Arram started to shake his head, then thought again. He grinned. “As a matter of fact, a close friend of mine thinks you are the best gladiator who ever lived,” he said. “She would love a favor of yours.”
Once Musenda was gone, Arram shut the door and locked it. Relieved, he sat on a bench and wiped his sweaty forehead on his sleeve. This thing with Kottrun was more like what he’d expected when he first arrived and hadn’t seen until today.
That was wrong of me, he thought shakily. Treating him like trouble. What if he was truly ill? I will have failed him.
He didn’t act ill, his common sense told him. He acted like a bully, or a thief. Arram answered him as he would have answered a bully. If I don’t take it from the likes of Tristan or Diop, why would I take it from him?
Arram considered telling Ramasu but changed his mind. It wasn’t necessary; Musenda had handled Kottrun. And Arram didn’t want to confess that he’d been about to strike a non-mage with his Gift.
Still a little shaky, Arram left the infirmary, then checked and double-checked the locking spells on the windows and doors, in case Kottrun returned to break in. Only then did he go to supper. Soon enough he would be gone, never to return if he had his say. Let another bully clash with Kottrun, someone who was allowed to teach him a lesson.
—
“Don’t waste time easing mild injuries,” Ramasu told Arram the afternoon before the games. The fighters had the day to themselves, so they had no patients. Instead they readied the supplies they would use the next day. “You’ll need your strength for the big ones. Treat them enough to keep them alive for a day, until we can tend their injuries properly. We will have many fighters with wounds that will kill them if we don’t keep them alive. Pass the ones whose hurts you are unsure of to Daleric.”
The gladiators’ usual healer had returned to his cottage on the Arena Road that afternoon. He had brought three more healers with him, two men and a woman, who would help on the day of the games and the days after.
Arram stopped packing a box full of jars of ointments and cloths. “Unsure?”
“Unsure whether their injuries truly require healing or whether they are simply trying to get out of the next battle.” Ramasu put an armload of jars into another box and set them in order. “Some new people will pretend they are worse off than they are, particularly since you are new. Don’t let them do it. If they’re caught by the commander of the arena, they’ll be hanged off the side of the arena at tomorrow’s sunrise.”
“Death by hanging has to be more merciful than the games,” Arram commented as he hammered a lid onto his box.
“They aren’t hanged by the neck. They’re hanged by the wrists and left to rot. The arena is kinder.” Ramasu rested a hand on Arram’s shoulder. “I’ll have a nausea potion for you in the morning. And a sleeping potion tonight, for both of us. Understand, if you served on a battlefield, it would be far worse. There are so many more killed or wounded. This is the closest to a battlefield I can bring you at present.”
Arram began to place bandages in a fresh box. “Why? Why is it needful?”
“Why was the typhoid hospital needful, or any other plague or surgery I’ve brought you to? A mage with healing skills must be ready for such things. This is how we repay the gods for our Gifts.”
Arram nodded, though the thought of working on a battlefield, particularly after the busier days here, made him dizzy. He was dreading the new day so much he had refused his noon meal.
“I knew nothing of desperate sickrooms with more than one person to tend when I was your age,” Ramasu said as they worked. “I was to be a priest of Mithros and rise high in my duke’s service. My marriage to a daughter of His Grace’s house had been arranged since we were children. I was fifteen when my Gift blossomed. Within a year I had been disowned and driven from my city, my father’s parting purse in my hand and my mother’s curse in my ears. I had managed to destroy half of the god’s temple.”
Arram stared at his master in awe. “Mithros’s temple?”
Ramasu began to chuckle. He poured a cup of tea for each of them. “Great Mithros appeared in all his glory over the ruins, picked up his altar piece—which was untouched—and carried it to his preferred location for a new temple. So the god saved my life, but little else. To preserve their name and fortune, my family exiled me. I had only wanted to show the duke what I could do.”
He gave a cup to Arram, who cooled it with a sign he had devised to take the worst heat from food and hot drinks. “Surely you had a teacher,” he said quietly.
