Ozorne smoothed her back. “I love you, too, sweetheart.” Then he scowled at Arram. “And there’s a friendly greeting from you.”
Arram smiled and hugged his friend with a care for Preet. Ozorne hugged him fiercely in return. “No, no, Ozorne, I missed you, of course I did. It’s been miserable, but you shouldn’t be here! It’s too dangerous!”
“Dangerous monkeywash!” his friend replied scornfully. “Even you didn’t know I was here until you saw my shadow. I’ll fix that next time, believe me! Okot doesn’t know because my mother summoned him to report on my status in person. I think she wants to find out if Varice and I have gone to bed yet.”
“Ozorne!” Arram snapped as heat rushed into his cheeks. Preet gave a chuckling sound.
Ozorne clapped him on the shoulder. “Oh, she isn’t interested in me, nor I in her, not like that. Anyway, I gave the guards the slip, sneaked a horse, and came to see if I could find you. I didn’t see you at the games.”
“I was back here,” Arram replied. “Working.”
Ozorne studied him with sharp eyes. “That bad, was it?”
Arram looked down the corridor toward the big room where so many had died.
Ozorne hugged him around the shoulders. “All right, friend.” His voice was gentler than before. “You’re going home. I’ll make sure you don’t get this kind of duty again.”
For a moment the thought of never hearing those screams, smelling those stinks, feeling blood and organs spill through his hands made Arram dizzy. Not to be afraid when a thick-muscled brute caught him alone in the infirmary…He shook it off and smiled at his friend. “Don’t do that. I’m needed here and places like it. Not enough of us can do healing spells. I have a knack for it. And some of these people are all right. Sarge—Musenda—for one. And there’s this woman, Gueda—”
“Oh ho!” Ozorne said, laughing. “A woman!”
He can always make me turn red, Arram thought unhappily as he protested, “It’s not like that. She’s a gladiator, and a good one.”
“Wait, the one with the big cat that was killed?”
Arram nodded.
“She was magnificent,” Ozorne said with awe as Preet toyed with his braids. He wore no beads that would give him away with their noise. “They killed her cat, and we thought she was done. Instead it was like she turned into a tiger herself—outnumbered five to one, and she killed them all. Varice made a fortune betting on her. Did she live?”
Arram smiled. “Yes.” He didn’t say he was the healer who treated her.
Ozorne looked at their gloomy surroundings. “Would you…show me around? I may never get back here. You know they’ll make me pay for this little excursion. I’ll be lucky if Okot doesn’t chain me to my seat whenever I attend games again.”
As little as he wanted to return to those blood-stinking rooms, Arram heard the touch of sadness in his friend’s voice. It was true; the list of things that Ozorne was not allowed to do grew longer each year. He nodded and led his friend up through the underside of the arena. Without emphasizing it, he was careful to ensure that Ozorne saw the dark, stinking cells where the unhurt gladiators and animals were kept before and after combats, cramped lockups without fresh air, water, or privies.
“They deserve better,” Ozorne said grimly as they returned for Arram’s bundles. “They give their lives for us; they should have better places to wait.”
“They deserve to live,” Arram murmured.
“You cannot take the games from the people,” his friend said gently, helping him to collect the various packages of medicines. “There would be rioting. There has been rioting, and murder, when past emperors have tried it. I have a book on the history of the games—you should read it.”
When Arram had everything he needed, Ozorne stood in the corridor and reworked his invisibility spell. “I’ll follow you,” Ozorne said when only his shadow remained. “Where do you go when you’ve dropped these off?”
Arram had meant to attend the lunch, but he couldn’t with his friend there. “Back to my quarters to get my things, and then to the wagon to wait for Master Ramasu,” he said. “We leave once he comes.”
“I’ll ride on your wagon, then,” Ozorne said as they walked down the corridor. Preet flew ahead. “I left my horse tied up outside camp. The trickiest part of this whole adventure has been waiting for someone to pass through a gate so I can go, too.” He fell silent as Arram let them out into the open. The guards waiting there nodded to him.
“I’m the last mage,” Arram told them. “No one else is inside.” He walked on toward the temporary tent where the remaining injured gladiators were housed. He hoped that the sight of these fighters, battling the worst of wounds, their lives still in question, might convince Ozorne that changes should be made to the games. He knew the likelihood of Ozorne’s becoming emperor was small, but as Mesaraz’s heir he would have influence.
The yard was quiet. The wounded were resting. Two guards were dicing quietly in front of the tent: they nodded to Arram and returned to the game. They didn’t notice that Arram held the flap open for a moment before he walked inside, making certain that Ozorne could walk in.
“Make the bird be quiet,” one of the gamblers said. “She’ll wake the lads.”
Preet was screeching from inside the tent. Arram stepped in and pointed at the flap he still held open. “Preet, bad girl!” he scolded. “Out!”
A pair of hands seized him and yanked him aside. A rough, callused hand clapped over his mouth; a muscled arm gripped him by the throat. Preet fled through the smoke hole in the canvas roof. Ozorne, shocked out of his grip on his spell, flickered into view. He was grabbed by a man who had been positioned behind the tent flap.
Arram clawed at the hand that blocked his mouth and nostrils. Suddenly remembering something Varice had told him, he stamped down hard on his captor’s foot. The man behind him grunted; the hand over his mouth loosened. Arram grabbed the arm around his throat and pulled it back enough that he could catch his breath. Without air, he couldn’t remember any spells. He shifted his hand and drove his thumbnail as deeply into the tender flesh next to the big wrist tendon as he could.
A dart of pain shot through his temple. A trickle of warmth rolled down his cheek—he knew it was blood.
“Next time I’ll use more of my blade,” his captor said. “And I recognize your friend. I can hurt him awful bad without killing him. You ease off or I’ll tell my friend where to start.”
Arram looked at Ozorne. His captor had gotten him by the hair and yanked his head back. With his free hand he had a dagger point at Ozorne’s ear. One movement and Ozorne would lose his hearing on that side, if he was lucky. Ozorne’s eyes were wild with rage, but he dared not move.
Arram’s captor said to Ozorne, “I’ve no such qualms about this piece of dog mutton. I’ll start with one of his eyes if you so much as say ‘ouch.’?”