent on her to make up for it, and hence marry Baelius. Regina was not likely to be of much use; her step-grandmother had constantly clashed with her parents about the best way to raise her, then finally retreated with the poisonous agreement that doubtless they knew best. Furthermore, Regina and Gaius Flavius, Aurum, were rumored to have a past of their own. It remained to be seen whether she would want that power within her reach, or as far away from her as possible. But Regina had inexplicably taken her side in buying the slaves, had been watching one the way Emma had watched the other. . .

She was not able to feel comfortable the rest of the night, off her footing and unsure what was going to happen to her, as if her fate was being decided by two powerful men far out of her control. She'd never thought to hope for much else; Roman society was a monument to man, to the proper order of things, to the emperor and the gods and the army, from the senator and praetor in the forum to the slave and gladiator in the arena. The woman was veiled, in the household, out of sight, unspoken of; a scant century or two ago, she would have been called only by her father's name, not even given the courtesy of her own. But if there was anything at all she had learned from Regina, it was that a woman could still fight to carve out a place, to strike back and state that this was who she was, and be prepared to face unending scorn and censure for doing so. And slowly, without noticing, Emma herself had started to want it.

This goes nowhere, she reminded herself. She could not defy her father and the Cassianii and perhaps even the emperor himself without destroying everything around them. She had her duty to think of. She had to save her family, save them all.

Didn't she?

David was gone on his usual business before dawn the next morning, leaving the household more or less in peace, and Emma went down to the gardens, where she often enjoyed walking or spending time to clear her head. She wondered how long she should play along with her parents' pretext that she was unaware of their plans, if she should try to recruit Regina as an ally, or if she should overlook her instincts and simply trust Gaius Baelius would prove to be, if not an outstandingly meritorious, at least moderately suitable husband for her. But she'd always had a sense of people, an ability to judge whether or not they were lying – or thought she had, at any rate. She no longer felt certain of anything, as if the world had changed and shifted from beneath her feet at the moment she had opened her mouth and demanded the men's freedom.

She sank down on a bench among the flowering bushes, pulling her woolen stola close against the morning chill. On the hill below her, the city was wakening to life, and she felt a sudden sharp dissatisfaction with the strictly limited borders of her world, the narrow horizons. If she could have pulled it apart brick by brick, she would have. She did not want to be the dutiful daughter, the veiled wife. Had no idea how to start, much less carry through, but –

"Ave."

Emma, having had no idea that anyone else was present in the gardens with her, jolted and started to her feet, whirling around. What she laid eyes on was nothing to soothe her racing heartbeat. Standing under the olive and fig trees, so quietly that he could have been there for the gods knew how long without her knowing, was none other than the Hibernian slave – or slave no more, she supposed – Killian. Deprived of the right to wear a toga, to which only Roman male citizens had claim, he was clad in a white loincloth, a leather-and-bronze manica on his right arm, and cross-gartered sandals, lean and sun-brown and carved of weathered muscle, dark-furred chest and tousled black hair and burning blue eyes. But what was he doing? Did he have a death wish? Coming on her alone like this – no barbarian could be trusted, was barely above the level of a beast, and if he tried –

"What are you doing here?" she stammered.

He smiled. "Praying." His Latin was still rough and oddly accented, but perfectly understandable; she had a sense he learned quickly. "Even slaves are still men."

"Aye, but here – " Emma glanced around again. "If someone saw you – this is the family's private quarters, you aren't – "

Killian raised one dark eyebrow. Then he reached up, plucked a fig, and calmly ate it in two bites before her stunned gaze. "You saw that, my lady," he remarked. "Summon the centurions."

Emma opened her mouth, then shut it. He shrugged, then nipped off an olive.

"No!" She took a step forward. "Who do you pray to, anyway? The god of madmen?"

"The god of the sea." He held up a crude wooden figure. "Manannán mac Lir. To the Tuatha Dé, to the goddess Danu. To all the folk of my people."

Emma hesitated, unsure what to say. Imperial religious policy was fairly tolerant; as long as citizens made sacrifices to the emperor and to Roma and paid their taxes, no one cared whatever other gods they offered worship to. She had a feeling, however, that Killian did no such thing. Then again, he is no citizen. Just a man very far from home, a sword, a slave, meant to die in the great spectacle of the gladiatorial games, saved only by her inconvenient interference. As she stood there, she had the oddest feeling that he was reading her like the pages of an open scroll, as if nothing about what she thought or felt was secret from him. She had to put up walls, reestablish their distance somehow, but she could not think how. "I don't – "

"Where are my manners?" He tucked the figurine away. "We haven't been properly introduced. Killian mac Dáithí, at your service. And you would be Emma Julia Aurelia, the praetor's daughter. Who bought me free. So, then. I've come to hear your price."

"Price?" She should have taken a step away, two, three, should have turned and fled the garden at that very moment, but instead she stayed, and so her fate was sealed. "What makes you think you could afford it?"

He stared at her, evidently caught completely off guard for a moment, then grinned. It was a slow, considered, genuinely open smile, one that went on far longer than was considered proper and decorous for a nobleman to smile at any woman he was not husband or father to, far less a slave. It made heat rush to Emma's cheeks – and to other, unexpected places. This was far too dangerous, and he had been far too familiar. Now, now she had to tell him to leave if he wanted to keep his head, but she still couldn't get the words out.

