Chapter One
CHAPTER ONE
Imperial Palace, Ravenna
Fifteen Years Later
Julia Augusta, daughter of the late Theodosius the Great, cracked an eye at the blazing, pernicious dawn shining through the window and immediately shut it again.
There had been opium in the wine last night. Julia knew, both from the peachy glow that had transformed her triclinium into a gleaming wonderland and the viciously pounding headache that was now pulverizing her skull. She had known what the Blue Lotus would do to her in the morning and she hadn’t cared. A grave miscalculation.
She was lying on her bed, her head pillowed on the soft, breathing stomach of her best friend Verina, the niece of Rome’s most illustrious general. Her limbs splayed across the torso of a Senator’s son. Several others slept tangled in the huge bed, and on the cushion-strewn couches, and on the floor.
“Verina?” she murmured.
“Mmmfff,” came the reply.
Julia sat up. The sun streaming through the courtyard stabbed at her eyes; even the water trickling in the impluvium fountain aggravated her pounding head. Her elegant bedroom was in extravagant disarray: wine spilled on white marble, couches overturned, and cushions scattered in the wreckage of last night’s bacchanal. All around lay the sleeping bodies of the young and decadent of Ravenna: sons and daughters of Senators and statesmen, philosophical luminaries and handsome stage actors, most in a state of undress that would appall their parents. A man in a satyr costume sprawled on a saffron couch, drooling into a silken cushion. The miasma of stale wine in the air was thick enough to intoxicate all over again.
Julia pushed a hank of sweaty red hair out of her face and pulled a swath of near-transparent silk up over her breasts. It barely concealed her gilded nipples. The crown she had worn last night as Queen of the Maenads, Mistress of Revelries, was somehow still on her head and decidedly askew. Beside her, Verina curled up around another cushion, pulling the same silk over her own shoulders. It appeared to be a curtain yanked down from one of the windows. Images of last night came intruding on her thoughts—the music, the mad dancing, the opium in the wine. Julia shut her eyes. She needed a bath. A bath, then a drink, in that order.
A shrill voice sliced through her skull. “Julia Theodosia Augusta Filia.”
Julia winced. It was Olympius, her late father’s favored minister, standing in the doorway. He wore his usual joyless cassock, his expression drawn into the sour frown of a man constantly smelling his own foul scent.
“Dismiss your friends, Augusta.” His gaze flicked over the piles of half-naked, slumbering bodies with bone-deep disgust. “You and I must talk.”
Julia sighed heavily. She had known this was coming.
“You heard the man,” she said grandly to the still-slumbering group. Slowly her friends hauled themselves up and stumbled around for their clothes. Verina righted herself reluctantly, with a look of supreme annoyance at Olympius.
“I’ll find you later,” Verina whispered. “After you’ve had his blood cleaned off the floor.”
Julia smirked. At a signal from her, an army of soft-footed servants entered and began discreetly putting the room to rights. Julia maintained an air of casual unconcern, watching the blotchy red spread from the man’s face to his neck. By the time the group had thinned out, she was fairly certain Olympius would burst a vessel.
“I hardly expected to find you so improperly dressed this late in the day.”
Julia stood with as much dignity as she could muster, wrapping a robe around herself as if it were an empress’s gown. She was very aware of what he saw—her red hair trailing down her back, the smeared black kohl ringing her eyes. The gilded nipples under the silk. But the way his face flamed, she rather thought he was at the disadvantage.
Since the age of fifteen, she’d been aware of the effect she had on men; she was not above using it to make an uptight zealot uncomfortable. And she would walk over hot coals before she would let Olympius think he had any power to discomfit her . Julia had been playing this game for a long time, and the first rule was to never let him see her rattled.
Despite the vicious pounding in her head, she maintained an air of casual ease as she sauntered over to one of the couches. “On the contrary. Receiving guests in this manner is all the fashion now.” Of course, one wouldn’t expect you to know that went unsaid. She gave him a cutting smile; with Olympius, she kept everything transparent and sharp as glass. “Please.” She gestured to the lumpiest sofa, the one the satyr had been drooling on. “Sit.”
Olympius settled onto the saffron-yellow sofa. He’d gotten thin since her father’s death, his already-lean features edging toward gaunt. His eyes had always bulged; now they seemed to fairly pop out of his face.
Her chamber slave, Agathe, arrived with a pitcher of the low-quality wine from the Vatican Hill that had been foisted upon her last week. It flowed red into Olympius’s cup.
