A forbidden warrior

An irresistible seduction!

Atia’s father, a Roman governor, wants her help to quash a rebellion in his lands. But ordered to keep a close eye on a rebel prisoner, Rab, downtrodden Atia is utterly spellbound. When she’s sent with Rab on a punishing mission through Arabia, their instant, wild attraction becomes a powerful longing. Atia must choose: guard her damaged heart forever or surrender to the promise of pleasure in Rab’s arms...

GRETA GILBERT’s passion for ancient history began with a teenage crush on Indiana Jones. As an adult she landed her dream job at National Geographic Learning, where her colleagues—former archaeologists—helped her learn to keep her facts straight. Now she lives in South Baja, Mexico, where she continues to study the ancients. She is especially intrigued by ancient mysteries, and always keeps a little Indiana Jones inside her heart.

Also by Greta Gilbert

Mastered by Her Slave

Enslaved by the Desert Trader

The Spaniard’s Innocent Maiden

In Thrall to the Enemy Commander

Forbidden to the Gladiator

Discover more at millsandboon.co.uk.

Seduced by Her Rebel Warrior

Greta Gilbert

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ISBN: 978-1-474-08891-6

SEDUCED BY HER REBEL WARRIOR

© 2019 Greta Gilbert

Published in Great Britain 2019

by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF

All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.

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Version: 2020-03-02

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For Mike Noble—

the kindest, wisest, funniest, bravest,

most wonderful stepdad in the universe.

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

About the Author

Booklist

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Extract

About the Publisher

Chapter One
Rome—101 CE

Atia always knew she would die young. Even before she visited the ancient sisters she sensed her days were numbered.

On the morning of her twelfth birthday, Atia’s mother shook her awake. ‘Dress quickly, my dear,’ she said. ‘Today all will be revealed.’

Together they hurried down the Via Sacra, their heads hooded, their eyes fixed upon the paving stones.

‘Faster, Atia,’ her mother urged, for gossip moved like brushfire through the streets of Rome. ‘If your father finds out about our errand, we will feel his wrath in lashes.’

Atia hurried after her mother as they made their way into the Subura slum. They entered a towering insula and began to climb—one floor, five floors, ten. Finally, they reached the highest floor and stood before a door. Atia’s mother knocked and it creaked open.

‘May I help you?’ called an ancient voice. Atia peered into the shadows and beheld a short, round woman with hair as white as the moon.

‘We have an appointment,’ said Atia’s mother. ‘A reading for my daughter.’

‘Ah yes—the ladies of Palatine Hill,’ said the woman. She gave Atia’s mother a second glance, as all people did. ‘Please, seat yourselves,’ the old woman said, then disappeared down a dark corridor.

Atia and her mother took their seats at a large circular table. Soon the round woman re-emerged, carrying an incense lamp. A chunk of amber-coloured rock smouldered inside the lamp’s wide belly, producing a rich, otherworldly scent.

‘Frankincense,’ her mother remarked admiringly.

‘To invite the goddess’s favour,’ said the woman. She set the lamp on the table, then pulled a large scroll from beneath her belt and ceremoniously unfurled it.

Atia gazed in wonder at the eerie drawing: a perfect circle divided into twelve proportionate wedges. Strange symbols decorated the insides of the wedges and colourful lines crossed between them—some of the lines blue, but most of them red.

The round woman placed the scroll on the table and studied it, then fixed Atia with an onyx stare. ‘The girl is good,’ she pronounced.

Atia released a breath she did not realise she had been holding.

The woman pointed to a blue line. ‘This means her heart is tender. She abhors the suffering of others.’

‘It is true,’ trumpeted her mother. ‘Atia has always been kind. A blessing from Juno.’

‘And look at this,’ said the woman. ‘Mercury conjunct Saturn. A disciplined mind. Like a general or a politician.’

Her mother smiled wistfully and Atia knew what she was thinking: If only Atia had been a boy.

‘Sensitive to the thoughts and feelings of others!’ exclaimed the woman.

Atia took a long whiff of the sacred smoke and began to relax. ‘The girl is loving and helpful,’ said the woman. ‘The girl likes to jest.’ Atia was almost enjoying the game now. ‘She is a natural peacemaker.’

The woman puzzled over the wheel some more, tugging her silver chin hairs. She pointed to a symbol that looked like the moon. ‘Here is the girl’s mother. Very well aspected in the house of Venus. So much beauty.’

Since Atia could remember, strangers had remarked on her mother’s uncommon beauty, often expressing disbelief that Atia was indeed her mother’s daughter.

‘You speak only of my daughter’s gifts, Grandmother,’ said Atia’s mother, turning the subject back to Atia. ‘What of the ill? What challenges will she face?’

‘The ill? I am sorry, domina. We do not usually speak of ill in such a reading.’

Atia’s mother gave a loud tsk, then plunged her fingers into the depths of her coin purse. She held up two gold coins. ‘One for the good and one for the ill,’ she said.

The old woman shook her head. ‘The ill can be difficult for some to bear.’

‘You mean that it can be difficult for some patricians to bear,’ her mother said.

The old woman only bowed her head.

‘Grandmother, I was born in this very neighbourhood. I rose to my station by the blessing of this alone.’ Atia’s mother gestured to her own face. ‘I can bear whatever it is you have to say and so can my daughter. We are stronger than we look.’

Atia had never heard her mother speak so forcefully in all her life. Nor had she heard her lie with such conviction. After all, her mother had been born to a family of Roman patricians from the province of Hispania.

Had she not?

Her mother pressed the coins into the old woman’s palm and a kind of knowing passed between the two women.

‘Decima!’ the round woman called.

Suddenly, another old woman emerged from the corridor. She was tall and thin and wore a pronounced scowl. Her bones made creaking complaints as she walked.

‘At your request, I present you with my sister,’ said the round woman. ‘She has a talent for seeing the ill.’

The thin woman gave a curt nod and seated herself beside Atia. She pointed a bony finger to a symbol inside the seventh wedge. ‘Here is Saturn in the girl’s house of marriage. It bodes ill. Many obstacles. And look here—it makes a bad angle to Jupiter, the planet of progeny.’

Atia’s mother nodded gravely. ‘Anything else?’

The thin woman sighed. ‘Where to begin?’ She pointed to a red line. ‘The girl will labour beneath the control of a wicked, powerful man.’ She pointed to another red line. ‘She will travel to foreign lands where she will face grave danger.’ She pointed to yet another red line. ‘She will witness terrible things and her heart will break a thousand times.’

Atia did not understand. She looked to her mother for reassurance, but her mother’s expression was ghostly. ‘What can be done?’ her mother asked.

The thin woman shrugged. ‘The girl must weather the storm and wait to be reborn.’

What did she mean, wait to be reborn? Atia opened her mouth to ask, but no words came.

‘Look, Decima!’ clipped the round woman. ‘You have upset the girl!’ She patted Atia’s hand reassuringly. ‘The girl must not dwell on the bad,’ she told Atia.

‘Why not?’ asked the thin woman. ‘If it is the truth?’

‘It is not all of the truth!’ said the round woman. She pointed to one blue line. ‘Look here. She will appreciate the beauty of the world.’

‘But she will seek to escape from it!’ croaked the thin woman, pointing to a red one.

‘She will be bold.’

‘She will also be shy.’

‘She will have many husbands.’

‘Disappointments all.’

‘She will be very clever.’

‘Yes, but she will never be beautiful.’

Atia heard her mother draw a breath. She will never be beautiful. The words were like burning coals dropped into Atia’s lap. She closed her eyes and pretended they were not there. She did not like this game any more.

‘What do you mean, she will never be beautiful?’ asked Atia’s mother. ‘Just look at her. She is well on her way.’

‘The girl is indeed lovely,’ said the round woman, nodding approvingly at Atia. ‘She has nice large eyes and such fine auburn hair. And her lips are shapely and abundant, are they not?’

The thin woman shook her head. ‘Yes, but look at that nose. It is not lovely, and nothing can be done to change it.’

‘The nose is a small flaw,’ said the round woman. ‘It means nothing.’

‘It is a distasteful shape. And it occupies far too much of her face.’

Atia placed her hand over her nose. The thin woman was right. It was not lovely. Her two older sisters had jested about it all her life. It was overly large and bony, with a terrible, hooking angle that made it resemble nothing so much as an eagle’s beak.

‘But she has beauty pronounced in her chart!’ protested Atia’s mother. ‘Just look at her fourth house!’

‘That house does not describe the daughter’s beauty, but the mother’s,’ said the thin woman. ‘The mother’s beauty is a part of the daughter’s life.’

The thin woman might have said more, but Atia had ceased to listen. All she could hear were those five terrible words: she will never be beautiful.

What could a woman become if she were not beautiful? Beauty was necessary for women, for it meant they married great men, and what other ambition was there for a woman but to marry a great man? Beggar, barmaid or brothel dweller—those were the alternatives, at least according to Atia’s mother.

‘I do not agree with you about my daughter,’ her mother was saying, but the thin woman was already pointing to another part of the wheel. ‘It is this relationship here that is of most concern. It bodes very ill for the mother.’

