Antinous looked slightly amused by the idea of Syrian dancers, having encountered many of their type while staying with his friends in Baiae, but it was the presence of the praefectus’s informer that interested him the most. No wonder poor Demos’s business was suffering! – certainly the man was there to look into the Cerberus Affair, but it was always remarkable how many people suddenly developed guilty consciences when officialdom was around! In fact, Thyssos was even looking a little uneasy himself, Antinous noted curiously, before he glanced down and saw there was a reason for that.

“Kedisi! Stop sniffing the investigator’s ankles!” he exclaimed, flushing with mortification at his pet’s behaviour and hastening to assure the investigator, “Really, there’s no need to be alarmed – he’s just curious, no danger to anything!”

“But what about that goat and the young ox?” Spurius grinned slyly at his friend, reaching under the table to scratch one of the big cat’s white-tipped ears.

“Oh… well who can blame him for those? He was hungry I expect, and it was only a tough old goat anyway,” Antinous regarded his pet indulgently, and Kedisi merely blinked back with an insolent flick of his tail.

“Maybe just one more chicken for him, Demos? And have you got any fresh honey-cakes today? The Cerberus affair appears to be good news for the bakeries if no one else. I couldn’t get honey cakes at any of them on my way up here – they’d all completely sold out. If the Hound of Hades ever shows up again and eats all the sops people throw at it, it’ll be far too fat to waddle back to the Otherworld. Unless it’s got three stomachs as well as three heads, I suppose,” he smiled round at the other three men with a perfectly serious face.