Everything shifted.
I took a step forward, pointing my right forefinger. “Move them back!” My tone made her believe I would carry out my threat to her eyes. It almost made me believe it too. That’s all you need.
Now she saw that I too had an unforgiving past. No one crossed her; nobody crossed me.
After a beat of disbelief, she made a slight, angry movement to her men; the heavies slowly walked across to the Medusa, leaving us.
A chill sweat trickled down my neck and under my tunic, but I made sure no anxiety showed. I was not so foolish as to think I had outfaced this woman. “That’s good. Now answer my questions, Menendra. Better to speak to me than officials. It’s your choice, but you are not stupid.”
Her chin came up though she did not object.
“Tell me how things were in those days, back when Rufia vanished. Thales owned the Hesperides, Rufia worked there. What about you? Were you providing your ‘supplies’ in those days?”
“Not me.”
“Too young? You hadn’t started?”
“I built up my little business afterward,” she acknowledged.
I looked her up and down. From the way she dressed, her business could not be so little; she was comfortably decked out. “Everything was more casual back then?” That was what the woman at the snacks stall had told me.
“I suppose so.”
“Where do you come from, Menendra? Where were you born?”
“Lycia.” In the northeastern Mediterranean. Pirate country. Not much else there.
“Slave or free?”
“I am no slave!”
“Never have been?”
“Wash your mouth out.” I saw her scanning me, wondering. Plenty of people assumed I myself must have slave origins. It was a possibility. I would have to live the rest of my life not knowing. In moments of depression, I felt that any slave had better luck than me; at least they understood their place in the world. Still, I was a happy bride now. Happy and fortunate. Happy, fortunate and free.
“All right. So you came to Rome of your own accord, for the pickings—was that when you met Rufia?” She begrudged me a curt nod. “You were friends?”
“She was decent to me. Took me under her wing. Taught me how to survive here.”
“Oh, all girls together then? I’m trying to imagine how it was.”
“You’re wrong.” Menendra cackled as she anticipated my discomfiture when she explained. “Way wrong. Rufia was hardly a girl. She must have been easily fifty. Could have been older. She had worked at the Hesperides for decades. She was older than Old Thales himself, and she looked every day of it. She was like a grandmother to me. So you haven’t been seeing the picture at all, have you, dearie?”
I pulled a face, openly admitting that I had misjudged everything. Believe me, I was cursing.