The last time Regina woke up that day, the cart was pulling into a courtyard. As Aetius and the others jumped down and began to unload, Regina stood up on her seat, stretched and massaged a sore rump, and looked around. The light was fading from the sky, and high, thin clouds had gathered. To her right she could see a wall, tall and formidable, a great curtain of slate gray two or three times her height that curved away across the ground.

She pointed. “There’s a town! Is it Durnovaria?”

Aetius snorted. “We’ve come a little farther than that. Haven’t you been counting the waystones? We passed twenty-three—not a bad pace after a slow start. That is Calleva Atrebatum.”

“Aren’t we going to stay there? . . . What’s this place? Is it a villa?”

It was no villa but one of the mansiones, a way station designed to support the messengers of the Imperial Post. It was here, Aetius said, that they would spend the night, for it was safe enough, and he would “swim to Hades before I give over any more ‘gate tax’ to any more swindling landowners in any more towns.”

The station turned out to be comfortable enough. It even had a small bathhouse, where Aetius retired with a pitcher of wine and a plate of oysters, bought for a price that made him groan out loud.

After a day spent largely sitting on a wooden board, Regina was too full of energy to sleep. And so, after she had eaten, despite the lateness of the hour, she, Macco, and Carta played trigon, a complicated three-person game of catch-the-ball. Regina ran and laughed, burning up her energy, and her voice echoed from the station’s plaster walls. Macco stayed as silent as ever, but his smile was broad.

The next day Aetius was again up and ready to go not long after dawn. It didn’t take long to reload the carriage, and soon the four of them were on the road again—though not before Aetius sniffed the air and inspected the clouds and the trees and the birds, seeking omens for their journey.

They continued to head steadily east. The road ran straight and true, unchanging, the way markers sliding past one by one. But the landscape changed slowly, becoming more hilly, and some of the plowed-up fields gleamed white with chalk.

Some of the villas looked abandoned, though, even burned out. On one farm, close to the road, Regina recognized a vineyard, rows of vines set out on a south-facing hillside. But though the vines were green and heavy they looked untended, and the nearby buildings were broken down. Aetius did not comment on the abandoned vineyard, and Regina thought nothing of it. If she had, she would have said that things must always have been this way. She did want to go see if there were any grapes, but Aetius ignored her pleas.