“You were missed last night at the mass for your father.”
“I spent forty nights at vigil.” Forty nights bending knee to stone in the dusty basilica, and she’d die if they made her do it for one more miserable hour. “I cannot imagine what else you want from me.”
“It is not what I want from you, Augusta. It is what is best for the realm.” His frown deepened. “When your brother ordered you to keep to your rooms when not in the basilica, he meant for you to be at prayer with your women. Not involved in—clandestine orgies with Ravenna’s most degenerate. By now everyone will know that last night, instead of attending the mass for your father, you hosted a party at which there was opium, prostitutes, men dressed as satyrs, and the lowest kind of debauchery.”
Julia let out an elaborate sigh. How could the headache throb so hard behind only one eye? “There was only one satyr, if you must know.” His gaze, she noticed, had drifted distinctly south of her neck. She raised a cool brow. “Does it keep you up at night, Olympius, contemplating my debauchery ?”
His face darkened to purple. “Since your father’s death, you have embarked in a headlong descent into depravity,” he said stiffly. “Spending time with people below your station, reading and discussing the works of the philosophers with men . You take opium, become inebriated, and have had at least one very public affair.” He drew a swath of parchment out of his robes and rattled it in his hand. “Your brother has entrusted me to give you this—”
Fear and fury shot through her. Honorius. “Give me that.” Julia snatched the letter and unrolled it with undue haste. Two words stood out like they’d been excised in gold leaf. Treason and exile .
“Read it,” Olympius said. “Aloud.”
Julia drew a breath. “‘It is hereby decreed that any exhibition of debauchery, consumption of wine, fraternization with those below her social class, reading of unseemly tracts of literature, or the ingestion of opium on the part of the emperor’s sister shall be considered an act of treason against the Augustus himself.’” The paper crinkled where she gripped it. “‘Punishable by exile to—to Pandateria.’”
Her eyes darted to the bottom of the page. She knew she would see it there, but she still felt its presence like a physical blow. Her brother’s seal.
* * *
By the time he reached Ravenna, Alaric of the Goths was goddamn sick of the swamp.
You didn’t see Ravenna from far off, like Rome. You trudged through the swamp, soaking in your own sweat, pushing horse carts out of muddy tracks, suffering the heat and the flies, until suddenly there it was. Thick walls coated in grubby plaster, the underlying brick exposed in long cracks. A rotten tooth in a rotten mouth.
His big black horse, Hannibal, tossed his head and dislodged a fly the size of a fat raisin. Alaric twisted in his saddle to look down the line. Fifty hand-picked warriors at his back, and beyond them, armor flashing in the trees and generally failing at stealth, lurked half a cohort of Roman soldiers. They’d been keeping a close eye since the campagna and hadn’t offered a shred of help with the carts.
Even so, he was in uncommonly good spirits.
“What the hell are you smiling about? You’ve led us down into the Empire’s stinking arsehole.” His second-in-command, Ataulf, raised a forearm to wipe sweat off his brow. “That invitation is a trap. How many times do I have to say it?”
“You don’t have to say it.” Ataulf had been singing this song all the way from the mountains. “I know.”
Fifteen years it had been since Stilicho had sent Alaric down into that canyon to die. Alaric had persuaded the foederati to turn on the Romans, and then had come war and savagery, two failed attempts to carve a homeland out of the Empire’s stinking carcass. After the second time—the doomed siege at Milan—his people had fallen upon Greece and Dacia, staying alive through pillage. Three years, Alaric had held them together with plunder and oaths and his own sweat and blood. Now the land was picked clean and his chieftains were starting to rebel; Alaric had begun sleeping in his chain mail to ward off assassins.
And in the midst of all this had come the missive from Stilicho. Characteristically terse. Theodosius is dead. Come soon. The new emperor may be agreeable to giving you a homeland. He still had that missive tucked under his chain mail, burning against his skin like a fallen star.
“I wish you luck, then, negotiating with your own assassins.” Ataulf’s tone was sardonic. The fly lifted itself lazily and landed on his neck; he cursed and slapped at it. A trickle of blood smudged his skin. “What do you have to negotiate with, if not our men as soldiers? I am pained to remind you that if you return to Noricum with nothing to show for it, the chieftains are likely to hang you on your own walls.”
