‘I gave him the poppy tears, yes.’
‘So he lied to protect the boy?’ asked her father. He lifted the scroll by its sides and passed it to the scribe.
Atia nodded. ‘An honourable thing to do.’
‘You sound as though you favour him,’ her father said, arching a brow.
‘I merely observe him,’ Atia said. She felt his gaze burrow into her.
‘Then you would agree that his physical conditioning does not match his vocation?’
Atia beat back a blush. The man’s lithe, muscular form brought to mind the hero Achilles—all taut muscle and long-limbed grace. Atia nodded.
‘Do you believe him to be a rebel?’ her father asked.
‘It is possible,’ said Atia, aware that any denial would betray bias, ‘though he seemed too concerned with the well-being of his nephew to harbour greater motives.’
‘You trust too easily, Atia, but that has always been one of your flaws.’
‘Yes, Father.’
‘We must be vigilant if we wish to wipe out these rebels completely. Hadrian is depending on our success.’
Emperor Hadrian and Atia’s father had come from the same gens of Spanish immigrants, along with former Emperor Trajan. As Hadrian had risen through the political ranks he had elevated Atia’s father along with him and the two had become commanders together in Emperor Trajan’s Dacian campaigns.
When Emperor Trajan died and Hadrian took the purple, Atia’s father had worked tirelessly to make Hadrian’s enemies disappear.
As the news of the executions flooded into the dining rooms of Palatine Hill, Atia had been careful to appear surprised. ‘Who would do such a thing?’ she always replied.
But she knew who would do such a thing, for she had seen the bloodstains on her father’s toga and the black look in his eye as he sneaked through the kitchen late at night. And when she passed by his doorway in the darkest hours, he had spoken the names of the doomed in his sleep—four Senators, along with a handful of their closest men, executed without trial. Murdered.
‘I have some disappointing news,’ her father had told Atia towards the end of the killings. She had been sitting in one of his client chairs much like she was now, his large ebony desk sprawling before him like a black pool. ‘I am afraid your husband’s ambition became threatening to the Emperor.’
‘My husband?’
When her father retrieved her third husband’s finger from the drawer of his desk, she had carefully concealed her horror.
‘He was a traitor,’ her father had explained. He had tugged her late husband’s jade ring from its severed digit and held it in the air. Then he had placed the ring on his own finger. ‘He was disloyal. Unlike you, Atia.’
Loyalty. Utter, unquestioning loyalty. It was what Hadrian demanded of her father and what her father demanded of her. So when a rebellion erupted in Rome’s newest province of Arabia Petraea, Atia had gone along to aid her father however she could. Of course she had. Her father was Emperor Hadrian’s man and she was her father’s daughter.
Now her father studied her closely. ‘I sent for you, but you did not come straight away. Why?’
‘Father?’
‘You lingered outside this very tablinium before entering.’
‘Ah, yes. I was smelling the roses.’
Her father cocked his head. ‘I have never known you to enjoy the fragrance of flowers.’
‘I was simply wondering if Arabian roses smell differently than Roman ones,’ she stated, but he seemed not to hear her.
‘Is there anything else I need to know about the interrogation? Anything the man may have said? Think carefully.’
Atia paused. She did not wish to condemn the camel trainer, but if she tried to conceal the strange comment he had made, she would have to hope for the rest of her life that her father did not discover it. He began to tap his fingers gently against his desk. The green glint of her late husband’s ring caught Atia’s eye. Loyalty, she thought.
Utter and unquestioning.
‘He asked me if I knew who he was.’
Her father ceased his tapping. ‘And?’
‘And he quickly changed the subject, so I did not pursue it. Better he think I did not perceive the revelation.’
Her father sat back in his chair. ‘Perhaps I have taught you something after all,’ he said. He motioned to Commander Plotius and whispered something in the tribune’s ear. Atia felt the blood leaving her limbs. She knew that she had just condemned the camel man to some wicked punishment.
The man who had offered her his ghutrah and made her laugh.
The man who had called her beautiful.
‘Consider it done, Governor,’ said Plotius, who cut her a glance before marching from the office with terrifying purpose.
Four drops, she thought. She would put four poppy tears into her cup tonight, not just three.
‘Are preparations complete for tonight’s banquet?’ her father asked.
‘Yes, Father.’ She glanced briefly at his leg.
‘You doubt my fitness to attend?’
‘Not at all.’
‘The injury is nothing. The doctor says it will heal in a month.’
‘So you still plan to journey to Rekem in the autumn?’ she asked him, though all she could think of was the camel man. What would Plotius do to him? And what of the camel man’s young nephew? He was only eleven years old.
‘Of course I shall journey to Rekem in the autumn,’ said her father.
Rekem, located far to the south, was the most important city in the province. As the new Governor, her father owed it an official visit. ‘The business of Empire waits for no man,’ he added. ‘My injury changes nothing.’
‘And the camel man’s nephew?’ Atia asked with careful uninterest. ‘Shall I question him further?’
‘What you really wish to know is if I will release him,’ said her father.
Atia gave a shy nod. ‘Sometimes I think you know me better than I know myself.’
‘You have always had a weakness for children. Understandable—since you were never able to produce your own.’
‘Yes, Father.’ She braced herself for what always followed.
‘If only your husbands had wanted you more.’ The rest of the statement he left unsaid, though it haunted the air like a ghost. If only you had been more desirable to them.
He closed his eyes and the silence spread out between them. ‘I will release the boy,’ he said at last.
‘You are merciful, Father.’
‘Merciful, yes, but not foolish. There is a condition.’
‘What condition?’
Her father’s face split with a jackal’s grin.
‘He wishes for you to apologise,’ the woman said. Her voice was as smooth as a dune.
Rab coughed and attempted to sit up. ‘Excuse me, but