“No!” She whirled around on me just as she turned onto the narrow street where her rooms lay above the bakehouse. I saw tears in her huge eyes, but her chin was still high. So beautiful, with her dark-gold hair loosening around her face in little curls and her cheeks like wild roses… Hell’s gates, she was tiresome. “No, I didn’t try to be careful. I’m not a whore, Vix, how would I know about things like that?”

“So you have to be a whore to think ahead?” I thought of Sabina, her pessaries and concoctions that had kept both of us free of having to worry about consequences. “You just wanted to hook yourself another husband, admit it—”

“I did not!”

There were a great many interested glances coming our way by now. I tried to bring my voice down. “Look, let’s be sensible.”

Demetra squeezed her little boy so tight he yelped, then flounced on her heel and disappeared into the bakeshop.

“You know I’m right!” I yelled after her. “I’ll give you some money, and everything will be good as new.”

“I don’t want your money!”

Of course she wanted money—what else could she possibly want? What else did any woman want? “Demetra—”

She banged the door of the bakeshop in my face. I heard a loud sob from within, and then nothing.

I hammered on the door for a while, but she didn’t answer, and soon I realized that half the housewives on the street were staring and giggling from their windows. I made a rude gesture and stalked off. Bloody women. I hoped the Tenth would be marching to Dacia very soon.

My furious feet took me back over the bridge, where the roiling river was swollen with spring floods and matched my mood perfectly, back along the well-beaten path to the camp. Two soldiers from my cohort called out to me, but I gave such a black scowl in return that they kept going.

I banged my way to the principia, scanning the notices pinned to the outer wall. News always came there first—promotions, demotions, holidays, upcoming inspections. Any news that the invasion into Dacia was beginning—hopefully tomorrow—would be posted here first. But there was no news posted, and I turned with a snarl and caromed off a tall figure in a toga.

“Watch where you’re going!” I snapped.

“Better for you to watch where you are going, soldier,” a deep patrician voice said, and I knew the voice before I looked up and recognized the handsome bearded face. I remembered the voice very well. I remembered another voice too, a voice from the slums that had snarled, “This is from Tribune Hadrian,” before driving a fist into my face and a boot into my side.

Oh, how I wanted to hit the bastard. I could feel my hand itch. “Tribune,” I said.