“Not quite,” Titus said, dry. “For one thing, I have no intention of being dragged along with you. The Emperor offered me a post, but I refused as fast as possible. You can fight the wars this time while I finish my bathhouse. And for another thing, Slight, in those days back in Dacia it would have been a very different girl leaning on your arm. I do hope you didn’t tell your wife about her?”

“I may be a barbarian, but I’m not an idiot.” It had been strange, seeing Sabina at the circus that afternoon, even from a distance. She had looked very cool and elegant on the Emperor’s arm… but not nearly as pretty as my Mirah.

I bid good night to Titus, making my way back through the dark atrium. Most of the rest of the household had gone to bed; just a few servants hurried about, dousing the lamps. I hadn’t even noticed darkness falling, not with my Parthian dreams glowing so bright.

I made my way up the stairs to the room I shared with Mirah, feeling a touch of apprehension uncoil in my stomach. She had thought we would both be returning to Mog, and now… legion wives could get along well enough with their men based at a fort, but a campaign was a different thing. I looked a little nervously through the shadows at the hump of blankets in the middle of the bed. Would she weep and wail like Demetra? I touched the amulet at my neck, the one my father had given me. It had seen me clear of any fight life had thrown at me yet, but who knew how well it worked on fights with wives.

“Get in here,” came Mirah’s voice out of the dark. “The bed’s cold.”

I stripped off my tunic and climbed in. She burrowed into my shoulder, shivering a little and kneading her toes against my shins, and I pulled my worn lion skin over us both. “Parthia?” she said.

“I have to go where they send me,” I began, but she shushed me with a finger against my mouth.

“I could have married Eleazer, Vix. He has a string of butcher shops and a villa in Ostia, and he certainly wouldn’t go galloping off to the east at a moment’s notice. But I married you.” She nestled her head a little deeper into my chest. “How long will you be gone?”

“Come with me,” I said impulsively.

“What?”

“Why not?” Suddenly I wanted her with me. I’d gotten used to having her in bed beside me, I liked her tart conversation and the oasis of cheerful bustle that spread around her wherever she went, and I didn’t want to give any of it up.