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He didn’t answer immediately. As the sky lightened she could see that he was still deeply, bitterly furious with her. The barge was narrow, sitting high in the water and pitching with each small roll of the current beneath them. It wasn’t carrying anything heavy. A few men moved quietly around Safinia and Numa, pretending not to see or hear them as they did their work. None wore the ribbons of a quaestor on their tunics and chitons. More unnervingly, Safinia didn’t recognize them. She knew most of the salt traders by face if not name, since the salt road wound past her home.

She could feel her stomach roiling. Safinia lay back down with a thunk, staring into the sky so that she could look at something that wasn’t undulating or streaming past her.

“I thought about taking you to Crustumerium,” Numa said. “The governor gave word a few days ago that he wanted you executed for treasonous behavior. I suspect he wanted me to take care of it out of sight, to avoid any repercussions from your mother’s popularity there, but it seems you have gone and made yourself popular in Cures, too. Tricky thing.”

“I did what I thought was right.”

“You’re a conniving bitch.” Safinia turned her head; he looked like he was going to get out of his seat and hit her. Then he folded his hands over his knee and recomposed himself. “You can see why I cannot allow you to stay in Cures.”

“So we’re going to Crustumerium?”

“No. I suspect you would only find allies there, too. Plebeians love you, Safinia. They see you as their protector. Everyone is sharing stories, again, about the violence you’ve meted out in my streets, latching on to a few young women you’ve avenged like you’re some folk hero. Never mind that we both know you were nothing but an angry drunk. I knew that once my daughter failed to bring you to heel there was no helping you, regardless of how I felt about your mother.”

“My mother’s ghost will haunt you for leaving me alone in the world,” Safinia said. “I did what I had to once she was gone.”

“By bloodying your knuckles on men who were no more deterred from their ways with a black eye than they were with an unmarked face.” His voice shook with rage. “Now you endanger my daughter with your mad quest. And why wouldn’t you? You’ve never thought more than a single step ahead in your entire life.”

She had never been given the luxury of thinking two steps ahead. She’d tried, while settling scores in the city-south, to find some kind of surplus, something stable to give her sisters. And while she tried, her roof was falling, the spices nearly gone, Anesia’s ribs growing prominent as they rationed underripe olives from the garden tree.

She closed her eyes and tried once more. “Where are you taking me?”

“I’m sure you can guess.”

Safinia’s heart thudded in her chest. She refused to give Numa the satisfaction of seeing her panic. There was still a knife in her boot, Livy’s ring and Ores’s pendant around her neck. She could sell them if she could only find a way to jump ship. She was a terrible swimmer and would be worse with her hands tied, but it was better than what she now feared.

Drowning was better than Rome.

“Why don’t you just execute me and be done with it? You could throw me overboard.”

Numa sighed, then stood to step carefully around her. It was clear this conversation was done. “I thought about that too,” he said. “But if she’s alive, I suspect Hersilia will want to see you.”

Safinia did try escaping. As the sun rose and beat brutally on her cheeks, she worked her fingers into the knot attaching her to the boat, pulling it apart fiber by fiber. The rope had been drenched and dried so many times that her fingers were aching, her nails split by the time she had it loose. Then, though every muscle in her body tensed, she forced herself to wait until Numa was distracted, speaking to one of the traders at the front of the boat, before throwing herself into the water.

She realized her mistake immediately. The river crashed around her ears, and she lost which way was up. Safinia hadn’t known that a current could crush her lungs and rip her head from her body before it even drowned her. She couldn’t even move her hands. In her panic, Safinia inhaled and began to choke. In a matter of seconds she’d gone from alive to certainly dead, and with the last sliver of her consciousness, she regretted it.

Then a hand found the fabric of her shirt and yanked her up, wrapping an arm around her waist and forcing the water from her lungs onto the floor of the boat in a bruising yank around her stomach.

“Once,” the man who saved her said in heavily accented Sabellic. “I fish you out just once.”

He didn’t even bother to tie her back down. Safinia gasped, hair plastered over her face, chin covered in spittle. Her eyes burned. Through their watery haze, she saw Numa. He said nothing, only gave her a nod from his seat, silent and hateful.

The boat docked at Tiber Island. Safinia knew of it. It was a landing stage for the Romans to harass Sabine and Etruscan barges, who either had to pay tolls or find a grueling, on-foot path to the salt flats. It was two or three hundred paces from its narrowest points, connected to Rome’s center by a rickety wooden bridge. Safinia refused to help her captors offload her; she went limp and forced them to drag her off the boat.

Numa disembarked as well. For a moment, they were alone. Safinia sat up on her knees and attempted to stretch her arms, still locked behind her back.

“This was a place of spiritual and physical healing, once,” he mused. “It makes sense. Close enough to care for the ill, far enough to quarantine them. The Romans think it’s haunted, though.”

He reminded her of Livy—Safinia wondered where he’d gone. “I didn’t ask,” she said.

Numa ignored her. “Every time I step foot here, I feel the shivering of destiny.”

There was a small group of men on the east bank congregating near the bridge. Safinia’s heart quickened. She didn’t have much time. “Let me go, Numa. Give me a fighting chance. For my mother—for her memory—”

“You are no Calliste the Centuria.”

“She wouldn’t want you to throw me to the wolves! Numa, please.”

The men were arguing about who would be the first to cross the bridge onto the island. It would all be over in minutes. Her last chance to escape. The fear that coursed through Safinia’s veins exploded with white-hot rage. “How can you do this? Your daughter loved me! She kissed me in your orchard! If you sell me to a Roman, I’ll—I’ll live every day I have left in hatred for you, I’ll escape and figure out how to kill you, you’ll never be safe, you’ll—”