Page 5 of City of Secrets and Shadows
Dreams interrupted by the scuff of footsteps.
I whirled toward the sound, hand instinctively reaching for my gladius. The dragon tensed beside me, its body coiling with sudden alertness.
A figure emerged from the shadows at the edge of the clearing, stumbling slightly under the weight of a burden. Tarshi. My heart leaped in recognition, then plummeted as I realized what – who – he carried. “Septimus!” I rushed forward as Tarshi carefully lowered the unconscious form to the ground. Blood streaked Tarshi’s face, a dark gash visible on his forearm. Septimus lay utterly still, a purple bruise blooming across his temple. Neither man looked victorious.
“What happened?” I demanded, dropping to my knees beside Septimus, checking for a pulse with trembling fingers. Relief flooded me when I found it, strong and steady beneath my touch.
Tarshi set down two heavy packs before answering. “He tried to kill me.”
Three simple words, delivered without emotion, yet they struck me harder than any blow I’d taken in the arena. I looked up at Tarshi, searching his face for lies, for justification, for anything that would make sense of this.
“Why would he—”
“Because of what I am.” Tarshi’s voice remained level, but I saw the muscle in his jaw tighten. “Because men like him will always see me as a monster, no matter what I do.”
I sat back on my heels, caught between them as I had been so many times before. “And you knocked him unconscious.”
“Would you prefer I’d killed him?” There was a genuine question beneath the sharpness of his words. “It would have been easier.”
I turned back to Septimus, gently probing the bruise on his temple. “He’ll have a headache when he wakes, but there’s nolasting damage.” My voice sounded clinical even to my own ears, a learned detachment masking the chaos beneath.
Tarshi nodded, then began unpacking the supplies they’d gathered – water skins, dried meat, medical supplies. He moved with the efficient precision that had made him deadly in the arena, but I noticed the slight favouring of his right side, the careful way he extended his injured arm.
“You’re hurt too,” I said, rising to examine his wounds. “Let me see.”
“It’s nothing.” He tried to turn away, but I caught his wrist, mindful of the gash that ran from elbow to mid forearm.
“This isn’t nothing. It needs cleaning before it festers.” My fingers traced the edges of the wound, assessing the damage. “Did he do this?”
A flicker of something crossed Tarshi’s face – pain or memory, I couldn’t tell. “Yes.”
“And your nose?”
“Also him.” His lips quirked in what might have been a smile under different circumstances. “He fights dirty when cornered.”
“You both do.” I reached for the medical supplies, pulling out a clean cloth and a small jar of healing balm. The scent of herbs filled the air as I opened it – lavender and witch hazel, comfrey root and myrrh. “Hold still. This will sting.”
Tarshi didn’t flinch as I cleaned the wound, his eyes fixed on some distant point beyond my shoulder. I worked in silence, the familiar rhythm of battlefield medicine steadying my hands. How many times had I patched up these two after arena matches? Too many to count.
“He said you would never be safe with me around,” Tarshi spoke suddenly, his voice so low I almost missed the words. “That all Talfen are savages.”
My hands paused in their work. “And you knocked him unconscious instead of killing him. Very savage of you.”
“I wanted to kill him.” The raw honesty in his voice pulled my gaze to his face. “For a moment, I wanted to prove him right. To be exactly the monster he believes I am.”
I resumed bandaging his arm, deliberately gentle now. “But you didn’t.”
“Not for his sake.” Tarshi’s eyes found mine, gold flecks in dark brown, a legacy of his mixed heritage that had always fascinated me. “For yours.”
The simple declaration hung between us, heavy with implications neither of us was ready to address. I tied off the bandage perhaps more roughly than necessary, using the movement to break the moment.
“Help me move him closer to the dragon,” I said, nodding toward Septimus. “It’s getting colder.”
Together we carried his still-unconscious form to the sheltered space beside the dragon’s foreleg. The creature watched with curious eyes but made no objection as we settled Septimus on the ground.
“You should rest too,” I told Tarshi, noticing the exhaustion etched in the lines around his eyes. “I’ll keep watch.”
He nodded, settling himself against the dragon’s flank, a careful distance from both Septimus and me. Always maintaining boundaries, always conscious of the space he occupied. I’d watched him do it for years in the ludus – making himself smaller somehow, less threatening, as if trying to hide the Talfen features that marked him as different.
