Amara hurries to draw the curtain behind them both. “But of course,” she says in a husky voice that nobody in Aphidnai would recognize. She lets the cloak drop to the floor, waits to see the impact her body has on him. Then she beckons the strange man over to the bed, unsure if her feeling of light-headedness is due to dread or relief from boredom.

10

“Sextus, you say their passion for you sets the pretty girls on fire—you who have the face of a man swimming underwater.”

—Martial, Epigrams 2.87

The noise grows, like the buzz from a hive, the deeper they push into the crowd. It isn’t an official market day at the Forum but, as always, various chancers have arrived here early with their wares bundled up in blankets to spread on the pavement. Gallus and Amara weave between the makeshift stalls, heading for the towering bulk of Apollo’s Temple. At the steps to the god’s sanctuary, a salesman is beating on a copper pot, bellowing out its price. Several more metal pots and jars, in varying sizes, are stacked in piles by his feet.

It takes Amara a while to recognize the woman she is here to meet. Marcella looks more formidable in her clothes. Her red hair is no longer smudging her skin. Instead, the curls are piled up neatly on her head. She looks at Amara with sharper eyes than she did at the baths. Amara knows she cuts a much shabbier figure in the full glare of the marketplace. She is afraid she looks like what she is: a prostitute working for a loan shark.

“Is this the steward?” Marcella nods at Gallus. He looks even more disreputable than usual, having tipped an absurd amount of oil into his hair. It’s a style he’s newly copied from Felix, but where the boss achieves an air of slicked-back menace, Gallus looks more like he got soaked in the street by a slave slopping out an upstairs room.

“Yeah.” Gallus sidesteps to avoid an ironmonger shoving past with his tray. Amara worries he might start a row, but he catches her eyes and thinks better of it. Felix made it clear that Amara was to be in charge of the business side of this deal, a role reversal neither Amara nor Gallus quite know how to navigate.

“We brought some surety.” Another woman, standing just behind Marcella, steps forward. She must be Fulvia, the younger sister. Blonde as her name, she is thin and fragile-looking. When the copper seller starts clanging his pot again, she flinches.