People liked to say Antioch was the Rome in the east, but I couldn’t see the resemblance. There might be colonnades and aqueducts and arenas all in marble, but it wasn’t anything like Rome. The men wore their hair long and colored their nails like women; Hebrew and Latin and more languages I didn’t even know made a spicy verbal mix in the streets, and I counted more whores in one forum than I ever saw in an entire Roman slum, or maybe that was just how all the women dressed.

“My former aquilifer!” Trajan greeted me on his first inspection of the Tenth’s detachment, though he did less inspecting than making promises to all the cheering men of treasure and triumphs in the year to come. “The sea journey didn’t kill you?”

“Nearly, Caesar.” I saluted.

“Still wearing that lion skin you took off Decebalus, I see. Didn’t feel like handing it over to the next aquilifer?”

“Over my dead body, Caesar.” The pelt was a little patchy now, but I still wore it over my red cloak, and when the First Spear centurion saw it he always frowned. “That’s nonapproved for a centurion’s wear,” he’d said many times. “Take it off.”

“Yes, sir,” I always said, never obeying. I’d gotten that lion skin from Trajan’s own hand, the same hand now giving me a friendly clap on my shoulder as he congratulated me on my new rank, and after that the First Spear dropped the subject of my lion skin. He already loathed me, but I didn’t hate him at all—on the contrary, I was looking forward to many pleasurable months of needling him on my way to getting his job. Technically his rank meant “First File,” since he led the first century of the first cohort and came first of all the legion’s centurions—but I liked the sound of “First Spear” better. I planned on doing the job a lot more efficiently than the prick who currently held the title.