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He held the lituus to the sky, painting invisible lines. Then he fell silent, his eyes unblinking, as he watched. For a while, Safinia watched him, counting the number of birds that crossed her eyeline; she wondered what they could mean, how Timaeus knew which bird was significant and which was just a bird. Maybe they were all important, somehow, to the picture being painted.

After a while she sat, her head leaning against the moss that crawled up the rocks, admiring the glittering dew that draped the trees below. If she closed her eyes, she ceased to be and became a tree or a deer or a bird herself. It was a small comfort, until Timaeus cleared his throat. When she looked at him, unease caught in her throat. He stared over the woods as he had before, but he looked stricken.

“Twelve vultures,” he said. “I’m sure it was twelve.”

“Is twelve bad?” A memory Safinia couldn’t place stirred her.

“Twelve is good,” he said slowly. “Twelve vultures is concerning. Most came from my left side, which is worse.”

“Are we in danger?” The skin on Safinia’s neck prickled. “What did you learn?”

Timaeus shook his head. “I learned what I already knew, that we have the misfortune of living at a time that is both ending and beginning.”

“But about Numa,” she said. “What is he going to do?”

“I don’t know,” Timaeus said, maddeningly. “A bird can’t tell you that. It can tell you, though, to be very cautious—to ford yourself against a flood that will take all who wander into its path. We are so small, Safinia—so impotent, compared to a tree. Please be careful.”

The day was hot—moisture rose from the forest floor and clung to Safinia’s skin, making Livy’s ring sweat and glue itself to her chest. She should not have felt cold, and yet how could she not? It lived along her spine, an iciness that made her feel like she should be turning around, and turning again, to catch whatever lurked just behind her.

“Timaeus,” she said. She could hear the desperation in her own voice.

“I cannot,” he said. “I cannot help and I cannot tell you more.”

She might have seized him then, as fear mounted through her body and made her sweat cold, to make him tell her everything that was behind his watchful eyes—but as if he had sensed that she might, he was already gone. The walk home was long.

Safinia kicked a stone along the road from the trees, back to the salt road and her little hut. A dark gloom had set in, twilight under cloud cover, as she dawdled her way back to Cures Sabini.

There was a glow in the distance—Mettius’s home. Something pricked Safinia’s senses, though—there’d been some change, some shift. She slowed her steps and tried to name it in the normal sounds and feelings of the night; a cool breeze, frogs croaking, trees brushing each other. And there—talking.

When Safinia arrived at the low wall that encircled the huts, she found the twins sitting on it, raptly attentive. They were speaking to a man.

“—and so we find it here, behind your ear!”

He flicked a small coin to Flavia, who caught it between her hands and then crowed over it with Rania as if it was a squished bug.

“Safinia!” Rania called. She’d seen Safinia standing a few paces away, barely in the circle of their light, her mouth hung open. “We met a magic man!”

“So you did,” she said faintly. “I don’t suppose you’ll lend him to me?”

They scrambled off the wall. Livy knelt before them to shake their hands before they went. “Remember that twins are auspicious,” he told them very seriously. “Embrace your novelty and power.” Then he straightened and turned to grin at Safinia. He was in purple, a color for kings, and looked like he’d had a fresh haircut. “Well, here I am. Shall we talk?”

XI

Her hut felt wrong without the hearth glowing inside. After so many days spent together, talking about their lives, Safinia wanted Livy to understand what it felt like to sit under the olive tree at night, breathing with the mountainside and enjoying the dark. With no soft light to slip under the curtain, the garden felt cold. She didn’t bother bringing Livy inside.

“You’re really here,” she said.

“I’m really here,” he agreed. “Do you have something to sit on that isn’t drenched in blood?”

“I thought you were ignoring me.”

Livy chose her workbench, sitting pointedly aside the bloodstains of many dressed kills soaked deep into the whorls of the wood. He looked up at her, his legs crossed, cape artfully pinned over one shoulder. He did look healthy enough. He hadn’t lost any weight, and there were no new scars or scrapes that she could see. His toga was his most decadent yet.

“It’s alright to say you missed me,” he said impishly. “What were you doing, some kind of forest witchery?”

“Your ring,” Safinia said. “I was trying to summon you. I did whatever I could think of, hoping you’d notice.”

He beamed at her. “Clever, clever woman. Well, it worked. There may be more of me in that ring than there is sitting before you. Metaphorically speaking. Now—fill me in. I’ve heard absurd rumors in Rome, with you at the center.”