Atia’s mother shook her head. ‘This is my daughter’s chart. How could it bode ill for me?’

The thin woman glanced at her mother’s stomach and Atia saw her mother’s lip quiver slightly. ‘You cannot know that.’

‘The threads of the Fates bind the members of a family as surely as they bind the world,’ said the thin woman. ‘When one thread comes unravelled it affects all the rest.’

‘Will I lose it?’ whispered Atia’s mother, gently touching her stomach. The thin woman remained silent. ‘Tell me!’ her mother shouted. ‘I command you!’

‘I am afraid you will lose more than just the child, domina.’

Atia’s mother began to weep. Fearful tears sent drops of green malachite down her lovely cheeks.

‘Why do you tell me this?’ sobbed Atia’s mother.

‘Because you asked for it, my dear,’ said the round woman. ‘Do you not remember? The good and the ill. You said that you could endure the knowing.’

Atia rose from her chair. She did not wish to hear any more of what the sisters had to say—good or ill.

‘I will wait for you outside, Mother,’ she said, though her mother was no longer listening to anything but her own sobs.

Atia was hurrying towards the exit when she heard a third voice. ‘Do not go,’ it crooned. ‘You should not leave in such a state.’

‘I am not in a state,’ snapped Atia, pausing before the dark corridor.

‘Come closer, dear.’

Atia peered into the shadows and saw a tiny, ancient woman surrounded by shelves full of scrolls. ‘Do not be shy,’ said the woman.

‘The thin woman says that I am shy,’ Atia said, hovering beneath the corridor’s low arch. ‘But the round woman says that I am bold.’

‘Can you not be both?’

Atia cocked her head.

‘Sometimes I am shy,’ continued the woman. ‘Other times I am bold. Sometimes I am even ruthless.’ She flashed Atia a toothless grin.

‘Ruthless? What is that?’ asked Atia. There was something menacing about this tiny woman, yet Atia could not bring herself to leave.

‘You will learn,’ said the woman.

‘Who are you?’ asked Atia.

‘Who I am matters little. Step closer.’ Atia took one step through the archway, though it felt more as though she was being pulled.

‘Now tell me what has upset you.’ The woman’s eyes were on Atia, but her hands were busy knitting. A fine-threaded white shawl stretched up from a basket on the floor beside her. Inside the basket, Atia caught the glint of a pair of shears.

‘The women speak in circles,’ said Atia, gesturing towards the others. ‘They make me confused.’

‘I understand. If I were twelve years old, I would be confused, too.’

‘How do you know my age?’ asked Atia.

‘I know many things.’

‘Do you know if I will ever be beautiful?’

‘You will and you will not,’ said the woman. ‘What else do you wish to know?’

Atia shook her head. ‘You are just like the other two. You speak in circles.’

‘I assure you that I am nothing like my sisters,’ creaked the woman.

‘Then tell me one true thing about myself,’ said Atia. ‘No more circles.’

‘Ah, one true thing...’ The old woman lowered her voice to a whisper. ‘For that you must come closer, lest the goddess overhear us.’

Before she even knew that she had moved, Atia found herself bending her ear to the old woman’s wrinkled lips.

‘I can tell you the time and the day of your own death,’ she whispered.

A chill tickled Atia’s skin. ‘That is impossible. How could you know something like that?’

‘It is written in the stars, my dear,’ she said. ‘It is the one true thing in your life.’

In a single motion, the old woman lifted the shears from the basket and sliced through a strand of yarn. She offered the shawl to Atia. ‘Well? Do you wish to know it or not?’

City of Bostra (modern Bosra in southern Syria), Roman Province of Arabia Petraea—119 CE

The trouble started with dates—sweet, cloying dates from the plantations of Palmyra. The camels were wild for them and Rab fed the beasts handfuls before they raced.

It was the sweetness of dates that had spurred his white camel to victory that day, or so Rab believed, and what had made her so skittish in the winners’ circle. The agitated giant danced about the enclosure like a harem girl, her large hooves calling up clouds of dust.

‘Calm her, Zaidu!’ Rab urged his nephew, who was perched high in the saddle.

‘I am trying!’ the boy shouted. His arms flailed uselessly as the white beast lurched towards a group of admirers. Rab seized the camel’s bridle and attempted to tug her backwards, but she resisted, apparently wishing to be admired.

‘Shush her to her knees,’ Rab told his nephew. ‘Now!’

Zaidu nodded, filling his small chest with air and hissing out a fearsome down command that would have sent a normal camel to the dust. But not the white. She reared up, then wheeled around, tugging Rab with her and sending him stumbling into the person of a woman.

A Roman woman.

‘By Jupiter...’ The woman cursed in Latin and for a fleeting moment Rab felt the softness of her body against his.

She was clad all in white—just like the camel—and had covered her hair with a shawl so ethereal and white it seemed to be made from the sheen of a cloud.

‘Apologies,’ Rab said, righting himself, then heard the sound of tearing thread. No, he thought, cringing. Not the shawl.

The woman gasped. Her flowing headpiece had somehow become attached to the belt of his robe and had torn slightly.

‘Untether it quickly,’ she commanded, glancing behind her. ‘Lest my father see us.’

‘By the gods!’ Rab muttered, and in his efforts he somehow yanked the shawl from atop the woman’s head to reveal a cap of shiny auburn hair gathered into a tight, oiled bun. It was a practical coiffure—not meant to be seen—and Rab could not conceal his blush at having glimpsed it.

‘Forgive me,’ he said, freeing the damaged shawl from his belt and thrusting it at her. Their eyes locked and desire rollicked through his body. ‘I will pay you for it.’

‘There is no need to pay for the damage,’ she said. ‘It is an old shawl.’

As she rearranged the garment on her head, Rab rearranged his wits, which seemed to have gone the way of the camel.

The camel! Curses, he had forgotten about the camel. He spun around, fully expecting to see its humped silhouette bounding towards the horizon. But the beast stood calmly behind him, his little nephew perched high in the saddle. Both boy and camel wore the same placid grin.

Rab smiled back. ‘Well done, Zaidu,’ he told his nephew. ‘You brought her to heel.’

‘It was not my doing,’ said Zaidu, glancing at the woman.

The woman frowned and her strange beauty hit Rab like a hot wind. Mystic eyes, hooded and sad, perched above a nose so large and regal it might have belonged to Cleopatra herself. So much stern dignity—and almost totally undone by her lips, whose rosy extravagance brought to mind an abundance of cherries.

‘It appears that you have calmed my camel,’ he said.

‘Do you really think I could have any effect whatsoever on such a beast?’

‘Yes, yes, I do,’ Rab replied stupidly.

‘But how?’

‘Perhaps she was drawn to your white clothing? As you can see, she also wears white.’ It was the most ridiculous thing he had ever said and he was shocked to discover a smile traverse her lips.

‘May I touch her?’ she asked.

‘You are welcome to do so,’ said Rab—with far too much enthusiasm. What in the name of the Great God Dushara was the matter with him? The woman was Roman. Rab did not converse with Romans and he certainly did not allow them to touch his camels.

But there she went, stroking the white beast’s nose, and he did nothing at all to stop her. Nor did he say anything when she began to coo softly in Latin. He only closed his eyes, as if she were whispering the sweet words to Rab himself.

An angry voice split his reverie. ‘Daughter, why do you engage with these dirty Arabs?’

A man in a purple-trimmed toga stepped forward. He pointed a bejewelled finger at Rab. ‘Can you not control your own camel?’

Rab opened his mouth to respond, but no words came.

‘I am speaking to you!’ shouted the Roman. He gave Rab a mighty shove, sending Rab crashing against the camel’s middle. Zaidu shouted something from his perch in the saddle and the agitated camel thrust out her long leg.

Rab could almost hear the Roman man’s bones splintering as the camel’s heavy foot pounded against his shin. He collapsed to the ground, his toga tumbling into the dust. ‘Father!’ the woman shrieked. She glanced up at Rab. ‘Please get help!’

Rab staggered to his feet only to find two sets of hands seizing him by the shoulders. A fist crashed into his jaw, followed by a foot into his stomach. A throng of Roman guards was pouring into the circle and Rab watched in horror as several other guards wrenched his nephew from atop the white camel. ‘Zaidu!’ he cried, then felt a heavy blow against his side.

‘Take them to the fort!’ he heard a man shout. Rab could not find his breath. ‘And somebody call a litter! The Governor has been injured!’

* * *

At first, there was nothing but pain—sharp, mind-splitting pain and the memory of blows. Then there was the taste of blood inside his mouth and the hardness of stone beneath his head. A silken voice split the silence. ‘Awaken.’

Rab opened his eyes to find himself surrounded on three sides by walls. Before him stretched the thick iron bars of a prison cell. Beyond the bars stood a figure bathed in torchlight—a vision of curves and white linen. A woman.

She turned and he knew her instantly. It was the woman—the one from the camel races. He would have recognised her anywhere—her soft curves, her auburn hair, her strong, determined nose, so like his late mother’s. Her shadowy profile sent a strange pang of nostalgia through him, though when she neared his cell and squatted low that nostalgia quickly transformed into an unexpected lust.

