Marcus knew he was being followed as soon as he reentered Quintillius' garden.

He heard the humming first, a woman's voice lighter than moonlight. Her shape was a lithe shadow matching his movement as precisely as the letters in Athenodorus' books. His second glance confirmed his tracker was Three Rivers, whose eyes never wavered from Marcus.

Flowers gave way to sheltering trees. Marcus cut a swift intercept arc through the middle of the tiny forest and jumped out onto her trail . . . but he was alone save for a small, long-beaked iridescent green bird peering down at him from a limb directly overhead. It flitted away toward the villa.

Marcus' stealth was unnecessary. She waited at the villa door. Odd, no servants have come out to meet us, Marcus managed to think, and even that realization was washed away in her still-gazing eyes the color of ancient oak.

Her voice was a narrow but deep river: "Shall we go inside, General Trogia? We are honored together tonight. We should enter together."

Marcus simply nodded; he had the unsettling feeling that he was a ship at the mercy of her wind.

The dining arrangements were a relief: The table was just a hand's height off the floor and the guests lounged around it in the Roman fashion. Books and a Roman table—there is some civilization in this wildland. But relief gave way to trepidation when he saw Quintillius and the guests rise: Two dozen Skraelings, an old man with a surly-looking teenaged boy at his side—they looked Greek in more ways than one, Marcus thought disgustedly—and half a dozen Northmen, including Hallbjorn.

"We are complete." Quintillius, Master of the Feast, tucked his hand into the fold of his toga. "Welcome Marcus Varrus Trogia of the Roman Empire, commander of the Fifteenth Legion Apollinaris, and Three Rivers, holy woman of the Lakota . . . "

"My people did not asked me to come here," Three Rivers said. "Your lives were shown to me in a vision. But if I return to them someday, I will tell them what I have seen here."

Quintillius bowed lightly, and the other guests followed— including Hallbjorn, though never taking his eyes off Marcus and sneering through his crimson beard.

Quintillius extended his arms as servants pulled free two chairs beside him. "Please, sit."

More introductions, and Marcus donned his bland diplomatic mask. The Skraelings represented several tribes living independently within the borders—wherever those might be—of Terra Ambrosia. Their names sounded like a Germanic-Asian cross to Marcus' ear: Lenape, Pamunki, Salagi, Nantico, Scarora, Saquahana, Manahoac. The old man was named Nikolaos Azanties—an inventor who spoke the rigidly precise Greek of a Constantinopolis patrician. The boy was his newest apprentice, Marcion, age thirteen.

Quintillius must have caught a glimpse of the younger Roman's trepidation; the older man's eyes gleamed as if to say, Patience, and all will be answered—perhaps.

Marcus found himself watching Three Rivers again, and only the force of embarrassment at such a breach of dignity broke his gaze. She now looked at him not at all.

Marcus spoke only when a few small questions came his way: Had he seen battles? Had he been to Rome? Was the passage across the ocean difficult? How much had he seen of Concordia? His answers were crisp, polite and vague.

Otherwise, he preferred to listen and watch. Quintillius acted in no way as Marcus expected an emperor to behave. No stodgy Maxentius, but more like the great Augustus Caesar when the first First Citizen invited his guests to dice games. Quintillius laughed frequently but quietly, a human middle ground between the raucous Northmen and the mild Skraelings.

An hour passed this way and Marcus' impatience heated. Was this the would-be usurper's idea of a state dinner? Small talk with savages and Rome's enemies? As the third course was laid before him, Marcus slammed his palm on the table and stood.

"Why am I here?"

The Northmen shot to their feet, quickly followed by the Skraelings—whose mildness was abruptly replaced by ferocity as their lean arms wrestled him down. Quintillius lifted a single finger; Hallbjorn nodded to his men and they sat, rumbling, and the Skraelings released Marcus but not their wicked glares.

"You are here to learn, general," Quintillius said quietly.

"Truly? Then why has no one taught me anything?"

"Anything? The teachers are all around you, Marcus Varrus, and I have seen you watching us like a hungry hawk."

"Pieces only," Marcus snapped. Three Rivers eyed him intently and Marcus found himself filling with brash strength. "I see your gardens and what you must consider a fine villa for this place, and your rambling town, and some beautiful books. A few colored tiles when I want to see the mosaic."

"Indeed." Quintillius' fingers built a pyramid that supported his chin. "You wish to know why we—and Terra Ambrosia—are here. Of course. Three Rivers would know the story also . . . or at least my telling of it."

Quintillius' tale opened the gates to countless childhood memories. Gaius Julius Quintillius—scion of a family that rose to prominence with the Trogias, dashing young commander of the Fifteenth Legion—comprised many of Marcus' earliest memories. The boy imperial nephew knew that Uncle Maxentius was a great man (because so many people told him so), but Quintillius stood twelve feet tall in the boy's eyes.

Marcus knew he would never be emperor with two cousins ahead of him. But his only ambition was to command the thousand-year-old Legion Apollinaris, as Quintillius did.

Marcus knew his uncle would gladly give him a place in the Fifteenth, and Quintillius often told the boy that he would be welcome so long as he was brave and no shirker. But Quintillius was humiliated during the first great battle against the Northmen and stripped of the Fifteenth's command.

He was forced to lead a small mobile brigade from Britannia meant to oversee the fortification and colonization of Icelandia, a disputed, chilly, volcanic island . . . but disappeared after the ships left Britannia. Maxentius said he had betrayed the Empire by throwing in his lot with the Northmen, who in turn betrayed him and depending on which story you heard—either sunk his small fleet in the northern Atlanticus, or marooned him on the wild western coast of Hibernia to die at the hands of its savages.

Here the story took a decidedly different turn from the official version.

"The leader of the Scandian raiders was Hrolf Hranisson," Quintillius said. "That much you know, since it was Hranisson who sacked Londinium. Where the annals are silent is that it was not I who gave Londinium to the Northmen, but the emperor himself."

"The words of a traitor! How dare you try to disgrace—!"

"Listen," Three Rivers told him. Her voice soothed his mind and eased him down. "Listen."

"You know that Maxentius Caesar disappeared at the height of the battle, and there was great confusion among the legions. Eventually he reappeared after Londinium burned, claiming he escaped. He didn't. Hrolf released him as part of their agreement."

Quintillius paused as if awaiting another outburst. When none came, he continued, "What the Northmen lack in numbers they replace with ferocity and sheer determination. And, as you well know from the current war—beserkers. The warriors who fight like demon-possessed madmen and can sustain countless wounds and kill a dozen or twenty Roman soldiers before they finally fall. Eventually the legions might have secured southern Britannia from the Northmen's raids, but at great cost. So Maxentius bargained with Hrolf: The Northmen could sack Londinium, do what they would with its goods . . . and people . . . and keep the territory north of Hadrian's Wall for themselves in perpetuity. In exchange, they would completely withdraw from the regions south of the Wall—and spare Caesar's life."