David Drake: To Bring the Light

Romulus looked at her. His face was distorted but unreadable. “Why?” he said in a snarl. “Will the gods strike me down, lady?”

“No,” Herosilla said. She threw down the bloody knife. It stuck quivering in the soil at her feet. “But I will.”

Romulus continued to look at her. He was twice her size and armed. He laughed.

The laughter rang false. His brother’s handprints were livid on his throat.

“He can’t stay here,” Herosilla said. The crowd was silent. “He’ll come with me to Cumae. You’ll have your city, your Rome. But you won’t have his life.”

“Take him, then!” Romulus said. “But if I see him again—”

He drove the blade of the mattock haft-deep into the ground.

“—I’ll split his skull!”

“Yes,” Herosilla said. She knelt beside Remus and dabbed at the cut in his scalp. Faustulus and Acca joined her; Acca held a skin of wine.

“I dare say there’ll be other people who can read and write in Cumae even now,” said Flavia Herosilla, once a gentlewoman of Rome. She gave Acca a vague smile. “Cumae can use a Sibyl to foretell the future, don’t you think, Acca?”