Ramasu woke him before dawn to a good-sized breakfast. “Eat,” the master said, digging into his own meal. “Now that we are here, they will cease to go easy on the fresh arrivals to the fighting force.”
Arram tried to speak past the lump in his throat. “Easy? They went easy on those men?”
“Yes. Today the new warriors, who believe they are practiced, will learn that this arena is harder than they ever dreamed. As for the New Meat…” Ramasu shook his head. “Let us hope they have enough native ability to survive their first four games. If they can do that, their chances are better than half that they will live past their first year.”
Ramasu was not joking about the sudden quickening of business. The gladiator with the compound fracture was even drafted to soak cloths. Arram quickly showed him to teach those who could walk how to wash their injuries in water that was treated to clean out dirt and infection.
Arram took charge of those with broken or cut arms and legs. Ramasu cared for those with more serious injuries. Preet, scolded away from the work down on the floor, perched in the rafters and sang, her voice soothing the wounded.
On their third day Arram was smearing salve into a new man’s sunburned back when a shadow fell over them. “If you don’t mind?” he asked the shadow’s owner politely. “I can’t tell what I’ve gotten and what I’m missing.”
The shadow moved.
Arram finished the job and told the gladiator he had treated, “You’ll be fine when you go to bed. You shouldn’t burn like that again with the charm I gave you earlier. Now,” he said, looking for the shadow’s owner. “What may I do for—” He recognized the large black man leaning against the wall nearby. “Musenda!” he cried, grinning and holding out his hands. The big man clasped them warmly. “It’s wonderful to see you!”
The gladiator smiled. “Good to see you. You’ve grown, haven’t you?”
Arram was shocked: he was now just half a head shorter than the gladiator. “I must have done so, though it was not my intention,” he said as the patients close enough to hear chuckled. “Now I see why the seamstresses keep complaining about lengthening my clothes.”
“Arram, you know this man?” Having finished with his patient, Ramasu came over to see who was talking to his student. “Mithros guard us all, Musenda! Or may I still call you Sarge?”
Musenda shook his head. “You can always call me Sarge, Master. It’s the others I must remind I’ve never been a soldier. Even the soldiers do it, once they hear me speak out.”
“You mean screech,” said a man with a sprained wrist.
“You mean bellow,” added a woman with a broken rib.
“However it is,” Musenda said, looking at the injured gladiators, his right eyebrow raised, “I can’t make them stop, so I live with it.”
“How is your sister-in-law? How are the children?” Arram inquired. He motioned for the woman with the broken rib to sit up straight. She did so, wincing, and he cast the painkilling spell for her.
As Arram lay a wrapping of his power on her to see if she had more hurts, Musenda said, “My sister-in-law is well. She’ll be pleased that you asked after her. I won’t have the chance to see her much longer, though. They leave for Tortall next month.”
“Do you begrudge her?” asked the female gladiator as Arram gently placed his hands over the broken rib. Seeing her broken bone in his mind, he murmured the brief words of the spell to mend it, making sure that each splinter fit into its former place. Finished, he glanced at the woman and at Musenda.
“Of course I don’t begrudge her,” Musenda replied. “She is happy. Her new husband is a good man. I’ll miss them, though, and the little ones.”
“Tortall?” Arram asked. “Why?”
“Her man works for horse dealers. They want to open a new branch there. They asked him to go—he’s one of the best trainers they have.” Musenda shrugged. “They offered him a fine wage and a house of his own. I should have such luck.”
“Oh, remind me, I brought some toys for the children. Not much, just some little things,” Arram told the big man. To the woman he said, “Meat, as much as you can eat, milk, and cheese.” She raised and lowered the arm on the side of the once-broken rib. “Light work today and tomorrow. Nothing with that arm. You should do well after that.”
The woman smiled. “If you were but a few years older, I’d give you a proper thank-you,” she said, getting to her feet. “I’ll wager those eyes are breaking the girl mages’ hearts.” She kissed Arram on the cheek and left, cackling gleefully.
“Don’t be looking for no kiss from me,” growled the man with the sprained ankle.
Arram blushed and tended to the gladiator’s sprain. Later, when he returned from getting a drink of water, he found Ramasu speaking with Musenda. The infirmary was empty of patients, so he collapsed on a bench and relaxed among the cooling spells.
“I had no idea that you two knew one another, or I would have sent word when we arrived,” the master was saying to the big gladiator.
“We met at the games, when he fell off the railing and nearly hit the sands,” Musenda explained. He grinned at Arram. “I’ll wager anything you like that Ua will remember you. Elephants remember everything. She took him in her trunk, stood on her hind legs, and handed him up to his family, as pretty as you please,” he explained to Ramasu. “Arram, you were what?”
“Young,” Arram muttered, blushing.
“That’s how Ua became the most popular elephant here,” Musenda told Ramasu. “They won’t even make her fight anymore. She just marches in the parades and pats the children at the rail. And has little ones who become champions.”
Arram’s stomach cramped. It was wonderful to know that the glorious creature didn’t risk her life in the battles now, but how could she stand giving her children up to the arena? He had worked often with Lindhall’s elephants, many of them too old or injured to fight, and the master had taught Arram everything he knew of the great creatures. They were more intelligent than most animals, and they had their own culture.
