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“Good.” His voice cracked.

He already knew. Of course he did. He put a hand over his eyes. “Our own father said—she’ll need to grow up fast. I don’t want that for her.”

“It’s already happened,” Safinia said, but she knew what he meant.

“I’m trusting you,” Mettius told her. His look was fierce. “And I’m going to find you someday, when I’ve gotten them all back. Me and Flavia and Orestilla are going to walk out of Rome together and right into your arms. So you two—you’d better be healthy and safe when we get there.”

Safinia nodded. She couldn’t speak around the lump in her throat. Mettius opened his arms to her and she lay down again on his shoulder, their hands intertwined on his chest.

She saw herself wandering, her throat dry and face streaked with dirt, looking for that stone which hid her ancestors, and now Attice, from her. What would she do if she found it? In a hero-story, she would push it aside and let ghosts stream from the underworld, returning to their families, guiding and feasting and lingering. That would never happen, and she wouldn’t want it herself, if she were dead. There was nothing so beautiful as peace, in the land of the living. Safinia would have to settle for meeting them in her dreams. Catching Orestilla’s hand and kissing it—apologizing, promising that if they found each other again, Safinia would love her as she deserved.

It was an embarrassment to feel her tears come—until she reached to his cheek and realized that Mettius wept, too. He turned to his side and buried his face into her shoulder.

“Anesia?” he mumbled.

“I’ll talk to her next,” Safinia said. “I’ll convince her to come. I’ll need her, to help manage Rania’s friends.”

“She’ll come,” Mettius reassured her. He sounded as doubtful as she felt.

She explained it all to Anesia the next evening, sleeping in Orestilla’s insula for the first time since her sister had moved in. “I’m so angry I can’t think straight,” Safinia said. “All I know is that I can’t stay.”

“You’ll need to think straight.” Anesia had been quiet, braiding and rebraiding the same strands of hair. She had bags packed, sitting by the stairwell, ready for her to journey south in a few days. “The girls will be counting on you to think straight.”

“And you? Will you come?”

Anesia didn’t answer right away. “You’ll be their leader. Like Mama.”

“Nothing like Calliste,” Safinia said. And it was true—this wouldn’t be anything like leading men into battle. “And I doubt it’ll be more than fifteen or twenty who come along.”

“But fifteen can be a village. And you are like her—I can tell you are.” Anesia lay back down on their mats and turned to face Safinia. “For once you’re not fighting this.”

Safinia considered. “I just know this is right. I know it.”

“Do you know the rest? Say you all make it, choose somewhere to go, and build houses, and take a census, and worship together. You’ll need to keep them alive. Have you thought about the decisions you’ll have to make?”

Didn’t you ever play king for a day? Livy’s voice echoed in her mind. Everyone else did. Hersilia, Numa, Livy himself—they all thought they had the right to say what the future was. Even Anesia sat in on those meetings, shouted her opinion as loud as the rest. What kind of king would Safinia be? The very concept didn’t make sense to her. Even the good ones couldn’t keep the world good for long. “I don’t know,” she told Anesia. “At the very least, I’d like to not make those decisions alone.”

“Well, that’s a start,” Anesia said drily.

That night, Safinia dreamed differently. She saw a man with a mud-streaked face, leading a tired throng of people into the mountains. Safinia knew him instantly: Sabus. She watched him as he followed a deer, light on its little hooves, skipping over the ridges, occasionally pausing and watching him expectantly as he caught up. When it stilled at last, on the high ground that would be Cures, he placed a hand on its head, murmured his thanks, and sacrificed the animal, letting its blood seep into the soil.

Ver sacrum. Safinia knew why the Sabine sent their children into the wild to build cities. It was because the building was the point, not the cities themselves. They were meant to start over, to begin again, together. There was no single empire, no king or governor, that would not eventually collapse. It worked for a while. But the end came for all kingdoms eventually.

It was enough that they could begin again.

In the morning, as she watched Anesia breathe, Safinia realized her sister had dodged the original question: Are you coming with me? She closed her eyes and forced her mouth to stay shut. It would be best if Anesia arrived at the idea in her own time. The best Safinia had gotten from her so far was a promise that she and Aulus would flee to Veii if the Sabine lost in Rome.

And then there were the girls. They spread the word, quietly, to those Sabine wasting in despair, and those who lived far from Cures’s wall, close to the Tiber, not attached enough to the city to lay their lives down defending it. Not many of them appeared keen to actually join Safinia—but some, maybe.

They were losing Aurelia, one of the smallest of Rania’s friends. She’d decided to stay with her family. A part of Safinia wanted to pick her up and carry her off anyway—she was nine, what did she know about where was best for her? But plenty of other people would decide things for her throughout her life. Safinia refused to be one of them.

Rania, Safinia wondered about. She would not have blamed her for saying that she had to go to wherever Flavia might show up. But the girl shook her head. “If she isn’t dead, she needs somewhere to go.” She looked up at Safinia, her eyes intense. “Not here.”

“Not here,” Safinia agreed.

The secret frenzy of their packing, deciding what they could leave forever, and what they had to carry, was lost in the sea of everyone else doing the same thing. Or maybe some fathers and friends turned a blind eye to it—no one had said the words ver sacrum, but it was on all of their minds. Once Safinia and her little flock had rested a while in the grove, Timaeus and the other cultists of Feronia would prepare them to walk a long way.

Northeast, maybe. Over the Apennines.