Playthings of the Gods

Men are the playthings of the gods. Rome is where the game is played.

238 AD. Jaquell Servatus lies face-down in the African desert, beaten, bleeding, and left to die. He is a young Optio of Rome, the son of the Emperor's most trusted centurion. Someone wanted him dead, and Jaquell intends to learn who.

Two years earlier, on the frozen Germanian frontier, Emperor Maximinus Thrax raised him up. Then Thrax sent him to the island of Meninx with one order: collect the taxes. The people there are starving. In Rome, Senator Tacitus Terrelius nurses a grievance and a plan, patient as a spider. On Meninx, his sister Sophonisba and the swordsman Honoratus wait to see which way the young soldier will break. A healer named Tafat pulls Jaquell back from the edge of death, and a strip of blue silk tells him she knows something about him that he does not.

Duty or mercy. Father or blood. An Emperor who cannot be reasoned with and a Senate that will not be denied. Jaquell must decide who he is before the Year of the Six Emperors decides for him.

Playthings of the Gods is historical fiction about the human cost of events that survive mostly as political history. It covers the Gordian revolt, the siege of Aquileia, and the men and women ground between them.