“This campaign isn’t like Dacia, stripped down to an army and a supply train. The Emperor’s got an entourage with him this time, for receiving all those Armenian kings. Laundresses, clerks, cooks, barbers, musicians—I got Mirah a place with the seamstresses. She and the boy will travel with the rest of the Imperial servants.”

“Lucky bastard,” Philip grumbled again, but Boil nudged him. “Sorry, sir.”

I waved it off, but felt wistful. Things were so different now for my old friends. Philip and Boil and a few others still occasionally came to visit during off-hours, to be stuffed with Mirah’s rich stews and trade jokes with me—Julius even started to come after a few months, making no reference to the beating I’d given him before the other men. But when we were all in armor on legion business they had to salute and call me by rank. And even around my table in the off-hours, they weren’t nearly so loose with their dirty jokes and their complaints about the other officers as they used to be.

Why should they be? Titus wrote me in one of his long letters from Rome. For all they know, you entertain the other centurions with stories about your days in the ranks. No one entirely trusts a man who works his way up the ladder, Slight. Titus was a big man in Rome now—his grandfather had died at the end of the year, and even out in Antioch I’d heard rumors about the size of the fortune my friend had inherited. I’d have hit him up for a loan—my men’s pay came irregularly, and what was the use of having a rich friend if you couldn’t make use of him to tide you over the lean times?—but I’d heard from one of the Imperial secretaries that Trajan was planning on asking for a loan too, and I couldn’t go following in an emperor’s footsteps.

Antinous bounced up and down before me, presenting my helmet proudly. “Good?”

“Like a mirror.” I threw a jab at him and he slipped inside it, thumping my ribs with a little clenched fist just as I’d taught him. “Good.” I cuffed the side of his head with my other hand. “Keep your guard up, though.”

“Like this?”

“Chin down, or it’ll get clipped. And fold your fingers tighter, like this—”

“No, no, like this.” Mirah demonstrated a clenched fist. “Thumb on the outside, Antinous. And don’t underestimate the impact of a good scratch with the fingernails either—it doesn’t all have to be punching.”

“When did you learn how to fight?” I asked my wife, amused.

“Eight boy cousins who all liked to tease, that’s how. And six girl cousins who liked to scratch.”