Page 6

“You didn’t hear I was looking for work,” Safinia said, a slight buzzing in her ears. “You heard I was looking for Hersilia.”

Safinia and Anesia took Orestilla to a guest house in the city-south, one that Safinia remembered having a courtyard. It would be more private than any tavern, and Orestilla flat refused to go back to her apartment.

“Do you think she just doesn’t want to be seen with us?” Safinia asked under her breath.

“Give her a chance,” Anesia whispered. “Besides, she’s your girl’s sister.”

The revelation that Hersilia had a bastard sibling was a shock Safinia had yet to properly digest. Not just that Hersilia had kept her sister a secret, but that she had one in the first place—how did her father have the time to keep a courtesan? Councilor Numa was the king’s closest advisor, officially—unofficially, he ran Cures Sabini in the king’s doddering absence. He’d overhauled the census, redrawn districts, doubled grain allotments (though Safinia, as registered head of her family, was still only bringing home a pittance). The festival calendar in the forum was his, as were his quaestors, guards he’d selected to investigate murders and other serious crime.

Safinia had only ever seen him at a distance, performing rites for the city or reading summaries of the magistrates’ decisions that month. The city regarded him as less of a man and more of an agent of the gods. How had he managed to keep a scandal like this tucked away?

The courtyard was smaller than Safinia remembered; still, there were enough sticky, weatherbeaten benches for the three of them to drag to a corner.

Anesia wasted no time. “So you’re not an Aurelius—you’re a Pompilius.”

Orestilla winced. “Please keep your voice down. No—my grandfather claims me. He doesn’t have any sons or grandsons, so he made me his apprentice and heir.”

“Let’s get back to Hersilia,” Safinia said.

“Gambling debts, you think?” Anesia asked. “Maybe she’s run off with a lover. Sorry it wasn’t you, Ama.”

Orestilla gave Safinia a pleading look. She was like an injured bird, quivering wings tucked around herself, and Anesia a bear shaking the tree. It would have been funny if Safinia wasn’t so hungry. She put a hand on both their knees. “Orestilla—”

“Please, call me Ores.”

“Ores. What’s happened to Hersilia? Have you gone to Numa about it?”

“He won’t see me.” Orestilla looked ashamed. “She’s been missing for four days. When I call on her at the villa, supposedly she’s sick. Or, oh, she’s just left for a tour in the south. Or, alas, you just missed her. All the same things as the last—”

Orestilla cut herself off. She pressed hands into her eyes, stemming tears before they could spill over.

Safinia gnawed on her lip as she studied Orestilla. Her mind was torn. Attice would be worried by now, maybe even frantic, curled in on herself in the stifling heat of their hut, waiting for Safinia while the walls began to sweat. But the circles around Orestilla’s eyes were pronounced; she clearly hadn’t slept well in days, if not longer.

Everyone in Cures was out for themselves. Safinia sighed. She couldn’t be one of them.

“Start from the beginning.”

Orestilla drew her arms around herself, and the motion looked elegant instead of childish; her dowry bracelets blinked in the torchlight. She had at least twelve on her left arm—Safinia had three, not gold but dented brass, stashed somewhere in the hut. It was all that remained of her parents’ marriage. In the outskirts, they didn’t bother to advertise their dowries like they did in the cities. For one thing, letting rumor spread that you had wealth and no wall around your home was asking for trouble.

“You should know that there’s been trouble in the city lately,” Orestilla began. “Sometime in the winter, three girls I know disappeared. All marrying age, all from good families. Another councilor’s daughter, and sisters from a merchant family. No one’s seen them since the weather turned. They aren’t out drinking, or watching the wrestlers, or listening to poets in the forum—they’re nowhere.”

“Lots of girls put on a show of good behavior for their future husbands,” Safinia pointed out. “They could be at home, or sick, or traveling—it could be anything.”

Orestilla shook her head. “That’s what the men are saying. But no two men have the same answer. One lover says she’s got lung-sickness, the next that she’s a slut who’s run off with another man. Her father will tell you she’s with relatives in the south. Her domestici just shrug.”

“Same as with Hersilia,” Safinia said. Orestilla nodded. “How can you be the only one to notice?”

“I’m not. My friends are terrified they’ll be stolen from their beds. Hersilia told me not to worry, that she’d have a talk with the council and make sure we were taken seriously—and now she’s gone.”

Safinia gnawed on her lip. She understood the fear of being seized in the night. And in the city, they didn’t teach their girls the spear, as Safinia’s mother did for her.

My father says girls from the outskirts may as well be men, Hersilia had told her once.

Do you want me to be? Safinia had joked.

Maybe it was a terrible coincidence—maybe several rich fathers had all failed in protecting their families at once. Safinia wanted it to be simple. She almost resented Orestilla for telling her this—not only because there was little she could do, but because for a moment it struck her as unfair, these quiet, dignified kidnappings. That wasn’t how it happened in the outskirts.

“It’s going to be me, next,” Orestilla whispered into her hands. Immediately, Safinia was ashamed. Fear was fear. Violence was violence. “My grandfather told me to stop being hysterical. He refuses to hire an extra guard. My father—he won’t even give me his name. Why would he take me in? No one will help me when it happens.”