"Are you, by any chance," Ulrika heard her mother ask in a breathless voice, "the Gaius Vatinius who fought some years ago on the Rhine?"

     His smile deepened. "You have heard of me, then."

     Gaius Vatinius then looked at Ulrika. His eyes moved up and down her body, lingeringly, making her feel uncomfortable. In the next moment, a slave announced the serving of dinner, and the three men excused themselves and headed toward the house.

     Ulrika turned to her mother and saw that she had gone pale. "Gaius Vatinius upset you, mother. Who is he?"

     Selene avoided her daughter's eyes as she said, "He once commanded the legions on the Rhine. It was years ago, before you were born. Let us go in."

     Four banquet tables were set, each bordered on three sides by couches. The placement of guests followed strict protocol, with the honored ones reclining on the left edge of each couch. The fourth side of the table was open, to allow slaves to come and go with food and drink. Roasted pheasant, dressed in their feathers, dominated the tables, surrounded by a variety of dishes from which the guests were to help themselves. The conversation of thirty-six people filled the dining room as they took their places, nearly drowning out the solo performance of a musician playing panpipes.

     As Ulrika was about to take her place on a couch next to a lawyer named Maximus, she glanced across at Gaius Vatinius and stopped when she saw a peculiar sight.

     Sitting on the floor at the Commander's side was a large dog.

     Ulrika frowned. Why would a dinner guest bring his dog to the party? She looked around at the other guests, who were laughing and helping themselves to wine and delicacies. Did no one else think it odd?

     Ulrika brought her gaze back to the dog. Her lips parted. The breath stopped in her chest. No, not a dog. A wolf! Large and gray and shaggy, with keen eyes and sharp ears, like the one in her dream. And it was looking straight at her while Gaius Vatinius engaged in conversation with his fellow diners.

     Ulrika could not take her eyes off the handsome creature.

     But as she stood and watched, the wolf slowly vanished until he was completely gone. Ulrika blinked. He had not risen from his seated posture. He had not left the dining room. He had simply faded away, right before her eyes.

     Ulrika felt the floor drop from under her. She reached for the couch and slumped down. Her throat tightened in fear. Now she understood why the ill-ease had plagued her all day.

     The sickness had returned.

3

ULRIKA HAD THOUGHT THE secret sickness that had clouded her childhood, and which she had told no one about, not even her mother, had ended when she was twelve.

     She could not recall the first time she had seen something that other children did not, or had dreamed of an event before it happened, or had brushed someone's hand and had felt that person's emotional pain. When she was eight years old, in a butcher shop with her mother, the butcher searching for a cleaver while customers waited impatiently, Ulrika speaking up, "It fell under a table in the back," the butcher disappearing into a room in the rear of the shop to return with the cleaver and a strange look on his face. Ulrika had seen enough of those strange looks to know that the things she saw or sensed, in dreams or in visions, were not normal. As she already felt like an outsider in every city she and her mother briefly lived in, Ulrika had learned to hold her tongue and let people hunt for missing cleavers.

     And then finally, on a summer day seven years ago, Ulrika and her mother had enjoyed a picnic in the countryside, and in the heat of that day,amid the drone of bees and the heady perfume of flowers, Ulrika had seen a young woman suddenly come running from the trees, her long hair flying behind her, mouth wide in a silent scream, arms stained with blood.

     "Mother, what is that woman running from?" Ulrika had said, thinking they should go to her aid. "Her hands are covered in blood."

     "What woman?" Selene had asked, looking around.

     When the woman faded before her eyes, Ulrika realized in shock that it had been one of her secret visions, but more vivid and lifelike than any she had seen before. "No one, mother, she is gone now."

     That was seven years ago, and no more hallucinations had visited Ulrika after that, no strange dreams of precognition or fantastical places, no sensing other people's emotions, no knowing where lost objects could be found. Ulrika had entered puberty and become at last like all other girls, normal and healthy. But now, at Aunt Paulina's dinner party, a vision like those of years ago had just visited her.

     Ulrika was brought out of her thoughts by the voice of Gaius Vatinius.

     "The Germans need to be taken in hand," he was saying to his table companions. "We signed peace treaties with the Barbarians during the reign of Tiberius, and now they are breaking them. I shall quell the unrest once and for all."

     The guests in Lady Paulina's dining room reclined on couches, supporting themselves with their left arms while helping themselves to food with their right hands. The place of honor at Ulrika's table went to Commander Vatinius. Her mother, acting as hostess, lay on the couch to his left. Ulrika was opposite. In between were a couple named Maximus and Juno, a retired accountant named Horatius, and an elderly widow named Lady Aurelia. They reached for mushrooms fried in garlic and onions, crispy anchovies, plump sparrows stuffed with pine nuts.

     When he saw how Ulrika stared at him, Commander Gaius Vatinius, a lifelong bachelor, fell silent and stared in turn. He could not fail to appreciate her unusual beauty—the ivory skin and hair the color of dark honey. Blue eyes were a rarity, too, among Rome's ladies. A glance at her left hand told him she was unmarried, which surprised him, as he guessed she was past the age.

     He smiled charmingly and said, "I am boring you with military talk."

     "Not at all, Commander," Ulrika said. "I have always been interested in the Rhineland."

     Lady Aurelia said fretfully, "Why can't they settle down and be civilized? Look what we have done for the rest of the world. Our aqueducts, our roads."

     Vatinius turned to the older woman. "What has the Barbarians so upset is that, four years ago, Emperor Claudius elevated a settlement on the Rhine from the status of garrison to colony, naming it Colonia Agrippinensis in honor of his wife, Agrippina, who was born there. That was when the new raids truly began. Apparently the Romanization of an old Germanic territory has stirred up feelings of some outmoded tribal patriotism and racial pride." Vatinius waved a long-fingered hand laden with rings. "Claudius has given me the honored duty of seeing to it that Colonia is defended at all costs."

     Ulrika reached for her wine, but could not drink. The wolf ... and now talk of renewed fighting in Germania.

     "The Barbarians have been peaceful for such a long time," said Maximus, the rich and fat lawyer. He held up his hand and his personal slave stepped forward to wipe his greasy fingers. "I hear the tribes are being incited by one particular rebel leader. Do you know who he is?"

     A dark look rippled across Vatinius's handsome face. "We do not know who he is, or even his name. We've never seen him. According to intelligence, he came from nowhere, all of a sudden, and is now leading Germanic tribes in fresh uprisings. They strike when we least expect it, and then vanish into the forest."