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Not that Hersilia had gotten married yet, Safinia reminded herself. Someone would have mentioned it. Everyone within twenty miles of Cures would have been involved, in some way, if only so that Safinia would be forced to watch the girl she’d jilted wind bracelets on her new husband’s arm. Safinia stood and stretched, hoping that some kind of the rakish confidence Hersilia had always liked would settle back into her bearing.

She was going to need it.

II

“Hersilia,” Anesia repeated. She’d jumped to her feet when Safinia asked her to go with her to the city—any excuse to leave the outskirts. “You’re going to have a friendly conversation with Hersilia.”

“Don’t,” Safinia said wearily.

“How can I not? You and Hersilia again.” Anesia sighed. “The gossip! People wouldn’t shup up about it. The princess and her plebeian lover.”

“She’s not a princess.”

“Close enough.”

Safinia hummed noncommittally. They’d been remarked upon, that was true. Hersilia was a councilor’s daughter, the absolute upper echelon of Cures Sabini’s women, since the king had no children of his own. She’d been the one to pursue Safinia in the first place. It had been dizzying to see her in one of the dirty, rat-infested bars in the city-south, resplendent in her dowry bracelets and flanked by bodyguards. “I just wanted to get a look at you,” she’d told Safinia. “To see if you’re half as strong as your mother was.”

“You knew my mother?” Safinia had asked. Belatedly, she’d realized she should have boasted—flexed, maybe, and said, twice as strong.

“The bards say she was ten feet tall and learned to fight from Minerva herself.”

“No,” Safinia had said. She’d been too drunk to think of anything clever. “Just a woman.”

“You make that sound like a bad thing,” Hersilia had said, and then, maddeningly, left. It was another two months before Safinia found her again, dragging Mettius to the kind of posh bars the elite Quirites drank at.

“I never understood why you cut her off,” Anesia said, pulling Safinia back to the present. “I always heard Hersilia had a mean streak.”

“You know what happened. I got too busy to see her.”

Anesia grinned. “And then . . . ?”

She’d clearly heard some gossip. Safinia sighed. “And then she sent Mettius to recite a litany of my failures and tell me to never look her in the eye again. I did try to break up with her properly. She was busy with a fellow from Veii that night.”

She’d flicked her fingers at Safinia like she was a fly circling her drink. But Anesia didn’t need to know that part. “Who told you about it, anyway?”

Anesia pressed her lips together and shrugged. “Word gets around.”

That was an understatement. It was typical for women to flirt, date, make girlfriends of each other before they moved on to proper husbands, but everything Hersilia did—especially with a woman so far beneath her station—was dissected and discussed. Gossip was as much currency as salt in the city, and Cures Sabini sprawled farther every year, with more huts built in clusters just outside the walls, and fierce competition for dingy apartment buildings just inside. These became more grand the closer they were to the forum, where public events took place—festivals, night markets, rulings from the magistrates. Quirites never slept a night in their lives without noise under the window. Even the homes above shopfronts, while more private, were cramped and close to the street.

Safinia and Anesia passed through the gates, joining the stream of travelers and merchants. Everywhere, people called to each other. Some hung out of windows three, four stories high. A man pursed his lips and made a whining, kissing sound. If he reached, he could touch the shutters of the building next to him. No wonder people in Cures were so careful to wear the right things and fuck in the right way: There was no room for error when everyone lived on top of each other.

There were encampments, too, more than Safinia remembered—brightly colored canvas sheltered those who had no relatives to impose on or valuables to offer the guest homes. She heard Latin and Etruscan mixed with her mother tongue, Sabellic.

Safinia felt conspicuous, even as her logical mind told her no one cared how long it had been since she’d walked down these streets.

“I should have done my hair,” she muttered. The braid pinned to her head was escaping its confines.

Anesia eyed her. “Yes, you should have.”

They split up after that, Anesia to visit her merchant friends and Safinia to the north. Hersilia’s favorite bar was a place called Flora’s. Safinia wouldn’t mind a drink, either, if someone else was buying.

Hersilia wasn’t there. Nor was she in the forum, or lingering at any of the shopfronts she liked. Some whom Safinia asked were surprised to see her but knew nothing of Hersilia’s whereabouts. “Haven’t seen Hersilia in days,” the tender at Flora’s said. “But Tarpeia should be around soon, you could ask her.”

Safinia shuddered. “No thanks.”

Soon it was evening, though heat still clung to the city streets like a fog, any relief in the wind passing well overhead. Safinia wandered back toward the gate, sitting on a crate to wait for Anesia, feeling battered. She’d asked a few people if they had errands they were willing to pay to get done—it hadn’t been worth the shame that crawled into her cheeks to see them turn away to laugh at her.

Things Safinia had not realized she’d forgotten came back to her; Hersilia’s sightly-too-large front teeth, and the way she put her tongue behind them when she smiled, as if she was always that close to laughing. The citrusy perfume she used to oil her hair. There’d been one day—only one—where Safinia had thought it might be love.