I had to hit Julius twice before he started swinging. He took me around the middle in a boar’s rush—he was strong, shorter than I was but much burlier, and that was good: The other legionaries would like it better if I had to fight hard. I let my friend give me a bloody nose and waited till I saw the satisfaction spread across his face before I applied the arm lock my father had once used to teach me my place. Julius’s face went down into the mud, and hard.

“There,” I panted, getting up. “I don’t care we used to share a tent; I don’t care we used to fight side by side. I’m not going to hear one more word of complaint out of you for as long as you march in my century.” I picked up my lion skin and slung it around my shoulders. “And you, all of you—you know who I am? I’m the man who brought the Dacian king’s head to the Emperor. I’m the man who carried your eagle. And now I’m your centurion, you ragtag rat-bait turds, so step sharp and shut up.”

“What’s a turd?” Demetra’s son asked me when I retreated to my tent and bedroll.

“Something you should learn to say if you want people to stop thinking you’re a girl. Get me a rag?”

He fumbled in my pack, coming up with a bundle of old cloth I kept for bandages. “Did you plan that?”

I looked down at him, still wondering why he was here. Why I’d turned around in the grocer’s shop instead of leaving like I should have, and looked down at that pretty little face and said, “Get your things; you’re coming with me to Parthia.”

I shouldn’t have offered. I should have at least asked Mirah first, if she’d mind taking in another woman’s child with one of her own already on the way. I didn’t know much about wives yet, but that was probably the sort of thing women liked being consulted about. I probably should have told her Demetra’s son existed to begin with… But I’d been on my best behavior, courting Mirah and marrying her and learning to live with her, and the time had never seemed quite right to tell her I was paying to raise another woman’s son.

I should have planned in advance; done it better. But Mirah had already gone ahead to Antioch, and I couldn’t exactly wait for a reply. And that pretty little boy had been staring up at me with those huge brown eyes, and all I could think was that the world was going to munch him up and spit out his bones if someone didn’t toughen him up.

So here he was, cross-legged and bright-eyed on a bedroll of his own in my tent.