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“I raised her,” Quintus said. “Sort of. I became part of her retinue when I was eleven, and she was just a baby. The others thought she was difficult—she cried all the time. But I liked taking care of her.”

“I have sisters, myself. They’re hard work.” Safinia did not add that she had refused to hold Anesia when she was newborn: She’d been terrified of dropping her and irritated by the screaming. “There was nothing she or Hersilia wrote that could hint at where they are?”

“I didn’t know Hersilia had been planning to visit. I hope they’re together, at least.”

“Was anything else missing?” Safinia asked. “Would anyone have heard if she screamed?”

“No. I don’t know.” Quintus hid his face in his hands. “No one seems to know.”

Safinia and Livy exchanged glances. She knew he was thinking the same as her: There was more here to be said. Quintus’s pain seemed genuine, but his excuses did not. Her normal tack would be to threaten him, but she had the sense that Quintus could endure a threat more easily than kindness. She put an arm around him, rubbing his back as if he were a child. “I know how much this hurts,” she said softly. “A sister of mine went missing once, and I went madder than you are.” It stung for a moment to use Attice as means for this man’s trust, but by Quintus’s wide, tear-filled eyes, now locked onto Safinia’s, he was almost there.

“I don’t know what to do.”

“Tell us the truth,” Safinia urged. “Everything you know or suspect.”

“It could be nothing,” Quintus whispered. “But Faustus told me that there were strangers in town around when she was kidnapped, representatives for marriage contracts. They were Latin, I think. She was reported missing a few days after they left, but the slave who was supposed to be with her had been dead a while. They could have taken her with them.”

“No one checked in on her for days?” Safinia asked, horrified.

“Never mind that,” Livy cut in. “Contracts mean paperwork. You said Faustus was head of the guard? Get him—I need to question him.”

“No!”

“No?” he asked, his voice dangerous. Livy rolled up the scroll in his hand and tucked it into his belt. At this, Safinia’s eyes narrowed—he’d been organizing the rest into neat piles as he read them. What made this one special? He caught her eye and shook his head, just a little. “Listen, you,” he said. “I rub shoulders with the kinds of men who travel around representing kings in marriage contracts. I might recognize one or two, if I can have Faustus describe them.”

“You can’t involve him,” Quintus blurted. “Didn’t you hear me? The last four head guards were exiled. Faustus will get the same or worse if he helps you.”

“Quintus.” Safinia smoothed a hand over his forehead, coaxing him to look at her. “Do you really think Faustus will be safe from your governor when he wakes up tomorrow and finds us gone?”

“Shit,” Quintus said. “Shit.”

“At least let him do something good, first. Please.”

He stared at Safinia a long moment, stricken. She thought she could tell, from the agony in his eyes, that what he had with Faustus was fledgling. Her own heart squeezed in sympathy. There was no point apologizing, but she wanted to; if she hadn’t come, they might have managed a little more time together. She knew, from the short months she’d called Hersilia hers, what a difference that could make for love.

“You’re right.” Quintus got to his feet. His jaw was clenched, maybe to keep from crying. “He’d be furious at me for even hesitating. He loves Sylvia, too. And maybe I can convince him to leave before light.”

“That’s the spirit,” Livy said.

“Wait for me here. The governor’s an insomniac, but he won’t come to Sylvia’s rooms if he wakes up and wanders.”

Quintus slipped away, back down the hallway, the sound of his footsteps impressively muted. When he was gone, Safinia collapsed backward, staring at the ceiling. She was exhausted. She didn’t want to care about what happened to Quintus and Faustus, but she did, very much.

“Good work there,” Livy said, returning again to the scroll he’d kept apart from the others. “Damned either way, so why not help us first. Very mercenary of you, Safinia.”

“What do you make of the marriage solicitations?”

“It could be something. Our Quintus underplayed a few of these letters. Come here.”

She obeyed, and Livy spread out Hersilia’s letter before her. Safinia touched her finger to the ink—she could tell, now, after hours spent staring at the one they’d filched from her ledger, what Hersilia’s sprawling handwriting looked like, even if she couldn’t interpret its meaning. She could imagine Hersilia growing red in the face as she wrote, faster and faster—she was such an elegant woman, with such inelegant tendencies. She liked to rant and storm around. Safinia thought she could see it in the mess of her penmanship, her passion making each line less legible than the last.

Livy tapped a section in the middle. “Hersilia’s advice was more extensive than Quintus made out. This letter here is almost entirely about a patrician woman’s role in marriage. I’m terribly proud of her, even if I find the content a little unsettling—it’s practically a treatise on the power women wield over their husbands. If I thought my wife was reading something similar, I’d have it burned.”

“You have a wife?”

“I haven’t seen her in years,” Livy said dismissively. “See, here, she writes on the importance of selecting a husband who is involved in lawmaking. There follow tips on how to curry intellectual dependence in her mate so that he may confide his indecisions in her—that, Hersilia says, is the first opportunity to stretch the boundaries of her influence. The process continues from there, until she is a pillar of his confidence—he cannot feel secure in a decision on matters of state unless he feels her full support.”

Safinia frowned. This was not the Hersilia she remembered. Her Hersilia was more straightforward in her ambitions—she wanted to sit on council herself, see a city led by a queen. “Why would Quintus lie about this?”