Free Graveyard of the Hesperides by Lindsey Davis Page B

now; the interfering bitch must have scarpered.”
    Tiberius lifted an eyebrow, amused. I flashed back a smile. We stopped holding hands but otherwise stayed motionless.
    Into the garden came a couple of no-hope, high-trussed bust-band, barefoot sluts, sneakily creeping downstairs.
    â€œHello, girls!” I greeted them cheerily. They wondered whether to run for it. “Come on down, my dearies, don’t be shy.”
    They came down. From the start, these Hesperides honeypots were not in the least shy.

 
    XIII
    â€œI was wondering when you would deign to show your faces. Do come and join us. Now that you are ready to socialize, I have a few questions.”
    â€œOh, shitty shit!” observed the first one, immediately identifiable as a whore who cost less on a tavern bill than donkey fodder.
    â€œYou said the nosy cow had gone!” groused her disheveled friend. She was refined (she thought); she had a snake bracelet with red glass eyes. She wore it on her ankle.
    â€œDon’t be like that,” answered Faustus in a mildly reproachful tone. “Flavia Albia only wants to know what you know about Rufia. Where is the harm—unless you were the killers?”
    This produced indignant denials. Faustus made a soothing gesture, palms spread. I just gazed at the couple thoughtfully. The first one noticed my coolness. She believed she could bamboozle men, but grasped that I would be more difficult.
    We established their names, Artemisia and Orchivia, and that they were not from Italy. They said their homeland was Dardania.
    â€œWhat shitty place is that?” I asked, deciding on a Dardanian adjective in the hope we could communicate. She looked blank.
    â€œPart of Moesia,” Faustus told me. Moesia is one of the eastern provinces, bordering on barbarian Dacia, where our Emperor was currently at war with a ferocious king who cut off the heads of Roman officials and merrily slaughtered our armies. This king, Decebalus, had made several attempts to expand his territory into Moesia. A troubled mix of Thracians, Dacians and Illyrians, which made a curious slurry at the best of times, Moesia clung on as a Roman province by bloodied fingertips. We sent tough legions and not very renowned governors, men who could be spared if they should happen to be decapitated.
    Apparently Moesia’s chief export was bar girls. Artemisia was short, wide-faced, grubby and stroppy. She wore a slouched tunic that showed off her big bust and sturdy legs, and she was topped by a high-piled, tangled mop of black hair. No bathhouse coiffeuse had ever attempted to tame it. Orchivia was squinty, with even stragglier, browner hair. She had at some point asked a stylist to tackle it, but the results were hopeless.
    The girls told me in their high-minded way that Rome was shitty, Roman men were shitty shits and Roman women shittier. I decided to wait before asking what they thought of Rufia.
    They were not slaves. They had been lured here by professional traffickers of sex-trade workers, who promised them a better life than anything available to young women of poor background (that is, all of them) in Moesia. So, compared with slaves, they came of their own free will. Using a rough and ready business plan, before that they had learned their craft by servicing the legionaries who defended their home province from its annexation by whooping head-loppers. These noble men with money to lavish in the shanty towns that clustered outside their forts had spoken of Rome—a city, I knew, many soldiers in the legions had never actually seen in their lives. Nevertheless, they eulogized its monuments, palaces, theaters—and its golden opportunities. Artemisia and Orchivia had listened to the squaddies then joined a mule train to Italy.
    Now they worked here, taking customers upstairs. They did not mind telling us. They said someone had to do it, though the job was disgusting, the old landlord wanted horrible favors and the new