Page 14

‘Of course, it’s . . .’ Loren stopped. In Pompeii, he was a lowly temple attendant.

In the minds of most, literacy wasn’t a given for him.

He cleared his throat. ‘It’s the festival I told you about, the reason the city is busier than usual, why guards are everywhere.

Gladiator games, wine, dancing. Isis has the honour of performing opening rites tomorrow morning. ’

He said it so instinctively, he forgot he wouldn’t be involved until his stomach twisted in reminder.

‘Let the Priest know he can’t use my other arm as the sacrifice.’ Felix sniffed. He sounded so indignant, Loren had to laugh. For a moment, the knot eased.

They made it another block, and a rustling was the only warning Loren had before a weight dropped onto his back from a ledge above.

Not so surprising. Aurelia’s favourite pastime was ambushing him.

But it’d been one thing when she was eight and scrawny, and another in the middle of her growth spurt.

‘I knew you’d come today,’ she said, arms locked around his neck. Loren wrestled with her, trying to slip free, and she only relented when he pretended to choke. A satisfied grin split her face. ‘Mamma said you wouldn’t, but I know everything.’

‘It’s been one day. You can’t have missed me that badly.’

‘Miss you? Never.’ Aurelia hopped up, wiping dusty palms on her dress. She’d tied the long hem for ease of being a nuisance. ‘I only wanted to show you what I’m working on. Besides, it proves I’m right and Mamma is wrong. Who’s this?’

Sometimes she changed directions so fast it gave Loren a headache.

Felix had plastered himself to the wall, watching their exchange with some degree of horror, like he didn’t know what to make of children. When Loren introduced them, Aurelia wrinkled her nose at Felix’s grubby clothes.

‘Does he bathe?’

‘Never,’ Felix said. ‘Take a whiff.’

She faked a gagging fit .

Loren rolled his eyes. ‘Is your mother home?’

The diversion worked. Aurelia beckoned them to follow and burst into her mother’s tailor shop with a victory cry.

Livia poked her head from the side room. ‘Aurelia, inside voice. Who – oh, Loren!’

In two strides, she crossed the room to pull him into a massive hug. Loren melted into it. Her hair, dark and curly as Aurelia’s, smelled of honey and clean water and everything else right in the world.

Which, these days, wasn’t much.

When Livia withdrew, she kissed each of his cheeks, but Loren couldn’t meet her eyes. ‘It’s been far too long, love. I worried you were avoiding me.’

‘You scold like Nonna.’

‘Good. If I can be half as formidable as she is, I’ll have lived a good life.’ She joked, but a sad crinkle formed between her brows. Quieter, just for him, she repeated, ‘Far too long.’

Questions lurked in her tone. Loren didn’t know where to begin.

Blessedly, Aurelia saved him. She hopped on the counter, feet swinging, and pointed. ‘Loren brought a friend. A smelly friend. He’s called Felix.’

Livia released Loren when she followed Aurelia’s finger to Felix, hovering half out the door.

‘Oh, dear,’ she fretted. ‘Dreadful-looking thing, what happened to you?’

Felix grimaced. ‘The Priest of Isis.’

‘Horrible old man.’ Livia tutted and moved to hug Felix, too, but he shifted back, and she stopped herself. Switching tactics, she clasped her hands and beamed, though Felix didn’t relax his defences. ‘Well, worry not. We’ll clean you up.’

‘I don’t have the savings to cover more than half right now,’ Loren said. ‘But I could run errands until— ’

‘Have I ever asked for pay before?’ Livia ushered a stiff-limbed Felix behind the counter, patting Loren’s cheek as she passed. ‘Next time, don’t insult me by offering.’

They disappeared behind the threadbare curtain blocking off the tailoring room, and Loren rubbed the cord around his neck. Livia was the last person who would keep score, but Loren added this to his tally of wrongs to right.

‘You like him,’ Aurelia said, mouth full of dates scrounged from Loren’s basket. ‘I saw you laughing together.’

‘Stop spying,’ he said, ‘and chew with your mouth shut.’

She slipped off the counter. ‘Come see my project.’

Aurelia took him upstairs to the bedroom she shared with Livia.

Common for Pompeii’s working class, their living space was small, most of the unit belonging to the shop.

A single bed, slightly wider than Loren’s own, stood neatly made and covered in pillows.

