“Oh, not even that. I’m thoroughly ordinary. But I don’t mind— ‘Diligence is a very great help even to a mediocre intelligence.’”

“Seneca?”

He bowed assent. “I’m happy to leave the adventuring and questing to greater men than myself. I’ll be happy enough to get home from this campaign, and never worry again about keeping my tunics white.”

“Give them to me, and I’ll get them white for you.” Sabina wrung out Vix’s tunic, holding it up with some pride. “Laundry may not be the most interesting chore on earth, but I’ve gotten very good at it.”

In truth, it was all interesting. More than that—it was fun. Walking alongside the wagon drinking in the smell of the pines was fun. Helping a cursing clerk to whack a stubborn mule along the path with a switch was fun. Helping some legionary woman carry her children across a river ford, one on each hip, was fun, even when her sandals squelched for the next hour. Picking up the cheerfully obscene legionary patois that was almost a different language—that was fun too. Vix’s friends were fun: Philip, who had taught her to cheat at dice; Simon, who had cast suspicious glances when he heard her accent but since relented into gruff liking; Julius, who lied about everything and cheerfully accepted that Sabina was lying about a few things too; Boil, who had been head-hanging shy in her presence at first but now followed her around half-hoping she’d give up Vix and come be his woman instead.

And when the other legion women asked, “Which one’s yours?” Sabina could point at a tall warrior—russet-haired, sun-browned, restless, and grinning—and say casually, “That one’s mine.”

That was the most fun of all.

“I hope that’s all the mud.” She gave the tunic one last rinse, holding up the dripping weight of wet linen. “I can’t see it anymore, so it will have to do.”

The legion had bloomed into a forest of campfires, and a thousand smells rose up into the dark toward the distant stars: smoke and oil, roasting meat and drying wool, leather and sweat and manure and steel. Sabina breathed it in deep as she and Titus threaded their way through the maze of tents and fires. Does my husband love the smell of a legion on the march? She thought not. Emperor Trajan, though—yes, he loved it. And as much as Vix might complain about the Tenth and its centurions and its traditions and its smells, he loved it too.

“You stole my tunic,” Vix accused as she and Titus came into the glow of the contubernium’s campfire. “And now you’re running off with a tribune. You girls, always going for the officers.”