Loren blinked. ‘Assassins?’
‘Assassins?’ Aurelia asked with too much grim curiosity.
‘Go and pack,’ Livia ordered her. ‘This isn’t for your ears.’
‘Mamma!’
Livia cast an imploring look at Nonna, who acquiesced with a threat to pinch, and only then did Aurelia scamper inside.
Dropping to a whisper, Livia leaned close. ‘Didn’t you hear? Nonna brought the news before the quake. Priest Umbrius was murdered in his bed. Bruises all around his throat.’
‘May Charon carry his soul swiftly,’ Nonna said with no shortage of glee.
Loren went numb. He must have misheard. No wonder the city was on tenterhooks. Divine signs came in threes, and people could tolerate only so many crises. Thieves, quakes, now murder.
But another source of anxiety pulsed through Loren. With Umbrius dead, Julia’s sway over the council was weakened. Servius had moved in for the kill. Did Julia know? Was that why she was so desperate to finalise the contract?Why hadn’t she toldhim?
‘Livia, I can’t leave. I have—’
‘You have what?’ Livia snapped the saddlebag shut. ‘You have a little girl inside that shop who will be wrecked if she loses you. So will I. Family doesn’t abandon family.’
He stared at his feet, blistered from his hike up Vesuvius. Livia said family, but Loren heard only Julia’s gnawing term: clinging. Burdens clung. Burdens lied about their true weight, and he couldn’t ask Livia and Aurelia to carry him any longer.
Julia was his new family. That decision now dried in dark ink.
‘I’ll walk you as far as the gate,’ he said firmly.
He expected Livia to protest, but her lips only pursed, like she didn’t believe him. She probably wouldn’t relent until Loren was a speck in the distance.
‘Besides,’ he said, forcing a smile, ‘someone needs to stay with Nonna.’
‘Bah!’ Nonna sank into a chair by the door. ‘I have taken care of myself all these years. I look forward to a break from the pestering.’
Livia grimaced. ‘Stubborn, both of you. But if anyone could survive this damned city, it would be her.’
Leaving Livia’s shop for the last time was a bittersweet goodbye, heavy on the bitter. This had been Loren’s first home in Pompeii. Now it stood stripped of all things familiar. Old dolls, quilts and weavings, the gladius above the window, all packed away on the horses that would carry Livia and Aurelia far from the city.
He wouldn’t weep for it. Not if he wanted to keep firm his resolve not to follow. He swallowed the burning in his throat and turned his back on the shop.
At last, after a long goodbye from Nonna, where she squeezed Loren’s hand too tight and he wouldn’t meet her eyes, they departed.
Loren guided Livia, Aurelia and the horses through the chaotic streets, a mix of those few wise enough to leave and the stubborn majority. At a point, not far from the shop, he caught a glimpse of Celsi in the swarming crowd, but when he tried to wave him down, he failed to catch the boy’s eye. Celsi’s attention was fixed, weaving through the flock towards the wealthy side of town, clutching tight to a bundle of paperwork. Some errand for the council, perhaps. Forms related to Umbrius’s death.
Better he didn’t see Loren, anyway. When the news broke that he’d signed as Julia’s heir officially, Celsi wouldn’t be pleased. That pout of his might become permanent.
Aurelia chattered away about everything and nothing, not realising that these were their final moments together. Loren lacked the spine to tell her the truth. She’d piece it together at the gate, where her tears would be Livia’s problem. He hated to end things this way, but throwing another deceit on his already teetering stack was old hat. Besides, he had vowed to decipher his visions to make things safe for her. Whether or not the ground kept shaking in Pompeii, at least she’d be far away when he learned if he’d succeeded. Her visions might ease beyond the city. She could know peace.
At the city gate, Livia left them waiting in the shade while she haggled for last-minute road rations, a poor excuse for giving Loren space to break the news to Aurelia. She’d started a game of balancing on cobblestones knocked askew by the quake. Watching her wobble made guilt swell afresh. He had to tell her. Inhaling deep, he opened his mouth.
Across the street, a flash of copper ducked into shadow behind a fallen awning.
‘Be right back,’ he muttered.
Ignoring Aurelia’s shocked shout, Loren rushed into traffic, dodged an oncoming cart and plunged after Felix. He had one chance, and herefused to lose it. Skirting a corner, darting in a zigzag, he chased Felix through narrow side streets and alleys populated only by storage crates and stray cats. Felix might be faster, but Loren knew the city by heart. And even if his heart had misled him at every turn lately, at least he still had Pompeii.
By the time Loren caught up behind a residential block, his lungs burned. He snagged Felix’s wrist before he could round another corner.
An empty victory.
