Not everyone in Rome was pleased with the direction things were moving.
This was not surprising — nothing significant happens in a city of a million people without generating opposition — but the nature of the opposition was worth paying attention to. It was not loud. It was not public. It was the kind of opposition that moves through back corridors and dinner parties, the kind that expresses itself in whispered questions and strategic absences and the slow withdrawal of support from people who would otherwise be expected to be supportive.
The faction, as Portia called it, had three heads.
The first was Lady Severa, Daria's mother, who had been outmaneuvered by her own brother and was not going to accept that gracefully. She had spent twenty years engineering her daughter's position and she was not the kind of woman who recalibrated easily. She had, Portia reported, been to see four senators in the past week. The topic of their conversations was not publicly known but was privately guessed.
The second was Senator Tullus, who had been one of the architects of Marcus Varro's original prosecution and who had, consequently, a significant personal interest in the case not being re-examined too closely. He was a man of considerable resources and negligible conscience, which made him dangerous in the specific way that competent unprincipled men always are.
The third was, unexpectedly, a member of Lucian's own household — a senior advisor named Galeo who had served the imperial family for twenty years and who had built his influence on being indispensable to the status quo. Any change in the status quo was, from Galeo's perspective, an existential threat.
Portia delivered this intelligence over dinner with the efficiency of a general describing terrain.
"They are not yet coordinated," she said. "But they are moving in the same direction, which is almost as useful as coordination."
"What do they want?" Livia asked.
"To slow the treaty review. To discredit the Varro case reopening. To introduce enough doubt and delay that the emperor loses patience and reverts to the original arrangements." Portia poured wine. "They are betting that the window is short."
"Is it?"
"All windows are short." Portia looked at her steadily. "The question is whether you're going to stand in this one or not."
Livia thought about her father in his coastal garden. About Gaius at the debate. About a white rose blooming two weeks early. About a voice in a moonlit garden saying I will find you again, Livia, and the fact that he had.
"What do they have?" she asked. "Specifically. What leverage do they have?"
Portia smiled slowly. "Now you're asking the right question."
They talked for two more hours. By the end of the evening, Livia had a clear picture of what each member of the faction held, what they feared, and where the gaps were in their position. Senator Tullus's role in the original prosecution had, it turned out, included some procedural irregularities that had never been examined. Lady Severa's influence depended heavily on the assumption that Daria had no independent political position. Galeo's value to the imperial household rested on the belief that he was the only person who understood certain long-standing arrangements.
Each of these assumptions was, under examination, weaker than it appeared.
Livia wrote four letters that night. One to Lucian, outlining what she had learned. One to her father's old ally, Senator Corvus, requesting a meeting at his earliest convenience. One to a legal scholar she had been quietly corresponding with regarding the original Varro prosecution. And one short, carefully worded note to Daria, which said only:
I believe you mentioned that you have thoughts about your own future. If you would like company in pursuing them, I am available.
Daria's reply came the next morning, before Livia had finished breakfast.
It said: When and where?
The faction, Livia thought, had made the classic mistake of treating the women in this situation as variables to be managed rather than people with their own plans.
That was going to be a problem for them.