She pushed a water bag through the bars. ‘Drink,’ she said.

‘What is it?’

‘Water. You have been asleep for many hours.’

He sensed a lie lurking behind her words, but he was too thirsty to refuse her. As he reached for the bag, her fingers grazed his. He nearly recoiled: they were as frigid as a corpse’s.

‘You are very cold,’ he remarked. Without thinking, he removed his head tie and pulled off his long white head cover. ‘Wrap my ghutrah around yourself,’ he said, pushing the garment through the bars. ‘It will warm you.’

He seemed to have forgotten that she was Roman and thus did not deserve his charity. Still, her fingers had been terribly cold and her cheeks were bereft of colour.

She gave the voluminous white headscarf a long, suspicious stare. ‘It is just a head cover. It will not bite you,’ he said.

As a gesture of goodwill, Rab grasped the water bag she had offered him and took a long quaff. The liquid tasted vaguely of flowers.

He held out his ghutrah once again. ‘Come now, you are obviously cold.’

‘How could I be cold?’ she clipped. ‘It is the middle of August in Arabia, by all the vengeful gods.’

The absurdity of the comment struck them both at once and for a second their voices mingled in laughter, bouncing off the prison walls like two parts of a song.

Her lips returned to frowning. ‘I am not cold,’ she repeated. She sprang to her feet and placed her hands authoritatively on her hips.

‘Why do you gape?’ she asked.

‘I do not gape.’

‘You are most certainly gaping.’

‘Hmm,’ grumbled Rab and looked away. He reminded himself that it was folly to engage with Romans. Their manners were bad, their greed never ending and their moods as changeable as the desert winds. Romans were, in a word, savages, no matter how lovely their frowning lips and curving hips.

He returned the ghutrah to his head and fixed it into place with his head tie. He brushed the arms of his long grey robe and folded his legs beneath him. ‘Where am I?’

‘In a holding cell beneath the Roman fort at Bostra,’ she said, and when he did not respond, she added, ‘In the Roman Province of Arabia Petraea.’

‘Arabia Petraea,’ he echoed.

As if he needed reminding. Despite over a dozen years of Roman occupation, the words still tasted vile on his tongue. Whatever name she wished to call his homeland, to Rab it would always be the Kingdom of Nabataea, with its capital not of Bostra, but of Rekem, that great southern city of stone.

‘Why do you keep me here?’ he asked.

‘Do you not recall? Your camel injured the new Governor of Arabia—a man who happens to be my father.’

‘That man was the Governor?’

Curses, he should have guessed it. The bejewelled hand, the purple-trimmed toga, the imperious demeanour. Of all the confounded ill fortune.

‘It broke his leg,’ she said with indifference, ‘though the break has been splinted and we are told it will heal normally.’

‘I did not intend—’

‘It does not matter what you did or did not intend,’ she said. ‘What matters is what my father believes.’

‘And what does your father believe?’

‘That you commanded the kick.’

‘That is impossible. Where is my nephew?’ Rab started to stand, but his legs seemed to be growing weaker by the moment.

‘Why is it impossible?’ she asked.

‘Where is my nephew, by the gods?’ Rab demanded.

‘He is in another cell not far from here. Why is it impossible that you commanded the kick?’

‘Is he injured? Has he eaten?’

She pursed her lips together. ‘He has been treated in the exact same manner as you have. Now please answer my question. I am trying to help you.’

‘So you beat my nephew and hold him in a cell and tell me you are trying to help me? He is only eleven years old!’

‘I had nothing to do with your nephew’s beating or his captivity,’ she said. Then, in a whisper: ‘And I was able to sneak him a corner of bread.’

Rab paused, feeling a strange gratitude, then reminded himself that there was no room in this conversation for such a sentiment. ‘I demand that you release us both,’ he said.

She stiffened. ‘You are not in a position to make demands.’

‘And you are?’ Rab craned his neck to observe the empty hallway in which she stood. ‘You approach my cell all alone, a beautiful woman without any protection... On whose authority do you question me?’

She appeared confused. She glanced around the prison as if she believed him to be referring to someone else. ‘On my father’s authority, of course,’ she said at last.

He struggled once again to stand, but this time the effort made him dizzy. ‘Do you know who I am?’

‘No,’ she replied carefully. ‘Who are you?’

He bit his tongue. By the gods, what was wrong with him? Had he really almost revealed his identity? ‘I am my nephew’s only protector.’

‘And I am your only friend,’ she added.

‘Why do I find that difficult to believe?’

‘Just answer the question,’ she pressed. ‘Why is it impossible that you commanded the kick?’

‘Because a camel is incapable of learning such a command.’

‘My father will investigate the veracity of that claim. If it is a lie, you will lose your life.’

Savages, he thought. Every last one of them. He shook his head and studied the floor.

‘So it is a lie,’ she said.

‘Why does the Governor care whether the kick was commanded or not?’ he asked. Better she discover the second lie than the first.

‘It amuses my father to discover the truth,’ she replied. ‘And I can assure you that he always does.’

‘Does he not have more meaningful sources of amusement? Roads to build, riches to plunder, slaves to drive?’

She would not take the bait. ‘Your story must match your nephew’s.’

‘And what does my nephew claim happened?’

She looked away. ‘I cannot tell you that.’

‘I thought you said you were my friend.’

She sighed. ‘Everything you tell me I am obligated to tell my father. Now please, answer the question.’

Rab measured out his words. ‘Yes, it is possible for a camel to be trained to kick on command.’

‘And have you trained your camel in such a skill?’

Rab paused. ‘I have.’

He had not. He knew very little about training camels, in truth. Or racing them, for that matter. The camel races were simply a ruse—something to distract attention from Rab’s more important activities. Still, Zaidu loved the races and had been working with the camel for some months now on a variety of commands.

‘Did you order the kick?’ the woman demanded.

No, he did not, but he feared that Zaidu had. He needed to protect the boy. ‘I did.’

‘Why did you do it?’

‘Because your father pushed me,’ Rab explained. ‘I was merely defending myself against him. I was unaware of his identity.’ At least it was mostly the truth.

The woman nodded thoughtfully and seemed satisfied. ‘You may have just secured your nephew’s release. And saved your own life.’

‘Am I supposed to thank you?’ he slurred. His head had begun to spin. She did not answer him, though she was watching him like a shepherd observing a doomed sheep. All at once he understood why. ‘It was not just water you gave me, was it?’ His vision blurred.

‘No, it was not,’ she admitted.

‘And you are not my friend.’

‘No, I am not.’

Chapter Two

Atia stopped to smell the roses. They had been placed in a vase on the shelf outside her father’s tablinium by some well-meaning slave. She paused with her nose enveloped in petals. What a strange compulsion, she thought. She had stopped smelling flowers years ago—back when she had begun to count down the days until her own death.

She breathed deeply now and was rewarded with a sweet, subtle scent. Even more rewarding was the rose’s lavish hue—like the ruddy burn of the sun through smoke. It reminded her of the colour of the tie the camel man used to hold his ghutrah.

The ghutrah he had offered to keep her warm.

She had been so shocked by the gesture that she had not even been able to properly decline it. What prisoner offered to aid his own interrogator? Even more startling had been their reaction to the gesture: they had laughed together like thieves.

Laughter? It was another strangeness. She had hardly recognised her own voice. How many years had it been since she had laughed? Ten? Fifteen? Back before her mother had died and delight had still seemed possible.

Now, at the advanced age of thirty, Atia had learned to view delight as suspect. Obviously the camel man had been trying to endear himself to her—to trick her into trusting him.

Still, something in the way his dark, sun-flecked eyes had smiled down at her had made him seem sincere. Even now, as she thought back upon those eyes, it was as if they were warming her very thoughts.

She knew that warmth could not be trusted. And when he had called her beautiful? That had been a trick as well: a sly attempt at flattery designed to gain her sympathy.

Because beautiful she was not—not with the terrible protrusion occupying the middle of her face. Well dressed, yes. Properly coiffed and painted, certainly. Rich. Powerful. Connected. She was the daughter of a Roman Governor, by the gods—one of Emperor Hadrian’s most trusted men. But beautiful? It was a gift that Venus had declined to grant.

Still, there had been something resembling sincerity in the way the man had spoken the compliment. You approach my cell all alone, a beautiful woman without any protection... It was as if he were not talking about her, but some fantasy version of herself—a bold, attractive woman who explained herself to no one. It amused her to think of herself in such a way.

Then there had been the strangeness of his expression after he had spoken the compliment. The tight lips and pulsing jaw. The eyes narrowed dangerously in something resembling hunger. It was quite possibly the best imitation of desire she had ever seen.

Of course, what he really desired was to be released from his prison, just as all prisoners did. Still, he had spoken the words—a beautiful woman—and, however false, they had had the effect of buoying her spirit, such that she had caught herself smiling all afternoon and, apparently, stopping to smell roses.

‘Come forward,’ called her father from inside his office. Atia returned the rose to its vase and entered her father’s sparsely decorated tablinium, pausing before his sprawling ebony desk.

