IGMS Issue 29 (4 page)

Or I could botch the surgery and let him die, either on the table or by breaking the aseptic operating conditions, allowing infection to enter the wound and turn septic, poisoning his blood until he died in days, or a week. But I knew I'd do neither of these. I've never taken a life simply to make mine easier, and I never will. It was time to get to work.

In the last month I'd spent more time away from the surgical quarters than in the three that preceded it, because Metellus was still there recuperating under Blaesus' drunken eye and I found it more comfortable to be elsewhere. Aside from checking his wound twice daily and applying fresh bandages, there was not much I could do for him. Were I not pleased with how cleanly the wound was healing - not a hint of infection - those checks might have been my least favorite times of the day. But I enjoyed seeing the outcome of my work.

The falling sun, a blood-red orange on the horizon, was my signal to return to the infirmary for my evening check of Metellus' leg. I enjoyed the walk from the outside training area, through the underground tunnel, to my quarters. With Thomas dead, Metellus injured, and Pictor assigned to train with a new team, I no longer had a constant looming shadow or a protective escort. I much preferred it that way.

When I arrived at the surgical quarters, Metellus was propped up on one of the cots staring at a piece of cheap paper he held in his hands, his crutches near to hand. Blaesus, sitting on the cot next to him, was bleary-eyed and near to sleep. After washing my hands, I went to check on Metellus' wound. He'd crumpled the paper in his fist. Just as I started to remove the bandages, Metellus snarled, grabbed one of the crutches, and swung it at my head. It cracked into my jaw, spinning me to the ground.

Blaesus shrieked.

I could taste blood in my mouth; I prodded at my teeth with my tongue as I scrambled away from the cot and turned about, looking for Metellus. He'd stood up, a crutch under each arm.

"He admires you, you sack of shit. You! You're nothing but dirt. Less than dirt, and I'll see you dead."

Blaesus, shocked out of his stupor, fled out into the tunnel.

If Metellus hadn't stood between me and the exit I would have fled as well. As it was, I stood, half-crouched, with an eye on the cots. Metellus might be stronger than me, but with his injured leg, I was the more agile. If I could keep the cots between us, he'd be hard-pressed to reach me. I could circle towards the door, get him to follow, then run. But as I moved to the right, he hobbled further back, slamming the door to the tunnel shut. There was no lock, but it would take time to open the door, time I might not have.

"I'll gut you like you did my wife, string out your entrails, and piss on them."

Did I wait, and hope Blaesus had run for help, and not just fled? Given time, Metellus might find a way to block the door from being opened. Or did I goad Metellus into coming for me, giving myself a chance to break past him or a chance to be taken out by him.

"She deserved it, your wife. She was a drunk and a whore. I did your children a favor when I ripped my knife through her flesh."

"Butcher!" Metellus stabbed his crutches into the floor in front of him, swinging himself forward at a breakneck pace. I held my ground, waiting until he was a body length from me, and committed to his forward momentum, before I ducked to the side, ran around the cots, and dashed for the door. Metellus bellowed as I pulled it open. I ran straight into Flavus' chest.

Flavus pushed me out into the hallway, and he and Alfred entered the quarters, shutting the door behind them. I backed way down the tunnel, towards the closed gate of the Colosseum, and waited in a shadowed alcove. Out of sight, out of sound. Minutes passed - it seemed like hours - before I ducked my head out. The door to the surgical quarters was open.

More minutes passed before I crept back to the surgical quarters and peered in. No one was there. In the silence, I noticed details I'd begun to take for granted: the scent of antiseptic underscored by whisky, and the smoke stains on the ceiling from the gas lamps. And one detail that was new: the crumpled paper on the floor by the center cot. Picking it up, I smoothed the paper out on the surface of the cot.

A letter, the handwriting unpracticed, but legible. It was addressed to Father, signed by Stolo. Certain phrases jumped out at me:

. . . glad to get your letter . . . sorry it took so long to write back . . . excited when you stabbed the terror bird . . . couldn't breathe when you fell, but I didn't cry . . . haven't cried since mother died . . . thank the chirugeon for saving you . . . wish to study surgery, to be like him someday . . .

One phrase I re-read:
haven't cried since mother died.

I didn't cry when I found out my mother was dead. It was just black ink on paper, a small mention in the newspaper obituaries nearly three years after I left her. I was working by then, apprenticed to a surgeon with dubious research methods. He'd hired me because I did as he told, no questions asked. Or, rather, no questions asked that didn't pertain to medical science.

