Aurelia was beside me in the dirt. I caught her sideways glance when she said, "Maybe you were right about Radulf. He's going to be a problem for us."
I heard her sigh, but I was already thinking about the other thing she said, that he was a problem for us. My eyes slowly closed, but I couldn't stop thinking about her. Aurelia's fate had suddenly become intertwined with my own. The only question was if that would make things better, or worse.
When I next opened my eyes, Aurelia was no longer beside me. As waterlogged as my brain still was, I knew she had lain here and spoken of our problem. I couldn't explain that, because although my entire world had turned upside down, one thing I had never doubted was that Aurelia hated me. Stranger still was acknowledging the presence of just the opposite emotion inside me. I disliked Aurelia, of course. But maybe my dislike for her wasn't as intense as I had thought.
More damp now than wet, I rolled to my side, and took in the fresh smell of dirt and the olive trees overhead. Their fruit was still too hard for eating, which was disappointing. I might've braved their bitterness just to have some food to gnaw on once I got up. If I could've gotten up.
My entire body felt like a rag that had been wrung dry. Back at the mines, Sal had once punished me by requiring me to dig through rock for twenty-four hours without sleep or meals. Once I was finally allowed to rest, it had taken an hour for my muscles to stop shaking from pain. It was awful then, but that was nothing to how I felt now. Worst of all was my injured arm, which lay on the ground in front of me like an empty tube that was attached to my shoulder. With the broken manacle cuffed around my wrist, I couldn't lift it, and the limb didn't even seem to be part of me anymore. The bandage over my injury was still knotted at the end, but the rest had come undone and lay in a heap on the dirt. And though I felt its burn, I couldn't see where the infection was. That would require me to rotate the arm, which simply wasn't going to happen. I didn't even care to look.
I flicked my eyes upward at the sound of voices some ways off from me. Aurelia was gathered in a tight circle with the other children, who occasionally leaned back to look at me, but I couldn't hear any of what they said.
Finally, one of the children got up, the African girl with the wide eyes. She walked over to me and said, "Thank you and I'm sorry."
I smiled -- even that hurt -- and asked, "Why and why?"
"You saved our lives down there."
"What happened was my fault. You don't have to thank me for that." Then I added, "Why are you sorry?"
"For the chains."
"You were only following orders. Maybe you can help me get these manacles off, though."
"That's why I'm sorry. The key got lost when all that water came in."
I rolled my eyes. That was a problem. If I was going to be on the surface with the entire population of Rome after me, I needed a way to blend in. With a little luck, I had some chance of passing as a free person, as Aurelia did, but not with manacles on my wrists and ankles, and lengths of chain dangling from every limb. They were almost as bad as a brand on my forehead.
"Don't worry," I told the girl. "That's not your fault either." Then I smiled up at her. "What's your name?"
She started to answer, until Aurelia appeared behind her. "Don't say your name," she said. "It's time to leave. I'll find you again when I can."
The girl thanked me once more, and then wandered back to the others. I looked past Aurelia to watch the children form into a tight group, check around for anyone else in the area, and walk away.
I squinted at Aurelia. "Why can't she tell me her name?"
"Because I still don't trust you."
"No, of course not. I only saved all of your lives."
"And why do you think they needed saving?"
"When you said the pipe was disconnected, I assumed you'd destroyed it. Not taken two pieces apart."
"Nobody would've cared to fix it unless they were after you!"
"You brought me there!"
"You asked for help. I gave it to you!"
"Right. If your idea of help was to put me in chains that nearly got me drowned!" I changed my mind about her. Again. At the moment, I had every confidence in my dislike for Aurelia.
"Sit up," she said. "It feels ridiculous to argue while you're lying there like a half-dead fish."
"I feel like a half-dead fish." But I gritted my teeth and got to a sitting position. When I did, I found Aurelia's knife at my neck again.
"Tell me how you do the magic," she said. "Also, I want that bulla back. It's safer with me."
This time, her knife was more of an annoyance than a threat, and I pushed the blade aside. "Is that how you make new friends, with a knife at their throats?"