It was an old argument. One they’d been having since they left Noricum. “The chieftains will let me in readily enough if I bring them a homeland,” Alaric said. “But not if it comes with an agreement to send our men as grist for the Roman war machine. I will not pay one nummus for land already owed. Not in alliance and not in service.”
He did not mean to negotiate. He meant to bleed the Romans dry.
“If you do not give the Romans what they want, it’s likely you’ll die here. Why keep you alive if you cannot be negotiated with?” Ataulf cursed beneath his breath. “We don’t have to choose between two paths to death, Alaric. There are still lands ripe for the conquering in Hispania—”
Alaric shook his head grimly. It was too late to run off to Hispania. It had been too late since the killing fields of Frigidus, when he had sworn to follow this road even if it led to death. That oath hung ominously close now, death before him and death behind, dogging his steps all the way from the mountains. The only way out was to accept the invitation of a man who had betrayed him. A man who’d once been as a father.
“I will not go to Hispania. Ataulf, if I’m not there to hold the Goths together, they’ll splinter—and be picked off by the Huns and enslaved by the Romans.” Alaric gathered his reins and tried to soothe Hannibal’s anxious attempts to break into a trot. Even the horses’ nerves were raw. “If I fail to get us a homeland, there won’t be a Goths by winter.”
They were almost within bowshot of the walls. Alaric gave Hannibal his head; the horse tossed his skull and broke into a bone-jarring canter, outpacing the rest of his men. As he approached, Alaric could feel the guards’ hostility. He knew what they saw: fifty ragged Goths on horseback, armed and tattooed, visibly out of sorts from the swamp. He wouldn’t want to let them in either.
A self-important centurion shouted down from the battlement. “State your purpose.”
Alaric leaned his forearms on the high pommel of his saddle and answered in Latin more polished than the other man’s. “You know our purpose. Your men have been keeping an eye on us all the way from the campagna .” He gave a sunny smile, just this side of murderous. “We come under a flag of peace.”
“I see no flag. Peaceful or otherwise.”
“Surely the great Empire holds no fear of our sorry band, Centurion!” Alaric amused himself by calculating the force and trajectory he’d need to put one of his throwing spears in the man’s throat from here. “We come at the general Stilicho’s invitation.”
The centurion frowned even deeper, then his head with its bristling crest disappeared from the wall. After a short time, a small porthole in the gate opened and the centurion’s face appeared. “Prove you are Alaric of the Balthi.”
Impatience pricked his skin. Alaric hadn’t ridden hundreds of miles, the last few through a miserable swamp, only to be halted by a little man behind a door.
A bloodthirsty smile curled his lips. “Open the gate before I tear it down.”
“Forgive my rude companion. He is not famous for his manners.” Ataulf halted by Alaric’s side, hands spread, reins dangling between his fingers. “Who else would we be? Perhaps you will explain to the general Stilicho why you left his guests waiting in the hot sun while you asked questions you already knew the answer to.”
The window snapped shut. There was a clipped voice beyond the wall, one Alaric recognized. A considerable amount of shouting commenced.
“And you consider yourself the diplomatic one,” Alaric said drily.
“ You threatened to tear the door down.” Ataulf leaned in, speaking low in the tongue of the pine-tree island, their long-dead homeland. “This is a trap. I can think of half a dozen examples of rebel leaders slaughtered at feasts in their own honor, senses dulled by drink and flattery,” he muttered. “Let me do the talking at dinner.”
Alaric spoke low, watching the door. “You’re not coming to the banquet. We may need to go quickly. I’m leaving it to you to have the horses ready and the way clear.”
“Then who is coming?” Ataulf glanced behind them disapprovingly. “You cannot possibly trust your life to these miscreants.”
Alaric followed his gaze, eyes falling on tall blond Thorismund, last prince of the Batavi. Thorismund was an army all by himself, none better to help him cut his way out of a hostile city. Near him rode the Hunnic mercenary, Riga, eyeing the walls as if planning to scale them with a brace of arrows at his back and a blade clenched between his teeth. Riga knew all the smugglers from here to Sicily. If he needed a secret way through the swamp to evade Roman capture, Riga could find it.
Behind them, the twins slouched on their Hunnic war-ponies, blond hair spiked up with animal fat, wolf-teeth necklaces gleaming around their necks. Their father, Gaufrid, had been first among his chieftains, first among those who followed him at Frigidus; he had died at Pollentia with an arrow in his gut. Alaric had made him a deathbed promise to take care of the boys, made an oath to right the Empire’s wrongs if it killed him. They were fifteen now, and more seasoned than warriors a decade older. Alaric sighed. Back in Noricum, he had decided to bring Gaufrid’s sons along, rather than leave them to face an insurrection on their own. But now he was questioning his judgment.
