Chapter XXXII
XXXII
“Up.”
The singular command brought Felix to his feet after two nights in the punishment cells. Finally, a trial. He’d rehearsed his defense a thousand times. He’d left nothing to chance.
The guard turned to Adel. “You too.”
Except that.
“Why her?” Felix winced as he moved out of the cell and toward the dark stairs, blackened against the blinding rectangle of light shining from the open doorway above. “Does the magistrate need to question her too?”
“Magistrate?” The guard frowned. “Haven’t they told you?”
“Told me what?”
The guard shifted his belt and gestured them to climb the stairs. “There is no trial. Once Jovan and Blandus Albus explained everything, the authorities left your punishment in their hands.”
Felix frowned. That wasn’t right. The magistrates were too high on power to release it so easily. That was not how Roman justice worked. A thrum of panic ran through his limbs.
His punishment. In the hands of his uncle Jovan and Blandus Albus?
The slow realization washed over him. There hadn’t been a formal complaint to the magistrates, Blandus Albus was simply taking matters into his own hands.
His eyes went to the gate, guarded now by four men.
Who would ever know? If Pater came looking for him, Jovan would simply say Felix had gone home last night, as usual.
Pater would search the alleys and find no body.
Felix would simply disappear. Circumstances beyond his control. Like pater like son.
The dread building in his chest confirmed the answer to the question burning on his tongue anyway. “And that punishment will be . . . ?”
The guard prodded them into the bright sunlight of the training courtyard, thick with a morning chill.
“Welcome to the Ludus Gallicus. You’ll be training for the Victory Games under Dante and Nova.
” The guard lifted a hand and pointed toward the hoplomachus quadrant, though he needn’t.
Felix knew the trainers. And he also knew hoplomachi were not novice fighters.
No one who faced the double-curved-sword-wielding dimachaerus did so without months of training.
This was a death sentence. And there was no way out.
Adel smeared sweat from her cheek and moved toward the fountain to get a drink. Her muscles quivered, though she hadn’t been training long.
“After your drink, head to the palus and practice striking and raising the scutum over your head.”
Though it would help build her stamina for the games, the thought of whacking her gladius against the wooden pole for hours on end seemed yet one more punishment—especially with the game master present in the stands today, scratching notes on a tablet as he watched them train.
Every so often he would point out a fighter and lean to whisper something to an adviser seated beside him.
If they were choosing pairs for the games, she would not impress them, fighting a wooden pole like this. But perhaps that had been Jovan’s plan.
Dreda and Tilla met her at the fountain, Dreda’s eyes locked on the hoplomachi quadrant even as she leaned toward Adel. “Why is the medicus out here? Not that I mind—just look at him . . .” She sighed.
Adel shrugged and tipped the communal cup into the fountain, bringing it to her lips.
She’d tried not to look in Felix’s direction, afraid of what her expression might reveal.
Jovan must have told the trainers to put him through the hardest of training as an extra punishment.
He’d be sore tonight. Unable to move tomorrow.
“Perhaps he volunteered,” Tilla suggested.
“Why?” Dreda’s lip curled slightly, as if Felix had suddenly grown less handsome for his lack of sense. “He seems a decent man. I’d hate to see him die.”
Adel dipped her hands and arms in the fountain, rinsing off a layer of grime and sweat. Buying time. “He did not volunteer.”
Dreda’s chin lowered, her eyes sparking with excitement. “You know what he did, then? Why didn’t you say so?”
She swallowed and dropped her voice. “He rescued the Gaul and Ilona.” Remorse swept over her that Berit had not been rescued. She sought Berit out, lifting weights as a trainer barked at her to move faster.
“They’re dead.”
“That is what he made us think so he could rescue them.”
“Why would he do that?”
“Because as you said, he is a decent man.”
“Decent men do not risk their lives for slaves,” Tilla scoffed.
“He did.” Adel glanced toward Ignacio, who jerked a thumb toward the palus in a get going motion. She gave a nod and spoke as quickly as Dreda. “He confirmed what Wulfula said. The games will be mortal combat. If you want to walk away from the arena, you must not lose.”
Tilla stared at her, eyes sparking with the anger the game masters knew would heighten the tension, make for a more enjoyable show. “That is the plan?”
“Can you think of another way to survive?”
Ignacio barked at her to hurry and Adel pushed away from the fountain. “Winning is the only thing we can do.”
Sweat stung his eyes. Felix swiped his clammy forearm over his brow, earning a snarl from the magister standing over him.
“Do that in the ring, and you’re dead. Do you think your opponent is going to wait for you to wipe your pretty face?”
The end of a wooden gladius jabbed his gut before Felix could swing his own to block the blow.
He bit back a grunt at the dull throb of pain and renewed his attack against the dented wooden pole standing in the quadrant of weights.
Despite growing up in a family of lanistae, it was clear within a few minutes of being in the hoplomachus ring that Felix needed to begin with the basics. How to hold a gladius, how to swing.
The hits against an immovable post jarred his joints, though the magister assured him he would appreciate it when the time came to swing at a man. What hurts now will be strength later.
Good advice on many levels. So long as one allowed hurt to strengthen and not fester.
Conviction struck more swiftly than any sword.
