Gaius Petreius Ruso is a divorced and down-on-his-luck army doctor who has made the rash decision to seek his fortune in an inclement outpost of the Roman Empire, namely Britannia. His arrival in Deva (commonly known as Chester, England) does little to improve his mood, and after a straight thirty-six-hour shift at the hospital, he succumbs to a moment of weakness and rescues an injured slave girl from the hands of her abusive owner. Now he has a new problem: a slave who won't talk, can't cook, and drags trouble in her wake.