“My teacher at home taught clever spells and charms to young nobles,” Ramasu replied. “He was no more ready for me than I was for my Gift. I spent a few years wandering the empire, always working my way toward the university, but stopping to study with anyone who would teach me.” He smiled and looked at the palm of one hand. “I chopped a great deal of wood and vegetables after my coin ran out. For the most part I learned from goodywives and hedgewitches. Proper mages had no interest in a scruffy fellow like me. Horse doctors, they would teach me, but not proper healers. Do me proud, when you go out in the world, Arram.”
“I will, Master Ramasu,” Arram said. His heart burned at the thought of his gentle, if aloof, master being treated like a beggar on the road.
They finished their tea and returned to packing.
When they were done, Ramasu stayed in the infirmary, making entries in his supply records. Arram ambled out into the practice grounds and, with the help of a couple of coins, persuaded the ever-watchful guards to let him go into the menagerie, where the fighting animals were kept. The head keeper warned him to stay away from the cages if he didn’t want to lose a hand, then motioned for him to go ahead after Arram handed over more coins. Nearly everyone knew him by now, and assumed that however young he might be, a mage who could sew up a man’s bum could be trusted not to tease a fighter elephant.
The people who worked with the animals either napped close by or had retreated to their rooms out of the sun. Arram was left to himself to admire—and feel sorry for—the great cats, including the famous Tacuma, rare wolves and hyenas, ostriches, elephants, giraffes, and zebras. The thought of them being ripped apart by gladiators and other animals broke his heart. He prayed for them to the Goddess as Maiden and to the Black God, asking that these torn and scarred veterans of the games be given rest in the Peaceful Realms.
He was taking a shortcut to an outer gate when he heard a familiar voice. “You’ll keep your word, then, and this will be but a taste.” The words were followed by the soft clink of coins.
“I know what I’m doin’, Master.” Arram dimly knew that voice, too. He crept to the edge of the building that concealed him and peered around it, promising himself that he would start carrying a scrying mirror. The shorter man’s back was to him, but Arram was very familiar with the heavily embroidered bronze wrap and the sandals heavy with topaz stones. He had seen Chioké wear both time and time again. The other man was the gladiator Kottrun, who had made him feel so uncomfortable. Now he grinned at Chioké. “You’ll get the victory you want.”
Arram stepped back, soundless. If they were setting up a crooked fight, he wanted nothing to do with it. Wasn’t it bad enough when the fights were straightforward? He wondered what Ozorne would say if he knew his master was involved in cheating at the games.
Chioké was at supper that night, joking with the camp’s captain and the healers. He even got Ramasu to smile slightly, claiming he had done his bit by bringing more supplies. “I would do more…,” he offered with a wicked grin.
“Gods save us, no!” exclaimed Daleric. “The last time you tried to help with the wounded, we had to treat you for a broken arm!”
“I didn’t know that fellow spoke Common,” Chioké protested.
“People really like him,” Arram told Ramasu as they headed to their rooms. “Master Chioké.”
“He makes himself likable,” Ramasu replied, yawning. Then he said quietly, “Until he isn’t. Re
member that. And he doesn’t like to share anything.”
Arram nodded. It was good to hear his own suspicions confirmed.
—
They woke and dressed at dawn, while their guardian brought around their cart. Six men escorted them through the gate into the gladiators’ compound, while Preet grumbled drowsily to herself. He had tried to get her to stay behind, but no matter where he put her she had turned up on his shoulder or, more annoyingly, clinging to his hair, until he surrendered. He kept her in his lap as he looked around him at the gladiators’ home. He had never been allowed beyond the infirmary. Now he was disappointed. All he could see looked the same as the guards’ camp. There was plenty of open ground for practices, barracks for the gladiators, practice dummies and targets, and empty barrels.
“For the practice weapons,” Ramasu murmured. He had noticed the direction of Arram’s gaze. “The guards take them in at night. The gladiators can do a great deal of damage even with blunt wood.”
