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“Not everyone is that brave,” Safinia said. She didn’t point out that Anesia wouldn’t be the one holding the spear. “I’d want to know, even if I died for it, that you could go somewhere else.”

They were quiet a while. Anesia handled the purchase of two meals from a chef near the gates—she bought from a different spot every evening, she said, so that no one would catch on that she didn’t know how much, exactly, Orestilla’s beads were worth. Safinia snorted. “I traded a rabbit to that man for dinner for all of you.”

“Well, a rabbit’s more useful than jewelry,” Anesia said crossly. She sighed as they left the city gates, an involuntary sound Safinia also often made. The air was so much clearer out here. “I wish we didn’t have to wait until spring. I keep thinking of them trapped there. Ores and Flavia.”

“We don’t know what happened to Flavia,” Safinia said. It was an automatic response.

“Whether she’s dead, or a bride-to-be, or a slave, she’s a child. We can’t flinch from that.”

She was right. Safinia looked sidelong at Anesia. She’d always thought of Anesia as a little callous. The way she’d shrug when she made a mistake and say, Well, it’s done. Or how she spoke of Aulus—the purely practical choice, love not part of the equation, though he followed her around like an adoring pet. Now Safinia thought that maybe it had been shrewdness all along. Anesia had always been able to let trauma and tragedy roll off her back. She was certainly doing more for Cures, more for her family and for Orestilla and Flavia, than anything Safinia had gotten up to in the winter.

Over dinner Anesia teased Quintus and Faustus until they couldn’t breathe for laughing. The four of them stayed up long into the night, buoyed by a feeling that was almost cheerful, for the first time since the Consualia.

XI

The next morning, Safinia rose early to hunt—Orestilla’s beads wouldn’t last Anesia forever, and there were some winter animals, boar in particular, that made good stew. As she high-stepped through the grass to the house shrine, she spotted a small figure, leaning against the stone.

“Rania?” she asked.

Rania scrambled to her feet. In her arms was the practice staff she used at morning lessons. “I was hoping . . .” she said.

“Rania, you know you’re not going to be allowed to fight,” Safinia said gently. “I’ll still teach you if you want, but—wouldn’t you rather wait a few years?”

She only held her own spear now to hunt. Even then—her hands had acquired a tremble that wouldn’t subside. Most of what Safinia brought in was from traps or arrows.

Rania looked at the ground, her chin set mulishly. Safinia felt a burst of guilt. Of course Rania would want to learn how to fight. They hadn’t been checking in on her enough. Flavia was on everyone’s minds, but no one said so to Rania. They tiptoed around her, like she was the ghost.

“Okay,” Safinia said. “We can start tomorrow. At the old spot in the circus.”

In the morning Rania was there before Safinia, standing on one leg, then the other, counting slowly to one hundred each time. “I’m ready,” she said when she saw Safinia.

“Alright,” Safinia said gravely. “From now on, you’re never without that pole. Eat and sleep with it at your side. I’ll train you morning and evening until you can beat me.”

“I could never beat you,” Rania whispered, with a sense of awe.

Safinia batted this away. “Of course you will. Show me your drills.”

They moved through forms together, and after a while moved to sparring in slow motion, their muscles twitching with effort. They had the same fight for days. Then Safinia began to add occasional new moves, or hold back a strike that was expected. She’d had too many students before to notice Rania’s talent. She was good at adapting, though it squeezed Safinia’s heart to wonder if Flavia was, too. Either way, soon Rania would be ready for a greater challenge.

Sometimes Anesia joined them for breakfast, or Quintus. It became a routine that Safinia didn’t mind. Her hours in between lessons were still as meandering, but life marched on as surely as the snowmelt in the Tiber. Sometimes Safinia even felt like herself. Like when Quintus was being ridiculous—she was starting to suspect that he was having an affair with Mettius, and more amusingly, that Faustus might be starting one up, himself.

She could laugh at the garden table, just as she had when Attice was doing the washing, quietly humming somewhere nearby. She would have enjoyed the boys, and especially all the stories Faustus knew about their mother.

Sometimes, though, she retreated to that imaginary place she knew Attice had always gone to. In the middle of talking or chores, Safinia felt herself just slip away, and she suffered through the rest of the day floating somewhere above her body, detached, but not with any freedom. She’d always thought that Attice went to some happier fantasy of her life when she was like this, but Safinia couldn’t think clearly enough most days to imagine herself somewhere comforting.

Spending time with Rania was good, though. She sometimes joined the girl for lunch. “It’s important for girls to learn the spear,” she told Rania on one of these days. “There’s no better weapon for leveling a fight against someone who’s bigger and stronger. Big can’t do anything to hurt you if he has a blade in his gut before he can get close enough to swing.”

Rania was quiet. Safinia had her mouth around an enormous bite of stew and was working a piece of gristle through her teeth before she realized that next to her, the girl was crying. Her chin was set in that same way again, as stubborn as ever, now wet with salt and snot.

“What’s wrong?!” Safinia asked.

“If Flav had a spear,” Rania began, before being taken by big, hiccupping sobs. Safinia held her for a long time, smoothing her hair over her slim shoulders, methodically pulling the knots out. She wished she could do what Attice used to do for her, make small braids to tuck into her hair when she tied it up.

Rania was getting tall, nearly ten years old, and all limbs. What can I say to her? Safinia wondered as she patted Rania’s head. That she’ll be okay? It was hollow comfort to say that eventually Rania would feel almost normal—who wanted an end to grief while they felt it? Who could look forward to the day when they realized that they hadn’t thought of their sister once since waking?

Long after the convulsing cries subsided, Rania lay on Safinia’s lap, just sniffling occasionally. She might have stayed there all night, except Mettius came home and found them sitting on the low wall that surrounded his hut. He picked Rania up and ran her around on his shoulders until she was laughing, despite herself, another release. Safinia watched and thought of Attice and almost—only almost—cried, herself.

The next day after drills were done, Rania didn’t bring her pole up to begin a spar. “What do I do if I don’t have this?” she asked. “What if someone takes it, what then?”