Musenda looked at Arram. “Are you all right, lad?”
Arram shook his head. “I never understand why people are so happy to see humans and animals chopped up in the arena. Isn’t life brutal enough? The waste is indecent. So is the—the joy the audience takes in the killing of innocent people.” Thinking about the conversations he’d heard at school about the various gladiators, he added, “Mostly innocent people, and innocent animals. It should be stopped.”
“Plenty of us would like that. Or we’d like it if contests were declared over before someone was killed,” Musenda said. “Time was, a fight to the death was rare. Not anymore. Our master emperor likes the sight of blood. So does his heir. That’s to be expected, I suppose, being a general and all.” He shrugged. “And who cares? We’re only slaves, when all’s said and done.”
“Valuable ones,” Ramasu said.
“Valuable? Not enough to let us live on a day nobles bet their gold on your opponent making a kill. Or when the crowd is crazed with blood lust and the ruler of the games knows he’d best sacrifice some gladiators or there’ll be a riot, like there was in 402.” Musenda smiled crookedly. “At least we got a new stadium out of that one.”
A gladiator poked his head in the door. “Sarge? Shrike and Wild Dog are brawlin’ again!”
Musenda sighed. “If anyone dies in these games, I pick those two. Good to talk with you both. I’ll come for the toys later, and my thanks.” He left at a fast trot.
As the days passed, Musenda—Sarge—became a regular visitor, whether he came with injured fighters or on his own. Arram often found Ramasu and the gladiator in conversation, walking around the exercise yard during quiet periods. Those came more frequently in the second week, when the newest gladiators had learned something and those from lesser arenas had been taught respect for their place in this one. As they learned, so did Arram. He also listened.
Most told him how they became gladiators. One woman, Quomat, broke Arram’s heart. She’d been married at ten, a practice among many of the empire’s tribes. After several miscarriages before she was fourteen, her village healer declared her barren. Her husband sold her to pay the bride price for his new wife.
“A merchant bought me. I was fine at his house at first,” she told Arram as he worked on a deep cut in her left thigh. Across her golden-brown stomach, left bare by the brief shirt that was part of her practice gear, was the tattoo “Not for You.” “They hardly beat anyone, and I could do any chore they gave me,” she said. “The meals was good. Then I started to grow, up top and my bum. The men—not just slaves!—they fought over me. Mistress decided I was too much trouble and sold me. The master of fighters at the local arena saw me on the block, and here I am.”
Arram finished and gave his usual care instructions. “Would you leave if you could, Quomat?” he asked, curious. She had a scar from her right temple across the bridge of her nose, and she had lost a breast to the gods of battle.
She slid off the table and stood, wincing as she put weight on the healed leg. “Sonny, maybe you’re trying to trick me or maybe you’re just green, but what you asked can get a girl killed. I’m a slave. I don’t have choices, only owners.” She patted his cheek with a brown hand knotted from years of wielding sword and spear. “I’ll give you credit and say you’re green. There are worse ways to live than this. Like being pounded by an old man when you’re only ten.”
She was barely out the door when two more patients came in. Arram turned away to scrub a tear from his eye before he settled them.
Not all tales were sad. Three men sold themselves to the arena “for the glory,” they said. Arram didn’t understand. A six-year veteran of the games was a soldier who had killed a fellow soldier: he’d been given a choice of death or the arena. One female gladiator, Gueda, came from a tribe where women and men alike were fighters. She had been caught by enemies and sold to the arena, where she liked the life.
“I’m one of four women as’ll take on a man,” she told Arram as he cleaned and mended claw marks in her side. She cackled gleefully, causing him to make a puzzled noise. She explained, “A’ course, I do me own fightin’ with a trained tiger at me side, against three to five gladiators!”
“It seems to me working with a tiger is as dangerous as fighting against a man,” Arram murmured, touching the skin next to her longest wound. His Gift spilled into it.
“Tacuma was just testy this mornin’,” Gueda explained, twisting to watch Arram work. “I’ve told them and told them don’t give ’im mutton, it makes ’im mean, but do they listen? I’m only the handler. Mayhap next time I’ll feed a sheep t’ Tacuma, aye. I’ll turn ’im loose in the shed when they fix the cats’ meals, see if the butchers like Tacuma when ’is belly aches, me poor big boy.”
“That seems ill-advised,” Arram said absently, using the spell to bind each layer of skin and muscle evenly. Her “poor big boy” had cut all the way down to her ribs.
“I suppose you’re right. Bad t’ give ’em a taste for human. They’re ruined if that happens.” She fell silent, only to stiffen a few moments later. “What’s that noise?”
During her silence Arram sealed her wounds. Now he placed a cream on the welts to fight infection. “What noise?” he asked. A distant roar reached his ears.
“Lady of the Cats, that’s Tacuma! Are you near done?” She rose to her knees. “If they handle ’im when I’m not there, they’ll get more than a scratch!”
