“Don’t tell on me, will you, sir?” The maid grinned: a scrappy urchin of thirteen Sabina had plucked from a begging bowl and a street corner in Brundisium, Titus knew. Sabina was always picking girls up in odd places and offering them jobs in her household. Half of them robbed her blind and ran away again, but it never seemed to discourage her from picking up another one. “Lady Sabina told me she doesn’t mind if I take things easy here.”

“I wouldn’t dream of telling on you,” Titus had promised. Still, he’d hoped to see more of the girl’s mistress on this campaign…

“Thank you, Tribune.” Hadrian put his seal to the bottom of his report, took a second letter from the secretary for signing, lifted a hand for a fresh pen, and still found the time to look up at Titus with a smile. “I think I’ve used you up quite enough for one evening. Dismissed.”

“Used up is right,” one of the other tribunes grumbled as he and Titus left the tent. “Why couldn’t the old legate have stayed? He never made us do anything except keep his wine cup full.”

“Oh, I don’t know. I like Hadrian. Can’t say he doesn’t work harder than we do.”

“I still wouldn’t mind a layabout. Legate Parminius’s tribunes don’t spend all day dashing up and down the column with his correspondence. They get to hunt, ride in litters. I’ve got blisters!”

“Rub them with goose grease,” Titus advised. A cure he’d picked up from Vix. Perhaps he’d drop in on Vix’s contubernium tonight—the first time since they’d started the march that he’d had an evening to himself.

“I hope you didn’t come for dinner.” Vix looked up from the cooking pot he was stirring over the low fire. “Julius made this stew before he went on sentry duty, and it tastes like boiled boots.”