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‘Fair play to you, cousin,’ he said. ‘I can’t compete with divine intervention.’

Claudia stared at his outstretched hand, unsure.

‘I will step aside, to be seen and heard only when you have requirement of me,’ he said. ‘All I ask is that you spare my life.’

If left alive, Marcellus would surely continue to be a threat, but if she killed him, she’d be starting out her reign as a tyrant. Claudia wanted to be admired and not feared, yet some quiet part of her wondered if she would have to be a tyrant, to rule as a woman.

Would the men of Rome respect her more if she conversed with them in their own language of violence, or was she to rise above it, as a superior creature?

Marcellus looked younger now, weaker. He was afraid, just as she was afraid. He was her blood, and Claudia was short on relatives. It would be her right to kill the man who’d questioned her legitimacy, and she was certain it would impress some of the more bloodthirsty onlookers, but when she looked to Gia, she saw the conflict in her lover’s expression, the softness in her eyes, the way she lowered her weapon subconsciously. Gia had killed, but not like Claudia had killed.

Gia killed with mercy.

When Claudia held out her hand expectantly, Marcellus hesitated before complying, his temple twitching.

‘All hail Empress Claudia,’ he said, kissing the ring.

5. A MARRIAGE OF INCONVENIENCE

‘What about lions?’ asked Damocles.

‘No.’

‘Elephants, then?’

‘Also no.’

Claudia sat in her throne room, in a golden chair with outspread wings. Damocles worked through a list of potential entertainments for her coronation, as Gia paced back and forth along the colonnade.

‘What about tribesmen from the client kingdoms?’

‘No.’

‘Should we have a parade of freed slaves?’

‘Absolutely not. I shouldn’t like to remind them of the empire’s greatest and most enduring evils.’ ’

‘Should we release a flock of doves, perhaps?’

‘So they can shit on the statues of the gods in my name? No, let us not,’ Claudia said.

Damocles sighed, rubbing his left temple.

‘Please, Empress, you must give us something to work with,’ he said. ‘I know you are most concerned with being the people’s princess, but there is a certain level of gravitas that is expected of us. A bit of pomp, a flash of glamour, some archaic ceremonial regalia. It’s what the people expect. We cannot put on such a paltry parade that we appear weak, cowed, frightened of the public. Not unless you want a rotten cabbage to the face.’

‘I do not.’

‘Then you must demonstrate your strength.’

‘Yet if I demonstrate too much of it, I shall be dubbed a tyrant before I’ve had chance to issue a single proclamation,’ she said. ‘The more I flaunt my power, the more my enemies shall seek to limit it.’

Hundreds of people swirled around her with fans and amphoras, presenting her with flags and sashes and even coins with her profile on them, all to be approved. Yet part of her mind had wandered away into the past, where all of her least regal demons dwelled.

She’d often knelt at her father’s sandalled feet in this very room, begging him to protect her from Decimus.

‘Please, Claudia,’ he’d said, as he plotted conquests over wine, ‘can you not see I’m busy?’

‘I don’t want to hear it, Claudia,’ he’d said, watching two men fight to the death. ‘Your brother’s mischief does not concern me.’