Lady of the Eternal City by Quinn Kate

Author:Quinn, Kate [Quinn, Kate]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Amazon, Paid-For, Historical, Fiction
ISBN: 9780425259634
Publisher: Berkley
Published: 2015-01-01T08:00:00+00:00

ANNIA

A.D. 130, Summer

Rome

“You aren’t wearing that, are you?” Ceionia Fabia wrinkled her perfect little nose. “It’s so short it’s improper. Everyone will see your ankles!”

Annia shrugged, looking down at her filmy blue hem. “I’m growing.” She was nearly as tall at twelve as Pedanius Fuscus was at seventeen. “And so what if people see my ankles? You’re always flashing yours for the boys!”

Ceionia was far too demure to bristle, but Annia could tell she wanted to. She was Annia’s age, smooth-haired and smooth-faced and unspeakably proper, and their respective mothers were always pushing them to be friends. Either girl could have said that was never going to happen, but since when did mothers listen to anything?

Ceionia turned away from Annia with a sniff. Her father, Lucius Ceionius, had gone east to dance attendance on the Emperor, so Ceionia had been corralled into Annia’s household for today’s festivities. Which Annia didn’t find festive at all: Brine-Face’s first walk to the Forum as a man of Rome.

The waiting crowd rippled, and Ceionia’s eyes flashed under her downcast lids. “Do you see Pedanius Fuscus yet?”

“Get your ankles ready.”

It was always an occasion when a boy donned the toga virilis for the first time. Everybody knew Servianus had pinned his hopes on the Emperor returning from the east to see Brine-Face become a man—“otherwise he’d have surely put on his toga at fourteen,” Ceionia whispered. But the Emperor had taken his entourage to Judaea rather than return to Rome, and so Brine-Face had his toga.

Annia could just make him out across the heads of the crowd, his hair gleaming barley-brown in the morning sun. This morning he’d have put aside his childhood tunic, taken the bulla amulet from his neck, and hung it up for the household gods, and according to law, that made him a man. Annia didn’t understand why. Girls didn’t get a ceremony when they became women. All she’d gotten when she started her monthly bleeding was a demonstration with cloth pads and a warm hug from her mother, and a lecture from the housekeeper about not running around flashing her ankles for Marcus anymore. What was this obsession with ankles, anyway? She wished she could ask Marcus that—he was standing behind her now, not hearing Ceionia’s little kitten-claw digs—but Annia poked his elbow and instead asked, “Why aren’t you getting your toga virilis yet? You’re more a man than Brine-Face.”

Marcus fingered the bulla about his neck, watching Pedanius strut past alongside his grandfather. “I don’t think I’m ready. I’d still rather stay up late reading than start my obligations as a man. I should be more resigned to my duty before I put the toga on, or I won’t do it the honor it deserves.”

“Prig,” Annia teased, but thought Marcus could have done justice to a toga. Even in his boy’s tunic he was slender and strong, his face high-cheekboned and serious, like he could mount the Rostra at any moment and give a speech. But it was Brine-Face at

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