“We’re overextended,” Boil told me bluntly. I’d made him a centurion in his own right as soon as I made First Spear; he ran his big fingers back and forth through the scarlet crest on his helmet as he gave me his report. “There’s a king making trouble in Armenia, and a legate got killed in Mesopotamia last week on a bad scrap of a fight. Too much territory to cover with seven legions.”

“Well, we don’t have to cover all of it,” I said wearily. “Where’s the Tenth been dispatched?”

Within twelve hours we were marching. Quietus, that fierce old Berber, greeted me with a hand clasp and a nod. “That your boy?” he demanded, nodding at Antinous, who had once again come along as my page. “Looks less like a girl than he used to.”

Antinous beamed. He had a gladius of his own now, and a curved Syrian knife he used to hack his hair short whenever it got long enough to even think about curling. Last time he’d decided to shave Dinah and Chaya’s heads along with his own. “They wanted haircuts too,” Antinous explained, and Mirah shook a rueful head at the sight of our bald daughters and told me maybe I should take Antinous with me on campaign again. I took him, but I kept a close eye on him. Mirah was right; there were plenty in the legions who liked pretty boys, and even with the chopped hair and sunburned face, Antinous was disturbingly handsome. That was when I got him a gladius of his own and told him not to be shy about using it if he had to.

“Can you swing that sword, boy?” Quietus growled at him, also noting the gladius. “Or is it just for show?”

“Been swinging it since I was eight,” Antinous said proudly. “And Vix is teaching me how to hunt! I can already shoot a rabbit at fifty paces, and—”

I cuffed him to keep still. Quietus just chuckled, and I wondered if Mirah had spoken the truth. If he’d really massacred every Jew in the province he could find.

I didn’t ask. Couldn’t ask.

We took back Osrhoene, thanks to several nasty little fights and a nice bit of trickery I’d thought up (never mind what). Took a few other cities back too, but it was just a random spot of order in all the chaos. We rode along the Euphrates, and this time I felt eyes assessing us flatly from the reeds, eyes that wanted nothing better than to decorate the spot between my shoulder blades with a dagger hilt. I didn’t tumble into sleep half giddy on triumph, as I had when I first marched through this land.