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Overhead, between the shifting canopy of the trees, songbirds flitted around, chasing each other. The weather was good. Safinia had fresh meat in her hands. And how could she now deny herself this trip when she’d been willing to take it in the first place? The last four years—her loneliness and boredom, her vigilance—piled up inside her. Now that the tether had been cut, she didn’t think she could make herself turn back home even if she wanted to.

And she didn’t want to. Her insides squelched with guilt. But her sisters had Orestilla, and Mettius if he was honoring his promise. They were already prepared to do without her.

“You said hire,” Safinia said. “What are you planning to pay me?”

His face split into a wide grin. “I’ve got plenty on hand. Will jewelry do? I’ll even help you find a reputable merchant to price them when we’re back in Cures Sabini.”

“No need. I know one.”

“Full of surprises, this plebeian.” Livy stretched, then began sorting through his things, looking for something. “Let’s have ourselves a breakfast, change into fresh clothes, and set out.”

Safinia, now that her decision was settled, was already scuffing her boot into the coals she’d used earlier and hiking her pack up her shoulders. “I only brought the one set,” she said. “Who travels with more than one shirt?”

“Savage,” she heard him mutter, but at least he gathered his things and followed her into the trees. In reply, she released a branch she was holding back and let it whip him in the face.

They left the salt road long before lunch. Livy made too compelling a target in his silks and stamped, brass-affixed sandals. As they passed a Latin caravan, the guards had a watchful, interested way about them that Safinia did not like. They had plenty of time to double back to rob Livy before the sun went down. “Come on,” she said when she noticed the signs of a goat trail leading higher into the hills. “Robbers will be looking for us. We need to leave the way entirely—I don’t feel like fighting on your behalf.”

“Funny,” Livy huffed. The way she led was steep. “I hear you’re good in a fight.”

“It’s not that I’m that tough,” Safinia said between breaths, as the trail became a scramble. They were heading toward a ridge; there, Livy could consult his map. “When I fight a man, I make sure he doesn’t expect to fight me. If I think it’s going to go on too long, I get out.” Or let Mettius wade in. But Livy didn’t need to know her backup was miles away.

“So that’s how you have such a reputation.”

Safinia snorted. “People talk too much.”

“Yes, they all seem quite afraid of you.”

The trees became hardscrabble and thin. They were exposed now on the ridge, but they could follow it south, until it dipped into lower hills. The city of Crustumerium was somewhere there, on rolling farms that had once been the border between Sabinum and Latium. Safinia waited for Livy to catch up, her eyes closed against the wind that whipped her cheeks red. Livy’s teasing needled her. Behind her eyelids, she saw an alleyway, crowded with drunk, yelling people, somewhere among them Mettius, and felt the splitting sting in her knuckles after punching—who had it been that night? A magistrate’s son, she thought, some man who thought he could have anyone. She’d thought it would feel satisfying to beat a man who deserved it. It didn’t.

She said none of this to Livy. “You are a stranger to me,” she told him when he finally stood at her shoulder, panting with exertion. “The same as the rest of them.”

She thought he would test her with more jokes, but Livy raised his hands. “Mercy,” he said for the second time. “Let’s stop for lunch and see if we can become more than strangers, hmm?”

“Fine,” she relented. “As long as we get out of the wind.”

They found a little clearing not long after, though steep and bedded with pine needles, with a largeish boulder big enough for them both to sit, spread their food out, and get a little sun. Livy added what he was carrying to her meal; some bread studded with a nut Safinia didn’t recognize, and fruit. Dried, but still.

“Were you planning on surviving on this all the way to Crustumerium?” she asked.

“Well, no. I figured I would find you.”

“Lucky you did, then.”

Livy looked smug. Safinia lowered the bread she’d been about to bite into. “What?”

“Oh, nothing,” he said. “I just wonder how much luck had to do with it.”

“Livy,” Safinia warned.

“Oh, fine. Easy enough to answer: You have something of mine. Call me irrational, but when I saw you with it, I thought it was as good a reason as any to trust you. Since we met I haven’t been so much ‘traveling to Crustumerium’ as I have been ‘watching the road for you.’”

“What would I have of yours?” Safinia asked around a mouthful of bread. Then she remembered—“The signet ring?”

“The very same. Given originally to Numa Pompilius. Hersilia once stole it out of her father’s study, as a girl. I took it as a sign to pay attention, and I’m glad I did—she’s a remarkable woman. I follow that same circumstantial evidence now, with you.”

“Oh,” Safinia said. She wasn’t sure, exactly, what else she should say. That she was sure to be a disappointment? Against Hersilia, anyone would be. She pulled the ring out of her shirt and looked at it again, the wolf and her human babies. No one in Cures had a signet half as ornate—Numa’s was a crude tree he claimed was a poplar, not that it was more than a few quick lines, carved into his projects in the forum. And Numa was great, lesser only to the king.

This was a laughable mistake. Safinia gave a sharp pull on the twine, snapping it from her neck, and held it out to him. “Have it back, if it’s yours.”