Old dolls sat beneath a weaving loom, and above the window hung Aurelia’s father’s military gladius, sheath carefully dusted.

Livia made any place feel like home. It lay in the little touches, hand-stitched tunics dressing the dolls, embroidered poppies on bed linens.

This had been Loren’s room once, too, his first year in Pompeii, until he noticed the strain with all three of them packed in.

But by then he had his place with Isis, where he made enough to rent the room at the brothel.

He made his excuses to Livia, and he left.

She had never forgiven him for growing up, but Loren likewise couldn’t forgive himself for taking advantage of her when she knew nothing about where he came from.

Focus. He shook off the nostalgia.

‘I got you something,’ Loren said, fishing out the silk, and Aurelia’s eyes lit up. She grabbed, but he held the scrap above her reach. ‘If you help me first.’

She glared. ‘I hate being bribed. ’

‘And yet.’ He sidestepped her stomping foot. ‘You spend a lot of time in the Forum. Playing, snooping, whatever you call it. What can you tell me about the stolen helmet?’

‘Mercury’s helmet?’ Aurelia bit the skin around her thumb. ‘It can’t be touched. I dared Celsi to try once—’

‘ Aurelia. ’

‘But he told me his pappa would never stop nagging if he came home with burnt hands. Then I said that’s only a rumour, and he said he knows because he saw someone try once, and now the man has to wear gloves.

Sounds awful, hiding your hands all the time.

Imagine trying to weave.’ She scrunched her face and flounced to undo the covering on her loom.

‘Did Celsi say who?’ When she only blinked, Loren huffed. ‘The man with the gloves.’

‘Oh. Some smuggler who lives in town.’ Her face twisted impishly. ‘But if you want the real story, Celsi told me he’s a pirate on the run from the emperor.’

‘Celsi says whatever gets him attention.’ Loren’s mouth pinched.

Aurelia’s story offered little of substance.

A divine helmet was utterly priceless; it would attract anyone with sticky fingers, pirate or not – Felix was proof.

But that told Loren nothing about Felix’s connection to the helmet.

Defeated, he let the silk flutter into her hand, and she grinned.

‘Try Nonna next,’ she suggested. ‘She must be as old as Mercury himself by now. She might know more. Now, look .’

Without further ado, she yanked the cover off her loom, and Loren’s blood ran cold.

The wooden frame held Aurelia’s latest project, yarn interwoven in an abstract tapestry. She pieced her weavings together with threads from Livia’s scraps, collecting colours like a crow collected trinkets, but she had a way of making something greater than its parts .

Her tapestries told stories. Told visions.

Now the loom depicted the swallow of a wave, but not of the sea. Black surged in a noxious curl, cut through with red, strands of twisting grey . . .

‘There’s an ending hidden here somewhere,’ Aurelia mused. ‘But I can’t quite find it.’

Copper and silver, woven throughout.

Loren’s stomach soured. He’d seen plenty of those colours lately. So, it seemed, had Aurelia. This was precisely what he feared, why he never shared specifics about his own dreams with her. A single vision was a single possibility. Two was confirmation.

Copper and silver. A thief and his stolen treasure at the end of the world.

Knees shaking, Loren sank onto the edge of the bed. ‘It’s . . .’

‘Missing an element, I know.’ Aurelia raised the navy silk. ‘This, maybe? How would you finish it?’

‘I’m not a weaver.’ He fought to keep his voice steady as he tore his gaze from the loom. ‘Perhaps you should shelve it awhile. Work on something new.’

‘I’m afraid I won’t have time.’

‘You’re young, Aurelia. You have all the time in the world.’

‘Mamma says I have an old soul.’ She rolled her eyes. ‘She says the same about you.’

Loren frowned. ‘You need friends your own age.’

‘I have Celsi.’

‘You hate Celsi.’

‘Not true. It’s Celsi who hates everyone. Except me, of course. But especially you.’ Aurelia plopped at his feet. ‘Braid my hair.’

Her rambling shifted to idle street gossip, critiques about Nonna using too much salt in her flatbread, fights she’d picked with other children lately, but Loren didn’t miss the way she left the weaving uncovered, a blight in the room he once called home.

Nor could he shake Ghost-Felix’s silent words, looping his mind and winding tighter with every pass, a thread tensing to snap . . .

You did this to yourself.