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Chapter XIX

FELIX

W hen Felix asked for help with the helmet, he didn’t think it would involve batting off clouds of gnats and dodging stinging nettles as he chased Loren through fields of grass.

Loren always wore his heart outside his skin, but this took chasing his impulses to a new extreme.

Knuckles bloody from climbing from the spire pit, he’d sprinted through thickets and brush, gaze locked on Vesuvius, a boy possessed.

Felix was naturally speedy, but even he struggled to keep pace with Loren’s long legs.

Ridiculous. Reckless. If Felix weren’t so annoyed, he might find it attractive.

By the time they stumbled back onto the road leading to the mountain’s base, the scorching heat had peaked. It’d be a hell of a climb armed only with sandals, a fact Loren seemed oblivious to. The last dregs of Felix’s draining self-preservation roiled.

‘Changed my mind,’ he called. ‘I don’t care about the helmet after all.’

‘Pity.’ Loren was six strides ahead. ‘My mind is set.’

‘We can’t scale a mountain like this. Remember when you hit me with a bowl? And sliced my arm open? I’m in no condition—’

‘It’s calling me, Felix.’ Loren’s heels dug into dirt, and he spun to glare.

His cheeks were flushed, eyes bright with discovery.

‘We were led to the spire pit. We were meant to find that knife. The answer I’m – we’re – looking for is on the mountain.

Go back to Pompeii if you want. I never said you had to follow. ’

‘Well. I am.’ Felix shifted the laundry bag to his other shoulder. ‘Following.’

‘Oh.’ Loren blinked. ‘Good.’

‘But it’s a bad idea.’

‘You’ve said.’ Loren made to keep walking, but as he turned, he wavered. Swayed. His knees buckled, and only barely did Felix slow his fall. Slowed it, but didn’t prevent it. Loren’s palms braced flat against the warm earth.

Felix swore and gritted his teeth. ‘Not again.’

Loren had done this too many times for it to be explained away as exhaustion or heat.

Until now, Felix had always thought prophecy was horseshit, but he was starting to wonder if Loren defied those rules, too.

Gripping his shoulders, Felix heaved Loren upright.

His eyes were glassy, focus a hundred leagues away, like Aurelia’s had been in the alley two nights ago.

‘Snap out of it.’ Felix pressed his hand to Loren’s burning forehead. ‘Come back.’

With a choked gasp, Loren shuddered and flailed, shoving until Felix sprawled on his arse.

He spat out, ‘Riders.’

All at once, Felix understood. His hearing sharpened, picking up the steady rhythm of hooves against packed dirt, a mile or less away. Distant, but nearing quickly. His nerves spiked. Could be innocent passers-by.

Could be worse.

‘They’re close.’ He dragged Loren up and jumped for the shoulder of the road, where they landed in a cluster of bushes.

For a moment, rustling branches and thorns consumed Felix’s senses, limbs so tangled he wasn’t sure where his ended and Loren’s began.

The proximity of skin and sound saturated him, too much at once.

‘Felix, how did you hear—’

‘One horse. Maybe two. Half a minute at most.’

‘But how?’

‘Shut up. Don’t move.’

Loren stilled. The rustling silenced seconds before the horsemen rounded the corner. Felix held his breath. In the close, dappled shadow of the bush, he made out a trickle of blood running down Loren’s chin where a thorn had pricked his lip.

Move on. Keep riding.

‘Look! Prints,’ a man exclaimed.

Felix mouthed a curse.

A horse whinnied. Two sets of feet dropped to the ground to investigate. Twisting his neck past the point of comfort, Felix watched filthy sandal-strapped calves tromp around where he and Loren had argued on the road moments earlier.

Warm fingers intertwined with his. Felix nearly shot out of his skin, but Loren only squeezed his hand. Another easy gesture. Something Felix would never have thought to do himself.

‘Keep looking,’ a different speaker grunted. His voice rang familiar. Felix riffled through his memory but came up blank when Loren’s thumb brushed his. Felix’s brain may as well have grown legs, sprinted off.

‘They end here.’

‘No.’ The soft schnick of a blade drawn. ‘There.’

Many things happened in the space of a heartbeat.

A sword hacked through the bush. Felix’s head should have rolled, but he wasn’t in the underbrush anymore.

He was on his feet, being dragged into the trees bordering the road.

An angry shout echoed, and the firm plunk of an arrow hitting its mark followed.

Felix looked up, expecting to see a shaft protruding from Loren’s back, but no, he was still running, and Felix ran, too, and ahead, an arrow shivered in a tree trunk.

