“Now, who’s the fool!” Felix laughs at her. “You clearly can’t afford them both, don’t waste my fucking time. Which do you want?” He pulls Beronice forward by the elbow. “This one’s younger. She’ll last me longer. But she’s also lazier.” Beronice fingers a cheap cameo at her neck, a present Amara remembers her getting from her lover Gallus. The look of hurt bewilderment on her face makes Amara want to cry. “Or you can have my hardest working whore.” Felix jabs a thumb toward Victoria. He addresses the drinkers who are now all crowded around, listening, enjoying the show. “If anyone thinks they’ve had better cunt after fucking that one, they can have their money back.” A couple of men laugh, one shouting out what the women can expect to get from him later.

Amara looks at Victoria. In her memory, her friend is always laughing, irrepressible, unconquered, like her name. Now Victoria looks tired, and heartsick, and somehow smaller. Amara used to envy the way Victoria wore her clothes, but in this unforgiving light, all she can see is how cheap they are. Victoria is looking back at her, almost out of hope, and Amara knows then that she would give up the wooden box, and all it means to her, a thousand times over to set her friend free.

“Victoria,” she says, her voice breaking. She cannot look at Beronice.

“Nine thousand,” Felix replies.

“You said fifteen for both! That’s more than half!”

“This one’s worth more to me.”

“I will give you three and a half.”

“Eight.”

“Four.”

“Six,” Felix says, and the sudden drop, where she was expecting seven, takes her by surprise. He smiles at her, and she understands. Six is the price Pliny offered him, when the admiral bought her for Rufus on the Saturnalia. It is also a thousand sesterces above the upper limit she set herself, one that will see her sink deep into debt.

“Five,” Amara says. “That’s already far more than you’d get for her on the open market.”

“No lower than six thousand,” Felix replies, and she knows that he won’t back down. Not now he has declared it to the crowd.

“In that case I want Britannica too. As part of the deal.”

“Britannica?” Felix frowns, surprised and suspicious. “Why do you want the Briton?”

“Because she’s my friend, and I don’t want her to die here. We both know she was a bad investment for you; she makes nothing but a loss.”

“What if I say no?”

“Then I walk away.”

Felix stares at her, assessing whether she means it. She keeps her face still, giving the lie to her wildly beating heart. “Done,” he says at last. “Good luck putting the British bitch to any use. Though I’m sure your patron will be delighted to have yet another greedy whore to feed.”