He appeared to be reviewing some official scroll. Beside him, a stony-faced scribe stood sentinel, his eyes flitting across the parchment in time with her father’s.

‘Sit down, Atia,’ he commanded without looking up. As she made her way to one of her father’s client chairs, she caught the gaze of her father’s first officer, Plotius, standing in a corner just behind the desk. The fleshy, thick-muscled military man took his time assessing Atia’s figure and Atia wasted none in volleying him a sneer. He replied with a just you wait look.

Seating herself, Atia nodded her gratitude at a boy operating a palm leaf in another corner of the room, though its small wind did little to alleviate the midday heat. It was August, after all—the sweltering month—and even the cool marble and high ceilings of her father’s villa were futile against the Arabian sun.

Trying to resist the heat was useless. In that way, it was much like her father himself.

‘You are looking well, Daughter,’ said her father, finally glancing up from his scroll. ‘Unusually so.’

Atia thought of the camel man and felt a small trickle of sweat trace a path down her cheek. ‘I should say the same, Father,’ she said. She glanced beneath the desk at his bandaged leg. ‘Only two days after your injury and you are already at work.’

‘The business of Empire waits for no man,’ he said. It was Emperor Hadrian’s favourite aphorism and her father recited it like a prayer.

‘A new prohibition?’ asked Atia, glancing at the scroll.

‘Execution warrants,’ he said, dipping his quill into a tub of ink.

Atia gulped a breath. ‘Which prisoners?’ There had been so many of them lately. Young men and old. Rich and poor. All Nabataeans—many of whom Atia had interrogated herself. They had been ripped from their homes under charges of collusion with the rebels, though Atia believed most of the men to be innocent.

‘We must clear out the holding cells,’ pronounced her father. ‘We will behead all prisoners who have been in captivity for more than a month.’

Atia’s throat felt dry. ‘You will not try them?’

‘Trials are expensive.’ The ink dripping from her father’s pen was like blood. ‘Besides, we must send a message to the populace.’

Atia pasted a smile on her face and gave a small nod. Later that afternoon, she would tip three drops of poppy tincture into her wine and try to purge the vision of a dozen innocent Nabataean heads on spikes in Bostra’s central square.

It was wrong. Nay, it was barbarous. To kill a man without trial? To take a human life just to send a message? The thought made Atia dizzy with despair. Her father’s method of government bore a strong resemblance to his method of war, yet Atia could do nothing to stop it.

Forty days, Atia thought suddenly. In only forty days she was supposed to die. She had been counting down the days since the age of twelve, when the exact day of her death had been foretold to her. For a long time she had feared the date, but had gradually come to look forward to it. If the prophecy was true, then in only forty days, she would no longer be complicit in her father’s wicked deeds. In the meantime, she only wished for a few drops of poppy tears to help her through.

‘I am also banning that silly scarf the men wear over their heads,’ her father said.

‘The ghutrah?’

‘It makes them all look the same. How will we find our rebels if we cannot tell one from the other?’

Atia thought of the camel man’s face: the round cheeks and liquid gaze; the eyes like big dark suns; the short black beard surrounding thick, sensuous lips; the bottom lip so much larger than the top—like the promise of abundance and its immediate fulfilment. She could have easily picked him out from among a hundred ghutrah-wearing men.

‘A clever strategy, Father,’ she said.

Her father scrawled his signature across the bottom of the scroll. ‘We are going to find every last one of these damned rebels and slaughter them where they stand,’ he said. ‘We will make Quietus’s massacre look like a child’s tantrum.’

Atia nodded and fought a wave of nausea. The Roman General Quietus had recently defeated an encampment of rebellious Jews in the adjacent province of Judea. According to rumour, he had taken over twenty thousand lives, including those of women and children.

‘We must strike fear in the hearts of all Nabataeans,’ her father explained. ‘They must understand that there is no resisting Rome.’

‘Yes, Father.’

Nor was there any resisting her father. To him, disagreement was a form of disloyalty, and disloyalty was meant to be punished. Once, Atia’s eldest sister had questioned her father’s actions and he had sent her to labour in a temple. When Atia’s second eldest sister had disgraced the familia through adultery, she had suffered twenty lashes. But those punishments were small in comparison with their mother’s. The one time she had questioned their father’s will, she had paid for it with her very life.

‘Now tell me,’ her father said. He was blowing gently on the ink of his signature. ‘What news of the Nabataean cameleers?’

Atia took a breath. ‘The boy claims that he commanded the kick, not his uncle.’

‘And his uncle, what did he say?’

‘That he commanded the kick, not the boy.’

‘You loosened the man’s tongue before discussing the matter?’

‘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.

Chapter Three

‘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 what did you say?’ he asked. His head throbbed and his throat felt as if it had been stuffed with wool.

‘At the banquet tonight, my father wishes for you to apologise to him before his guests and to pledge your loyalty to Rome. He does you a great mercy.’

She had changed her tunic. In place of her simple white wool, she had now donned an elegant garment of flowing bronze linen. Worse, she had kohled her eyes and reddened her lips with the dregs of wine. She was the embodiment of loveliness, though her expression was grave, as if she were heedless of it.

‘You stare at me as if I am Medusa herself,’ she snapped. ‘Did you not hear what I just said?’

Rab struggled to his feet. ‘You drugged me.’ It seemed she was drugging him still—with that cursed, silken voice.

‘I helped you sleep,’ she said.

‘A sleep of the dead.’

‘I gave you the gift of peace.’

He gripped the bars of his cell. ‘A strange way to describe a poppy haze.’

She tilted her head at him in that careless, haughty way of Romans, but he noticed a throbbing pulse in the side of her neck. Pulse, pulse, pulse. Was it possible that she felt it, too? This strange pull between them?

‘I was ordered to give you the poppy tears,’ she said. ‘I had no choice.’

Pulse, pulse, pulse. Her neck was pale, as was the rest of her. He imagined she spent most of her life indoors. She probably wasted hours each morning anointing herself with expensive oils and perfumes just like all Roman women of her station.

He imagined her seated at her makeup table gazing into her copper mirror. The vision should have angered him: it was the picture of Roman decadence. But instead he thought of her lovely auburn hair hanging at her shoulders—free of its ties and buns. He wondered how long it took her to comb.

He released his grip on the bars and ran his hand through his hair. What was wrong with him? He had every reason to doubt this woman and no reason at all to be imagining her at her makeup table.

‘The poppy tears dulled your rage,’ she explained.

He shook his head—which only increased its pounding—and tried to revive his indignation. ‘Drugging a man is no way to dull his rage. When the rage returns it is stronger than before.’

She shook her head, having none of it. ‘The drugging of prisoners is a common practice. It softens their tongues.’

‘You speak like a damned politician,’ he said. Though she did not look like one. She looked like one of those lavish Roman goddesses sculpted from the sandstone.

‘I am a politician’s daughter.’

‘As if that is all there is to you.’

She cocked her head. ‘What do you mean by that?’

What did he mean by that? ‘I mean that you do not seem quite as heartless as a politician.’

She laughed bitterly. ‘I assure you that I am very heartless.’

‘You sneaked my nephew a corner of bread.’

She frowned, as if unsure of what to make of the comment, and seemed to decide to dismiss it entirely. ‘As soon as you agree to apologise to my father, your nephew and the camel will be released.’

Zaidu’s freedom in exchange for an apology? It sounded too good to be true. ‘How can I trust you?’ he asked.

‘You have no choice but to trust me,’ she said. ‘If you can perform your apology with enough conviction, my father may decide to release you as well.’

‘What do you mean, perform?’

‘You must take the knee before him and speak your apology with great humility,’ she said.

‘So your father wishes to humiliate me before his guests?’

‘He wishes to demonstrate his clemency as Governor.’

‘He wishes to flatter himself.’

‘What does it matter, as long as your nephew is released?’

Rab felt vaguely ill. The last thing he had ever imagined doing was asking forgiveness of a Roman governor. But Zaidu’s safety—nay, his very life—was at risk.

‘Fine. I will do it,’ he said.

‘You will?’

Was he mistaken, or was that a smile ghosting her lips?

She motioned to the three guards standing nearby. They took positions behind her as she produced a key from the belt of her tunic. She unlocked the barred door and stepped into Rab’s cell.

Her perfume swirled around him—some wicked mixture of honey and myrrh. He breathed it in, despite himself, and stole another glance at her neck. It was pulsing faster than ever. It seemed to be keeping time with his own beating heart.

‘Drink this,’ she said. She motioned to one of the guards, who held out a water bag.

Rab nearly exploded with laughter. ‘Do you think me that much of a fool?’

The woman’s expression was all innocence. ‘I vow that the water inside this bag is clean and unaltered.’

‘And I am the King of Babylon.’

Her eyes flashed and there it was again—that ghost of a smile. Why did it please him so much to see it?

‘I understand your hesitation,’ she said, recovering her stony façade.

‘My hesitation?’ He gazed at the poison-filled leather serpent dangling before him. ‘Have you always had such a gift for understatement?’