“Give me a moment and listen to me,” Arram said, trying not to be impatient. Realizing that she was not listening, he wrote instructions on a sheet from his workbook and ordered her to wait. He rushed into the stillroom to put up a jar of infection-fighting ointment, since she was plainly the last person who would go easy on her wounds. When he returned he saw that she had taken a light tunic kept for those who wore shirts, and had it half over her head. The moment she was dressed she swiped the ointment from Arram’s hand, glanced at the instructions, and kissed his cheek.
“Nice work, youngster,” Gueda said with a grin. “If you ever visit with your girl, tell the guards I said you could come see me and Tacuma, no charge.”
The afternoon was filled with lighter injuries than Gueda’s. Other visitors assured Arram that Tacuma quieted down once his human had come into view, before he could do serious damage to those who had fed him mutton. Gueda herself brought her cat around to meet Arram and Ramasu after the noon meal, before the animal settled for his afternoon nap. Both healers acknowledged the cat’s splendor, Ramasu at a somewhat greater distance than Arram.
“But I thought you liked cats,” Arram teased his master gently after Gueda and her companion had left.
Ramasu lifted his eyebrow. “If you like him, you may play with him. I will keep the kind of distance that shows so large a creature proper respect. Perhaps even a little more distance, so there are no misunderstandings.”
Arram grinned and turned to greet their next patient, a cook with a burned hand.
As things quieted near the supper hour, Ramasu left him in charge and went to take a nap. Preet chose the same time to fly outside.
Arram cleaned the infirmary, then sat out front, chin in hand. Gueda’s mention of “his girl” that morning had stayed with him. He missed Varice more than he had thought he would: her laugh, her teasing, her perfumes, her touch on his shoulder when she wanted to say something personal. He missed her, and Ozorne, and his masters. He missed the university gardens and the quiet libraries, the breezes that blew cool over the fountains, and the comfort of his room. He knew he would see his friends soon, but in the time between, the day of the games loomed like a thousand years.
He was occupying himself by rolling fresh bandages when a shadow fell over his work. He looked up. A burly gladiator stood in the open doorway. “Where’s the master?” he demanded.
“Out until after supper, but what is the problem? I am able to handle most injuries,” Arram replied.
The gladiator snorted. “You? You’re naught but a pup.”
Arram straightened. “I was healer enough to look after Gueda’s wounds,” he retorted.
The man snorted a second time and walked farther into the infirmary, drifting around as he surveyed the contents of the countertops. His eyes flicked too often toward the stillroom. “What kind of injury do you have?” Arram asked. “Or is a friend the injured one?” The stranger made him uneasy.
“What’s in there?” the man asked, pointing his thumb at the stillroom.
“Nothing of interest to you,” Arram said, frowning. Was this fellow trying to find the more serious medicines? “And the room is locked.”
“But you have a key.” The gladiator looked him over, sizing him up.
“I do not.” It was a lie; Arram knew the spells that would open the room. Now he really disliked this man. “Unless you are hurt or seriously ill, I must ask you to leave.” He moved until he stood directly in front of the stillroom door. He fumbled for a protection spell that would be just enough to send this man on his way. He was terrified that he would use the wrong thing.
“I have a headache.” The man took a few steps toward Arram, a smile on his mouth. Arram recognized the expression in his eyes: it was contempt, something he knew all too well from school. “Give me something for it,” the gladiator ordered.
“Your training chiefs have headache medications,” Arram replied. Ramasu had explained that on the first day.
“But I want healing from you, boy.” The man shook his arms out in front of him, as boxers and masters of unarmed combat did. He clenched his fists, making the joints crackle. His muscles bulged.
Arram called a ball of glittering black fire to his hand. “Go to your training master, please,” he said calmly, glaring. “Before I help you outside.”
“Kottrun, what are you doing here?” Musenda walked in. “The practice chief is looking for you.”
“I have a headache,” the other gladiator snapped as Arram slowly absorbed his Gift. Kottrun added, “And this piece of arena bait—”
Musenda cut him off. “You’ll have it worse when the practice chief gets his hands on you. Besides, you know the chiefs carry what’s needful for the usual things.”
Kottrun glared at Arram. “You’ll regret this,” he said, his voice so quiet only Arram would hear. He walked out, passing too close to Musenda for politeness. Arram watched him go.
“What was he really after, youngster?” Musenda asked. “You’re standing by the room with the serious medicines.”
“We had only reached the headache area of our conversation,” Arram explained. He silently cursed the bone-deep school tradition of never reporting bad behavior to instructors. Besides, the way days in the camp went, he might never have to deal with Kottrun again.
Musenda slapped the doorpost casually. “Well, if he bothers you, let Ramasu or me know. Why don’t you lock up and go get something to eat?”
“I’ll do that, as soon as I’ve finished my chores,” Arram assured the older man. “Thank you. Oh, and wait!” He ran into the stillroom and retrieved the sack with the toys he had gotten for Musenda’s family. “They aren’t much, but I thought the children would like them,” he explained as he gave the sack to the gladiator.
Musenda looked at the little doll, the lion, and the gorilla, all with moving wooden limbs. “You’re a good-hearted fellow,” he said gruffly. “If I can ever do anything for you…”
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. Remember 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.”