Page 44 of Vesuvius

Clovia said in a low murmur, ‘She’s been so eager to meet him. Talks about little else. I worry about her nerves these days, anxious all the time, checking over her shoulder. I wonder . . . Forget it.’

‘Go on. I know everything that happens around here.’

‘Is that so, Ax?’ Clovia’s voice turned coy.

A polished silver vase in an alcove gave Felix a distorted glimpse of the two, nestled on a bench in a lovers’ nook. Clovia wore a servant’s garb half pulled from her shoulders, her legs draped over the lap of a thin man in oversized armour.

‘Rumour has it the boy isn’t who he claims.’ Ax’s hand crept up her thigh. ‘That he has a secret, and Mistress found out.’

Ice dropped into Felix’s stomach. Loren was a labyrinth of secrets, made more complicated by how readily he revealed everything else to the world. Felix didn’t know what all those secrets entailed, but if any led back to the helmet . . .

Who was their mistress, and what did she know?

Wine-hazy eyes caught his in the vase’s reflection.

Shit.

Felix fled. Clovia’s cry echoed in the hall as Ax gave chase, boots hitting the tile. Felix was faster. He flew through halls, ducking left and right in the maze until the steps faded. His legs burned, wounds searing, and he collapsed against a wall to clutch a stitch in his side. Blood trickled from the reopened gash on his calf.

Mistake. Ax strolled around the corner ahead, adjusting his belt. ‘Enjoy the show?’

‘Seen better,’ Felix panted.

Ax sneered, nostrils flaring. In a surprisingly swift motion, considering the alcohol curling off his breath, he grabbed Felix’s neck and slammed their foreheads together. Felix stumbled, dizzy, head throbbing.

‘I should run you through for interrupting.’ On his chest, Ax straightened a crest etched with laurels and a loopy letter.F, Felix recognised, if only because it was part of his own name. ‘But Mistress is sensitive to killing in the house. Let’s ask her permission before I gut you.’

For the second time in as many days, Felix found himself at the mercy of an angry guard. Ax kept a blade at the small of his back, hand steady despite the wine, on their trek to the garden. A lovely moonlit stroll, Felix reckoned, except for the knife prodding his midsection.

‘Better show her respect,’ Ax hissed as they crossed the green. ‘Piss her off, and she might make an exception to the no-killing rule.’

A triclinium overlooked the lawn. Warm light washed over a spread of picked-through food. Two figures reclined on the couches. A woman, half-drowned in a purple confection of a dress, laughed at something her companion said and popped a grape in her mouth.

‘Mistress,’ Ax announced. Both occupants turned.

Sitting there, wining and dining and . . .wooingthis woman was Loren.

Rage sparked. Felix’s vision went red. ‘Youbastard.’

The last thing Felix saw before Ax forced his face into the dirt was the woman’s arched brows shooting up.

Down in the grass, waiting for Ax to make good on his promise, it came as a comfort to be proven right. Right that Loren was some idiot rich boy play-acting poverty. Right that Felix was a bizarre charity case, a lesson on interacting with street scum. Every budding politician had to practise manipulating the lower classes at some point, after all.

The blow from Ax’s knife never came.

Instead, the pressure on Felix’s neck released. Grass fell from his hair as he straightened slowly. Ax had retreated, and now Loren hovered over him, hands fluttering uselessly.

‘He’s mine,’ Loren was insisting. ‘A friend.’

‘Interesting choice of company,’ said the woman, tone drier than a Roman summer. She still lay draped across the couch, unbothered, as if strange boys tempted execution in her presence regularly. ‘Your troublemaking friend, I presume?’

‘He’s . . . protective.’

Am not. But Felix held his tongue.

‘Please, Julia,’ Loren said. ‘He didn’t mean harm. Or offence. He’s a ward of Isis. Killing him would displease her.’

Julia frowned. She had the dignified, sour face of an empress, and frowning only accentuated the crow’s feet around her eyes. Gods, Felix itched to steal from her.

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