Part of Varus deplored the stiff-necked determination of a sturdy provincial not to look like a rich man's toady. There was no question of anything of the sort: Varus just wanted his friend to sit with him at this lengthy event.

On the other hand, if Carce's citizens hadn't been so stiff-necked and determined, the city would not rule all the land from Mesopotamia to the Atlantic, from the German Sea to Nubia. Logically, Varus would admit that being without his friend's presence was a cheap price to pay for an empire.

In his heart, though, he wasn't sure. Corylus was a soldier's son and destined for the army himself. He had grown up on the Rhine and the Danube, where mistakes meant not embarrassment and expense but death in whatever fashion barbarian ingenuity could contrive. Corylus projected calm.

Varus needed calm right now. He wasn't really watching the stately procession of treasures across the stage. That vision of the wizened old woman seated on a throne in the clouds, was becoming sharper in his mind.

She was the Cumean Sibyl, and she prophesied the approach of Chaos.

Hedia's face was turned toward the stage, wearing a look of polite pleasure. That was the appropriate expression for the wife of the noble patron of the entertainment, so of course that was how she looked. She would have tried to appear just as politely pleased while torturers used a stick to roll her intestines out through a slit in her belly if that were what the duties of her station called for.

Moved by a sudden feeling of fondness, Hedia patted the back of her husband's hand. He looked at her in surprise, then blushed and faced the stage again.

Saxa was a thoroughly decent man, a sweet man. There were people-there were quite a lot of people, in fact-who felt that Hedia in her twenty-two years of existence had encompassed all the licentious decadence which had flowed into Carce along with the wealth of the conquered East. There was evidence for their belief, but even Hedia's worst enemies would never claim that she wasn't a perfect wife in public.