Crashing feet thundered behind. Then Felix’s thief instincts kicked in. He took the lead. He pulled Loren, hands clasped, and they hurtled through the forest as if hellhounds were snapping at their heels. Mercury’s helmet, swaddled in its bag, knocked against Felix’s back, rhythm like a heartbeat.

Trees thinned. The landscape changed from forest to a field of plants in uniform rows.

They burst into a vineyard, one of several in the countryside around Vesuvius, where black soil let grapes grow heavy.

Felix had sampled some the other week, until a worker chased him off.

It felt nice to reminisce about old times, when he was chased for nothing more than petty theft, and his chaser wasn’t armed with lethal weapons.

Banners embroidered with a familiar vine-cinched L hung listless in the dead air. Felix moved his thumb, tucked inside his fist, to rub the ring he still wore. A plan teased his mind.

Tactically speaking, a vineyard was a poor place to flee through. With straight rows, another arrow fired would find a clean shot. If their pursuers wanted the bag, Loren, empty-handed, was collateral damage. A victim of circumstance. Only one logical thing to do.

‘We need to separate,’ Felix panted.

Loren turned on him, eyes horrified. ‘Are you mad? I’m not leaving you.’

‘It’s our best chance. Cut diagonally across the field. You’re less bulky than they are, you’ll have an easier time at it. But with any luck they’ll follow me.’

‘With any luck?’ Loren’s breathless screech shot in pitch. ‘Felix, no!’

‘I have a plan,’ he said, then shoved Loren sideways through an opening in the trellis. Loren fell with an indignant cry, tripping over his feet, but Felix clenched his teeth and kept moving .

He had years of practice at that. Keep moving , his father used to say, and sooner or later they’ll tire of chasing you . Keep moving and survive another night.

Felix hoped that would hold true.

Not daring to look back, he plunged deeper into the field, sandals striking season-hardened soil.

Veering sharply, he took his chances with a promising gap.

From there, it was a matter of keeping a row or two of space between him and the guards, zigzagging across the empty vineyard.

In the hottest part of the day, the fieldworkers had abandoned half-full baskets of grapes, seeking shade.

Eyeing these, another plan struck. He emptied a basket into the laundry bag. If this failed, at least he’d have a snack on the way to his execution.

Felix had barely slipped through the next gap when a reedy cry stopped him.

‘You there, stop!’

Two men stood down the row, one trim and proper, the other hunched over a basket. Baring his teeth in what he hoped resembled a smile, Felix raised a hand in peace, then jogged to meet them.

‘Greetings! Are you the grape-keeper?’ A bullshit term. But he had long since learned that if you bullshitted confidently enough, anything sounded authentic.

‘Aye,’ the upright one said. He wore the fine linens of an esteemed director, someone good at ordering work without lifting a finger. He clasped his hands, heels together at a sharp angle. A badge glinted on his shoulder. ‘I am Master Adolphus, caretaker of these lands. I assume you are a thief?’

‘Depends on your definition,’ Felix said.

The hunched man paused harvesting fruit long enough to snort. He wore the wide-brimmed hat of a field slave, the skin of his arms seared bright red. Adolphus kicked his leg .

‘Silence, Stravo. This is no time for laughter.’ He turned to Felix. ‘You realise trespassing is a crime?’

Felix shot him his most disarming grin. Three more beats. That’s all he needed.

Adolphus didn’t waver. ‘And that such a crime is punishable by—’

Tragically, Felix never received his sentence. Behind him, a trellis crashed to the ground and a man in leather armour wielding a sword burst onto the scene.

‘Why, sir, I never,’ Adolphus squawked, stepping back into the chest of the second guard, emerging on the other side. ‘No weapons in the vineyard!’

‘Apologies, Master,’ the swordsman said. For once, he wore no identifying colours, and his signature hawk crest was absent, but beneath the iron helmet, Felix would recognise him anywhere: his old friend Darius. ‘We’re pursuing this thief. He’s wanted in the city.’

Poor flustered Adolphus fought to regain his composure, while at his feet, Stravo sniggered. Smoothing his tunic, Adolphus said, ‘Very good. It seems you came just in time. He is here to steal our prized assets.’

The second guard, the one with the bow, frowned. ‘Grapes? I’m afraid this is a bit—’

‘Do you think,’ Felix interjected, adopting a mask of cool indifference at odds with his racing heart, ‘my father will be pleased with the way I’ve been treated, Master Adolphus?’

He held out his hand. In the high afternoon sun, Loren’s signet ring winked.

The effect was immediate and fully consuming. Adolphus’s flushed face transformed from red hot to pasty pale. Stravo muttered a curse. Darius and his comrade stared, confused.