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“That’s the second time you’ve offered it to me. Believe me, when I need it, I’ll have it. For now, think of it as a badge of sorts, bringing you into my employ.” He took the signet ring from her palm and admired it a moment before searching in his bags for a proper chain. “It’s my favorite thing that I’ve brought with me from home.”

Safinia hesitated. But she did like the weight of it. It was warm to the touch as she slipped it back around her neck. “What is your home like?” she asked. “I assume it’s prosperous, or else you’re the only idiot that sews gold into the lining of your cloak.”

He laughed. “Yes, it’s prosperous, both the home I was born to, and the one I chose. You won’t have heard of either.”

“Try me.”

“Hmm. My birthplace, the closest you might know—Pathva, it would be called on your maps.”

She had to think—the name, like many names of things, stirred a spark of memory that fizzled away.

Livy took pity on her: “It’s far north of Cures Sabini.”

“You’re Etruscan, then.”

Livy made a noncommittal noise. “Up there, we call my birthplace Patavium. A provincial enough place, if you ask my contemporaries. I prefer to think of it as upstanding. The moral law is quite firm there.”

“But that sounds Latin,” Safinia complained.

“So it should. There’s no small interplay between neighbors—Latins in Etruria, Etruscans in Latium. Soon the boundary blurs and no one can tell the difference. You speak Latin, don’t you?”

“Non tam,” Safinia answered. Not well.

Livy threw his head back and laughed. The sound startled a nearby bird from its huddling. “Lucky I am a quick study with languages, and Sabellic isn’t so different from Etruscan.”

“So you live in Latium usually?” The idea made Safinia uncomfortable. Technically, Sabinum and Latium were now at peace, but they had been enemies before—it was always tenuous, and their neighbor to the south loomed large and hungry still.

“It’s best not to think about it too hard,” Livy said. Upon Safinia’s disgruntlement, he relented, shrugging. “Yes, I suppose the city of my heart, the city my ring is an emblem of, is Latin. It’s to the south. They call it the Eternal City. You won’t have heard of it, but oh, Safinia, it’s beautiful. Growing up in Patavium, I suppose I felt stifled. I had to wait a long time, sort out a number of political problems, before I could cast off toward my new home, and all it could offer me.”

He put his chin in his hand as something dreamy crossed his face. “I promise you, though,” he said. “It was worth it.”

The next day went much the same. Safinia woke early, skinned whatever creatures had been unfortunate enough to fall to her snares, and cooked the meat over buried coals. Then she dragged Livy into wakefulness, and they found a high point near to the road to orient themselves with his map and some other funny devices he swore would keep them heading the right way. He estimated about four days to Crustumerium, and on the third, factored for another two. A messenger on the salt road, with a horse and unencumbered by fear of bandits and Romans, could do it in two, supposedly—but Safinia refused to take the road, and Livy, soft in the arm as he was, was forced to rely on her.

“We’d be there already if you weren’t so slow,” Safinia muttered.

“I could move faster if you weren’t insistent on torturing me,” he replied. “Why do you always have to eat your lunch on the move?”

At least the journey hadn’t been boring. Safinia would even say—though not within earshot of Livy—that she was enjoying herself. The trails they found looked almost the same as home, but as Safinia lost the feeling of alienation, what came in its place was a thrill: She had never been here before. She had never seen that tree before, that boulder. She couldn’t remember ever being able to think these things. Who would remember the first time they saw something in the place they’d been born and spent their whole life?

During the day, and whenever he managed to wear her down for a rest, they traded questions. Safinia’s were of the future, a topic Livy danced around, but he sometimes rewarded her with an interesting answer, and in turn he had plenty of questions for her. He started with her genealogy, as far as she could remember, the names of her neighbors, and all the Centurions and Centurias she could recall being contemporaries to Calliste. When he exhausted himself with the outskirts, he wanted to know the name of every city-state in Sabinum, which were led by governors and which by kings, what relationships they had with Latium and Etruria, and their major exports. He wanted to know where the maps ended, quizzing her about Gaul, Greece, Egypt, and what he claimed was beyond. This, he said, was important toward getting a sense of local knowledge.

“What about an island, a big one, to the west?”

“No, to the west is ocean, and then the coast curves down, but that’s far into Celtic land.”

“The northwest, I mean, the northwest.”

“It’s just wilderness past Gaul.”

It unsettled her how big the world he described was. She remembered when she was young, thinking of her father’s ancestors—sheep-herders—with childlike superiority. They knew nothing of what was beyond them! Livy had the same smugness.

“You won’t be alive to enjoy it, my dear, but there is a drab and lovely little land past Gaul,” he said. “We call it Britannica. Rich in metals, and in rain.”

He was particularly interested in ancestor stories and gods. He had Safinia walk him through the process of a ver sacrum three times before he was satisfied. “Does it have to be twenty years after disaster?” he asked.

“If it’s a proper one.”

“So there’s such a thing as an improper sacrificial journey? A lesser ver sacrum?”