I frowned at the thought. I loved that eagle. I’d carried her for four years, after all—not through any more campaigns, but whenever we did a route march she was always there on my shoulder, and she and I had marched behind Trajan at the triumph he’d held in honor of his Dacian victories. Before heading south to Rome with my dispatches I’d spent a long time in the chapel stroking her metal wings and promising to be back soon—but I’d been gone from her side more than five months now, and I felt guilty. It would hurt to give her up to another aquilifer.

Well, she’d still be my eagle, even if I didn’t carry her anymore. She belonged to all the men of the Tenth, both high and low. She’d watch proudly when I got my centurion’s helmet, if I ever did get it. I wished one of the Tenth’s centurions would hurry up and die, or retire, or anything as long as I got my century soon…

“—Maybe we can have the naming feast in advance.”

“Mmm?” I shook out of my thoughts back to the present.

“For the baby.” Mirah wrapped her own arms about her waist, which didn’t look any different to me yet. “I want my sister there, so I can see the look on her face. No more condescending smirks about her little Isaac! I’ll have one of my own.”

“Do we have to name him Isaac?” I asked dubiously.

“Benjamin, maybe. Emmanuel. Something pious.”

“Hannibal,” I said. “Caratacus. Something warlike.”

“Hannibal Emmanuel?” Mirah smirked, and doubled over laughing. She might be pious, my new wife, but God did she know how to laugh.

“Might be a girl,” I pointed out.

“It’s a boy,” Mirah said firmly.

“You can already tell?” I grabbed her round the waist, poking her stomach.

“Yes, I can tell. Might even be twins—twins run in my family.”

“Good. Then one can be Hannibal and the other can be Emmanuel.”

Mirah looked around the forum with a critical eye. A shopkeeper with a stall full of brass pans was trying to catch her eye, as was a ragged thief hawking stolen beads. The butcher’s shop wafted smells of blood and dung, and a pack of street dogs were fighting in the gutter over the corpse of a rat. A cluster of dirty children raced past shrieking, and hordes of harried housewives scurried with their baskets. “The city’s no place for a baby,” Mirah decided.

“Mog’s different.” A drunk reeled out of a wine shop and careened off Mirah’s shoulder; I sent him hard into the nearest wall and snugged her close against my side with one arm.