I got the right of it, it seemed, Tiberius thought, his sweaty back pressed against the smooth, warm stone of the imperial bath.
He twirled the scrap of parchment between his fingers, rolling it from one knuckle to the next, reading and re-reading the black ink as if the words might somehow alter themselves under his glare.
That was it. He knew it.
He had taken the first step onto a narrow, precarious ledge, a road that admitted no turning back. Forward he would go, or down into the abyss; in either case, he would walk it to the absolute end. Either his own, or that of his mission.
It was treason, pure and simple. He knew the name for it well enough. His very birth was one, was it not?
It was in his very blood, as the high-born priests loved to preach from their gilded pulpits: bastards were begotten in deceit and lust, cursed from the womb to be treacherous, devious creatures.
