“Just let me see her,” King said, his voice less demanding than the first time he’d asked to see Fiona. “She’s diabetic and needs insulin.”

“I noticed the insulin pump and have taken steps to see that she is provided with refills when required. If I allowed you to see her it would brew hope of rescue among the others. Hope would lead to discontentment, unruliness, and anger. Right now they are content prisoners. Right now, they are safe.” Alexander crossed his arms. “So it is as I said before, impossible.”

“The others?” Pierce asked, turning from the statue. “How many people have you kidnapped?”

“Fifty-seven. But kidnapping implies a negative intent,” Alexander said. “I am saving their lives.”

“By keeping them in a subterranean tomb?” King asked.

“You were charged with keeping just one of them safe,” Alexander said. “And we know how that turned out. Until the matter is cleared up, they must remain under my guard. They will be safe in the secret places that only my people and I know about.”

“The Herculean Society?” Pierce asked.

Alexander gave a nod and a grin. “Your old friends, yes.”

King hated to admit it, but he agreed with Alexander. His methods were shady, as they had been in the past, but what he was doing wasn’t any different from the mission the rest of the team had undertaken; to protect the last speakers of ancient languages, they had to be stealed away and hidden. The difference was that Alexander employed inhuman helpers and kept the prisoners in the dark, both figuratively and literally.

Alexander leaned back, his large elbows resting on another crate. “Of course, your presence here debunks my claims of safe refuge.” His eyes, brimming with a mixture of cockiness and annoyance, glared at King. “How did you find me?”

“You didn’t mean for us to find you?” King asked.

“Not at all.”

King explained how they pieced together Alexander’s two separate mentions of a promise to someone—a promise he was now breaking by getting involved with the problems of the world. He related the logical jump to Acca Larentia and the hints about her burial place not in what history said, but in what it was missing. When he was done, Alexander looked stunned.

King noticed the ancient man’s flabbergasted expression. “What?”

“I’m … impressed.” Alexander sat up straight. “I thought you were simply a man who knew how to kill people.”

“I’m that, too,” King said.

“Dare I ask if you could have been followed?”

King thought about his unease while in the ruins of the Roman Forum. He’d felt a presence watching them, but he was sure it was the guard’s they had encountered that his instincts had detected. “We weren’t followed.”

Alexander didn’t look convinced. “These are strange times. The rocks themselves can have eyes.”

“Only Lewis knew exactly where I was headed,” King said. “We weren’t followed.”