No. He would lead Gaufrid’s boys this far, but not down into the Frigidus canyon.
Before him, the gates swung ponderously open. Stilicho stood waiting. A wind kicked up at Alaric’s feet.
The first time he’d faced Stilicho as an enemy, it had been fourteen years ago on the plains of Larissa, each side dug in deep and daring the other to blink. They had met next on the frozen coast of Corinth; he had fled across black ice to the jagged mountains, with Stilicho’s army in swift pursuit. Then had come Verona, hemmed in on every side, his men starving and deserting all around him. Stilicho had blocked the road north and Alaric had fortified a hill over the city and bargained for his life and the lives of his men. Made it out with his army in shreds.
Now all that separated them was a few dozen muddy strides. Time and hardship had carved long runnels down Stilicho’s cheeks, and there was more iron in his close-cropped hair than brown. His eyes were the same, though. Still that flat stare, as from across a frozen wasteland. Daring you to blink.
“Alaric.” The old general cast a disapproving eye on the ragged group he’d brought along. “I sent you a personal invitation. It appears you responded with an invasion force.”
“Just fifty of my closest friends and family.”
“Bring ten and follow me.”
Alaric urged his horse forward, straight into Stilicho’s trap.
* * *
Pandateria. Of all godforsaken places.
Julia stalked through marbled hallways, the hated missive clutched in her fist. Pandateria was a barren island where the Imperial family sent troublesome women. Those who refused to be quiet, who would not stop taking lovers, who transgressed some stupid rule. A quiet assassination wasn’t long in coming after. Strangling, for the lucky ones. For the unlucky, they simply stopped sending food.
Olympius must have put Honorius up to this.
But when she arrived at the door to her father’s chambers—her brother’s now—she found it firmly shut.
“I am sorry, Princess,” his guard said. “The emperor is praying for your father’s soul.”
“Rubbish. My brother mourned that overbred bird of his that died last week more than he did our father.” Julia knew the guard would not lay a hand on her. She was already past him, pushing at the door. If Honorius even breathes the word treason at me —
Julia stopped on the threshold. Gone were the maps of far-flung territories, the storied old desk that loomed like a battlement. Honorius had remade it into something like a throne room. Extravagant murals. Plush rugs from Persia. Lapis lazuli everywhere. If this had been her study, she’d have filled every niche with books. But it wasn’t her study. It would never be her study.
By all the gods, she needed a drink.
Honorius lounged in a silver chair, swathed in an Imperial toga. Purple did not favor him; the color only made his teenager’s livid spots look angrier. A throng of his boyhood friends vied for his attention while his beloved cockerels gabbled at his feet, picking seeds out of the carpet. His eyes were fixed toward the far end of the room, and it was only when she strode forward that Julia saw what he was looking at.
A naked man hung by his arms. It was her father’s steward, Atticus. An older man, dignified; he’d helped her rescue a kitten from a storm drain once. Julia halted in horror as Honorius’s huge Germanic bodyguard, Praxis, brought a knot-ended whip down on the man’s back with a wet thwack .
The man screamed, and Honorius’s boy companions giggled as if this was a bawdy play.
She must be careful. If it seemed she cared too much, Honorius would whip the man harder just to antagonize her.
“Honorius.” Another of those dreadful thwacks and her stomach attempted to claw up her throat. “Honorius.”
Her brother startled. “What are you doing here?”
“What on earth did he do?” Her tone carefully calibrated. Not too much concern.
“He overfed my cockerels again. Roma has a terrible stomachache.”
“How on earth can you tell that a bird has indigestion? Really. This is in poor taste.” Julia frowned. “You there, cut him down.”
The man with the whip looked at her brother.
“Forgive me. I forgot about your delicate sensibilities.” Her brother made an imperious gesture. “That’s enough, Praxis. Clean up this mess.” The man banged a fist on his chest and began to fiddle with the steward’s manacles. “What do you want, Julia? I did not summon you.”
Her head gave a vicious throb and Julia gritted her teeth. After Olympius left, she’d napped for hours to try to calm the headache in preparation for confronting Honorius. Clearly it had not worked. “You sent your minister to interrupt my prayers this morning instead.”