‘I am not proud that I drugged you,’ she said. ‘But I promise that I shall not drug you again. I would never compromise the moment this evening when you kiss my father’s signet ring.’

‘Kiss his ring?’ Rab echoed, feeling the room begin to spin. He pressed his arm against the wall.

‘Dizziness is a common side effect of poppy tears,’ she observed. She gazed wistfully at the floor. ‘And, of course, a craving for more poppy tears.’

‘I am afraid I feel no such craving,’ he shot back.

‘That is well, for this water contains no such medicine.’ She took the bag from the guard and thrust it beneath his nose. ‘Drink,’ she demanded and then, more gently, ‘and afterwards we shall witness your nephew freed.’

And thus the battle was over almost before it began. Witness Zaidu freed? Rab tipped the bag into his mouth and drank down every last drop.

Moments later, they were standing on the rampart of the fort, watching Zaidu’s small figure lead the white camel back to Bostra. Rab felt a weight slowly lifting from his chest.

He knew that in less than an hour, Zaidu would walk through the big cedar doors of their family’s home and be greeted by his three sisters, who would shower him with love and care. Zaidu would explain that Rab had been captured and the news would spread to those who needed to know. Rab was certain that a rescue party would come for him. But even if one did not, the work would go on. That was all that mattered.

‘Come, let us prepare you for the banquet,’ the woman said. She was standing beside him—not an arm’s length away—and he stole another glance at her neck. Pulse, pulse, pulse.

* * *

She walked ahead of Rab and the guards across the fort’s central courtyard. Soon they stood before an elegant, columned building gleaming pink in the late afternoon light. As he stepped inside the towering structure, Rab found himself surrounded by brightly painted frescoes and unnatural heat.

‘The guards will stay with you while you bathe,’ the woman explained. ‘I will leave your undertunic and toga in the dressing room and await you here in the entry hall. Go now.’

She was gone before Rab could protest and soon he was sitting naked inside a hot, luxurious, marble bath, sweating layers of dirt and blood from his skin.

All around him were signs of opulence. Fine glass pitchers. Thick, embroidered towels. Water ladles inlaid with precious stones. Rab scraped the fine bronze strigil along his oiled limbs and gazed up at the high, stained-glass windows. Their light poured down in pools of colour on to the new marble floor.

He might have been impressed. The Romans were excellent builders and baths like this one were among the most lavish in the world—true palaces of leisure. But Rab could not bring himself to relax, for he knew the source of all this gaudy wealth.

Taxes. Nabataean taxes, to be precise, stolen from every Nabataean trader and merchant from Bostra to Rekem.

Rab gazed at the gilded rail leading into the hot pool and envisioned the camel-loads of frankincense that had surely purchased it. Twenty per cent. That is what the Roman tax collectors took from every load, thus robbing the Nabataean incense traders of virtually all their profit. In the thirteen years since the Romans had come, the richest Nabataean traders had become paupers. Many were now so desperate that they had gone on to the Roman bread dole.

Twenty per cent. The Romans made it sound trifling—the price of acquisition, they called it. As if it had little impact on Nabataean lives. As if it had not slowly, systematically, fleeced the Nabataeans of their wealth and greatness. He scraped a bronze strigil along his bruised limbs a little too roughly. ‘Twenty per cent,’ he muttered. Reason enough for a fight.

The lamp flickered. It was too damned hot. He needed to get out of this cursed bath. He dropped his strigil and pushed past the guards. ‘Stop!’ called one, though Rab could hardly hear him as he strode down the hall to the dressing room, where he thrust aside a chair and crashed into something soft.

Or someone, rather.

‘Titans of Olympus!’ she gasped, stumbling backwards. He saw a blush creep up her neck and his stomach leapt with an unwelcome lust. Against his will, he stepped towards her.

‘You might have announced yourself,’ she protested, stepping backwardss.

‘In the men’s changing room?’ he asked.

She was sweating. Her lovely robe was clinging to her breasts, emphasising their shape. He felt his desire begin to rise.

‘I told you I would leave your clothing here,’ she said. Her voice was unusually thick. ‘You might have remembered that.’

‘I apologise for my poor memory,’ he said, sounding in no way apologetic. He saw her eyes range across his naked chest and then turn away. She took another step backwards.

‘Why did you leave the bath so soon?’ she asked.

‘The gleam of gold began to sting my eyes,’ he said, stepping forward.

‘Where are the guards?’

‘On their way, I’m sure.’

He was now only a few steps away from her, yet it was not close enough. He could feel the fullness of his desire and puzzled over how quickly he had lost command of himself. Here he was, standing before the enemy—captured, powerless, naked—yet all he wanted was to get closer to her.

‘Please, robe yourself!’ she commanded, keeping her eyes carefully locked with his. ‘Your toga is just there.’

‘Where?’ he asked and, when she turned to indicate the toga, he saw her eyes slide down the length of him and behold his naked form once again.

The entirety of it.

And for one unexpectedly satisfying moment he saw her heavy lids disappear and her eyes open wide.

Chapter Four

The guards burst into the dressing room and seized the camel man by his arms. ‘Robe him!’ Atia shouted as she pushed back through the doorway and out into the main hall.

She felt as if she had just escaped a burning building. She fanned herself with her hand and began to pace. Did the man have no shame? But the question was unfair. Once inside the baths, men were not required to remain clothed. Still, he had appeared almost triumphant as he watched her take in the vision of him.

And what a vision it was, in truth. So much glowing bronze flesh. So much taut, sinewy muscle. He had seemed taller without the trappings of cloth and there was a solidity to him that she had not perceived before. His arms bulged, his chest sprawled, his thighs were as thick as logs and between them...

She stopped pacing. Shook her head. It was not as if she had not seen a man’s desire before. After three marriages, she had long since learned to dread the sight, for it meant only one thing: submission to her wifely duties.

And yet now her mind wanted nothing but to consider that large, fascinating blur of flesh that she knew many men would call a blessing. Many women, too, she thought wryly.

By holy Minerva, why was she even thinking of such a thing? She was the Governor’s daughter. She was supposed to be a model of modesty and decorum. She gazed up at the hall’s high ceiling where an image of the goddess Juno floated in diaphanous robes. The goddess held two pomegranates in her hands, as if weighing them. Her cool expression seemed full of judgement.

‘It was not my doing,’ Atia explained to the placid goddess. What was not her doing? The toga? The bath? The unreasonable attraction she felt towards a man whom her father suspected to be a rebel? ‘It is not my fault,’ she muttered weakly to the goddess. ‘He trespassed the boundaries of propriety.’

Though to be fair, it was Atia who had trespassed on him.

She returned to pacing. It was not just his nudity that had unnerved her. In addition to his highly improper display of flesh, there had been that look in his eye—the same one he had flashed when they had first met and then again when he had called her beautiful.

Strange things had happened to her body all three times he had looked at her that way. Heat had pulsed through her, followed by a kind of melting feeling and a weakness in her legs. It was as if his very gaze had the power to cook her—to turn her limbs into noodles and her insides into bubbling polentum.

They bubbled even now, just remembering that look. And then there was that barely detectable smile that she saw traverse his lips just afterwards. It was as if he knew she admired him.

As if he believed that, in some small way, he had conquered her.

Ha! He had done no such thing. He was her father’s prisoner! How could he have any power over her at all? His life was not even his own. Nay, if she felt anything for him at all, it was pity.

In that instant, she heard the door to the men’s changing room swing open. She turned to discover him striding towards her, the flowing white toga virilis draped elegantly around his body. Her stomach turned over on itself. If she had believed that the trappings of clothing would erase his appeal, she had been woefully mistaken.

By the gods, he was well made. Even the draping toga could not conceal his finely sculpted strength. The flowing fabric hung from his broad left shoulder and swept beneath his right arm, revealing the contours of his chest through his snug-fitting undertunic. As he walked, the heavy woollen garments seemed to whisper across the floor.

Pity. Deep, abiding pity, she reminded herself as he planted himself before her and nearly slew her with his gaze.

‘You wish to make me into a Roman,’ he growled.

He did look rather Roman—with all his pursing lips and broad-shouldered arrogance. Closely trimmed beards such as his had become popular among the equestrian class recently and even his long black hair was of the latest Roman fashion. It brushed the tops of his shoulders, giving him a carelessly regal appearance—like a scholar fresh from the baths.

‘The toga suits you,’ Atia observed. She studied the creases of the garment’s folds, careful not to meet his gaze.

‘Is that supposed to be a compliment?’

‘It is merely an observation.’

‘The toga is a mockery,’ he said, swatting the air.

‘It is not my doing,’ she said, though she had no idea why it seemed important to clarify. ‘My father wanted you to be presentable at the banquet. He has also asked me to learn your name.’

‘Ha!’ the man scoffed. ‘What else did he ask for? My domicile? My sandal size? The breed and lineage of my finest camel?’

The humour of the statement struck them both at once and they chuckled together.

What was this strange thing between them, this laughter? And when had his dark eyes acquired that glint of gold?

‘Rab,’ he said at length.

‘What?’

‘Your father wished for you to learn my name. It is Rab.’

