I bowed my head, trying not to laugh, hearing chortles from the first few rows of legionaries who had overheard. Emperor Trajan swept the lion skin about my shoulders, the mane covering my laurel wreath, the yellowed fangs framing my forehead. He tied the paws across my chest, and I heard the claws click against my breastplate. I raised my hand to stop the pelt from slipping, and felt the coarse fur of the mane in my fingers. It smelled like dry grass and sunshine, like blood and sweat, and above all like a king who had died on a stone circle. Trajan had offered me a new pelt, but I’d refused.

A pole was thrust into my left hand, and then the Emperor grasped my right. “Congratulations, Aquilifer,” he said, and spun me about toward the assembled legion. He raised my arm into the air, and the Tenth exploded.

I saw Sabina, immaculate in green silk, applauding with the polite formality of any legate’s wife, but she had tears in her eyes. Hadrian stood at her side, my legate in the unpleasant flesh, putting his hands together exactly twice before he was done applauding. His bearded face was impassive as he stood there in a breastplate that had probably never been bloodied in its life. He’d opposed my elevation, I’d heard. The Emperor had been the one to override him.

Cheers swamped me. The Emperor gripped my shoulders, looking as proud as my father would have, and kissed me soundly on both cheeks. He shouted something I couldn’t hear over the cheering and the banging of shields, and I looked up dizzily to see the eagle riding over my head, giving her imperious silent shriek. I wouldn’t have to carry a legionary’s pack anymore, just the eagle.

My eagle.

One of my better memories, that.

TITUS

“Lion skins are hot,” Vix complained as Titus slowed his horse to pace beside the new aquilifer. “I don’t know how the lions stand it.”

“Barely raised to your new rank, and you’re already grousing.” Titus shook his head. “Honor is supposed to be the reward of virtue, you know.”

“Who said that?”

“Do you really care?”

“No. But if I don’t ask you get hurt feelings.”

Titus laughed, flipping a lock of his gelding’s mane back across its neck. He could feel sweat running down his neck even though it was barely noon. A cloudless blue dome of sky over a flat expanse of green and a dusty white ribbon of road, as if the world were celebrating along with the legion. Celebrating the fact that the Tenth Fidelis was going home.