Men caught up on news from each other, and from the bath girls.

"I DO NOT SEE HOW IT COULD HAVE HAPPENED," Nela was saying, bending over me as I lay sleepily on my stomach on the heavy striped piece of toweling, about the size of a blanket, her strong, dutiful hands rubbing the oils of the bath into my body.

"The daughter of Minus Tentius Hinrabius, if none other,'' said she, "should be safe."

I grunted, not too concerned.

Nela, like most of the others at the baths, could talk of little but the startling disappearance, and presumed abduction, of Claudia Tentius Hinrabius, the proud, spoiled daughter of the Administrator of the City. ---Assassin