"Brave lass," he said approvingly, glancing her up and down. "Spirited. So then. I don't owe my life to anyone, man or woman. Tell me what you think it's worth, and I'll pay."

"You – you're a slave." Emma clenched her fists. "You have nothing."

"Aye," he said. "Almost nothing." And grinned again.

She felt as if she'd turned molten, plunged into the mountain of fire that had erased Pompeii and Herculaneum almost fifty years ago, as it suddenly struck her what he was insinuating. By all rights she should have slapped him then and there, but her feet were still moving her closer, until they stood no more than a furlong apart in the cool shadows of the orchard, the morning sun splintering brilliant through the trunks. Until she could smell the husky, earthy scent of him; he looked remarkably clean for a slave forbidden access to the public baths of the city. Or was he a freedman now? Not wanting to remind her father, she'd not asked him about the slaves, whether they'd been freed or merely taken into household service. David had said he did not trust them to guard him, but clearly he'd kept them close enough that one of them could find himself here in the family's private gardens. Or perhaps –

"Come now, my lady." Killian's smirk turned crooked, dark, devilish. "I doubt we have all day."

"I – no." Emma took another step back. "If we were seen – both of us, we'd – "

"Well then," he murmured, their faces close enough by now that she could feel the heat of his breath on her cheek. "We just won't be seen, will we?"

She looked up into his face, his eyes dancing with mockery, clearly expecting that she wouldn't dare to do it, that she'd have a mind for propriety and decency and modesty, everything that a well-born Roman woman should be. That she would not actually touch him, a man so far beneath her as to be the dust beneath her dainty slippers; she was a woman who could command his death with a flick of her finger, an ill-spoken word. He must be mad after all to be making this wager, or simply a man who thought that his life was worth very little and he cared not whether it was taken from him. After being freed from the arena, perhaps he thought he was living on borrowed time and intended to go out in a blaze of glory – seducing the praetor's daughter beneath their very noses, force his enemies to acknowledge his existence as a man even if only to take it from him. As they had already taken his wife, his home, his freedom. Small wonder he thought he had nothing left to lose.

And yet.

He knew nothing about who he had chosen to challenge.

Emma stepped forward, put her hands on his broad shoulders, closed her eyes, and kissed him.

She had never kissed a man before, and for a brief instant, everything felt strange and unnatural – the sensation of his mouth on hers, the scratching of his unshaven stubble against her cheek, the taste of salt, the heat of him, the solidness, the closeness. But then he inhaled sharply through his nose – he clearly had never, not in a thousand years, expected her to do it – and his hand came up as if to cradle her head, tangle in her unbound hair, press her closer. Then she was moving in as well, opening her lips, a wetness and a deepness and a scrape of teeth, as his tongue took her in a way she had never known a tongue was meant to, she heard him emit a deep grunt, as she curved into the angle of his body, as his hand traced the line of her spine through the fine cloth of her chiton, as they turned their heads and stole a breath from wet parted lips and then kissed again, harder, harder, until the word seemed barely sufficient to encompass it, until she was tangled and wedged against him, nearly between his legs, and realizing in mortified astonishment that the loincloth hid very few pertinent features of the male anatomy (she'd seen naked slaves before, she knew, but not like this –) and not wanting to stop, still not wanting to stop, though her head was thrown back and his hot mouth was starting to work from hers to her cheek, to the underside of her jaw, down the column of her neck. Her hands cradled his head, she could hear the noises they were making – downright carnal, beyond all bounds or expectations of decency and decorum. But she couldn't – she couldn't – she –

Had to put a stop to this, and immediately, before she threw herself away. It felt like cutting herself in half, but she did. She jerked back and heaved a breath as if she had just been saved from drowning, hauled out of a storm at sea. Their foreheads were still resting together, their noses brushing. "Enough," she croaked. "Enough."

He stared at her with eyes gone blank with shock, as if unable to believe that she had called his bluff so resoundingly. Then he pushed away, almost violently, and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. "My lady," he said. "My lady, I should. . ."

Emma watched him, trying to recover herself. "Is the debt settled?"

"More than." He smiled again, so sadly that it hurt her. "I'll keep and cherish that until they come for me. Which I suppose they must."

That jolted her. "Why?"

Killian's unsettlingly blue gaze held hers, unblinking. "You're going to tell them."

"Shall I?" She lifted her chin, staring back. Gods, how she wanted nothing more than to kiss him again. To run her fingers over the white scar on his cheek, to ask him about Hibernia, to taste the freedom she had been so sorely lacking, to defy everyone who thought to control her and contain her, to blow unleashed like the wind and the wrath and the Furies. But if she did, she would never stop, and she had sense enough to know what an impossible dream it was. "Wouldn't you like to know who I am?"

His intent expression never wavered. "Perhaps I would."

Emma turned away. It was late enough by now that she'd have been missed up at the house, and the last thing, the last thing, she needed was for them was to come looking for her and keeping consort in the company of a slave, of this slave. She didn't answer him, instead keeping her head down and climbing the terraced steps back toward the villa, sharply aware of her heart pounding beneath her breastbone, the weakness in her knees, the sweatiness of her palms, and above all, the thought forcing its way into her head and refusing to be denied:

She knew exactly why she had saved him.