‘As in Rabbel? The last Nabataean King?’

‘Half the men in Arabia are named Rabbel,’ he said absently.

‘Are they indeed?’ Atia said, though she was barely listening. She had become distracted by Sol, the Roman sun god. His long arms were stretching through the bathhouse doorway, staining Rab’s face with golden light.

‘Rabbel was a popular king,’ Rab added, ‘though not any more.’

‘And who is your father, Rab?’ she asked, for her own father had commanded her to find this out as well. ‘And what is your father’s profession?’

Say he is a farmer, or a herder. Let him be of no political interest. A nobody.

Rab paused and gazed at the ceiling. ‘My father was a man called Junon. Before his death he was...a pomegranate farmer.’

Atia exhaled. A nobody, then. A glorious, unassailable nobody. ‘Come then, Rab, son of Junon, farmer of pomegranates,’ she said. ‘We must prepare you for your performance.’

She glanced over his shoulder at the guards. ‘Please await us outside.’

The three men exchanged looks and Atia knew she had just made a grave error. The guards would certainly notify her father of the unusual command. Atia would have to devise some story to explain it. But not now. Now was about preparing Rab to preserve his own life. With Fortuna’s favour, he might even earn his freedom.

‘If my father senses insincerity in your apology tonight, he will punish you further,’ she said. ‘You must believe me in this, for I have seen it before. He demands a moving performance.’

‘He wants theatre?’

Atia sighed. ‘All banquets are political and all politics are theatrical,’ she said.

‘You speak in knots,’ he said.

‘Just give me your best apology and let us see if it will suffice.’

Rab cleared his throat. ‘Honourable Governor Magnus Atius Severus of Arabia Petraea, I, Rab, son of Junon, do beg your forgiveness for the harm done to your person by my camel and I pledge my loyalty to Rome. Good?’

‘Beyond terrible.’

Rab frowned.

‘Your words are too terse and your demeanour far too proud. Just look at how you hold yourself. In that toga, I might have mistaken you for Augustus himself.’

A sly smile spread across Rab’s face and he puffed out his chest comically.

‘It is not a compliment,’ Atia warned. ‘You must hunch your shoulders and hang your head low. Do not appear comfortable in that garment. Appear as if you feel unworthy of it.’

Rab gave a dismissive grunt.

‘I do not think you understand what is at stake,’ Atia said. ‘My father wishes to humiliate you and receive your submission. If he is not satisfied, he will pursue other means.’

‘What means?’

‘He will take a finger, Rab. Or a toe. He will have you disrobed, or thrust your arm into the snake charmer’s basket. I have seen all these things happen to slaves and prisoners who have come before my father at banquets. He likes to put on an entertaining show.’

The colour left his cheeks. He paced away from her, his silence betraying his fear. Good, Atia thought. He should be afraid. Only the gods knew what manner of humiliation her father planned for him.

‘And as for the nature of your apology,’ she continued, ‘you must make it as detailed and elaborate as possible. Sorry is not enough—you must fawn and you must beg.’

She watched him cringe. ‘You must bury your true feelings deep. Watch me now and listen closely.’

Atia dropped to her knees and assumed her most miserable expression. ‘Honourable Legatus Augusti Pro Praetore Magnus Atius Severus,’ she said. ‘I come to this banquet in the manner of a lowly dog. I am embarrassed, ashamed, contrite. I sit on your couches, I eat your oysters, I avail myself of your endless generosity, yet I deserve none of this.’ Atia sat back on her heels. ‘Do you see? Now continue where I left off.’

Rab gave his shoulders an exaggerated hunch. ‘Honourable Governor, I stand before you as a beggar, a sand-scratcher, a worm. A fly on the back of the world’s ugliest toad. The stinking excrement of the lowliest jackal in the foulest—’

‘Perhaps a bit less description,’ Atia interrupted, suppressing a grin.

Rab nodded gravely. ‘Only two days ago, my camel did the unthinkable. The mindless beast thrust out his wretched leg and crushed your own. It was a crime for which both beast and owner deserve the worst of punishments. And yet you, Honourable Governor, in your magnificent mercy, have allowed us to live.’

‘Better,’ said Atia. ‘Now drop to your knees.’

Rab dropped to his knees before her and she felt a wave of heat pulse through her body. Now they were kneeling before one another with half-an-arm’s length between them. The bubbling in her stomach returned with new force.

She gulped a breath and willed herself to focus. ‘You must speak your apology with great humility,’ she advised. ‘Ideally, you must begin to cry, but only if you can produce real tears.’

‘It will be difficult enough to hide my disgust.’

‘You must not simply hide your disgust, you must swallow it whole,’ said Atia, ‘and after your apology, you must declare your loyalty to Rome...with thunderous enthusiasm.’

He rolled his eyes. ‘You wish for me to raise a cheer, then? Summon the trumpets?’

She frowned. His arrogance was exasperating. He certainly did not comport himself like the son of a pomegranate farmer.

‘Senatus Populus Que Romanus,’ he was saying now. ‘I have come here to pronounce my loyalty to Rome. First I shall perform a Roman salute, followed by a prayer to Magna Mater. Then I shall recite a few lines from the Aeneid.’ He arched a brow and it was all she could do not to laugh.

‘You will say none of those things—lest my father throw you to the lions!’

‘Just the lions?’ He was making light of her advice, but his words had grown edges. Beneath all his bluster, she knew he was afraid.

‘After your apology, you should straighten your posture and lift your chin thusly.’ She tilted her head so that her face gazed up at his. ‘Then passionately declare your loyalty to Rome.’

‘I am beginning to understand the nature of this drama,’ he said.

‘And that is?’

‘A debased, uncivilised Nabataean man is transformed by his submission to Rome.’

She did not deny it.

‘And if I do not wish to be your father’s performer?’

‘You risk losing more than your dignity,’ she said.

Rab exhaled mightily, then rose to his feet. ‘I declare my complete and undying loyalty to Rome,’ he said, his rich, gravely voice resounding against the marble. ‘For Rome’s greatest Governor has lifted me from squalor and shown me mercy.’

‘Bravo,’ she said, feeling unreasonably happy. ‘You have learned the dance.’

He flashed a begrudging grin and extended his hand down to her and when she rose to her feet it was as if they were really dancing.

‘If Fortuna wills it, you will walk free tomorrow,’ she said. If Fortuna willed it, this would be the last time they would ever speak again.

‘You do me a kindness,’ he said. ‘Why?’

‘I find it...tedious to watch other people suffer.’

‘I am grateful to you,’ he said. She noticed that he had not released her hand. She glanced at the floor, unsure of how to respond. ‘Truly,’ he said, willing her to look at him again. ‘I owe you a debt.’

Atia blinked. Obviously he was trying to win her favour again. What prisoner ever expressed gratitude to his captor?

‘Yes, that is it,’ she said. ‘That is the tone of sincerity you must strive to convey.’

He lowered his voice. ‘It is not a tone. I am sincere.’

What a strange thing for him to say. But of course you are not sincere, she wished to tell him. You are a prisoner. You will say anything to engineer your escape.

‘When you stand before my father tonight you must work hard to veil your thoughts,’ she said. Meanwhile, her own thoughts had begun to run riot.

‘You appear to know quite a lot about the veiling of thoughts,’ he observed. He squeezed her hand. There was very little distance between them now. She could smell his clean olive scent.

‘Yes, I believe I am something of an expert in that particular skill,’ she admitted.

She had been veiling her thoughts all her life, in truth—from a father who used her, from husbands who despised her, even from her own awareness. Thoughts were dangerous, because they always led to pain. ‘If my thoughts are concealed, they cannot be used against me,’ she said.

‘And yet perhaps you are not so very adept at concealment as you think,’ he whispered. She glanced at his lips, the bottom lip so much larger than the top, like a pillow upon which she might lay her secrets.

‘I am extremely adept,’ she countered. She had meant the statement as a kind of jest, but the words came out thick and heavy.

‘Can you guess my thoughts in this moment?’ he asked.

‘No, I am afraid I cannot.’

His lips were so close. It was as if he wished to kiss her. ‘I am thinking that you are very beautiful.’

His breath washed over her, bathing her skin with sensation. It flooded down her limbs, making her feel relaxed and alert all at once. What had he said? That she was beautiful?

Beautiful?

She froze. She was many things, but beautiful she was not. Something was amiss.

She stepped backwards. He was watching her closely, his eyes smouldering with...with that look. That very well-crafted, remarkably believable approximation of desire. Something was very, very amiss.

He tilted his head back to take in the length of her body and his eyes fixed on the belt of her tunic—the place where she had stored the key to his cell.

And there it was—a glimpse of the truth. His mind was not on her—of course it was not. Had she forgotten how her terrible hooked nose made her completely undesirable? Nay, he was thinking of the key. He did not desire her. He desired escape.

She took another step backwards. And to think that she had tried to tutor him in the art of performance! What a fool she had been. She had almost been taken in by him, had waited for his kiss, had longed for it, even. How could she have forgotten herself in such a way?

‘Do you think me that naive?’ she asked.

