Page 1 of Us in Ruins
Italy, 1932
Statues watched as Van descended into what was left of the Temple of Venus.
June warmth had settled over the Gulf of Naples, sticky enough to raise beads of sweat against the back of Van’s neck, but down here, the air was cool and still. Trapped almost. His boots crunched against the stone floors, dust stirring as he lit the oil in his lamp.
Behind him, Atlas fumbled down the last few steps with his eye pressed against his camera. “The papers are going to love this.”
The camera flashed, and Van blinked. It was a newfangled thing, all black and chrome with a pop-up bulb. Atlas carted it around everywhere, snapping photographs of the excavation’s progress. Atlas Exploration Company couldn’t exist without the deep pockets of Atlas’s family, founders of the Metropolitan Museum of Ancient Art, and those deep pockets required proof that their prodigal son wasn’t merely gallivanting around Italy.
In the dark of the temple, the echo of the flashbulb stained Van’s vision. The wrinkle between his brows dug itself deeper. Terse, he said, “Watch it.”
“Relax, pal,” Atlas said with an echoing laugh. “It’s not like it’s booby trapped.”
It wasn’t anymore. Because Van had disarmed all the traps the first time he followed the hidden staircase leading him deep beneath the earth.
“And we need a picture to go underneath the headline.”
Van snorted. “What headline?”
“?‘Young Scholars Resurrect the Lost City of Pompeii,’?” Atlas said in his best broadcaster voice.
“More like ‘Van Keane Discovers the Treasure of the Vase of Venus Aurelia.’?”
“Where’s my name in that headline? You wouldn’t be here without me.”
With his white-blond hair greased, his collared shirt neatly pressed, and that Zeiss camera strapped around his neck, Atlas was better at funding and documenting excavations than he was at participating in them.
Van ignored him and trekked deeper into the temple, following the chipped tiles where they led to a marble altar, flanked by stone sentries. Five legionaries had been carved from white marble, etched with dark veins. They each perched on engraved pedestals that bore a Latin inscription. Instead of a gladius, bows strapped across their backs with full quivers of stone arrows. Venus’s guardians.
Atlas circled the guardians, weaving between their pedestals. “Aqua, Ignis, Terra, Aura, and Mors.”
One for each of the elements, and a fifth: death. Where the rest were depicted as broad-shouldered soldiers in greaves and paludamenta, the statue of death’s skeletal frame had been pierced through the chest with a carved arrow, right into a heart bleeding red.
Somehow, it watched Van, just a skull with empty eye sockets. As if it could sense the shard in his pocket, that the treasure it had been sculpted to protect had returned home.
“The only one left standing in our way,” Atlas said as he placed his hand on Mors’s bony shoulder. Our way, Van balked. “I wonder what his trial will be.”
Does he know what I have done? Van could still feel the cobwebs clinging to his skin. Couldn’t shake the catacomb cold from his limbs.
But then a wide, naive smile crept onto Atlas’s face. “What are you waiting for?”
Van hovered over the altar. Three black porcelain shards had been arranged so that their jagged edges aligned. They’d fit together like puzzle pieces. Two more and the Vase of Venus Aurelia would be whole again.
“Drat. The shard. It’s with my journal,” Van said, rolling out his shoulders in agitation. He pressed a finger to his temple. Forgetful. Believable. “I forgot it back at camp.”
Atlas squinted. “That’s unlike you.”
“Is it?”
“You barely take your nose out of that diary of yours.” Another one of his piercing laughs cuts Van right to the marrow.
“It’s not a—”
Atlas clasped a hand on his shoulder. “I’ll grab it. Left side under your pillow, right?”
Van frowned. “That’s supposed to be a secret.”
Glancing over his shoulder, Atlas was already running toward the entry staircase. “I thought we didn’t keep secrets.”