“No son of mine is being named Ulpius!” Mirah reached around her own bulk to unlace her shoes. Her belly might be up under her chin, but she carried it with all her usual quick energy. No graceless waddling for my wife: Heat, sand, spiders, and hardship hadn’t managed to slow her down, and neither did carrying a child.

“What about Marcus, then?” I pulled her feet into my lap. “That’s not a bad name for a boy. And I knew another Marcus besides Trajan, a senator who gave me my start in the legions in the first place. That’s a good pair of men for any boy to be named after.”

“I don’t know if I want to name a child of mine after a Roman emperor.” Mirah winced pleasurably as my fingers began to massage her little arched feet. “I know you adore Trajan, Vix, but have you even heard what’s happening outside Parthia?”

“Of course I have. I get all Titus’s letters, don’t I, and he always knows everything going on.” Titus had some new public office back in Rome and was apparently much relied upon. The bugger had gone and gotten important on me, but his letters read just the same as ever. He still quoted philosophers I hadn’t read and told me I was a savage for drinking unwatered wine.

“All this unrest with the Jews he talked about in his last letter,” Mirah was saying. “In Cyrenaica, Cyprus, Alexandria. Grumbling everywhere, and according to Titus, all Trajan does is send troops in to squash things.”

“Stops the grumbling, doesn’t it?”

“For now.” Mirah groaned as my thumbs pressed her heels. “All your precious Emperor wants is the rest of the world to stand still and not bother him so he can go conquering on till the end of time. That’s who you want our son to be?”

“A man like Trajan? Yes.”

“Trajan has his head in the sand, and so do you,” Mirah said. “You’re both living in a dream, out here on the edge of the world. People have their own troubles all over Rome. And even Trajan can’t squash trouble just by sending troops down to step on it.”

“It’s worked so far.”

Mirah gave me the one-sided flick of a smile that meant she thought I was a fool but would let me get away with it. I liked provoking that smile sometimes, just for fun.