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across the bosom and therefore tended to emphasize the curves.
    ‘Just passing through.’
    His eyebrows met in the middle. ‘You are lost?’ Claudia explained about her clash with the thugs. ‘Savages!’ He spat in the dust. ‘They rape you, yes?’
    ‘They rape me, not on their bloody lives.’
    ‘Oh.’ The gleam went out of the Celt’s eyes. ‘I need to piss.’ He made a cross between a bow and a hop, no doubt the sort of gesture that had evolved in those Barbarian climes to imply courtesy but which, in reality, was probably just another means to keep warm.
    Since the parrot was now engrossed in preening its mate, Claudia moved across to the fishpond, where graceful filaments of algae floated in the margins. Minerva’s orchestrating this, she thought wryly. Yesterday was her festival and while artisans and doctors, scribes and schoolmasters left votive offerings up on the Capitol, and white-robed priests led young heifers to the sacrificial blade by their gilded and beribboned horns, forceful, striding Minerva was playing practical jokes on those who’d displeased her. Claudia dabbled her fingers in the fishpond and decided that, if not top of the goddess’s hit list, she probably ran a close second.
    The ripples that nibbled the surface were reminiscent of the ones that lapped Genua harbour in the days when she used to dance for a living. Days when a tunic of this quality, regardless of colour, would have been an object to die for. Kill for, even. The sort of tunic that, had one come into her possession, she could have sold for her keep for a month. A whole month without leers and jeers, sticky hands and mouthed obscenities… She shuddered involuntarily. Thank the gods, those days were way, way behind her. A spot of forgery here, a new identity there, topped by marriage to a fat and unsuspecting wine merchant—what could go wrong? Claudia rested her chin in her hands. Marcus Cornelius Orbilio, that’s what. What is it with life, she thought. You map it all out, bury your past so deep that, in comparison, the Emperor’s Spanish silver mines are mere scratches on the surface…then along he comes. High in the Security Police and with a nose like a truffle-hog, that damned patrician (born rich, born respectable, what does he know about life in the gutter?) comes snooping and discovered that dancing wasn’t the only way she’d earned her living.
    A squad of blue tits descended to search the burgeoning leaves for grubs as Claudia’s deliberations projected themselves into the future. Should this Macer fellow prove unequal to the task of investigating violent deaths, it’s not beyond the realms of possibility that he invites the Security Police to help—and I can do without it being made common knowledge, thank you very much, that there were certain other services on offer in Genua, apart from the dancing. Oh yes, she thought, as the tiny birds twittered and quarrelled and performed their acrobatics, the very last thing I need in my well-ordered life is the intrusion of some wavy-haired aristocrat with a twinkle in his eye who thinks that if he covers his mouth with the back of his hand, no one notices he’s laughing. Not that Claudia remembered what he looked like, of course. Good gracious, no, it was just that…
    A shadow fell across the fishpond and a second reflection appeared in the water. Dark, sultry, her heavy breasts heaving, the girl who’d hung around the atrium yesterday leaned low over the sweet-smelling flags. The ripples on the water could take no blame for the contortions in her face.
    ‘I know what you’re up to,’ she hissed. ‘But you won’t get away with it.’
    Pretending to study the irises, Claudia watched the scowling reflection for several seconds. Presumably another sister—nine, ten years younger than Tulola?—but, in true Pictor style, no one had bothered to introduce them and any reluctance on this madam’s part wasn’t down to shyness.
    ‘You just watch me,’