“You are the only person I know who refers to the eighth hour of the day as morning.”
“And you are the only person I know who would have someone whipped half to death because of a chicken.” Julia stalked to Honorius’s chair and slapped the crumpled parchment on the desk. “Do you recognize this?”
“Of course I do. I wrote it.”
One of his friends snickered. “ Told you she wouldn’t be happy.”
Julia flicked a glance at the assembled throng. “Was it your idea, or did the Senate here put you up to it?”
“Calm down, Julia. You’re being hysterical.” Honorius’s friends were laughing openly now. “Out,” he snapped. They obeyed, thank the gods. “You were always Father’s favorite,” Honorius said when they were gone. “He used to let you run wild. I cannot.”
Julia bit back a bitter laugh. “You think I was his favorite?” How could he remember their history so wrong?
“You were the one he used to show off at parties. Remember?”
“Until Mother died and I got sent to Capri. You got to stay.” Julia crossed her arms over her chest. “I will not be sent off to an island again, Honorius.”
“Then, you will behave.” Honorius said it with exaggerated patience, as if he were the elder and she the wayward younger sibling. “I’ve inherited chaos, Julia. The provinces on fire, the treasury drained, and usurpers circling my throne like sharks contemplating a meal. What will they think of my strength if I cannot even control the women in my own household?” He frowned. “Alaric of the Goths is in Ravenna right now, taking my measure like a city wall he means to crack.”
That name froze the breath in her lungs. Alaric of the Goths. It carried images of fire and death, bodies on stakes outside crumbled walls. It was practically family lore; the man had turned at some nameless battle fifteen years ago, over some sublimely petty insult, and hadn’t stopped terrorizing Rome since. “Honorius, what madness has seized you that you’d invite that villain into our city?”
“Are you not listening? The provinces are on fire . Stilicho thinks he can bring Alaric into the foederati again, if we make the right offer. But we must not send a message of weakness. Otherwise he may just decide to try his luck at another invasion.” Honorius gave a heavy sigh, and suddenly he could have been her father’s beardless ghost. “Alaric would have had us all roasting in a bonfire three years ago if we hadn’t moved the capital to Ravenna. But that sent a message of weakness, and now you would have me send another.”
“Would the message of weakness I’m sending be louder than the one you’re sending, by running to Rome’s greatest enemy for help in the first place?” Julia gave a derisive snort. “Or perhaps threatening the women in your house with exile to keep us in line?”
“Julia, I don’t expect I shall have to exile you. I expect you to behave as a proper Roman woman. Chaste, obedient, and not any trouble.”
Chaste. Obedient. Not any trouble. Her father’s voice, thundering down a tunnel of years. “Exile me then. Do it.”
“Sit down, Julia.” A flinty look came to Honorius’s eyes. “Praxis, make her sit.”
Meaty hands landed on her shoulders and the burly man pushed her down onto a low stool. Julia gasped, shocked by the transgression. No one ever laid hands on her without permission.
“You turned twenty-two in April, Julia. That’s too old to be unmarried.”
Too old! “Seventeen is too young to be emperor,” she shot back. “I hear you still wet your bed during thunderstorms.”
Honorius flushed. “Olympius is in need of a wife. I think it should be you.”
She was on her feet again in an instant. “ No , Honorius. Spend me on a rich foreign ruler whose loyalty you need. Not a vain little cockroach like—”
“You calling someone else vain. Now, that is funny.” His laughter had no humor in it. “Praxis. Make her sit.”
Praxis slammed her back down on the chair. Hard enough to hurt this time.
“I never understood why you two couldn’t get along,” her brother continued mildly. “This marriage solves two pressing needs for me. I replenish the Empire’s diminished treasury with Olympius’s wealth, and I solve— this problem.” He waved a hand to indicate her entire self. “If you don’t like it, Julia, go and get your own army. Otherwise, you will marry Olympius. You will do it because you value the lives of your friends—that corrupting influence Verina, for example. But that is not the primary reason. Is it?”
Praxis’s hands tightened on her shoulders. A sick fear twisted in her gut. “No, Honorius.”
“What is the reason, Julia?”
She knew the answer. Her father had drilled it into her years ago, when he’d sent her away at fourteen. “Because it is my duty, Augustus. To you, and to the Empire.”
Honorius would send her to an island to die. He would do even worse without blinking.