“Don’t blame your friends.” Sabina looked around the tent. “All they did was tell me which bedroll was yours once I showed up.”

Vix’s eyes went over her. Sabina supposed she looked a far cry from the elegant legate’s wife he’d met last week after the Emperor’s dinner party. She’d borrowed a plain wool dress from her maid, roped her hair in a careless plait down her back, and strapped on a pair of hobnailed sandals. The kind of sandals built for long walking.

“I don’t know what you’re playing at,” Vix said finally. “But you can get out of here and go home.”

“I think this is home, Vix. Isn’t that the point of building all the legion camps exactly the same whenever you’re on march?” She looked around the neat sturdy walls of the tent, pegged immaculately into place. The bedrolls were already laid in a neat pattern, and a clutter of smaller possessions—dice, good-luck charms, private talismans—marked each square of personal space. Sabina picked up the whetstone that had sat by Vix’s bed when he lived in her father’s house and now sat by his bedroll here. “Home away from home wherever you are.”

“Not your home.” He snatched the whetstone out of her hand. “Go back to your husband’s tent.”

“You don’t think we share quaters, do you?” Sabina raised her eyebrows. “He’s quite cross with me at the moment, actually—he already has a nice arrangement with a tribune from the Sixth, much prettier than me, and didn’t want me tagging along on this campaign at all. Dragging a wife to parts unknown; most unsuitable. But I begged the Emperor very prettily, telling him it wasn’t really so unsuitable as all that—Emperor Augustus’s granddaughter Agrippina followed her husband on all his military campaigns, after all. Trajan just chucked me under the chin after that, and said I could tag along as long as I didn’t try to lead any charges like Agrippina did. So, here I am.” Sabina wiggled her toes inside her rough sandals, pleased. “Hadrian makes me ride with the baggage train in a special wagon, and set up my own tent a good distance from anything interesting, but he couldn’t send me away after the Emperor gave permission.”

“Why did you beg to come along?”

She spread her arms wide, encompassing the tent and the camp beyond it. “To see the world.”

“At the back of an army?”

“I think it will be interesting.”

“Mud, blood, battles, danger—”