Page 76 of Vesuvius

‘Loren, sweet sparrow.’ Nonna let Loren kiss her smiling cheeks, her face soft and creased as fresh dough. ‘Sit, sit. You and the shifty one. Help me knead.’

She moved a basket off a second stool, and Loren procured a third from the shop. Felix looked like he would rather stay standing, ready to flee at the slightest whiff of burnt bread, but Nonna shot him a stern glare and he acquiesced, arms tight around his middle.

Nonna put Loren to work stretching a lump of dough, repetitive, mindless work that numbed his lingering headache. Flour coated his hands and dusted his face. In another life, he could be a baker. Forget politics and priesthood, vineyards and visions, and become Nonna’s apprentice. He’d live out of her storage closet, and she’d teach him to bake, and he wouldn’t have to cut his hair or move home or marry.

‘Don’t lie to Nonna, now,’ she started after a measure of comfortable quiet where her eyes didn’t leave Felix once, ‘because I see it in both your faces. You got yourselves in trouble.’

Loren watched her wrinkled hands expertly fold her loaf. He bit his lip and copied her tucks, but his came out lumpy. ‘We may have caused the trouble. I need you to help us out of it.’

‘Use your wrists more. Like that. Good.’ Nonna hummed. ‘I suspected so, the moment I first saw you two together. You attract trouble like flies to honey, sparrow.’

Puffing his cheeks, Loren chanced a glance at Felix, who still sat coiled tight.Now or never. Before he could change his mind, he plunged. ‘Nonna, what would it take to steal Mercury’s helmet? And what might one use it for, once they had it?’

A beat of silence. Then a flour-powdered pinch bit his cheek. Dropping the dough, Loren clapped his hand to his stinging face.

‘Tell me you didn’t, boy. Tell me you had nothing to do with it.’ Nonna went in for a second pinch and, in his haste to avoid it, Loren toppled off his stool. Cobblestones rushed to meet him.

Arms caught under his. Loren stared, dumbstruck. He hadn’t seen Felix move, but he’d flown to stop the fall faster than the beat of a hummingbird’s wings. A slow blush crept down Loren’s chest.

‘It wasn’t Loren,’ Felix said, voice carved cold.

‘Yet the company he keeps reflects on him. Humans are not meant to fiddle with divine power.’ Nonna sat back, seething. ‘Unless . . .’

Felix’s jaw clenched.

Loren carefully extracted himself from Felix’s grasp before he did something foolish, like melt into it for ever, and fumbled to right his stool. This was the breaking point. Nonna’s trailed-off accusation had, once again, pushed Felix too far, and now the conversation must end, still no answers given. Still no nearer to their aim.

Then Felix surprised him. With his foot, he dragged the other stool closer to Loren’s and sat. Sat so their arms brushed, tiny, temporary contact. Loren’s breath caught, pulse tapping fast.

Permission.

Loren turned to Nonna, swallowing thickly. ‘Unlesshe had already been touched by the divine. A priest’s blessing, maybe.’

‘Or a curse. The life of a mortal who has caught the eye of a god is no easy path. They cease to be human and turn into a tool. An object to be manipulated.’

‘Strangely enough,’ Felix said, ‘I still feel plenty human.’

‘Then Mercury is not through with you yet,’ Nonna warned. ‘The helmet is called dangerous for a reason. For three hundred years, it has not moved, not since Rome thought it a fair exchange for stamping out my Etruscan ancestors in their own city. What energy do you think that bears? How many souls of the restless dead it holds? I have no answer for why you could take it, but gods, I fear the fallout.’

‘Unless,’ Loren repeated, ‘I could find the answer. What if I stopped the consequences before they started? Where would I look?’

‘Your brand of curiosity could spark a war. I pray you have thought this through. I pray he is worth the risk.’ She lowered her hand, but Loren knew better than to trust. Old Etruscan grandmothers struck faster than a snake. ‘What do you want to know?’

‘Everything,’ Loren said breathlessly. ‘Tell me – us – everything.’

‘Even I do not know all ends,’ Nonna said. ‘But I will tell you where to search.’

Getting through the gate proved the easiest feat of the day. The two flustered, baby-faced guards were already overwhelmed by a merchant disgruntled over their search through his cabbage cart. All Loren had to do was explain he and Felix were disciples of Isis on the way to burn the linens of a plague victim before the guards exchanged fearful glances and ushered them through. A dirty trick to be sure, but an effective one.

Leaving Pompeii always felt like kissing it goodbye. As if once Loren strayed too far from its gates, they would never open for him again. Being on the road meant he had no walls to hide behind. Still, he pushed on, with a wanted thief at his heels, an obscenely powerful artefact tucked in a laundry bag, and desperation clawing his spine with every step.

He hoped there would still be a Pompeii to return to come morning.

‘How much further?’ Felix asked. He lagged several paces behind, kicking small stones at Loren’s calves.

Another pebble struck. Loren rolled his eyes but didn’t rise to the bait. ‘Nonna said it’s perhaps a half-hour walk from the gate. Have we walked a half hour?’

Felix’s sulk was audible. ‘No.’

---