That night, my master and I had made our bi-weekly trip to the graveyard. Outside the university most of the corpses that were made available to surgeons for dissection came from the
damnati ad mortem
, most of which were badly mauled by animals. My master wanted undamaged bodies to study. As we dug up the first fresh unmarked grave we came to - it was his policy never to disturb a marked grave as the family might take note - I wondered if my mother might be at the bottom of it. Might we dissect her, find out what had gone wrong with her? But the bloated corpse, when we uncovered it, had a penis.

I never did find out what had gone wrong with my mother.

Two men with a gurney dropped off Metellus' body early the next morning. It had been found by Silus' guards at the bottom of the stairs leading into the tunnel from the Ludus. They told me he must have fallen on the stairs and broken his neck, but although I could see his spinal cord was snapped, the injuries from the fall were consistent with postmortem damage. I kept my mouth shut.

Flavus showed up as I finished filling out the death certificate. The guards were due back soon to remove Metellus' body for disposal, but for the moment we were alone. I hadn't seen Blaesus since he'd run off the night before, but I figured he'd polished off a bottle of whisky elsewhere to settle his nerves and passed out in the process.

"You've examined the body?" Flavus asked as he came to stand by it.

"I have."

"Then you know?"

I nodded, but there was a question I had to ask. "Why?"

"On the sands, we live or die by our own skill, and by the will of the crowd. Some days we walk off the sands, victorious, but when we leave it injured, it's the skill of the surgeon that determines whether we live or die."

I signed my name on the death certificate. "He didn't see me as a surgeon."

"He was lost to reason," Flavus said. "He would have seen you dead, and damn the consequences. You're the best surgeon we've ever had."

He stood there silently for awhile. I wondered if he expected me to thank him. Would he be insulted if I did? I stayed silent.

After Flavus left, I pulled out a blank sheet and began the notification letter.

Stolo and Pulla, I regret to inform you that your father, Metellus, succumbed to his injuries yesterday.

It was true enough, in its own way. Since his wife's death, he'd suffered from a gangrene of the soul, a devouring desire for revenge that had, in the end, killed him.

Never forget that he loved you, and sought to protect you to his last breath.

It was only words on a page. They held no meaning.

Caro Carvetii.

I rested the nib of my pen in the ink pot as I stared down at my name, a name Stolo knew to be the Butcher's. Tears slid down my cheeks. I brushed them away before they could stain the paper. I hadn't cried since I fled from my mother the last time she spoke to me.

At the opiate house, the day we were put out of the lodging home, after the most recent man had finished with her and stumbled off, I walked over and put my hand on my mother's shoulder. She'd looked up at me, her eyes unfocused, and said, "You want to have a go?" Then she'd named the price she was charging.

After a minute, I scratched my name out and wrote in its place:

The Chirugeon of the Colosseum, New Rome.

Sometimes words matter.

Alec Chu traveled the high road, swinging his bot through the trees. The wet branches shook with the storm's convulsions, but penetrating the kidnapper's camp perimeter was easy from up here, and the rain and wind didn't touch him. Not in the Hole. When you were riding the signal, theatre conditions were all only tactical concerns.

"On spot." White light flared through the trees and thunder rolled, but Lucy's voice came in clear. Storms couldn't touch the signal. Before the thunder faded, the rest of the squad echoed her. "On spot . . . Ditto . . . Ready . . ." Taylor, Bodi, and Olivia. Alec landed his bot on a thick branch, dug his claws in and stared down at the miserable collection of huts mired in the mud below. His optics lit four green stars in the brush, marking where his squad-mate's bots crouched.

"Alec?" Hastings, the mission conductor, back in the Hole. Alec could hear a lighter snapping behind his words. That old bastard always waited until their bodies were strapped into their rigs and their minds were halfway around the world before he lit up. So much for a healthy work place. "Gimme status."

Safe in Albuquerque, in the Hole with his squad, wrapped, wired, and tubed into this teleprescence rig. Sucking your smoke. Thinking like that could ruin a mission. Alec drank in the data pouring into his nerves and became his bot again.

"I'm good."

"Right. Five on spot. Squad Leader Taylor, confrontation command is yours."

"Command accepted, Conductor Hastings." Taylor's voice snapped crisp across the signal. "You know your assignments. Time's everything. Olivia, start the clock."