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Safinia shrugged and hiked her pack back up on her shoulders, sliding the spear into its proper place, and finally unstringing her poor, overworked bow. “I heard them talking. They were Romans.”

Livy shook his head, his brow furrowed in deep thought. He looked, for the first time, at a loss.

Had he ever seen something like this up close? He’d told her himself he had no talent for military history—but how could he have traveled as much as he claimed and never touched violence? The only people who were spared were shut inside walls, and didn’t leave for love or money unless they had a regiment to accompany them. Safinia and her neighbors were lucky they’d only seen one or two raids target their clump of homes and farms in living memory—many more times she and Mettius and Aulus had run to the aid of little villages much farther than theirs, though. She could spare a little pity for Livy’s disbelief. A little.

“Where did you go, last night?” she asked. It wouldn’t do them any good to stay here and argue. “You weren’t behind the boulder.”

It was his turn to shrug, looking as hollow and bleak as she felt. “I was around,” he said. He took a last look at the wreckage and then settled on Safinia, fixing her firmly in his eyes. “I won’t abandon you, Safinia. Not so long as we have business together.”

Before she could question him, and that strange hardness in his expression, he turned on his heel, taking the lead for the first time on their journey, the back of his head revealing nothing. Around them, the morning burst with birdsong—as if nothing that happened yesterday would merit a change.

“I’ve never asked you about Rome,” she began. It was barely more than a bandit camp. Now she wondered. “They’re so small, I didn’t know you’d even heard of them.”

Livy shrugged again. “Once people have dug in, they’re hard to dig out,” he answered. “Let’s just get moving.”

Act II

753 BCE

“I am aware that for historians to make extravagant claims is, and always has been, all too common . . . But however that may be, I shall find satisfaction in contributing—not, I hope, ignobly—to the labor of putting on record the story of the greatest nation in the world.”

—Titus “Livy” Livius, Ab Urbe Condita, Book I

I

They found the survivors of the village the next day, much closer to Crustumerium. They’d been folded into a farming community—small, but with guards enough to defend from raiding parties in future. A woman with dull, exhausted eyes pointed them to a cluster of huts on the edge of the town.

“Those are abandoned. You wouldn’t be bothering anyone by making camp there. As long as you move on.” She eyed Safinia. “Not enough food to spare.”

“We have our own,” Safinia said. She could feel how much the woman wanted to be alone but couldn’t help herself from lingering. “The abandoned huts, were they . . .”

“Family left for Crustumerium after last harvest. No angry ghosts there,” the woman said bitterly. “Now go.”

The huts were in good shape, luckily, for being abandoned over winter. “We should reach the city tomorrow,” Livy said. They had been on the road five days. As he fumbled through a series of attempts to get the hearth lit, all while Safinia laughed at him, she realized something strange: Livy, as different as he was in lifestyle and temperament, had become her friend. Her first new one in years.

The small farm had been abandoned along with the huts, but the land, though overgrown, still had distinct furrows. There were no signs of looting, no scorch marks. She couldn’t imagine her own home being treated so well in her absence.

They’d walked through a few similar settlements after reaching the headwaters of the Allia River, some bearing the marks of long-past raids. The migration was happening to the outskirts of Cures, too. Every day another family near the Tiber packed their things and decided to try to make it in the city. Soon Safinia’s home, and Mettius’s, would be the first line of defense, the only border between Cures and ripe wilderness.

She shot an extra fowl as Livy finally got the hearth going and gave it to the remnants of a house shrine she found peeking out of the long grass. She wasn’t sure what god it belonged to—no etchings, even, that she could ask Livy about, so the prayer had to be unspecific. Hopefully it would be enough to earn the welcome of whatever Lares might still linger here.

Safinia shared her thoughts on the migration she’d noticed with Livy as they ate, the hearth making comforting patterns on the ceiling of the hut.

“It’s such an interesting time for Cures, and Sabinum,” Livy said around a mouthful. Safinia liked to think she’d been a bad influence on his table manners. “The rise of a city-state is always rocky. So much wealth has come into the nation, in such a short span of time—there are bound to be tensions, intrigues, notable events and moments to observe and record. These disappearances we’re investigating, for instance.”

Safinia chewed her lip. “It was different when I was young, I think. Different when my mother was young, definitely. The wall was shorter, she said. No villas, either, or at least fewer. Then the magistrates and councilor families started having more and more people work their mines and trade their metals.”

“Well, Sabinum’s known for its gold. All those arm bangles.”

“I suppose there is more wealth in Cures than there used to be,” Safinia said. But was that really true? There was certainly less wealth in her own family home, and those of her neighbors.

“That’s just a part of civilizing,” Livy said. “You can’t avoid it—things will always stratify, after a while. Chin up, Sabinum will be part of a whole greater than you could ever imagine—this is that process begun.”

For the first time in a long while, Safinia allowed herself to wonder what it would have been like had her mother not died in battle—if she would have eventually moved them inside the walls to protect the wealth she brought back from her battles: hammered bronze weapons, jewelry, and statuettes. Fine cloth. They might have become society people themselves. Hersilia had always thought so.

“Livy,” she said. “Is Calliste the Centuria mentioned in any of your histories?”

He gave her a look that was not quite sympathetic. “Women hardly ever are. Does her lifestyle fascinate you? You’re a fitting heir.”