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“A lie of omission is not on the same scale as a true lie. It sounds like they had a close bond, not unusual with a personal domestici. I would trust my own steward with my life. Possibly he felt an obligation to keep her confidence, or some irrational urge to keep us from asking questions that could lead to Faustus.” Livy rolled the scroll back up and tucked it in a pocket. “Maybe he’s just stupid.”

“He isn’t,” Safinia said. “What was it you called him, earlier?”

“Catamite? I don’t know why he took such offense, when it’s obvious where his proclivities lie.” Livy’s mouth twisted. “A catamite is a boy kept for pleasure. I hope you are aware this is not a practice any boy should continue into adulthood.”

For a moment, Safinia was too stunned to answer. “What were you thinking, insulting him like that?” she asked. “You can’t say that to another man.”

“It’s only an insult if I’m attacking his masculinity. He has none to spare.”

“What business is it of yours? He’s helping us!”

“He’s not helping you,” Livy said sharply. “Vice is catching. You could still stand to be a good woman, Safinia. Where I come from, a hardworking, strong-boned girl like you—with a pure Sabine bloodline, no less—is the absolute ideal of our species. There may come a time when you no longer have to carry your family on your shoulders in your comedic turn as patriarch, and when that happens, the less you are corrupted by deviants like Quintus, the better chance you stand of finding an improved status for your life. Maybe even as a good wife.”

Safinia slapped him across the face.

At first, the sting in her palm was bright, but as Livy staggered, the contact seemed to slip—he was under her hand one moment; the next it was as if she glanced off him, stumbling with her momentum, though the hit had been square.

They stared at each other, both breathing hard; Livy held his cheek, and Safinia touched her fingers, not sure they were solid still.

“You hit me,” he said.

“You deserved it.”

Nothing he’d said was all that different from the things Tarpeia tittered over, or what people used to say about her parents. But those people never pretended at friendship. Livy had.

“You hit me,” Livy repeated. “You shouldn’t be able to hit me!”

“Why not?” Safinia snapped. “You shouldn’t say insulting things if you don’t want to get hit.”

“What have I said to insult you?” Livy didn’t bother to keep his voice down. “Have I misjudged you? Are you corrupted already by your lesser friendships? Or is it—ah, it is, isn’t it. You have that strong a reaction to the idea of marriage?”

Safinia eyed him, unwilling to soften, even as his tone took on a cajoling apology.

“Come on, now. Surely at one point in your life you would have expected to marry? If your parents hadn’t died?”

“No,” Safinia said stiffly. “My parents had a match for Attice, but not for me.”

Calliste had only asked once, when Safinia was around ten. At her revulsion, Safinia’s mother had laughed. “Even the good marriages are something of a trap,” she confided, smiling wistfully at Marcus as he played with Anesia and Attice in the garden. “Love makes it hard to live freely.” She never would have asked Safinia to go through with it. She especially would never have thought, as Livy did, that the best a woman could hope for in her life was to marry well.

“Safinia,” Livy began. She shot him a glare that Mettius would have known meant to leave it, but he went on undeterred. “I only want the best for you,” he said quickly. “I was once very like you—a great talent, living on the fringes of the life I deserved, mocked by my competitors for my provincialisms. Society is uncompromising. Can you blame me for wanting to spare you the fate you seem determined to see out?”

“Yes. I’m not you.”

“Of course.” He said this so contritely that Safinia could not help but believe him. She knew his mollifying tone, by now, when he thought she was being stubborn about something foolish. “Truly, I apologize. More than one way to skin a cat, I suppose.”

“It’s not only the bit about marrying, you know,” Safinia said. The fight had gone out of her, giving way to embarrassment. “You’re an idiot to care about virtue. Quirites are the same about Mettius—but who does it harm, if two people agree to do what they like with each other?”

Livy stilled. “Who is Mettius?”

“My neighbor,” Safinia said. “I’ve known him my whole life. He could be a better man, but it has nothing to do with how he fucks.”

“Mettius Curtius?” Livy asked. Safinia nodded. “You’re saying Mettius Curtius is—that he’s—virtueless?”

“Cinaedus is what Sabine say. Not to his face.” She narrowed her eyes at Livy. There was that face again, the same he’d leveled at Quintus—he was working something out in his head, something he didn’t see fit to share with her. “Do you know him?”

“No,” Livy said, but he was lying. She was sure he was lying. He couldn’t help but react. He’d had an idea of who Mettius Curtius was, and she’d said something to dismantle it. It could be that Hersilia had spoken of him—she hated Mettius almost as much as Tarpeia did, though for very different reasons. Maybe Livy had slept with him, been one of Mettius’s patrons when he was, as he’d said, young and gorgeous.

Maybe something Mettius did would be spoken of in the future.