Chapter XVI
XVI
Sweat stung her eyes. Adel tried to blink it clear and watch Tilla’s feet at the same time.
Tilla’s toes tensed, signaling a feint. Adel parried the strike and shot past her, spinning and throwing her scutum up to block the next swing.
The vibrations from the blow didn’t jar her injury like they used to.
She was healing. The relief was as short-lived as the split-second pause before Tilla swung again.
Adel blocked it, a shout barely registering over the clatter of wooden blades.
“Cease! Cease!”
They broke apart. Breathing hard, Adel rubbed the back of her sword hand across her cheek and turned to face Ignacio, awaiting what was surely criticism. Instead, he jerked a hand toward the battered pole at the edge of the arena.
“Endurance training for the rest of the afternoon. We’ve got to build your strength back up. Two strikes against the palus, then raise the scutum over your head. Go.”
She obeyed, trotting to the pole and beginning the pattern Ignacio had ordered. A strike on the right. Backhanded swing on the left. Duck and raise the shield.
Again.
Strike. Strike. Raise.
Strike. Strike. Raise.
She timed her breath, letting her limbs take over the rhythm. Beside her, Ilona struggled to keep the pattern on her own palus. A bandage still wrapped her head from the blow she’d suffered at the Dacian School. Her skin looked nearly gray against her shorn hair, her breath coming in odd huffs.
“Are you all right?” Adel grunted.
Ilona’s eyes slid toward her, and somehow through her, as if she couldn’t quite focus.
“Ilona?”
The woman squeezed her eyes shut and dropped forward against the palus, catching herself on one shoulder. Adel dropped her gladius and bolted to grab her.
“Ignacio!”
The magister was there in seconds, as if he’d noticed Ilona’s decline as quickly as Adel had.
“Help me get her to the medicus.”
Adel shrugged out of her scutum and wrapped her arm around Ilona’s back. Together they shuffled her toward the operating clinic.
“My head . . .” Ilona gasped. “Like someone . . . stabbing it.”
“We’ll have you to the medicus in a moment. Keep going.”
Ilona vomited twice before they’d reached the door. Ignacio elbowed it open. “Medicus? This one’s in a bad way.”
Felix was there almost instantly, wiping Ilona’s chin with a rag, clearing a space on the operating table for her to lie down.
“I told you it was too soon to have her training.”
“We can’t waste a day with the Victory Games coming,” Ignacio argued. “She was fine this morning.”
Ilona clutched Adel’s hand in a death grip as Felix drilled Ignacio for details he didn’t know the answer to.
“She looked gray,” Adel volunteered. Felix offered a grateful smile she should not have felt in her chest. “And she fell forward. Her eyes . . . It was as if she could not see me anymore.”
“Thank you.” He snagged a lamp with a brass mirror to direct the beam of light and gently cupped Ilona’s chin in one hand. “What hurts?” He leaned close, staring into her eyes and flashing the beam of light into them and away.
“My head,” Ilona whispered, squeezing Adel’s hand tighter.
“Anything else?”
The compassion in his tone and eyes should not have made Adel want to yank Ilona off the table and out of his gentle touch. God forgive her. Where had that come from?
Ignacio nudged Felix’s shoulder. “This is all she needs.” He held out a cup.
Felix twisted to look. “What is that?”
“A bit of sleeping draught.”
“Where did you get that?” Felix held out a hand, waggling his fingers toward the cup.
Ignacio hesitated, then moved it toward Felix’s nose. “I made it.”
Felix inhaled. “Wine and—”
“Opium,” Ignacio supplied. “Just a pinch.”
“Not necessary.” Felix turned back to Ilona. “She needs rest, Ignacio, not—”
“But it does help,” Adel broke in. “With pain and sleep. Let her have it.”
Felix’s gaze jerked to hers, shock and then understanding slackening his expression. “You take it?”
She nodded.
He pushed to his feet and twisted toward Ignacio, questioning him rather than her. “How much? For how long?” His voice wavered in anger and his fingers curled.