Arram nodded. He had spent days patching up samples of that damage.
He was denied even a glimpse of the stables or the cages where the wild beasts were held, because a fog had rolled in overnight. It masked all but the closest barracks and hung like a curtain of shadows over the looming arena. Two soldiers rode ahead to unlock the chains that held the gate closed. Then Ramasu raised a hand and murmured a few words. Slowly one half of the gate swung outward. Ramasu drove the cart into the tunnel through the arena.
Although the broad road was packed dirt, their cart still sent up echoes. So did the slam of the gate as the soldiers closed it behind them. They were alone in the torchlit vastness of the sleeping arena, under the many rows of seats.
“The guards will return with Daleric and his people,” Ramasu said quietly. “I like to be set up and have time to read and meditate before the noise gets bad. Which reminds me.” As the cart cast echoes from the tunnel’s roof and sides, he reached into the pocket of the cheap, light robe he was wearing, a duplicate of the one he had given to Arram for the day. From it he drew a small packet. “You’ll want these. Don’t worry about leaving them in. You’ll be able to hear those close to you perfectly well. They’ll be shouting as it is.”
Arram opened the packet to discover three pairs of wax earplugs. He smiled. “Thank you. These will help, and I’d forgotten. Varice had some for me the last time I had to go to the games.”
“She’s a clever lady,” Ramasu said. “Devoted to you and Ozorne, I understand.”
“Well, to Ozorne,” Arram said, looking at Preet. He touched the warmth that was Varice’s charm. It was the only thing he carried in his belt pouch today.
“No, I am fairly certain she is devoted to both of you, in different ways,” Ramasu commented. “Of course, it would be a waste if any of the three of you were to marry at so early a stage in your careers.”
The word was like a hot poker in Arram’s ear. “Marry!” he yelped, his voice echoing through the tunnel. “No, sir, no, none of us are thinking— Well, Ozorne’s mother has brought it up, for him, but he doesn’t want to yet, nor do Varice and I! We haven’t even gotten certificates, and we all want to be masters of one sort or another!”
Ramasu glanced sideways at him. “In the world outside the university, many people are married by now, remember, and starting families. There’s no shame in it.”
Arram shook his head. “But there’s so much more to learn! I know I’m supposed to be advanced, but I look at what my masters can do and what is in the books, and I realize I’ve hardly begun to learn my craft!”
“I see. Forgive me—you’re at an age when many students discover that love, or their families’ marital alliances, are stronger than their studies.” Ramasu drew the wagon up. They had reached the gates on the other side of the tunnel. To their right were cells, large ones, barred with iron. To their left was a single great opening, closed by heavy wooden doors and locked.
Ramasu dismounted and touched a finger to the left-hand lock. It fell open. He pressed one hand to each half of the door. Both sides swung inward, revealing a shadowed interior. Returning to the cart and picking up a box, he asked Arram, “Would you do the lamps inside? Only those overhead, not the wall or ground ones.”
Arram gulped, then reached into the room with his power. To his great relief, the overhead lamps were huge metal braziers held in baskets of chains. Their contents were not charcoal but wax studded with a multitude of wicks. He didn’t have to manage a tiny light, but a small wave of flame that swept along the braziers until all were lit.
“Very good,” Ramasu said with approval. “A finely tuned use of your Gift. Now let’s unpack.”
In stowing boxes on shelves along the far wall, Arram learned the room. There were twenty stone tables there, all with gutters in each side like a butcher’s table. Arram gulped; these would carry away blood. There were new tall leather buckets at one end of each table, he assumed for trash.
“Twenty?” he asked, his voice cracking.
“Usually needed only when the emperor wants a great battle, or a blood feud has sprung up among the gladiators,” Ramasu said. “Once we’re done stocking the wall shelves, we will put surgical supplies and burn treatments on the shelves underneath the first ten tables from the door.”
Arram nodded. The healer would be able to reach what was needed easily, at least at first.
