Champion in Love (bxb)

CHAPTER 27. Old Dogs Have Tricks

Three days before the rematch with Arsenius' school, we gathered around the long kitchen table. I was there, of course, then Quintus, Didius and Laurentius who were the closest to the matter. Also, Probius, Valentine and Tredici who showed the most promise from my student body. Noble Rufius Fulgentius, who had no marital talent to recommend him, but who worried about the return on his investment, got the seat by the table as well.

Allia commandeered the second table for two enormous tubs, so she could wash her cooking pots, or so she claimed. The sponge kept falling out of her hand whenever Laurentius inhaled. She sniffled so loudly after each sidelong glance at him; I grew tempted to just tell her Laurentius would not be in the fight and be done with it.

I let the rest of my students into the kitchen, but they had to stand. It was their skin on the line, if my hand-picked quad failed to take care of Brutus. And that was what I was going to announce today, my picks for the rematch. The A-team.

I rose from my seat in the middle of the table and folded my arms across my chest, waiting for the conversations around the room to die down. Icy-cold weight shifted in my stomach, as I swiveled my glance round the room, stopping at each face in turn. The mood was somber, for the last time we sat here was after we'd just buried Junius, but I sensed what I wanted in it. Grief was transforming into the thirst for vengeance.

"You know why we're here," I said, once it was quiet enough. "You know that our task is righteous. There is a predator in our midst, an outsider, who is laughing at us. It's not enough to defeat him. We must stomp him out, so everyone knows not to mess with us. Nobody kills one of us and lives! Nobody! We will not permit this."

"Hear, hear," Rufius Fulgentius muttered. His eyes were already drooping, but oily sheen spread through them after he took a swig from his wineskin. Losing a gladiator hit him where it hurt the most, his purse.

Laurentius downed his beer in one mighty gulp, wiped his lips with the back of his hand and banged his mug on the table. "Hear, hear!" Hoarseness roughened his bass. Laurentius was loud by nature, but this was raw, reverberating with 'beer, charge, we'll-crush-em!'. You can never have too much of that before a big fight.

Other mugs caught Laurentius' beat. Thickened voices picked up the chant. "Hear, hear!"

Quintus' head whipped back and forth, at everyone, at me. He was drunk without beer, from being in this kitchen and got drunker each time he looked at me. He wasn't the only one like that, just the most obvious. My heart pounded in time with the growing anthem of war. They craved triumph to make sense of our collective, near familial, bereavement. It was up to me to deliver it.

"In three days' time, we'll unleash some reckoning! We all worked our asses off to get to tonight. I watched each and every one of you like a hawk!"

That got me some laughter and clapping. I waited for the noise to die down. I was about to reveal what everyone wanted to know: who made the cut.

I clenched my fists. Names. They wanted to hear them. Right.

"Quintus," I called. "Didius."

There were murmurs of ascent. These names came as no surprise, but Quintus pointed at the middle of his chest: 'what, me? Oh, wow. How?' This fake modesty earned him a cuff on the ear from Laurentius. Or would have had, if Quintus didn't dodge the huge hand.

I waited out their scuffle, before I dropped the next name.

Victor was sitting at the opposite end of the table from Rufius Fulgentius, so when I faced my boss, he remained behind my left shoulder. Hair at the nape of my neck rose when I sensed his eyes on me, the same way I would have felt an opponent closing in on me out of my line of sight. Except, no opponent's glance had ever sent a pleasant shiver down my spine.