The wood creaked, groaned, and then suddenly disappeared. Lucretia barely had time to take a breath before her body lurched backward toward the water. Her arms flailed.
Felix’s hand caught her forearm, tugging her upright, away from the edge of the dock. Her body collided with his, and his arms braced her shoulders, steadying her. A rush of warmth flooded her, but she couldn’t luxuriate in the pleasure of his touch. That was all over.
“Someone should really fix that,” she murmured breathlessly as she found her footing and stepped away from him.
“I’ll have a word with the harbor authorities.” A strange instability colored his voice.
She glanced up at him. His icy mask had slipped, and he was gazing down at her with the intensity she remembered from their lessons, as if she was the only thing in the world that mattered to him. Sorrow, pain, and regret swirled in his gray eyes, the emotion so piercing it took her breath away.
Then he dropped his hands from her shoulders, and the emotion vanished, replaced by cool blankness. She realized his ungracious manner was hiding a deep well of pain. He did feel remorse about what happened between them. He just didn’t know how to acknowledge it.
Her gut told her that Marcus would be safe with him. Marcus had been longing for this trip, and it would be cruel to deprive him of it.
“Marcus may join you,” she finally said. “But I’m going to require that oath first.”
Chapter 31
Felix thought Marcus’s neck was at risk of breaking from how quickly he was turning his head in every direction, trying to absorb all of the sights in Cyrene. Different languages flew all around them in the harbor district: Greek, Latin with several different accents, Aramaic, Punic, Coptic, and even something that might have been Gaulish. A hot, dry breeze blew over them, a reminder of the endless desert that lay to the south. But here on the coast, the land was green, with mountains in the distance overlooking the sea.
The nine-day voyage had passed smoothly. They’d stopped in Regium, at the southernmost tip of the Italian peninsula, to resupply, then left Italy behind to cross the great expanse of sea southwest to Cyrene. Marcus experienced some seasickness at the beginning of their journey, but rallied quickly and soon struck up several friendships with the sailors. They taught him how to harness the angle of the wind to attain the most efficient speed and how all of the various lines and ropes worked. He took to it with great enthusiasm. Felix worried the boy might havediscovered a new passion. Lucretia might not be pleased if her son chose to spend his life on the seas.
His mind had returned to Lucretia with unrelenting frequency during their trip. There was little else to think about during the long days of staring at nothing but an expanse of blue-gray water. He knew he should have apologized to her—or at least tried to—at their last meeting, but really, what was the point? It wouldn’t fix what he had done. It wouldn’t make her love him. It would only assuage his own guilt, and he didn’t deserve to seek her forgiveness.
The best thing he could do for her was guide Marcus’s growth and learning, to give her a son worthy of inheriting what she built.
Marcus had disappeared into the crowds ahead of him, but now reappeared, doubling back at a jog. “There’s a ship over there carrying silk from Serica!” he exclaimed. “Can we go see it? I’ve never seen a Serican person before.”
“The crew won’t be from Serica,” Felix said, to Marcus’s disappointment. “The goods will have changed hands in India, then Parthia, then sailed here from Syria. But we can take a look.” Silk had one of the highest profit margins of all luxury goods due to its rarity. No one but the people of its far eastern country knew how it was produced, and its fineness was highly sought by the wealthy.
Marcus led him to the ship. A crowd milled around the dock next to the gangplank which led onto the vessel, and even more people clustered on the deck. It seemed to be one of the more popular cargoes in the harbor, and Felix would have some competition if he hoped to purchase any.
They eased their way through the crowd and onto the ship. The wares must be held below deck, and a steady stream of people filtered down the narrow stairs. “Let’s wait for the crowd to thin.” Felix pulled Marcus over to an unoccupied spot by themast. “See?” Felix said in a low voice, directing Marcus’s gaze toward the sailors dotted around the deck. “The crew is not from Serica.”
Marcus absorbed this with a nod. “Well, they must be from somewhere rough. They look as if they’ve seen some excitement.”
Marcus was right; though every crew had its share of grizzled members, it seemed that each sailor on deck displayed an assortment of scars and the remnants of past broken noses. Felix’s own nose, still healing, throbbed in sympathy. The crew member nearest Felix sported a tattoo on his forehead of the Greek letterdelta, marking him as a former slave, tattooed either in punishment for disobedience or after an escape attempt.
It wasn’t unusual to have a crew comprised of men with fraught pasts.
The more unusual thing was the way the sailors were positioned, which Felix noticed as his gaze passed over each of them. They seemed to be stationed at regular intervals around the deck railing. Many had their hands on the weapons tucked into their belts, and they surveyed the crowds on deck with forbidding glares, as if the people aboard were not merchants wanting to buy their cargo but their enemies in some way.
On the dock, another set of crew members shepherded more and more people aboard.
A trickle of unease ran down Felix’s spine, a gut feeling he couldn’t quite find a reason for. “Marcus,” he murmured. “I think we should disembark.”
“We haven’t even seen the silk yet,” Marcus protested.
Felix hesitated, his gaze sweeping over the deck as he tried to assess the situation. Perhaps he was overreacting, but his intuition was sending up a flare that something wasn’t right. He didn’t want to reveal his worries to Marcus in case the boypanicked, especially if he was wrong and there was nothing amiss. “We can come back later if they’re still here.”
Felix took a step toward the gangplank, but there were too many people in the way, having just been shoved aboard by two crew members—crew members who were now working to remove that very gangplank.
Breath stuttered in Felix’s throat as the reality of the situation crashed over him. “Hey!” he shouted at the sailors.
His shout drew the attention of the others on deck, who looked to the gangplank and realized that their mode of exit was being removed.
The brawny and menacing sailors jumped into action. Several let down the lines that held the sails, causing the huge swaths of canvas to unfurl. Others dealt with anyone protesting, doling punches and drawing their swords, daggers, or clubs.
“Fuck,” Felix hissed.
