” She glared at Tara when she said that. It was that friendly kind of arguing they were doing so I wasn’t too worried.“Tying you like this was m... idea,” broke in Tara. “Liz told me about how when she was here this week, you were getting up and wandering around the house in the middle of the night. She’d like, go to sleep holding you and wake up and you were missing. So I figured if we accidentally both went to sleep at the same time...” At this point they both glared at each other, “ ... then. The woman sat beside me, quiet and obviously deep in her own thoughts and troubles."How did he know I wasn't one of them?" she asked after bit. She seemed to relax. "I spread myself for him." I don't know," I told her, "but the lieutenant's been with a lot of prostitutes. He would know I think." It was embarrassing. Letting men poke me. Lor'." Your first time?" I asked.She nodded. "They raped me, of course, four or five of them, before they sent me out with that bunch. But lying there on that. She paused. "He's fluent in Coptic. First language. He barely speaks a word of Arabic; his Japanese is better." She waited for my next question.The native speakers of Coptic were a very small tribe of Egyptian desert dwellers. Indeed, the only reason anyone else cared if the language survived was due to its biblical connections.A few tribes spoke it, a few priests.And Ishtaaru's family. Coptic was her first language."Do you know him?" I asked finally.She turned back to her tea preparations.. It did not take long to find out, as she shut the door of the living room and turned to face him.Dangling from the little finger of her left hand which she was waving at him, was a pair of tiny knickers.“What the fuck is this?” she said with distain.“That is a pair of knickers,” replied David, now annoyed.“Don’t be clever with me. They were in your bed.” She seemed almost to gloat at that.“And what pray, were you doing rooting round in my bedclothes? It’s not the week for changing the bed..