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“It’s you,” Safinia said, pressing her hand to her chest. She willed her heart to relax, her blood to cool. “How did you know I was here?”

“Simple. I was looking. You seem well, Safinia. The wild agrees with you—you look much more at home here.” He went about stringing a bit of twine from a low-hanging branch and affixing it into the ground with a stake, and then unfolded an audaciously loud, patterned length of canvas. “You almost slipped past me. But here we are.”

“But . . .” Safinia felt helpless as she watched him construct an elaborate and entirely unnecessary tent with still more twine, stakes, and little clips to secure the canvas. “I asked around everywhere for you in Cures. I need your help.”

Livy produced a small, thin cushion, placed it primly under his canvas, and sat. This was almost too much for Safinia. “What are you doing getting comfortable?!” she cried. “We need to get back home—I only left to find you!”

“You might be able to navigate in the dark, but I’m an old, fumbling man,” Livy said brightly. He was obviously no more than ten or fifteen years older than Safinia. “Come sit, and I’ll share what’s left in this jar. The farmer who gave it to me said it was stew, but I’m not so sure.”

Safinia grabbed the ring around her neck and held it through her shirt, wrestling with her incredulity. To date, only Timaeus had ever been able to sneak up on her in the woods. “Who are you?” she asked. “What are you?”

“If you’d like to think of me as a god, you may,” Livy said. He laughed when he saw her expression. “Alright, maybe not so believable. Come on—sit down. We can talk about our plans. I’ve been looking for you, too. I think we might be able to help each other.”

He began to unpack. Livy had a small number of useful things with him, as well as an enormous amount of useless things—in addition to the pillow, more than one comb, several changes of clothes, and an even larger assortment of hair oils and perfumes than Safinia had seen in Hersilia’s dressing room. He didn’t look like a man accustomed to strenuous travel. A picnic accompanied by several attendants seemed more his style. It was amazing he’d gotten this far without a guard.

Safinia sat and took the jar from him. He was right—it was too late to travel farther today.

“Who told you my name?” she asked around a chunk of gristle. The stew was not bad.

Livy waved his hand vaguely. “It doesn’t matter. What did you learn about me since we last talked?”

“My friend says you’re a seer.”

Bemused surprise crossed his face. “Who is your friend?” he asked.

“It doesn’t matter.”

“Et tu,” he said and laughed to himself. “I was prepared for you to tell me that you hadn’t found anyone to identify me at all. I’ve taken pains to pass through the city with a light touch, we’ll say. Clearly I underestimated you.”

“Yes,” said Safinia, and Livy snorted again. “Is it true?”

“Is what true?”

She was losing patience. “Are you a seer?”

“Am I a seer,” Livy mused. He was enjoying her annoyance. Or maybe he was just dramatic—certainly he didn’t fit the image Safinia had in her head of a seer. A seer was a drifting, vague woman, dressed simply, unable to hold a coherent train of thought. Sometimes she would be overcome by fainting; that was the god taking her. But Livy behaved more like a poet, albeit a wealthy one—in love with the sound of his own voice. “I see your skepticism. It might be useful first to draw a distinction between seer and oracle. I am not like the Sybils you might find far to the south. But I do know the future. So you may think of me as a seer.”

“If you’re not like the Sybils, what are you?” She eyed him. He seemed solid enough. “Are you a god?”

“You’re being remarkably calm about it if I am.”

Safinia shrugged. “I’ve never claimed to know everything. Only to be curious.”

Something happened in Livy’s face, then; after a moment of surprise, it split open with such a transforming pleasure that Safinia was taken aback. His smile, his real one, was wide and unguarded. “What a wonderful answer,” he declared. “Few in my circles would give it. No one values curiosity like they should, especially in the pursuit of knowledge.”

Safinia looked down. She didn’t want him to see how the compliment warmed her. There was a part of her always hungering—to go somewhere different, to know new things. She rarely had time to indulge it. Livy made it seem, though, like a worthy thing, not just a selfish fantasy.

“Well?”

“I’m not a god. Yet.” He grinned. “No, it’s more accurate to call me a historian. My knowledge of the future comes from study of the past. All time is a river: the now, then, before just passable currents.”

“You’re the answer to our prayers,” Safinia said, and she meant it. Unmitigated relief spread in her chest. “You must be able to find her, then. Tell me how I can help.”

“It’s not that simple,” he said. The apology in his voice cast her hopes into the winds. “I can’t reach into the water and pull Hersilia out of it. The knowledge I have of the future is only that—knowledge. Who won this war or that. Who is king, or will be king. Border lines, conquests. I haven’t seen it all myself.”

Safinia groaned, flopping back into the grass. The light was rapidly falling away, and she had no more idea how to find Hersilia than when she set out. Less, even, because before finding Livy she could at least hope he would tell her what to do. He now gave her a pitying look. As the stars appeared in pinpricks between the leaves, he had her recount everything she knew about Hersilia—old lovers, places she’d traveled to, friends. Some of what she told him he already seemed to know. Safinia sensed, though, that he had not yet guessed her own relationship to Hersilia.

She was about to list herself under lovers, but stopped. Most men, even those who’d enjoyed gossiping about her affair with Hersilia, would not have thought to call them lovers. Claiming otherwise was a blow to their worldview. What women did was for fun, not for love.