‘Apologies, I do not underst—’

‘Guards!’ she called.

Chapter Five

Atia tipped the vial into her goblet and watched two cloudy drops mix with her wine.

‘How many for you, Lydia?’ she asked her friend.

‘Only one, dear,’ said Lydia, glancing at the door. ‘And be quick.’

Just beyond the small bedroom, every bored patrician in Bostra had gathered. They milled about the column-lined courtyard of her father’s large villa, trading compliments and spoiling for gossip.

‘You are making me look bad,’ said Atia, tipping a single drop of the poppy tears into Lydia’s goblet, then a third into her own. She swirled the liquid inside her glass and thought of the moment that afternoon when she realised Rab had been lying to her. The tears will wash away the pain, she told herself.

It was a long-practised refrain—a phrase she had invented in the days after her first marriage, almost eighteen years ago now. She had been only twelve years old at the time—a full two years younger than the proper age for a Roman marriage.

It had been a trying time. After her mother’s death, her father had been eager to rid his doma of his three daughters. Her eldest sister had refused to marry, so he had sent her to serve at a temple in distant Crete. He had rewarded a military ally with the hand of Atia’s second-eldest sister, who had inherited the beauty of their mother.

He had had more difficulty finding a husband for Atia. ‘Your nose is a problem,’ he had told her. ‘No man wishes to pass such a thing along to his children.’ Eventually, however, her father had found a beneficial match in the person of an elderly Senator—a political ally with a taste for young girls.

The tears will wash away the pain, Atia would always tell herself when she heard the heavy treading of the Senator’s sandals on the marble floor outside her bedchamber. She would quickly tip the vial to her lips and, when he turned her over and laid his wrinkled stomach across her back, she would close her eyes and find peace.

‘Come, Atia,’ urged Lydia. ‘Before we are missed.’ Atia tipped one last teardrop into her goblet and the two women slipped back into the courtyard. They followed a crowded walkway to the dining room, where they stretched out at opposite ends of a lounging couch surrounded by tables full of delicacies.

Lydia raised her goblet. ‘To Arabia Petraea.’

‘To Arabia Petraea,’ Atia repeated, then took another long sip of her wine.

It was a sly joke the two women shared, for neither had wished to come to Rome’s easternmost province. Lydia had followed her husband here three years ago. A lesser tribune in Trajan’s Second Legion, the womanising commander had survived the change of administration from Trajan to Hadrian thanks in no small part to the wise counsel of his wife.

‘What troubles you, Atia?’ Lydia asked now, casting a wary eye on her husband. The old lecher had cornered a young Greek woman and was shamelessly caressing her cheek.

‘Nothing at all, my darling,’ Atia said, because her troubles seemed insignificant in comparison to the humiliation Lydia currently suffered.

‘Come now, I can see that something worries you,’ Lydia prodded. She reached for a fig. ‘Beyond the usual worries, of course.’

Atia sifted through her catalogue of worries to find one suitable to discuss publicly. Her stomach twisted as she envisioned burning ghutrahs and starving prisoners and innocent Nabataeans doomed to die. She wondered if her own death would come before all of them.

‘You are familiar with the science of astrology?’ she asked her friend.

‘Of course, my dear,’ replied Lydia. ‘We recently hosted Dorotheus of Sidon at our villa in Gadara. A wretched man, but his astrological treatise is quite famous.’

‘Did I ever tell you that an astrologer once predicted the day of my death?’

‘Really? But you must know that such predictions are impossible. Astrology is a general science.’

‘Of course,’ said Atia. She plucked an olive from a plate and gazed at it.

There was a long silence. ‘Now you have made me curious,’ asked Lydia, also gazing at the olive. ‘What day did he give you?’

‘It was a she, not a he—a very old woman in the Subura slum,’ said Atia.

‘And?’

‘I cannot recall the exact date she gave,’ Atia lied. In forty days. Atia popped the olive into her mouth and swallowed it whole. ‘She only said it would take place in my thirtieth year.’

‘How perfectly morbid! And how old are you now?’

Atia raised a brow.

Lydia laughed. ‘Come now, Atia. You do not really believe it, do you?’

Atia shook her head dismissively. She did not need to tell her friend that not only did Atia believe it, she had been looking forward to the date.

‘If the reading took place in the Subura, she was likely a charlatan,’ Lydia added. ‘Besides, old women will say anything to amuse themselves.’

‘We most certainly will,’ said Atia, sending Lydia a playful grin. A pair of centurions’ wives had taken up residence on the couch near them and a pair of young lovers were seating themselves upon the third of their trio of couches. Even in the furthest reaches of the Empire, it seemed, Atia could not escape the risk of gossip. ‘My real worry is the heat,’ said Atia, turning the conversation to a safe subject. ‘I fear it has begun to vex my nerves.’

‘It is a brutal time of year,’ replied Lydia. ‘Though not without its charms.’

‘Charms?’

‘I am speaking of the nights.’

‘Ah, the nights,’ said Atia, as if that explained everything. She shot Lydia a confounded look.

‘The nights being the only respite from the heat, of course,’ Lydia said with a wink.

‘Of course,’ said Atia. Her friend might have been speaking Latin, but she sensed another language at play.

‘To enjoy the nights more, I have begun to sleep on the roof of our villa.’

‘Have you indeed?’ said Atia. Her head swirled. She was beginning to feel the effects of the poppy.

‘I sleep on the roof of our villa because there is a wonderful view of the night sky.’ Lydia continued. Atia frowned. Why was Lydia repeating herself?

‘You sing of the night sky like a Grecian choir boy,’ Atia teased.

Lydia rolled her eyes and leaned forward, and the two women met in the middle of the couch. ‘I have taken a lover,’ Lydia whispered. ‘Is it not obvious?’

Atia sat back, mildly stunned. No, it wasn’t obvious, though now that she considered it, she did notice something of a lightness to her friend’s mood. She raised her glass in honour of Lydia. ‘Have you found it as satisfying as you had hoped?’ Atia asked in her public voice. ‘Viewing the night sky, I mean.’

‘It is utterly spectacular, my dear,’ said Lydia. She shot a glance at her husband, who had now begun to caress the Greek woman’s arm. ‘I highly recommend viewing it yourself.’

Atia tossed her friend a scolding grin. ‘You know my father would never allow me to...ah...sleep on the roof.’

‘But you are a grown woman, are you not?’

‘A Governor’s daughter does not sleep on the roof at all,’ Atia said. ‘And I fear she has never even seen the night sky.’

It was the unfortunate truth. Atia had never learned to enjoy the pleasures of the flesh, despite having been married two more times. Atia’s second marriage had been worse than the first. After the old Senator had died, her father had married her to an ill-humoured tax collector as payment for a debt.

The man had been spiteful and rough with Atia, and had often criticised her looks, calling her less than what he deserved. On the rare occasions that he had visited her bed, he had been intent on harming her. And though the poppy tears had helped her endure the pain, they had not been able to shield her from his anger, or the bruises that had always decorated her skin after those terrible nights. Thank the gods her father had chosen to end the marriage and make Atia available for a better alliance.

Though that better alliance had proven to be folly. A prominent Senator, her third husband had claimed to be her father’s ally and had eagerly sought Atia’s hand. But on their marriage night, he had explained to Atia that he preferred not to see her face during the coupling act. The very next day he had introduced Atia to his mistress.

As it turned out, the Senator had been a spy. He had married Atia to learn more about her father’s efforts to secure Hadrian’s rule. When her father had learned of the Senator’s treachery, he had slain him at the baths and taken his finger as a prize.

Atia took another sip of wine. Now Lydia was motioning Atia towards her once again. Atia leaned forward and her friend whispered in her ear. ‘Love will always be elusive to women like us. But why not seize a little bit of life before it passes us by? A bit of pleasure? We are not getting any younger.’

Atia lay back on the couch and nodded her assent. Indeed they were not. Lydia was already a grandmother and Atia would have been if... She paused. If she had appealed to her husbands enough to get with child. She smiled and took another drink. The tears of poppy were simply a wonder. They made even the most difficult thoughts somehow easier to think.

‘I have been sleeping on the roof for many months now, in truth,’ said Lydia, tracing the rim of her glass. ‘I enjoy the night sky every night.’

Atia peered at Lydia. Was it the effect of the tears or did her friend seem to glow? ‘How would one go about such an endeavour?’ she asked casually, then filled her mouth with a wedge of melon.

Lydia grinned. ‘One must simply select the rooftop mattress one desires and then pay for it.’

‘Pay for it?’

‘Of course. Or offer some kind of gift in exchange. I recommend the Nabataean-made mattresses. They are especially comfortable.’

Atia could not conceal her wonder. Her closest friend was having an affair with a Nabataean man, whom she compensated with coin and gifts.

It was all very commercial, though she supposed that, in a sense, every union was so. Marriages were always negotiated and every woman was for sale. Or perhaps rent was a better term. Atia herself had been rented three separate times, in three separate marriages. She had never had any aspirations of love or pleasure. She was simply an object of trade in the economy of her father’s shifting alliances. If she survived beyond her prophesied death, she did not doubt that she would become such an object again.

