Chapter XXV
XXV
A DAMP CHILL CLUNG TO THE AIR as the winter sun climbed into the sky, illuminating puddles from the previous night’s rain.
Adel filed out of the triclinium, her dawn meal of gruel and ash-laced water sitting in her stomach like a stone.
She’d forced it through bruised lips and now wondered if it would stay there.
Biting back grunts of pain, she made her way toward the gladiatrix ring.
“What happened to you?” Wulfula edged up beside her, voice low in concern or . . . possessiveness. As if the thought of someone else’s hands on her might send him into a jealous rage.
Adel kept her eyes forward. “You should see my opponent.” Even speaking made her face hurt.
“Always too much confidence.” Wulfula shook his head. “Are you training to be a cestus now? You’re supposed to duck and block during the fistfight, you know.”
Adel sighed, too tired for this. “You do not need to worry about me, Wulfula. I am not your concern. Nor do I answer to you.”
“You will need me one day. And when you call, I may not answer.”
Adel pressed a hand to her heart. “May that day come soon.”
The magistri barked orders for the provocators and gladiatrices to begin the day on the palus.
Adel paused at the rack of rudes and jostled for the best of the wooden swords.
Her favorite felt heavier today, as if the handle was filled with lead weights.
The thought of swinging it for hours on end made her limbs feel heavy before she’d even begun.
She rubbed her elbow, black and blue and tender.
She’d never felt like this after a match, even when her arm had been sliced open.
Perhaps, like an old sword, she was losing her edge.
It happened to every fighter at some point in their career.
They climbed a mountain or hill of success, stood at the top for the briefest of moments, and were shoved down the other side without warning.
Perhaps her tumble was coming. Perhaps she was already in a free fall.
The thought made her mouth dry and laced her limbs with panic. She couldn’t be falling yet. She’d barely begun to rise.
Berit stumbled to stand opposite Adel, the palus pole between them. There was a strange gray cast to her skin in the morning light and Adel had the sudden sinking feeling that Felix had been telling the truth after all.
“Are you well?”
Berit gave an unconvincing nod and licked her lips as if her mouth had gone suddenly dry.
Ignacio barked at them to begin, and Adel swung first. Berit’s following swing was sluggish. The rudis nearly flung from her hand.
“Tighten your grip,” Adel encouraged. “Do not let Ignacio see you. He will keep you training long past the evening meal if he thinks you need to work harder to sleep at night.”
Out of the corner of her eye she caught a glimpse of Jovan stepping out of his office, eyes fixed on the gladiatrix ring.
A man in shimmering blue moved to stand beside him.
Someone looking for entertainment, or was it the game master?
She couldn’t tell from here. Either way, Berit wasn’t putting on a good show.
Just do not drop it.
“Keep on.” Her words emerged sharper for the spectators.
The girl swung again and clamped her lips shut, shoulders jerking. Her sword bounced off the palus and spun through the air before clattering through the gravel two gladiators over. Jovan’s eyes snapped toward them.
Berit bent over, gulping air.
“Are you going to be sick, Berit?” Adel snapped, eyeing Jovan. “You should be, with that performance.”
Berit lurched forward and lost her morning gruel. She dropped to her knees, her limbs quivering. She spat and swiped the back of her hand across her mouth.
Adel shouted for a slave to clean the sand as she circled the palus to squat in front of her cousin. “Did you drink the wine last night?”
Berit squeezed her eyes shut and shook her head, fighting to swallow down the jerking of her stomach.
“You are shaking.”
“I am fine,” she whispered, her voice breathy and tight.
“You had best go see the medicus.”
Berit shook her head. “No. I’m—”
“Not well.” Ignacio stooped to grip Berit’s arm and haul her to her feet. “And you’re keeping everyone else from training. Go. Sergius is in the infirmary.”
He gave her a shove toward the colonnade. She swayed and shot out a hand to balance.
“I will take her,” Adel growled, as if the girl’s weakness were the greatest nuisance. She dropped her gladius and gripped her cousin’s arm, dragging her to the edge of the ring.
“Everything’s moving,” Berit moaned in a low voice once they were away from the others. “I feel heavy, tired.”
“I know.” Her response was short. Clipped. Adel said nothing until they were in the coolness of the empty clinic, the door safely closed behind them. Felix was nowhere to be seen.
“Medicus?”
Adel helped Berit climb atop the high table, where she folded over, curling onto her side.
“My head.” Berit reached up, cradling her head in her hands.
Adel crossed to the infirmary and shoved the door open. “Medicus?”
