“I’ll put up with the dinner for the company, Slight.” Titus settled himself by the fire, folding up his long legs under his tunic. He always changed out of his tribune armor and insignia before coming to visit Vix and his contubernium brothers, since it saved them the trouble of won-dering if they had to salute him or not. They looked up at him—the little Greek Philip tossing his dice and big fair-haired Boil half asleep by the fire and bearded Simon whittling a stick—and they all gave friendly nods. Titus nodded back, taking a bowl of stew from Vix just as they did, and settling in to eat. Night had fallen by now, the last streaks of red sunset gone behind the line of trees, and the flickering light of the fire cast a pool of warmth in the black. A black broken by thousands of tiny pools, Titus thought as he looked out over the orderly expanse of camp. A field of fires in every direction as every contubernium in the Tenth settled to eat dinner, sharpen swords, doctor blisters, trade stories—and do it all the next day, and the next, until either they or a Dacian king was dead.

“You’re right,” Titus told Vix after a taste of the stew. “Boiled boots, I’m afraid, is putting it kindly. I suppose you’re missing Demetra and her lamb stews now, eh?”

Simon and Philip let out identical snickers. “Not exactly,” Vix said, rubbing a hand over the back of his head. “I’ve got another girl.”

Titus raised a disapproving eyebrow. “Would it do any good to tell you that the mother of your child is due not only courtesy, but fidelity?”

Vix kept eating. “No.”

“Then I won’t bother.” Titus had heard of the old saying about a man who could fall into a sewer and come out smelling of roses. Vix, he thought, could fall into a sewer and come out with a pretty girl on each arm.

A female voice sounded behind Titus. “Is there room for one more?”

Sabina?

Titus looked up in astonishment. His legate’s wife, looking nothing like a legate’s wife, with a sheepskin cloak and a sunburned nose and a rope of hair over one shoulder.

Did she come looking for me? But the flush of pleasure had barely started to spread through his chest when she took two steps forward and jumped up into Vix’s arms.