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“I might sleep outside even if you weren’t here. It’s a nice evening.” A white lie, for now. Truthfully, she wanted to keep watch a while, to make sure no one had followed them out of the city. But no need to alarm Orestilla yet.

Safinia curled her braid at the crown of her head and pinned it tightly. The oil Orestilla used was lightly perfumed—something floral lingered on her hands, amid the smell of olives. “You’re welcome to keep me company, but I think you’ll find the mat inside to be enough of a shock.”

Orestilla smiled. She was headed inside to turn in herself when Safinia stopped her.

“Ores,” she said. “Why me? Why ask for my help, when you heard I was looking for her? I didn’t even know you existed before today.”

“I know,” Orestilla said, too quickly. It was hard to tell in the fading light, but she might have blushed. “But to be honest, I probably would have asked you for your help anyway. If I made it through tonight.” She studied her fingernails intently. “Hersilia spoke of you often. And I knew of your mother, of course. There hasn’t been a Centuria to rival her since she died.”

“It was why Hersilia took interest in me,” Safinia remembered. “She wanted to know why we were still living out here, when our mother was a hero.”

She hadn’t liked Safinia’s answer: Cures Sabini prefers their heroes dead. And they’d have ended up out here in the end again, anyway, once Calliste’s war prizes had been traded away for necessities. Safinia was only twelve when both her parents were killed.

“You were always her favorite,” Orestilla said. “Hersilia was always hoping for you to come back to her.”

“She never said as much.”

“She wouldn’t, though, would she? She knows what’s expected. You could hardly have been her husband.”

Orestilla bit the soft tip of her thumb, staring over the hills as the last trace of sun faded. There was the barest light on her face, and then it fell away to shadow. Safinia was gripped by a sudden desire to study it. She’d never seen Hersilia in the outskirts, but the dark might have sloped on her cheeks just like this.

“The first time I saw you was six or seven years ago,” Orestilla said. “My friend and I snuck out to the city-south to drink. You were there, with that man you were always with, your neighbor.”

“Mettius,” Safinia murmured.

“You were both drunk and singing, I think. I remember how little you cared that you sounded terrible.” Orestilla smiled. “Then when me and my friend were trying to get served, this man came up behind her and tried to hike up her skirts. He reeked. We barely had time to feel scared before you’d grabbed him by his hair and hauled him off. Then you punched him in the face.”

“What happened next?”

“Nothing. He tried to take a swing back but lost his balance. You told him that he could get up, but then he’d have to tell everyone how a girl thrashed him into the ground.”

“I don’t even remember that,” Safinia said. The thought disconcerted her. “You wanted my help because you knew me when I was drunk and stupid?”

“I didn’t think you were stupid. You had him and everyone knew it. I saw him think about whether he actually could take you, and then he realized his reputation would never recover if he lost.”

“They’re funny about masculinity in the city.”

“They’re funny about it everywhere. But that night, you didn’t have to step in.” Orestilla stretched, her form dark against the only light—the soft glow of the hearth inside. “When I heard you were in the city, I was willing to bet you might do the same again. Sleep well, Safinia.”

“Sleep well,” Safinia echoed.

She tried to settle in and only ended up staring at the stars, blinking through gaps in fast-moving clouds, her head pillowed in her hands. Try as she might, she couldn’t remember the night Orestilla told her about, only a jumble of similar ones. It made her uncomfortable to imagine that Orestilla thought of her as some kind of—protector. That would imply that there was something intentional and honorable about the fights she’d picked as a furious, unmoored teenager. She’d probably stood over the man who terrorized Orestilla’s friend and wished he would stand up and hit her back. Those were the only nights she felt any kind of release—the ones where Mettius had to step in to keep her from getting killed.

Where had that anger gone? She only had to think the question to know: It had been spent.

Four years ago. She’d come home to find her home burning. Mettius’s too, up the hill. Raiders had come and then scattered with their prizes—Attice among them. Safinia tracked the kidnappers into the forest—as if they could hide from her there!—and when she found them, she learned that punching someone wasn’t the same as killing them. Splitting their lip, breaking their nose—it wasn’t the same. Killing opened a hole in her chest and filled it with numbness. Her emotions had been tumbled smooth, like rocks lining the banks of the Tiber. At first the absence of fury had been a reprieve, until it went on and on.

That day, Safinia washed her bloody hands in a slow-trickling stream, trying to catch her reflection in the water, before she realized that she wouldn’t know herself even if the current stilled.

III

The next morning was cool, and the woods were cooler, as they always were; as if entering was the same as submerging in deep water, the membrane between two places passable but distinct. Safinia wiggled her toes in her boots—they’d once belonged to her mother, but the soft leather had now almost completely yielded to the shape of Safinia’s feet.

She passed through the trees, aiming for quiet rather than noiseless—birds and deer would spook easily over one bent twig in a field of silence, but were unconcerned by the soft crunch of leaves and brush underfoot that they could take for any normal creature.

It was a lucky day. Two of her traps had rabbits in them; she slung one over her shoulder and took the other to the shrine to gut it.

This shrine was one of many scattered through the woods, some permanent, most little more than sticks lashed together into a facsimile of a house shrine. These shrines didn’t frustrate Safinia—gods didn’t make promises the way ancestors did. They didn’t exist to protect her and thus had never let her down.