Atia gazed at her friend in admiration. Why should she not strike her own bargain for a change? There was something liberating about the idea and it occurred to her that one would not have to be beautiful or desirable in such an arrangement. One would only need to be rich. And rich Atia was.

A vision of Rab’s dazzling grin filled her mind. Go away, she told it. He was her father’s prisoner, after all—the worst possible candidate for a lover. Besides, he had exploited her good will and sought to flatter her towards his own ends. It terrified her—how close she had come to believing his deception. She was certain that, had she allowed their encounter to go on for even a few more seconds, he would have tried to kiss her.

And she would have kissed him back. That was what scared her the most. It was as if his body had been beckoning hers, pulling her towards him by some invisible force.

Thank the gods she had not fallen into his trap. She was not a desirable woman: her father and all three of her husbands had made that abundantly clear. And for the first time in her life that knowledge had served her well.

The tears were hitting her now—a great rush of them. They cooled her limbs and flooded her mind with bliss. She began to laugh. How little any of it mattered, she thought. In forty days she would likely be dead.

Her laughter bubbled over the couch and flowed out into the dining room, mixing with the chords of a lute and catching the attention of her father, whose raised couch gave him full view of the room. His arm was a blur of movement. It was almost as if he was motioning to Atia.

Atia’s heart took a plunge. He was motioning to her. She ceased her laughter. Her head swirled. She could hardly stand upright in such a state, let alone face her father. Yet she knew she did not have a choice. She stood and steadied herself, then smoothed her stola and crossed the room.

‘Good evening, Father,’ she said, squatting at the side of his couch. She struggled to gather her wits.

‘May I ask what is so funny?’

‘I was just speaking with Lydia,’ Atia said. ‘About sleeping on the roof!’ Her father gripped her wrist and pulled her close.

‘You are cold.’ He searched her eyes. ‘You have indulged in tears of the poppy.’

‘Just a few drops. To relieve my headache.’

His grip on her wrist grew tighter. ‘They cloud your judgement. They make you even weaker.’

‘Yes, Father.’

He released her wrist. ‘The guards tell me that you asked for time alone with the camel man this afternoon. Why?’

Here it was—the moment she had been dreading. ‘To gain his confidence,’ Atia stated. ‘For further interrogation.’

‘And what did you discover in your time alone with him?’

Atia paused. She felt as if she were balancing on some invisible rope. ‘He claims his father was a pomegranate farmer.’

‘That is all?’

‘He was very tight-lipped.’

Her father scowled. ‘Did you at least discover his name?’

‘Rabbel. He goes by Rab.’

‘Rab, son of...?’

‘Junon.’

‘Junon? What kind of a name is that?’ Her father paused. ‘Ah, it is as I suspected, then.’

As he suspected? What exactly did he suspect? Atia could not think. A panic was rising inside her. It was mixing with the softness of the drug, making her dizzy and confused. Her mind seized on a vision of Rab cowering in his cell, his bright new toga stained with his own blood. ‘What will you do with him?’ she asked.

Her father only shook his head. ‘You have grown too attached to the tears, Atia. But that will soon be remedied.’

‘Father?’

But he motioned her away and Atia could do nothing but plaster a smile on her face and make her way back through the dining room to Lydia, her heart filling with dread.

Remedied? Did he plan to take away her poppy tears? Gods, no, not that.

‘Make way for the prisoner,’ announced a herald.

The crowd parted and there was Rab’s hunched figure standing at the entrance to the dining room. Behind him stood a host of guards.

Atia’s father made a show of hoisting his injured leg on to a footrest. ‘You may approach, prisoner,’ he said.

Rab reached the base of the dais in a few long strides. He bowed his head.

‘Tell me, prisoner, what category of audacity compels you to present yourself at this elite gathering?’ asked her father.

Rab shook his head and studied the floor. ‘Forgive me, Honourable Governor. I am as a dog who prowls at a lion’s banquet. I embarrass myself.’

There was a smattering of laughter and her father nodded gamely. ‘You are worse than a dog, Camel Man. By allowing your camel to injure me you have placed the well-being of this province at risk. You are a menace.’ He stomped his good leg on the floor and Rab wisely jumped.

‘That is why I have come to apologise,’ Rab continued, ‘for guilt consumes me and I fear the judgement of the gods. But mostly I fear your judgement, Good Governor, for despite the atrocity of my actions you have granted me mercy.’

Her father was pressing his fingers together—a good sign. ‘Go on.’

‘I am but a witless, humble cameleer and I curse the day that, in my ignorance, I ordered my camel to deliver the kick that resulted in your injury. Had I known that I was in the presence of the Governor of this great Roman province, I would have rolled beneath the offending hoof myself.’

He was doing well. He had heeded Atia’s advice. The audience was looking on with sympathetic interest and her father was nodding gravely. It seemed quite possible that Rab would emerge with his freedom.

‘And that is why I beg your forgiveness,’ Rab was concluding. He fell to his knees. ‘I do not deserve it, just as I do not deserve this fine toga, which in your generosity you have seen fit to provide. Please, Honourable Governor, forgive me, if only so that I may spend the rest of my days singing your praises.’

Atia’s father paused dramatically. ‘You fail to mention my greatest mercy, Camel Man.’

Atia saw Rab’s eyes search the floor. She held her breath. ‘My nephew,’ said Rab at last. ‘In your mercy you released my young nephew. And for that I thank you, Honourable Governor.’

‘It was a pleasure to release the youth,’ said Atia’s father. ‘My guards followed him all the way to your home east of Bostra, just to ensure his safety. It is a fine home for one such as yourself. Two floors, a big garden. Beautiful acacia trees.’

Rab’s eyes flew open.

‘Oh, I know much about you, Rabbel, son of Junon,’ continued her father. ‘What I do not know is where your loyalties lie.’

Rab swayed on his knees, as if he had just received a blow. ‘Ah, with you, Honourable Governor,’ he said, recovering himself. ‘With you and with Rome.’

Atia’s stomach twisted into a knot. She had not prepared Rab for threats to his family. ‘Then you would not deny your Governor a request?’

‘I—’ Rab glanced at Atia. ‘I would do anything in my power to fulfil it.’

‘Tell me, have you heard of the Nabataean tax thieves?’

‘I have not.’

Atia’s father gave a theatrical harrumph and his guests tittered. ‘I find that hard to believe, Camel Man,’ he continued, ‘but since you claim ignorance, I will enlighten you. Every month for the past year, the caravan that conveys the Roman tax payment from Rekem to Bostra has been robbed along New Trajan’s Way. We believe the thieves are using the riches to fund the Nabataean rebels.’

‘Fools!’ cried someone from the audience.

‘Fools indeed, but as a result the rebel army has grown bolder,’ said Atia’s father. ‘Two Roman tax collectors were killed just last week. And we all know about the attack on the Rekem contubernium.’

There was a collective sigh. Just two months before, a squad of ten Roman soldiers had been killed on their way from Rekem to Bostra. ‘New Trajan’s Way is no longer secure,’ continued Atia’s father. ‘I assume you know the alternative routes, Camel Man? The locations of the water holes and such?’

‘I do,’ Rab said carefully.

‘Good. As a demonstration of your goodwill, I would like you to guide my daughter and a host of guards to Rekem. Departing tomorrow.’

Atia caught her breath. A journey to Rekem? In the middle of August?

‘I wish for you to convey a precious package to Legate Julianus, the commander of the legion stationed there,’ her father continued. ‘In addition, my daughter has some business with him.’

Atia felt every eye in the room settle on her. There was only one kind of business that could take place between the commander of a Roman legion and the daughter of a Roman governor: marriage.

There was a spate of hushed talk and Atia felt as if she were sinking into the floor. He had done it, then. Her father had selected her fourth husband and was sending her to him along with her precious dowry.

It would be a sine manu marriage—as they all had been—with her father retaining control over Atia and her dowry. Whoever her new husband was, Atia would be expected to submit to his every wish—at least until such time as her father determined the alliance of no further use.

Atia laboured to keep the emotion from her expression. She could tell her father was relishing this moment. He had given the bored patricians exactly what they craved. She could hear the gossip starting already—whispers about the meaning of the match, along with a smattering of comments on Atia’s advanced age, unfortunate nose and general plainness. She had never been more grateful for the effects of the tears.

Her father returned his attention to Rab. ‘You will guide my daughter and her armed escort and help ensure their safety from rebel attack. It is a dangerous mission, but it is how you may prove your loyalty to Rome.’

‘Yes, Governor,’ said Rab, his head bowed.

‘Good, now kiss my ring.’

Rab betrayed only the slightest hesitation as he bent to do the deed and kept his expression blank as Atia’s father pulled him close and whispered something in his ear. When Rab returned to standing, he appeared smaller somehow. Defeated. He had managed to get free of his first prison, but now he was obviously trapped inside a new one.

And this time, Atia was trapped with him—the man who had offered her his ghutrah and called her beautiful and tried to kiss her.

The man who had done all those things not out of desire, but in a desperate, futile effort to get himself free.

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