“The magistri have given it for centuries.” Ignacio shrugged. “There are times when it is needed to keep our fighters in the ring. And sometimes it is best for . . . Well, the is not the most . . .” He circled a hand as if searching for a word. “Calm.”
She squinted as if to argue, but kept her mouth shut rather than prove him right.
Felix gritted his teeth. “Perhaps we ought to keep each other informed of this. We wouldn’t want to overdo it and send another fighter to the underworld.”
Another? She ran the disappearances through her mind. Was that where the others had disappeared to? Victims of Ignacio’s potions, rather than Blandus Albus’s money troubles?
Ignacio raised his hands in mock surrender and gave a nod that carried as much understanding as condescension. “Only trying to help.” He looked at Adel and jerked his head toward the door. “Back to the ring.”
The evening light was fading quickly. He didn’t have much time.
Felix drew in a steadying breath. It wasn’t every day a man attempted to steal an imperial slave out of one of the most fortified buildings in Rome.
One that was inhabited and guarded by men who knew dozens of ways to kill a man.
Slowly. And with much flair. He was thankful the gladiatrix had been asleep and hadn’t witnessed what he’d done to her fellow patient.
A bead of sweat trickled down Felix’s temple despite the chill in the air.
Noting the blood still ringing his thumbnail, he pressed a wide cork disc over the mouth of the jar he held and took a deep breath.
Now or never. He strode from the clinic, turning to close the door behind him.
His eye caught on the blood-stained sheet covering the still body beneath.
“Rest well, friend,” he whispered, and shut the door. Straightening his shoulders, he quickened his pace, angling for the office across the courtyard. No one was about this time of day, the gladiators divided between the triclinium for their evening gruel or the baths, fighting for the hot water.
Steam flowed out of the bathhouse door as a slave exited, arms laden with soiled training clothes. Felix skirted him and turned the corner where a row of closed doors faced the training courtyard and the colonnade overhead framed the lanista’s office door at the far end.
Nervous energy laced his limbs though he’d made the trek countless times. His fingers tightened around the red-glazed jar. The pottery was warm, from his hands or what it contained, he wasn’t sure.
God, give me wisdom. He didn’t dare utter the prayer aloud, but nor did he dare enter Jovan’s office without it.
An impatient “Enter!” answered his knock.
Felix entered quickly, shutting the door behind him, barring their conversation within walls covered in painted reliefs of famous gladiatorial matches. He let out a breath as he turned back to his uncle.
Jovan’s gaze lowered to the jar in his hands, his chin slowly tilting to one side in question. “Is it done?”
Felix swallowed and stepped toward the desk with a facade of confidence he didn’t quite feel. “It is.”
The jar thudded against the desktop as Felix set it down.
Jovan sighed. “I know this first one was hard for you. It’ll get easier, I promise.”
His gaze jerked to his uncle’s. “Easier?”
“This happens all the time, Felix.” His uncle’s words were gentle, though his meaning was not. “You must remember, they are only slaves. Investments. We gave the Gaul a good life. He wouldn’t want to suffer. No one does.”
As if that was all the justification needed to murder an injured man simply for needing a long recovery.
He cleared his dry throat, forcing himself to speak the words he’d rehearsed on the walk over here, and not the ones that sprang to his mind now. “I sent for the body cart already. It will be here soon.”
Jovan nodded. “Very good. We will honor him tonight.” He picked up his pen and turned back to his ledger, continuing with his work as if Felix had not just placed the heart of a murdered man on his desk.
Felix turned to leave, the shaking in his legs intensifying with relief as he shut the door behind him.
He gulped a breath of air and attempted to steady his equally shaky breath. The easy part was over.
His gaze traveled to the niched walls of the entrance hall and the gate at the far end.
It was a gate only free men went through.
A gate that required a stiff price. Felix felt the cost of it every time he went through, and tonight it would feel particularly heavy.
But perhaps tonight it would be worth it.