“My grandfather retired there. I could stay with him if I liked, but I’m a man grown now—I’ve got a post, I’ve got some money of my own. No excuse to be living off my family, not with my mother gone and both my sisters married with their own households. So I took my own apartments.” Not large apartments; just a bedchamber, a study, and the atrium, which doubled to hold his occasional modest dinner parties. “It’s not much,” Titus said happily.

“Seems to suit you,” Vix approved, looking Titus up and down. “That toga fits better than armor ever did. Quaestor now, eh? I got your last letter—”

“No more marching, no more mud,” Titus relished. “Just good clean scheming and backstabbing.”

Vix hissed and booed. “Don’t tell me you’re turning into one of those cold political lizards like Hadrian!”

“Not yet. Then again, ‘No man ever became thoroughly bad in one step.’”

“Hell’s gates, I’ve missed you quoting at me. Cato?”

“Juvenal. Why did you say Cato?”

“Because half your quotes are Cato, you sod.”

At Titus’s direction, Vix hauled two couches in from the study, one over each shoulder, and soon they were both plunging into plates of stuffed salmon, roast pork, new bread, and ripe peaches as Ennia bustled in and out with the dishes. “What brings you to Rome, anyway?” Titus asked belatedly, after Vix had finished inhaling half a shoulder of pork. “Did I forget to ask?”

“Quarterly legion reports for the Emperor.” Vix washed the last mouthful of pork down with a swallow of wine. “The First Spear wanted me out from underfoot. Bastard hates the sight of me.”

“What did you do now?”

“I’m just after his job.” Matter-of-factly.

“Then wash your hands between each dish instead of just plunging in.” Titus raised his eyebrows as Vix tore another hunk off the loaf of bread. “Because you’ll never make First Spear without a little civilization.”

“I’ll have to make centurion first. Next spot that opens is mine, now I’ve reached thirty.”

“Did Simon from your old contubernium ever make centurion? He was well old enough—”

“No, he’s out of the Tenth now—retired back in Rome, if you can believe it…”

That led to a discussion of all the Tenth’s news: the new legate—a flogger or a layabout? Julius—was he still claiming descent from the great Caesar? Boil—had he ever found a girl who didn’t leave him for the nearest flute player or tavernkeeper?

I miss it, Titus realized. Not the life of the army; he could do without that. But the easy companionship of the men he’d known in Dacia—in politics there was nothing like it. Everyone was far too busy looking out for his own career. To have a friend here was to have someone who might cut you out in the next appointments for praetor.