“My wife’s a Jew, Caesar.” I fingered a corner of the faded blue scarf I now wore wrapped around my arm under the greave, ever since the earthquake when I’d pulled Mirah out of the rubble. “She’s yet to make a belt out of my entrails, even when I track mud on her floors instead of wiping my feet.”

“Good man. I’m sending you to Cyprus; if you have a Jewish wife you may have a lighter touch feeling them out. Take that fast-moving century of yours with you.”

“I’m having all the centuries trained for speed now, Caesar.” Now that I was First Spear, I could make the other centurions do it my way. They didn’t like it, but they still had to obey. Hell’s gates, but I loved being in charge.

“Take a few cohorts, then,” Trajan decided, “and go make me a report from Cyprus.”

“Yes, Caesar.”

He flung down his stylus and rose from the desk, stumping past me toward the railing of the boat. It was near sunset; the river was gold in the light and the banks purple. I looked overhead to the sail snapping in the breeze; it was embroidered with Trajan’s name and titles, all in gold. In the setting sun the name looked like it had been written in fire.

“Look at that boat there.” Trajan pointed, and I came to join him at the railing. His guards stood nearby, and couriers with message cases and secretaries waiting to take dictation and a few lounging members of the Imperial retinue, but he spoke only to me, the two of us leaning on the rail of a boat like any pair of soldiers enjoying an idle chat. “That barge with the red sail. She’ll be heading to Charax, and then to India. Imagine that. India!”

I couldn’t imagine it. Did the world extend so far? Surely if we went any farther east, we’d fall right off the edge of the horizon. “What’s India like, Caesar?”

“I don’t know.” He sounded wistful. “I’d like to find out—keep marching, keep conquering. That’s a life worth living. You want to go to India, Vercingetorix?”

“Not if we have to sail there,” I said. “I hate boats.”

He laughed. “March overland then. I’ll give you half my legions to march from the north; the other half will come with me and aim for the coast. We’ll meet in the middle. How does that sound?”

“Like a good plan, Caesar.”

“Maybe it is. Gods, I wish I were twenty-two instead of sixty-two.”

“Sixty-two or no, Caesar, I’m there behind you. Even if you make me go by boat.”

Trajan lifted an arm and waved at the red-sailed boat gliding past on her eastern journey. “Oh, get on with you. Go to Cyprus. Find out why in the name of all the gods the Jews are rebelling again.”