Chapter 7
Chapter Seven
Sulla
Day three. Evening.
Before I’m ready to enter the tent, I walk the perimeter of the camp. The routine steadies me.
When I enter the barracks tent I’m hit with the smells of wet wool, mud, and exhaustion.
The curtain that separates the men’s side from the women has been pulled back during the day.
Most contestants collapsed onto their cots after the cold-water challenge and haven’t moved since.
A few are at medical getting checked for hypothermia.
Blake is complaining to anyone who’ll listen about the “inhumane conditions.”
I’m sitting on my cot with my boots.
They’re soaked through. After three days of rain, the leather is waterlogged, already starting to stiffen. If I don’t treat them tonight, they’ll be rigid by morning. Rigid leather means more blisters. Blisters mean infection. Infection meant death in the arena.
Old habits.
I unlace them completely, pull out the insoles, and stuff the boots with paper towels from the latrine. That draws moisture but it’s not enough. The leather itself needs attention.
In the ludus, we maintained our equipment obsessively. Armor, weapons, boots—everything. Your life depended on your gear, so you learned. The armorer taught us that wet leather dies if you dry it wrong. Too fast, too hot, it cracks and becomes useless. You have to coax it back slowly.
I check the small kit I brought. The crew confiscated most personal items, but they let us keep basic toiletries. I have a small container of petroleum jelly—modern equivalent of the animal fat we used in Rome. It will work.
I work methodically. Remove the towels once they’re saturated. Replace them with fresh. While the boots continue air-drying, I take my knife and scrape off the worst of the mud caked in the seams. Carefully. Leather is already stressed; too much pressure and it tears.
Around me, people are stirring. Someone groans. Someone else is trying to stand and using his mattress to lever himself up.
Trevor limps past my cot toward the latrine. When he comes back, he’s moving worse than before. He sits on his cot—two down from mine—and starts unlacing his boots with shaking hands.
When he pulls them off, I can see the problem even from here. The leather is already stiff, creased wrong. And his socks have blood on them.
He stares at his boots as if they’ve betrayed him. Picks one up, tries to flex it. It barely bends. His face crumples.
“Fuck,” he says quietly. More despair than anger.
I could ignore this. Should ignore this. Not my problem. In Rome, you looked after your own equipment. If someone else’s gear failed, that was their weakness to manage.
But I’m not in Rome.
I watch him for another moment. He’s trying to massage the boot back to life, but he’s doing it wrong—pulling when he should be working the leather gradually, section by section.
The choice sits in my chest. Heavy. Unfamiliar.
Help or don’t help.
In the ludus, I wouldn’t have hesitated. Not my concern. Let him fail.
But that’s who I was.
“Trevor.”
He looks up, surprised. I don’t think I’ve said his name directly before.
“Bring your boots here.”
“What?”
“Your boots. Bring them.”
He hesitates, then limps over, boots in hand. Sits on the edge of my cot.
I take one from him. The leather is worse up close—stiff, already cracking at the flex points. But not ruined. Not yet.
“You dried them too fast,” I say. “Near the heater?”
“Yeah. I thought—”
“I know. Seems logical. But heat kills wet leather. Makes it rigid.” I flex the boot carefully, working the stiff section. “It can be saved. Probably.”
“How?”
I show him by working a small amount of petroleum jelly into the worst creases. Not too much—just enough to soften the fibers. Then I flex it gently, repeatedly, coaxing the leather back to pliable.
“The trick is patience. You have to convince the leather to bend again. Force it and it tears. Once it sets hard, it stays that way.”
He watches intently. “Where’d you learn this?”
“Old training. Equipment maintenance.” I don’t elaborate, just hand him the boot back. “Work that section for a few minutes. Small motions. Let the jelly soak in. Then do the other boot. They’ll be functional by morning.”
“You’re sure?”
“If you do it right.”
“Thank you.” He sounds stunned. “Seriously. I thought I was going to have to quit because of my boots.”
He goes back to his cot and starts working the leather carefully.
I return to my own boots. They’re dry enough now. I apply petroleum jelly to the stress points, work it in, flex them methodically. The familiar rhythm is soothing. This, at least, I know how to do.
Juno appears beside my cot. Purple hair, nose ring, covered in tattoos. She’s holding her boots.
“Sulla?” Her voice is tentative. “Trevor said you know how to fix wet boots?”
I look up at her. Could refuse. Could tell her to figure it out herself.
“Let me see them.”
She hands them over. Same problem—dried too fast, leather stiffening. I show her the same technique. Explain it while I work. She watches closely, asks smart questions.
“Why does the jelly work?”
“Replaces the natural oils the water stripped out. Leather is skin. Needs oil to stay flexible.”
“And the flexing?”
“Reminds the fibers how to move. If they set rigid, they stay rigid.”
She nods as she takes her boots back. “Thank you. Really.”
After she leaves, Jacks approaches. Then Zay. Then Sienna. Then a man I think is called James.
I help them all.
It’s strange. Each time someone asks, I expect to feel annoyed. Resentful. In Rome, I would have. Helping was weakness. Giving anything freely meant you had less for yourself.
But I don’t feel that.
Instead, there’s something else. Something I don’t have a name for yet. Maybe satisfaction? Maybe just the absence of resentment.
I’m sitting with Zay’s boot, working a particularly stubborn crease, when I notice Reid watching from across the tent.
She’s maintaining her own gear—organized, exacting, military-precise. But her eyes are on me. Not judging. Measuring.
Our gazes meet. She doesn’t look away immediately.
That’s new.
She nods once. Not approval. Recognition.
I nod back.
She returns to her work. Her attention lingers longer than it should.
By the time I finish helping everyone who asked, it’s nearly dark outside. My own boots are treated and re-laced. The healing blisters on my feet, treated and retaped. The tent is quieter now—people resting, some sleeping already despite the early hour.
I’m putting my gear away when the thought hits me, I helped six people tonight. Freely. Without being forced. Without expecting anything in return.
The ludus master I was would be appalled.
But I’m not appalled. I’m… surprised. At myself. At the fact that it didn’t cost me anything to help. That I’m not weaker for it.
Maybe I’m even stronger.
The thought is so foreign I almost laugh.
Mac enters the tent around 1900 hours, clipboard in hand. The conversations stop.
“Listen up.” His voice cuts through the quiet. “Tomorrow is psychological stress testing. Individual interrogations. We’ll be assessing your mental fortitude under pressure.”
A ripple of unease moves through the tent.
“You’ll be questioned by Directing Staff. The questions will be personal. Uncomfortable. Designed to get under your skin. Your job is to maintain composure. Briefing at 0600. Get some rest. You’ll need it.”
He leaves.
The tent erupts in nervous conversation. Trevor looks terrified. Blake is already complaining that this is “psychological torture.”
I lie back on my cot, hands behind my head.
Interrogation doesn’t frighten me. I’ve survived far worse than questions.
But as I close my eyes, I think about the boots. About choosing to help. About the surprise of not resenting it.
Small choices.
Flavius once said change happens in small choices. Repeated. Tonight I chose differently. Six times.
Tomorrow they’ll try to break me with words and pressure.
But tonight, I helped instead of hurt.
That’s something.
I fall asleep thinking about leather and oil, and the strange weight of gratitude in other people’s voices.
In Rome, no one thanked the ludus master.
Here, they thank me.
I don’t know what to do with that yet.
But I’m learning.