"How about Laeta? Have you noticed an increase in the volume of messages from him? More urgent signals, perhaps?"

"No more than usual. He can't use signals."

"Why? No entitlement?"

"He writes too much. The beacon flares can only send one letter at a time; it's too slow for long documents." Too inaccurate as well; you need nighttime, with exactly the right visibility, and even then every time a message is transmitted between watchtowers there is a risk that the signalers may misread the lights and pass along gobbledegook. "Laeta sends scrolls, always via the dispatch-riders."

"No sign of him having new responsibilities, then?"

"No."

"I don't suppose he's bothering to inquire after me?"

"No, Falco."

There was something I wanted to check up on. I gazed at them in a frank and friendly manner. "I'm asking because if Anacrites is laid up or dead, there may be changes on the Palatine... Listen, you know how I came out to Baetica with a letter for the proconsul saying I was a man on a secret mission?" They were bound to know; there was no harm in sharing the confidence. "The old man told me you had already been asked to note the presence of another person nobody talks about?" They glanced at each other. "I'm getting worried," I told them, lying well. "I think an agent might have gone missing. With Anacrites lying prone we can't find out who he had in the field."

More obvious looks were now being exchanged. I waited. "Letters of introduction from the Chief Spy's office carry the top security mark, Falco."

"I know. I use it myself."

"We are not allowed to read them."

"But I bet you do!"

Like lambkins they agreed: "Just before you came Anacrites sent one of his coded notes. It was his normal nutter's charter: the agent would not be making contact officially—yet we were to afford full facilities."

"I bet you thought that was about me."

"Oh no."

"Why not?"

"The agent was a woman, Falco."

"Well you'll enjoy facilitating her!" I had grinned, but I was groaning inside.

Anacrites ought to have been planning to send out Valentinus. He was definitely working on the case and Momus, my crony at the Palace, had told me Valentinus had been the best agent Anacrites used. Why send a female? Well Valentinus was a freelance, his own master. Perhaps he had refused to work abroad. That surprised me though. All I knew of him—not much, admittedly—had suggested he was a calm, efficient type who would not balk at anything. Most people welcome the offer of a free long-distance trip.

Surely even Anacrites hadn't fallen for the old belief that respectable businessmen like the oil producers of Baetica were likely to be seduceable? The ones I had met might possibly be so—but they were too long in the tooth to be blackmailed about it afterwards.

Maybe I had been living with Helena Justina for too long. I had grown soft. My natural cynicism had been squeezed out. I

had forgotten that there will always be men who can be lured into pillow confessions by a determined dancing girl.

Just as I left I asked another question: "What do you think about the new quaestor? What are your views on Quadratus?"

"A bastard," my allies assured me.

"Oh go on. A quaestor is always a bastard; that's how they're defined. Surely he's no worse than the rest of them? He's young and jumped-up—but you've seen it all before. A few months with you showing him how the world works and he'll be all right, surely?"

"A double bastard," the lads reiterated solemnly.

One thing I always reckon in the marbled halls of bureaucracy is that the best assessments of personalities come from the clerks they kick.

I went back and sat down. I laced my fingers and leaned my chin on them. First the proconsul had taken the initiative to show he entertained doubts about Quadratus, and now these characters openly despised him without giving him a trial. "Tell me!" I said. So being obliging friends of mine, they did.

Quinctius Quadratus was not entirely clean. His personal record had preceded him to Baetica, and although it was confidential (because it was), it had been pored over by the secretariat: there was a bad story, one that Quadratus would find hard to shake off in his future career. On his route to the Senate in his late teens he had served as a military tribune. Posted to Dalmatia he had been involved in a messy incident where some soldiers attempting to reinstate a bridge on a flood-swollen river had lost their lives. They could have waited until the torrent abated, but Quadratus ordered them to tackle the job despite the obvious risk. An official inquiry had deemed the affair a tragic accident— but it was the kind of accident whose details his old commanding officer had bothered to pass on personally to the proconsul who was just inheriting Quadratus in a new civil post.

So there really was a black mark against his name.

* * *

Shortly afterwards, I had finally reached the corridor when I noticed some early arrivals queuing for an interview with the proconsul. A scribe who must be senior to the other men—because he had sauntered in even later and with an even worse air of being weighed down by a wine headache—had been waylaid by two figures I recognized. One was the elderly oil magnate, Licinius Rufius, the other his grandson Rufius Constans. The youth was looking sullen; when he spotted me he seemed almost afraid.

I overheard the senior clerk say the proconsul would not be available that day. He gave them some good reason; it was not just a brush-off. The old man looked irritated, but was accepting it reluctantly.

I nodded a courteous greeting to Licinius, but with a long hard ride ahead of me I had no time to stop. I took the road to Hispalis with problems cluttering my mind.

Most puzzling was the female agent Anacrites had intended to send to Baetica. Was she the "dangerous woman" he had been muttering about? Then where was she? Had he ever actually given her orders? When Anacrites was attacked, had she stayed in Rome without further instructions? Or was she here? Here perhaps even on her own initiative? (Impossible; Anacrites had never employed anyone with that much gumption.)

The female agent had to be identified. Otherwise she might be the dancer I was pursuing. I might have drawn all the wrong conclusions about Selia. She could have been at the dinner as backup for Anacrites and Valentinus; she could be innocent of the attacks; she could have dropped her arrow in the street during a meeting with them; the wounds on the two men could have had some other cause. If so, what was she up to now in Corduba? Had she been dressed as a shepherdess at the Parilia parade in order to follow up the cartel? Had she then disguised herself as an old woman to try and interview Licinius Rufius? Were she and I all along working for the same ends?—Well then, who was the real attacker of Valentinus and Anacrites?

The other possibility was that Selia was as dangerous as I had always thought—and that some other woman was in Baetica on the Chief Spy's behalf. One I had not encountered yet. Very likely the dancer Dotty had hired for the party. Some lousy fleabag Anacrites used, who was dogging my steps and liable to get in my way. That was the most likely. And it made me livid. Because maybe somebody at the Palace knew we were both out here—in which case why in Hades was it necessary? Why, when Helena Justina needed me, was I wasting my own time and duplicating effort?

I dismissed the idea. The Palace might well be capable of keeping agents in the dark, but under Vespasian double payment was never sanctioned where a single fee would do. So that meant there were two different offices actively involved. Laeta had sent me out, unaware that Anacrites had someone else in the field. Our objectives might be similar— or absolutely different. As I homed in on Selia, somebody else with conflicting orders could be doing the same. And in the long run, as I had suspected right from the night of the dinner on the Palatine, I myself would probably end up suffering: the hapless victim of a palace feud.