Chapter XXIV #2
A table next to Ilias caught Felix’s eye, covered in various blades with scraps of parchment tied to the handles with string. He flipped one of the tags, noting a scrawled price before lifting the blade and turning it in the light. A good knife.
The grindstone stopped. “Do you like that one?” Ilias asked.
Felix twisted his wrist, turning the knife. “Feels good in the hand.”
Ilias nodded in a way that made Felix feel as though he were a student who’d given his tutor the correct answer. “I made those.”
“All of them?”
“I tried to tell you that when I spoke with you at the ludus.”
That’s why he was familiar. But if this was Felicia’s blade seller, why was he seeking Felix out? Surely things had not progressed from giggling to meeting families. Though . . . he had come to meet Ilias. “I apologize for rushing away. Hazard of the job.”
Ilias gave a nod. “You might like that one.” He pointed toward a gladius.
Felix had no intention of ever wielding or owning a sword—if that was even legal for a civilian—but he picked it up anyway.
This one felt oddly light. He turned it over, admiring the scrolled engravings on the blade itself, and gave it a little heft, as if checking the weight.
He started to lower it back to the table.
“That one is special.” Ilias stood, wiping his hands down his thighs— the motion clearly the reason for the dark streaks staining his tunic.
He reached for the blade. “I tried to show you at the ludus.” In one quick movement, Ilias spun and extended his arm, ramming the sword into the wall behind him. The blade sank into the brick.
Felix’s jaw dropped. What sort of blade was this? “It . . . penetrates stone?”
Ilias’s mouth twitched as he turned, drawing the hilt away from the wall, no blade to be seen.
“Not quite.” He turned the handle upside down and made a show of sliding a decorative lever near the handguard with his thumb.
The blade slid out of the handle, dropping back into place. He handed it back to Felix.
“How . . .” Felix tilted the blade to the light, noting then that the blade was made like a series of pipes, each section smaller than the one it fit into. He pressed his finger against the tip of the blade and it slid back into the section before it. “Incredible.”
Ilias shrugged and dropped back onto his stool, positioning the grindstone between his knees once more. “Did you play at being a gladiator when you were a child?”
Felix nodded. “Didn’t we all? Everything becomes a sword when you’re a boy.”
Ilias grinned. “My uncle was a wood-carver and he made me a sword of wooden tubes that would collapse into each other if you thrust it at something. It was the best toy I ever had. That sword gave me this idea. Only, I wanted the blade to be able to lock in place and collapse at will. It took years to develop the locking mechanism inside.”
“All for a toy?” Felix winced as the words emerged, as if Ilias’s passion were somehow childish. “I didn’t mean— It’s very impressive.”
Ilias swallowed and bent over the stone, positioning a scalpel blade against it just so. “I . . . They would be very expensive toys for everyday children, but I thought, if I could sell them to the ludi, perhaps they could prevent so many injuries and casualties.”
A noble endeavor. Calling it a forgery suddenly made sense.
A replica of the real thing. But with a key difference.
“You would change the course of the games.” Even as he spoke, he knew it likely would never work.
Too many swords were needed. And if the fighters were big enough rivals, they might not use the mechanism.
He foresaw legal battles among the ludi in the future, and knew Jovan would likely think the same.
“I wanted to show it to you the other day. Felicia thought you—”
The blade slid down the grindstone with a screech that sent a pain to Felix’s teeth, or maybe it was the sudden way his jaw went tight at the mention of his sister’s name.
But perhaps it wasn’t his sister. How many women in Rome were named Felicia, after all.
Hundreds? A thousand maybe? The thought brought a slight comfort, no matter how delusional. “Who?”
The redness in Ilias’s face deepened to a shade that made Felix wonder if the man was even breathing anymore. Was he having an apoplexy?
“Are you all right?” The question came without thought, the automatic response of a trained medicus, even if the smallest part of him hoped it was an apoplexy. Ilias hadn’t answered the first question.
Ilias glanced at the blade still clutched in Felix’s fist and nodded. “I’m fine.”’
Felix replaced the blade on the table and stood awkwardly perusing the others.
How did one broach the subject of Felicia, exactly?
Thank you for your service, the blades look great, and by the way, leave my sister alone?
She was the one going to Ilias. He couldn’t blame the man if his sister was the one following him around, conjuring excuses to have their knives sharpened.
When he thought of it that way, Felicia was looking more like a villainous stalker, and Ilias the innocent victim.
He didn’t need to stay. Ilias could deliver the blades to the ludus.
Yet Felix found himself pacing the nearby shop fronts, even so.
Garden pottery and secondhand shoes. Neither of which he had a need for.
He browsed, mind running with thoughts of Ilias’s gladius and what it could mean for the games.
Was there a place for a blade like that?
Perhaps he ought to tell Jovan about the possibility.
Ilias seemed a good sort—which was irritating in its own right.
If he did tell Jovan about the sword, it wasn’t an invitation into the family. Felicia was too young, too—
“All ready, sir,” Ilias called.
Finally. Felix paid from the ludus funds and tucked the rolled bundle under his arm. The price was a little high in his opinion.
“I hope to do business with you again soon,” Ilias said with a smile.
“My sister is bald and pastes her eyebrows on.”
Ilias’s mouth went slack. Felix gave a nod and turned away, squeezing his eyes shut in horror as he marched out of the markets and back toward the Ludus Gallicus.
My sister is bald and pastes her eyebrows on?
That was not the way to control the situation.
Plus, Felicia was going to kill him.