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“I’m certain he would,” Orestilla said, sounding not at all certain. For a moment she seemed caught, twisting her fingers in that nervous way; then she knelt at the bedside where Safinia sat, her hands on Safinia’s knees. “I used to come here every day, for schooling. This was before my grandfather officially registered me as his heir, so I suppose I was a kind of Hersilia backup. It was wonderful. Numa didn’t care that we were girls—we learned everything that he could teach, writing and laws and strategy and all that. After lessons, Hersilia and I would run around the orchard, or play games in the house if it was raining. She used to tell me everything she was thinking. And Numa—our father, I mean—he was kind to me.”

Safinia nodded. She had the strangest urge to touch Orestilla’s face—she looked so sad, her wide, large eyes so pleading. “What changed?”

“Even before I became my grandfather’s heir, Hersilia wasn’t allowed to acknowledge me in public. By the time she was old enough, thirteen or so, to go around town, it just mattered so much more that she have friends at her station. Sometimes she would come to the workshop to order a piece, and we would get to talk properly, but never for long. I think that my grandfather chose me instead of one of my cousins because he could see my father wasn’t going to claim me, since he hadn’t already. And he was right, I stopped having lessons when I was nine. There was no point.”

Safinia remembered Hersilia at thirteen—they’d been around that age the first time they met. Hersilia had been gangly, with front teeth that were slightly too big for her face, all so disguised at a distance by silks and jewelry and elaborate braids that Safinia had been dumbstruck when the girl had walked up to her and extended a hand to shake; all she could think was, You’re not nearly as pretty as everyone says.

That had been a short-lived thought. Safinia had repeated it to Hersilia when they were older and been well-tormented for it. “You’ve been mine since that day,” Hersilia declared. She was fond of grandiose statements of love. “I could read it in your eyes.”

In a strange way, she realized she’d found Hersilia just as Orestilla had lost her. This time, Safinia did not resist reaching out a hand, smoothing her thumb over Orestilla’s temple and cheek. The skin was warm and stretched tight over bone; Safinia caught herself thinking it was fragile, despite all evidence being that the woman she touched was resilient, if lonely. Orestilla looked up at her, a question forming on her lips, when footsteps startled them both.

They sprang to their feet, hardly daring to breathe until the sound faded down the hallway outside Hersilia’s room. “We shouldn’t stay here longer than we have to,” Safinia said, stuffing her hands into her armpits. Her face was hot—she was grateful to the dark for hiding it. “Where would we figure out who Hersilia’s been writing to?”

“Her ledger room, maybe.” Orestilla crept to the interior door and opened it a crack to listen. “But she works with Numa in the tablinum sometimes, too. I’ll go there and wait for him to go to sleep, then meet you back at the thicket. You go look through her letters—it’s the next door over from this one.”

She’d slipped through the scant opening and was down the hallway before Safinia could respond, her footsteps padding away—too loud, though it seemed to be more important to Orestilla in that moment to leave, and quickly. Safinia had the discomforting feeling that she’d just been rejected, when she hadn’t even planned to make an offer.

It had been memories of Hersilia, Safinia decided, that made her want to touch Orestilla. There was nothing more to interrogate.

In the ledger room, Safinia chanced burning a lamp, Orestilla’s nerves be damned. She didn’t need to worry about her reputation if she had to hotfoot it out the building, though getting past the guards would be annoying. She left the door slightly open, so that the light blended with the low-burning torches in the hallway.

This room was less grand than Hersilia’s bedroom, but it also felt more like it belonged to her. It was small, with one wall completely overtaken by shelves stacked with scrolls and thin wooden tablets. A small writing desk sat under a little window—it would be cramped and dim during the day.

Perfect, maybe, for a secret correspondence.

She started with the scrolls on the desk, haphazardly pushed aside rather than rolled neatly and stowed. She should be able to recognize a letter that was newer, at least. The top one had frayed edges, but was not as yellowed as those on the shelves. She unrolled it and found the ink partially blotted, and small doodles in the margins. She wished she knew what Hersilia’s hand looked like—the writing on her desk was in all different styles. Was Hersilia’s the cramped, slanted lettering, or the soft, open loops?

This was ridiculous. She was just going to take as much as she could carry and let Orestilla worry about figuring out what was useful. Safinia leaned forward to sweep the whole pile on the desk together, so she could roll it up and stuff it in her belt. As she did, something hard and metal fell from between the papers and hit the ground with a ringing thunk.

It was a ring.

Safinia knelt to retrieve it, then held it up to her eye. It belonged to a man, by the size of it, and it was heavy—she suspected it was solid gold. There was a design stamped on its top, one she couldn’t quite make out in the low light. Maybe an animal of some kind.

It didn’t seem like something Hersilia would ever wear. She liked her jewelry to have jewels. Still, Safinia pocketed it—maybe Orestilla would know where it came from.

She turned back to the desk. She could probably steal four or five small scrolls without much trouble, more if she could come up with a bag. It would be so much easier if she could just read one word—just one. South, or friend, or kidnap. But the scrawling remained inscrutable. Here and there, she thought she could see the loops and dots that represented part of her name—the only thing Hersilia had ever actually managed to teach her—but it meant nothing without context.

“Is it that you don’t know what you’re looking for, or that you can’t read at all?” a man asked.

Safinia stifled a shriek, scrambling backward and grasping for one sickening moment for a spear that she did not have. A man leaned in the doorway, his arms folded, looking amused. She scanned the room, her heart wild with panic. The window was too small to wiggle out of without effort. He blocked the only way out.

She reached for the small knife belted at her hip, and he raised his hands, smiling.

“There’s no need for that,” he said. “We don’t need any trouble between us. I am curious to know why you’re thieving in the office of Councilor Numa’s esteemed daughter, but I believe I could be talked into seeing things your way.”

He was like no one she’d ever seen before. His clothing was a riot of color and silk, a turquoise toga hemmed in a Grecian meander; everything he wore was impossibly fine, from the gems worked into his sandals, to the hammered gold brooch securing a cape over his shoulder. He would outshine any of Cures Sabini’s elite. But he didn’t look Sabine—Safinia thought he might even be Latin. He wore his curls cropped close and tidy, as they did in the south, and his limbs were thin and spindly, the rest of him aristocratically plump.

The man inspected the fingernails on his right hand as he waited for her to recover. There were three rings on that hand, two on his other. “Okay, now I’m starting to get bored. Speak, or I’ll send for a guard.”

“I wasn’t thieving,” Safinia blurted.

“Of course you were. There’s a gold ring in your pocket right now that doesn’t belong to you. Why should I let you have it?”

“Just take it.” She thrust the ring at him. “I wasn’t going to keep it.”

“I didn’t say give it to me,” the man said. His eyes narrowed on her, but not, Safinia thought, with malice. He was studying her intently. “I asked you why I should let you have it.”

“I thought it might belong to my friend. Or someone who knows where she’s gone.”