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Safinia chewed on her lip as she considered. She’d taught a little grappling before the Consualia; Mettius had surely passed on a little more. But this seemed more about fighting than escaping.

“You fight dirty,” she said. “Every time. At your size, don’t bother trying to punch. Scratch if you really can’t get away. Aim for soft parts of the skin.” She touched the inside of her elbow, her neck. “This dip here, on men just below the bump in their throat. Push your fingers in it.”

Rania nodded gravely. “What else? What if I can’t just run away, what if I’m stuck with him?”

Safinia regarded her. The girl matched her gaze, matter-of-fact but unwilling to offer anything more.

“You could try to break his nose,” she said. She took Rania’s hands and positioned them in front of her, palm out. “It’ll wind him as much as a punch to the stomach, but you don’t need as much power. Aim to hit him with the heel of your hand, like this. Nose, throat, groin.”

Rania nodded. They practiced a few times; Safinia was about the right height difference from Rania that a man would be when she was grown. “But what if I were only a little taller?” she asked Safinia when she’d gotten the moves down. She held her hand a slightly above her head. “This tall.”

“It doesn’t make a difference, really,” Safinia said slowly. She was missing something here. “You want to be low in your knees whatever you do. And you can’t forget—you get one hit, maybe two if you’re lucky. Fighting isn’t a conversation. Usually the first person struck is the first person killed.”

“I promise,” Rania said. “If anything happens, if I can, I’ll run.”

“If you can,” Safinia repeated. Huh.

They ended their lesson when the sun began to warm them, rather than shed layers and be cold in the winter breeze the rest of the day. Rania was off as soon as Safinia called the lesson.

Quintus was busy at home, and Anesia was sitting in on another meeting in the forum. Mettius was training, himself, with the real warriors. Safinia went back to gnawing on her lip, and her thumbnail when this didn’t suffice, watching Rania scramble up the hill and take a left turn, instead of right to lead her home. With no one around to tell her not to worry, Safinia began to trot after her.

It took a while to find her. Safinia almost walked past the small alleyway Rania was in—beyond was actually a dark little courtyard, blocked from the sun on all sides by apartment buildings. Safinia stood outside the alleyway to listen.

Rania was not alone. “I don’t think I can,” a girl was saying. Young, by the sound of her voice. “You do it so much better.”

“Do it with me.” That was Rania. “Start from the hip and push your hand—up to strike.”

Safinia had just taught her that. At least two other voices chimed in, asking this and that. Rania recounted everything she could remember of the lesson, missing only a few details. She was a good listener.

They were there until almost lunchtime, when they streamed out of the narrow alleyway. Rania was at their head. She noticed Safinia first and stopped short; a parade of six other girls, the youngest nine or ten, the oldest looking about fifteen, nearly toppled into her.

Safinia raised her eyebrow. One girl clutched Rania’s arm, staring up at Safinia with awe.

“So what is this?” she asked. “I’d be happy to teach any of you.”

The girl and Rania exchanged glances. “I’m not allowed,” she said.

Now that Safinia looked, though the girl was disheveled from her self-defense practice, the clothes she wore were tight, soft weave. The others were dressed like her—the oldest, though she still looked very young to Safinia, was in a stola. They all had expensive, embroidered sandals or slippers, the kind of shoes Safinia remembered Orestilla wearing.

“What is this?” Safinia asked again.

No one said anything until Safinia met Rania’s eye. She pushed her chin out. “They have to get married,” she said. “I’m teaching them so that—you know. So that their husbands can’t push them around.”

Husbands? “But—” Safinia looked at the smallest. “You can’t be older than ten. It’ll be a long time until you have husbands.”

“None of us have started bleeds,” the oldest girl spoke up. “But as soon as we do, we’ll have matches. Our fathers say it’s our duty to have children as soon as possible, since the Romans have taken so many of ours away already.”

“Our sisters are in Rome,” another girl said. She looked no older than Rania. “Some of them. Their husbands need new wives and children right away.”

“They don’t want to,” Rania said. She squeezed the hand of the girl next to her. “Aurelia is promised to Calpurnia’s dad.”

Safinia’s vision went fuzzy for a moment, black around the edges. Fire rose through her stomach, burning away her deadened grief. “You’re children,” she said. Sometimes bleeds came early. Anesia’s were normal, when she was fourteen or fifteen, but Safinia and Attice had both started around eleven. “You—your hips won’t even bear it.”

They all just looked at her. There was no arguing to be done for them—if they’d reached the point of learning to break a man’s nose in an alleyway, they’d given up on trying to convince their families. Each face was pale with naked fear, except Rania’s. She just looked determined.

And a little hopeful. Safinia said the only thing she could think of that would be helpful. “I’ll meet you back here, in the morning.” Each little face nodded. “I’ll teach you everything I know.”

She walked home in a stupor. Faustus saw her and tried to wave, but she could barely register him. Her body focused on the task of getting home—and then broke. The canvas shade was still strung from the olive tree; Safinia ripped it down, ripe fruit skittering like beads in every direction. Then she screamed, the sound skidding out of her throat, and went for the house shrine. She grabbed one of the stupid, smooth little figurines in her fist and slammed it against the stone roofing, bruising her knuckles as it chipped away.