Cleaving at his heart. He hadn’t exactly done that when his father disappeared—nor when he returned.
His hurt, disillusionment, and anger had festered into a bitter unforgiveness.
Weak and unbecoming. Perhaps that was the reason he’d striven to free the gladiators.
Why he could not bear to see Adel trapped by her own bitterness and hurt.
Because he had been trapped too, and there had been no one to rescue him.
The trainer barked commands—left, right, thrust—and Felix obeyed, his mind straying behind, weighted with regret. Forgive me, Lord, for not forgiving him sooner.
The gladius flung from his grip on the next blow, winging across the quadrant and clattering against a pyramid of weights.
“That’s enough for now,” the magister said, eyeing him. “Go get a drink.”
Felix didn’t need to be told twice. He moved toward the stone fountain, recently vacated by a huddle of gladiatrices. His arms and shoulders ached. Muscles quivered. He leaned an elbow on the lip of the fountain and scooped cool water to his mouth.
“How the mighty have fallen.”
He’d recognize that sneering voice anywhere.
Felix looked up. “What do you want, Sergius?”
The elder medicus shrugged and smirked. “I have everything I want. Thanks to your stupidity.”
Felix scooped another drink to his lips, trying, and mostly succeeding, to let the man’s words roll over him like water.
He straightened. “Congratulations to you, then. I hope you can cover your drunken disappearances and botched procedures long enough to enjoy it.” He bowed and turned away, stooping to grab up the gladius on his way back to the palus.
He struck the stupid pole until he was nearly senseless with fatigue, and the call to the triclinium came as a welcome rest.
He dropped into an empty seat, only to have a knee rammed into his side.
“Move. That’s my spot.”
Felix pushed back to his feet and surveyed the room. Searching for an empty space.
An arm nudged him. “This way, medicus.” Gaiseric edged in front of him and beckoned him to follow.
They crossed the room to a table of secutors and hoplomachi, and Gaiseric pointed to a space beside him and dropped into his own place.
Felix sat and in moments had a mug of cloudy water and a bowl of steaming mash shoved beneath his nose.
He took a drink of the water and nearly spit it out until he saw the others downing the whole mug.
He swallowed with effort, his mouth tasting of ash.
“What are you doing here?” Gaiseric asked, and Felix dared to take a bite before answering.
The barley gruel was nutty and slightly sour, the grains sold to the ludus from the city beer brewers—not as popular a beverage as wine, but the availability had grown in recent years as legionaries sent to the north had returned home with a penchant for the brew.
Felix didn’t care for it. But he cared less for a growling stomach.
He looked up to see all eyes around the table trained on him. “I . . .” Would their indifference change if they knew what he was doing? Or, rather, what he had done? Would the knowledge make them hostile, or friends? There was little time to debate and less to answer.
He bent over his bowl. “Does it matter?”
“It might.” Gaiseric’s tone was tight.
Strange how two sharp syllables could carry such weighted question and threat.
“Jovan is angry with me.” Felix swiped a bite of gruel onto the bread, neither of which improved the other.
“So angry that he sells his own kin to the ludus?” Gaiseric lifted a pale brow. “What did you do? Steal from him?”
He couldn’t be closer to the truth.
Felix forced down a sip of the ash-water, pressing his fist against his mouth to keep it down before responding. “He bet against the . Crippled her chance of succeeding. So I warned her. He lost a . . . a lot of money. Blandus Albus too. I am not their favorite person just now.”
The gladiator ran his tongue over his teeth as he regarded Felix. “Why would you do that?”
Nothing about his voice or expression gave away how Gaiseric would feel no matter how Felix answered the question.
He hesitated. It was a question he might have wanted an answer to as well if he were in their shoes.
But he had to act with caution now. Telling the wrong gladiator at the wrong time could end in death for them all.
He would need to speak with Adel, ask who could be trusted.
“For the money and fame, of course.”
Snorts and muttered curses from around the table answered this remark. Heads bowed over bowls. Gaiseric’s eye twitched before he scooped up another bite and hunched over his bowl. He lowered his voice. “I know you’re not here for coin.”
“Medicus.”
Felix jerked his head up as a guard he’d never seen before gestured him away from the table with a quick tip of his bald head.
He took one last bite of gruel and downed the mug as he stood and followed.
The guard said nothing as they stepped into the covered portico outside the dining hall.
Felix crossed his arms as the cold air hit his bare chest. His whole life he’d seen gladiators dressed in nothing but loincloths, but he hadn’t considered how cold they must be when they weren’t training.
“What are you doing?” the guard questioned.
“Eating.”
“Why aren’t you in the clinic?”
“Seems everyone wants to know that today.”
The guard’s eyes darted around the empty courtyard before centering on Felix again. “We have mutual friends. Should I tell them you’re in trouble?”
He eyed the man, wondering if he spoke true or if this was an effort from Jovan to discover his connections.
“Friends . . . ,” Felix repeated slowly.
“Gaius and the Battering Ram.” The guard lowered his head and voice as he spoke the names, and Felix noticed the tanned circle on the top of his head that didn’t match the paleness of the newly shaved sides. It was the hairline of a monk.
“My part has been discovered,” Felix whispered. “I’m a prisoner here. We need a new plan. Tell Telemachus to find my pater.”