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“It was smart not to come with me to see Tarpeia,” she told him as he wiped his mouth. “She implied you were cinaedus.” A word for men who submitted. Ceded their manhood in bed.

“If it wasn’t true, I’d be obligated to hit her for it.”

“So she wasn’t lying.” Safinia let Mettius’s head loll onto her shoulder. “Why not take a wife? You like women just as much as men.”

“I’d rather die well-fucked and alone,” he said. “There’s no overcoming my reputation, anyway—what woman would have me? Unless you’re offering, of course.”

“I’d rather marry a river bug.”

“See, there you are. No choice but to keep getting buggered by meaner and meaner men until I swear off sex altogether.” He groaned into his hands. “All the good ones want sweet, young things. I should know, I was that once.”

“You’re still handsome,” Safinia said. She felt awkward. Mettius was nice to look at, but she’d never burned for him as some of the girls she used to know had.

He flopped onto his back, staring at the sky. “I’m old. Everyone loved me when I was sixteen. I do the same things now, and somehow it’s wrong?”

Safinia knew very little of Mettius’s angst. Women had no way to claim ownership over each other as a man did whoever lay beneath him. How she and Hersilia made love didn’t count.

There were plenty of people who would be called virtueless in the outskirts, which relied on favors too much to do anything but live and let live. Technically, her parents had been one such couple. Her father was under Calliste’s command until he chose to stay home and raise his daughters. Quirites didn’t understand it; they said he was making a woman of himself.

That was always it, wasn’t it? A man couldn’t be fucked because women got fucked—and while it wasn’t a crime to be born a woman, to choose to lower yourself to the status of one was unacceptable.

Safinia sat next to Mettius, absently ripping blades of grass, while the sky grew dark. The city was gray behind them, already beyond the sun’s reach, its terra-cotta roofs and looming buildings a sharp, black print against evening blue. In a moment the sun would slip beneath the Tiber—but for now it called to Safinia, drawing her to the last light. Toward home, and everything untamed beyond.

“Just stay out here if you want to be like that,” she told Mettius. She could see the forms of her neighbors crisscrossing the hills for this chore or that. Their homes were lovely, sloped things. “You know they only care about who’s fucking who in the city.”

“They’ll have to love me again if I represent Cures in the summer Games,” he said grimly. “I’ll wrestle the king himself for that honor.”

“Won’t be too difficult a matchup.”

“You’re so lucky to be a woman, Safinia.” Mettius didn’t seem to have heard her. He stared the other way, out at the city—oil lamps burned, now, in windows of apartments that rose above the wall. They were close enough that they could still hear the clamor of it all, if they were quiet. “No one ever cared about you and Hersilia. You both still have your honor.”

“As long as we were willing to marry men in the end,” Safinia said sharply. Then—because a headache was beginning behind her eyes, and she could not hold it in any longer—“Hersilia has been kidnapped.”

“What?!” Mettius whipped his head back to her. “When? How?”

“I’m trying to find out. She’s not the only one, either.”

He opened and closed his mouth, apparently too shocked to speak. Safinia supposed she should congratulate herself for finding the one thing that would shake Mettius from his gloom, but watching the news settle on his face was bitter. She knew he wanted to tell her not to worry, or to make a joke, but there was none to find. If Hersilia wasn’t safe, then no woman was.

Safinia laughed hollowly. “Not so lucky after all.”

V

Anesia met Safinia at the top of the ridge, where the path split between their home and Mettius’s. “Ores is a madwoman,” she announced. “She just keeps begging for more to do, and then doing it badly. I hope you don’t mind that she made a mess of your rabbit.”

Safinia shrugged. “It’s all the same in stew. Do you want me to tell her to go?”

“Actually, I want her to stay forever.” Safinia could not tell if Anesia was being sarcastic. “I used some of her dried spices for dinner. We ate like princesses. If she can keep that up, she can stay.”

The sisters linked arms and headed down the ridge, to their garden. The path was little more than a worn-in scramble, littered with rocks and holes. There was a route they traveled by instinct; Safinia could run it full-tilt if she had to.

Orestilla was unphased as they half-slid into a heap in the garden. “I saved you a bowl,” she said. “Attice is in bed already.”

“Well, you’ve got my priorities down.” Safinia was pleased, extricating herself from a pile of limbs and sitting with Orestilla. Anesia hadn’t exaggerated—the stew, though cold, smelled divine. “Food and family.”

“Ane said they’d be the two things you’d ask after when you got home.”

So Orestilla was on a nickname basis already, then. She looked as though she’d settled in a little more—though she still jumped at every stray noise. Safinia nudged her, mouth half-full of stew. “I don’t suppose the glamour has worn off and you’re ready to go home?”