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Aulus leaned over to spit on the ground. Anesia’s mouth twitched in a smile, the first Safinia had seen on her in days. Several of the men who’d stayed behind looked scandalized.

“Are we just supposed to believe that?”

“I saw her,” Anesia said, her voice icy. “We all did, at the sacrifices. She is one of them.”

“Romulus’s bride,” Safinia said.

“She did always want to be a queen,” a woman murmured. One of Hersilia’s younger cousins.

Safinia thought about explaining Hersilia’s convoluted logic, that it had been a warped love for Sabinum, a frenetic, patriotic belief in their potential that drove her. What good would it do, though? Hersilia and Livy had both claimed to see a bigger picture. It let them overlook all sorts of violence. Visions of the expansive, horrible city she’d glimpsed when Livy died lingered with Safinia; they taunted her. But she kept silent about that, too. Even if it was true, Livy couldn’t account for every detail. Rome’s existence didn’t have to mean that Orestilla and Flavia would live out the rest of their lives there. War was still worth it.

The talk wore on; Mettius found himself in the middle of it. Now that the Quirite plebeians outnumbered patricians by a vast margin, they refused to let these men put themselves at the center. Better to listen to their champion.

Anesia was slumping with her chin propped on her hand. Safinia touched her shoulder lightly. “Home?” she asked. Anesia shook her head.

Safinia squeezed her shoulder, then let her be. Anesia was adult enough now to decide if she wanted to get involved with the messiness of planning war. If not by age, then by whatever kind of trial the last few days had been.

Safinia slipped away, cutting through long grass that stuck to her skin, as the rumble of Mettius’s voice faded to something instead like weather. A small pouch of ashes, tied to her belt, bumped her thigh as she went.

Orestilla’s tools, and unfinished links of chain, were pooled inside a basket in their garden. So was the string the sisters used for games, knotted and threadbare but set alongside the fine silver loops as if it were just as valuable. The little fence that ran doggedly around Attice’s garden listed slightly to the side; the branches of her olive tree hung heavy with the weight of ripe fruit. It all asserted itself in the blueish light of late, late night, late enough to be early morning.

The roof looked threadbare. I’ll need to patch it soon, Safinia thought. Winter would be warm, if summer had been any indication. That meant rain instead of snow, and unlike snow, you couldn’t brush a drizzle off your roof before it became a problem.

The mundanity of this thought made her want to cry. The tears caught somewhere in her throat.

She pulled the tightly knotted cloth that held Attice’s ashes from her belt and took it inside. A little pot with the dregs of dried spice would do. Safinia dumped this on the cold hearth and replaced it with Attice.

Inside their little house, the mat was a mess of blankets. Safinia’s hunting spear and amentum hung by the door with her mother’s bow. She’d wished for her weapons every day that she’d been locked in Rome, but now she was glad they hadn’t traveled with her; they surely would have been lost to the chaos.

The remains of a stew had been left, dried. Safinia snorted. That would be Mettius, utterly disregarding the rules while he stayed in her home.

She would need to organize their spices and cooking fat. Safinia was sure Mettius would have rearranged them in a way that would be annoying to Attice when she came home. She bit her lip at this thought, pressing until she tasted blood. There were enough practical things to do that she could work until she collapsed in sleep, and avoid thinking at all. She hoped.

Safinia dragged the chest that contained their clothes from the deep recess it had sat in for as long as she could remember. Then she took a kitchen knife and broke the packed mud floor, softer where no one had stepped. She dug a shallow hole and then wrestled off her bloody tunic, the one that stunk of Rome, and shoved it into the little dugout, along with her torn leggings and Livy’s gemmed knife, and covered it again. Then she went outside to their cistern to dip a shallow bowl and wash herself, letting the dirtied water stream downhill to the trees.

Slowly, her hands emerged from under a coating of blood. She spread honey over her wrists and the cuts that lingered.

Anesia had returned when she came back around the house. “What’s the word?” Safinia asked.

“Nothing until the spring. Those old fools convinced everyone we need time to get the harvest in, and to muster our allies.”

Safinia nodded. She picked through the pots left behind with Ores’s work and used her perfumed oil to smooth her hair back and tie it into a sensible braid. The scent of olives and hair was agonizing.

“I’m going to help,” Anesia said. “I know I can’t fight. But I’m going to make myself useful with the city-planners.”

“You think they’ll listen to you?”

“I’ll make them,” Anesia answered grimly. “Or Mettius will. They want him to lead the battle when it’s time. He has sway.”

That made sense. Mettius remained the Quirite champion—and Sabinum’s Centuries were in disarray, their Centurions kidnapped or slaughtered or on the road somewhere, unaware they were needed at home. Cures needed a hero, someone to write poems about later. If they prevailed.

“You’re seventeen,” Safinia reminded Anesia. “Unmarried. It would be hard for me, even, to find the stubbornness it’s going to take to make them listen.”

“You mean I’m not determined enough,” Anesia said. “I don’t have the temperament to lead, that’s what you’re saying.”

“No,” Safinia said, though that was what she was saying. The light of early morning grew on Anesia’s face. Her chin was thrust forward, her eyes clear. There was that angle to her face again. The way the light sloped over her cheeks made her look so much like their mother. Normally Safinia only saw it in flashes, when Anesia turned, or before she had fully woken up. But here, stillness settled into the features, and Safinia looked at Calliste.

Safinia opened then closed her mouth. “I’m sorry,” she said, and that, ironically, startled Anesia’s features back into her own. “You’re grown. You look more like Mother every day.”