‘Do you think my father is a patient man? Or a forgiving one?’ Felix squished a grape between finger and thumb. Juice and pulp splattered. ‘If he found out you allowed his son to be chased by armed men, he may question what else you let happen. Lax on patrol, lax on quality.’
‘Sir.’ Adolphus’s receding hairline trembled. ‘My work is my life. Allow me to set this right.’
Felix stood, hoisting the bag over his shoulder. ‘You’ve done enough.’
‘There must be something more.’
‘My assistant and I were on our way to inspect the upper pastures.’
Behind Adolphus, Loren’s nose crinkled.Pastures?he mouthed, but Felix shot him a warning glare.
If Adolphus thought the phrasing strange, he didn’t dare mention it. Instead, he brightened. ‘We shall go together. Stravo has a cart.’
Beneath the brim of his hat, Stravo grimaced.
‘No, no,’ Felix said. ‘It’s delicate work, these inspections.’
Loren pulled another face. It didn’t help Felix stay in character.
‘Besides, my father did want this done anonymously,’ he continued. ‘Though . . .’
‘Anything. Anything at all.’ Adolphus adjusted his badge, a reminder of his station.
Resisting the urge to raise an unimpressed brow, Felix looked towards the sun’s position. The ambush had cost precious time. Making it up the mountain before sunset had been a stretch already, but now it would be impossible on foot. Scaling Vesuvius in the dark would surely prove deadly.
If only there were a faster way.
Stravo seemed to draw the same conclusion the moment it clicked for Felix, but he didn’t look happy about it. ‘Shall I hitch the mules?’
‘Oh,’ Adolphus said to Felix, ‘what a brilliant idea, Master Lassius. Full of them, you are. Just like your father.’
Full of shit, more like.
Adolphus fretted and fussed, a last-ditch effort to impress, until they left him at the edge of the vineyard. He waved a linen handkerchief as he faded from sight.
‘We aren’t sailing to Troy,’ Loren muttered. ‘The theatrics are unnecessary.’
Felix pretended he understood that reference.
Stravo’s rickety cart was little more than planks tacked together and set on four wheels. Felix didn’t trust the contraption not to fall apart, especially where he was much heavier than its usual fruity occupants. Despite the ominous creaking, it held firm, even when the road turned from packed dirt to lumpy rock farther out.
He and Loren dangled their legs in tandem off the open back, the laundry bag separating them. Damned laundry bag. Felix couldn’t believe the deceit had worked. The risk he’d taken was calculated, and forsomeone who never learned mathematics, extraordinarily foolish. Had Darius kicked the bag, looked beyond the surface layer of grapes, everything would have ended then and there.
Would Darius have let Loren go? Or would his blood have spilled, too?
A whistled tune from the driver’s bench shook Felix from his mental spiral. They were on the mountain proper, halfway up one of the trails only grape farmers used.
Loren cleared his throat and spoke for the first time in a long, silent while. ‘It was clever, what you did back there with the ring. Brave, too.’
‘Brave? It’s your ring. I stole your identity. You should be angry.’
‘If you want to be Lucius Lassius Lorenus, be my guest.’ Loren pulled his knee under his chin, like he had the day at the harbour, when he’d spoken about Achilles and Patroclus and Felix had lacked the nerve to tuck his hair. Even now, eyeing the strands mussed by their sprint through the vineyard, he clenched his fists to stop from reaching.
Instead, he picked his thumbnail and watched the ground disappear below. ‘I ruined it for you. Darius saw the signet ring. He’ll tell Servius, who will tell your father. It’s over.’
Loren’s brow furrowed. ‘You’re a thief, Felix. For all Darius knows, you murdered Lassius’s real heir and stole the ring for this purpose. In fact, I hope a rumour of my brutal slaying does make it back to my father. Delay the inevitable, at least.’
‘Or hasten it, if he came to see for himself.’ Felix studied Loren’s profile, the sharpness and softness of his lines, the translucent glow of peach-fine hair on his cheek. ‘Darius saw you at the games. Now Servius will know you both as Julia’s heir and my accomplice. Two axes against your neck.’