Sergius had the good sense to look sheepish as he rolled to his feet and smoothed the blanket draped over the bed he’d been lying on. The embarrassment shifted quickly to a scowl.
“What do you want?”
“I need you.” Her voice lowered. “Something is wrong with Ber—Hippolyta.”
“Is she bleeding?”
“No.”
Sergius swore and grumbled beneath his breath about overreacting as he shuffled into the clinic behind her. Inside, the elder medicus looked from Adel to Berit and back.
“You look terrible,” Sergius slurred.
“You are here for Berit. Her head hurts, she vomited, and she claims everything is moving.”
“Of course it is.” He peeled back her eyelids and peered at her eyes. “Did Ignacio bring her the nightly draught?”
A chill struck and sent her heart beating faster. So Sergius knew of it? She glanced at Berit. Would he administer more if not? “I think so.” Ignacio had not come to her room. But perhaps that was because Felix had already administered a draught of some sort in the clinic.
Berit groaned and wrapped her arms around her head as if someone was coming after her with a war hammer. “Water,” she croaked.
Adel scanned the room, but Sergius got to it first, nabbing a dirty cup from the counter and ramming it against Berit’s teeth.
Adel reached for it. “There is no need for roughness—”
Sergius spun and flung up his arm, preventing her from grabbing at the cup. “Do not presume to admonish me.” The venom lacing his words sent a shiver across her skin, followed by a rush of heat. He treated everyone with a cool indifference but had always reserved his dislike for Adel.
Sergius glared, lip curled. “Barbarian whore.”
Berit knocked the cup away from her mouth and pushed herself upright, spitting the water in Sergius’s face. His fist reared back and Adel caught it before he could swing.
“Guards!” he shouted.
Adel released his bony wrist and turned as the door opened, a rectangle of white light falling on her. Sergius’s fist caught the side of her neck. Pain shot through her skull, bruises throbbing.
Adel gritted her teeth and spun toward him, trying for all the world to smirk. “You hit like a child.”
“What is the meaning of this?” A dark silhouette wavered in the doorway, but Adel would know Felix’s voice anywhere. It carried the dangerous cadence of the previous night.
“Call the guards!” Sergius shouted, then lowered his voice as he turned toward Felix. “She’s violent.”
“And yet, you’re the one swinging.” Felix shouldered into the room and shoved Sergius back. He dropped a rattling bundle next to Berit. “What happened?”
“These two are violent. Tried to assault me. I’m going to Jovan.” Sergius stormed from the room. If he accused her of assaulting him, the last thread tethering her flimsy hope of becoming a magister would snap for good. Adel started after him.
“Do not go,” Berit moaned and gagged.
Felix swung a bowl beneath her chin.
Adel wavered in the doorway, Sergius’s threat and Berit’s entreaty tugging in opposing directions.
“Please, Adel.”
That’s all it took. Adel let out a breath and crossed to her cousin’s side.
“I am here,” she murmured, gently brushing loose strands of hair away from Berit’s face and holding them back as the girl emptied her stomach.
Felix studied them. “When did this start?”
“This morning?” Adel lifted a shoulder. “She is dizzy and weak.”
Berit went to wipe her hand across her lips, but Felix intervened with a rag. “My head hurts,” she admitted in a whisper as he stepped away to fetch a pitcher.
“Rinse and spit.” He tipped a fresh cup of water to her mouth, the careful movement a far cry from Sergius’s rough effort. “And what else?”
Berit obeyed, then took a second drink. “I feel sore.”
Felix raised a hand toward Berit’s face, and Adel caught his wrist, stopping him before he could—
He froze, eyes cutting toward her. “I’m not going to hurt her.”
Of course he wasn’t. Heat prickled her neck. Adel released him and he slowly rested his palm against Berit’s forehead, turned the back of his fingers against her cheek.
Adel chewed the inside of her own cheek as she watched.
His were hands that gave, expecting nothing in return.
Everything she’d thought about Romans, about men, he’d made a lie.
The thought registered slowly, like it had always been there, lying beneath a coating of dust. But what was she to do with it? Trust him? To what end?
“You feel warm.” He pressed two fingers beneath Berit’s jaw and stared somewhere over her shoulder, his lips twitching in silent count of her heartbeat. He gave a nod. “Let’s get you to a bed.”
A shadow fell across the doorway and a guard stepped inside. “You called?”
“No. Sergius was mistaken.” Felix waited for the guard to leave before he tucked one arm around Berit’s back and hooked the other beneath her knees, lifting her off the operating table. He looked at Adel and tipped his head. “Open the infirmary door for me?”