“Daleric is responsible for hiring and training runners,” Ramasu explained. “They will restock when they see you are low on supplies. If you need something, hold up your hand and a runner will come for your orders. They will also fetch us water, or tea, or even something to eat during rests.”
Arram couldn’t envision any time this day when he would want to eat.
“The bucket for discarded cloths, pieces of weapons, and so on is also useful for vomiting,” Ramasu said gently. “I know this will be hard, Arram. Do not be heroic. I have often done this on my own with Daleric’s people. Sometimes I work here with two mastery students. I—”
“Two mastery students!” Arram cried, as close to hysterics as he had ever been in his life. “Then why not at least bring another instead of using only me?”
Ramasu raised his eyebrows until Arram caught his breath. Then he said, his voice kind and firm, “Because I knew you would be enough.”
Later, as they listened to the clatter that heralded the approach of Daleric and his companions in the tunnel, Ramasu cast a shielding spell around them and murmured in Arram’s ear, “Mind what you say. There are listening spells here as well as the camp. And, son, if you have mercy for these people, once they’ve taken a sufficiently bad injury, don’t heal them completely. They will have to go back into the arena today if you do. Unless, of course, they demand to return. The others can finish their healing tomorrow or the next day.”
“Return to the games?” Arram whispered, horrified.
“Some do. Hekaja only asks that we heal them, not that we tell them what to do with their bodies,” the master replied. He touched his fingers to his lips and to his forehead in salute to the goddess of healing; Arram did the same. He had noticed the goddess’s image over the door to the tunnel. Someone had given her a fresh dressing of vivid paints, clearly an act of worship. Without thinking, his magic quick to his hand after days of constant use, Arram called up two small balls of light and sent them gliding to the figure. He silently asked the goddess to accept his gift. The balls hung in the air for a moment. Then each moved to one of the figure’s outstretched hands and remained, as if she herself worked healing magic in the room.
“Very well done,” Ramasu said, resting a hand on Arram’s shoulder with approval. “I did my worship this morning. I have to say, I would not have thought of this, but I will from now on. It will give heart to all who see it. Now, let’s try to get something to stay in your belly, if only for a little while.”
Arram would remember that day as a giant stinking roar in hot darkness, one where hands clutched his arms and hands and, once, his thro
at. Despite the wax plugs, his ears filled with the screams of the wounded and the dying. They were carried into the room on stretchers by soldiers or gladiators, sometimes by the very gladiators who had been trying to kill them a moment before. They were slung onto a freshly cleaned table, where the next free healer looked at them and judged whether to take this one himself or herself or to refer the case to Daleric or Ramasu.
He vomited into the bucket more than once.
The wounded called on their gods, mothers, lovers. They cursed the emperor and no one hushed them, not there. They begged for death and screamed for life. He learned the truth of what he’d been told, that newcomers were hurt first.
And not only the newcomers. Quomat, who had been married at ten and fought for years, died just as she reached his table. Arram growled and reached deep into his Gift, thinking to go after her spirit and bring it back. He couldn’t lose her to the Black God without so much as a fight!
Then Preet was on his head, pecking, having dropped from her perch on the candleholders above. Arram shook his head to dislodge her and put his hands on the woman’s chest. Suddenly copper fire slid under his palms, coating her entire body to shield her from him. Arram glared up into Ramasu’s face. Three of his patients had died so far. He would not surrender another!
“She has passed into the Peaceful Realms,” Ramasu told him, his eyes steady. “Will you deny her that? Look at her scars. Look inside, at her muscles. How many are nicked and shortened by swords? This isn’t life, Arram. Let her go.”
So he looked, and wept at the ragged mess that battles had made of a good, strong body. “Black God bear you up and give you peace, Quomat,” he whispered.
“Gut wound here!” someone shouted. Ramasu left. Arram turned Quomat’s remains over to the handlers and went to the next clear table. Someone told him there was time enough to catch their wind. The next event was a chariot race of twenty laps—twelve for the Goddess in her three aspects, four for Mithros, and four for the Graveyard Hag. Once the tables were cleared, they could eat if they wished.
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