Roman by Heather Grothaus

by that,” Maisie said, coming to lean over Isra. “She’s taken quite a thrashing. Much more and she wouldna have survived.”
    Roman had no response to that. His own arm was searing, throbbing heat at the moment, his back ached, his head pounded, and he needed to make water.
    â€œI’ll return in but a moment,” he said to Maisie as he made his way toward the low door.
    â€œRest a while in your chamber,” Maisie instructed, pouring from a pitcher into a cup. “Victor shall come before the noon meal.”
    Roman paused. “Is that wise?”
    Maisie glanced up at him as her hands readied her supplies on the tray. “Of course it’s wise. Of all the people at this abbey, think of those with whom Constantine would nae readily come to blows for disobeying him. I count three, myself.”
    Roman had to grin as he considered there could be no other woman on the planet more suited to bringing Adrian Hailsworth to heel. He inclined his head toward her in acknowledgment and turned to leave, intending on seeing to Lou right away.
    â€œOh,” Maisie called after him into the gallery. In a moment she was standing in the doorway, cloths in her hands. “Valentine asked me to tell you that he has taken to the mews this morning.”
    Roman nodded and made his way toward the stairs to behold the pale Brother Wynn descending, his personal stench preceding him like a rolling fog. The man gave Roman a distracted smile and bow, which Roman returned, and then held out a short, waxy-looking stick. After Roman took it, Brother Wynn first pointed to his own biceps and then Roman’s before giving a wave and disappearing into the blackness below with an eye-watering breeze.
    As Roman climbed the stairs, he wondered how he had come to have such people around him, such friends as these.
    Was Isra Tak’Ahn’s presence a threat to all of them?
    The ointment disappeared into Roman’s sleeves, along with his hands. As much as he wished to indeed seek his bed and put to good use the medicine gifted by Wynn, he needed to talk to Constantine first.
    Roman found the general once more in the abbey’s manicured bailey, where the majority of the brethren were readying the plantings and beds for the coming winter. Stan was working with his back to Roman, using a wide, stiff rake to smooth a section of needle mulch. The bailey was peaceful, quiet, only the sounds of tool and branch and leaf stirring on the crisp breeze. Roman stepped into Constantine’s peripheral vision and gave a bow.
    Stan glanced up, pretended a return bow over his rake, and then turned his attention back to the curved red slivers beneath his sandals.
    Roman waited for Constantine to stop, but it soon became apparent that the man had no intention of giving him any attention at all. So Roman did the only thing that came to his mind. He strode to the nearest arch and retrieved a rake and then joined Constantine in the garden bed.
    The motion of pulling the rake was so terrible that Roman was soon forced to use only his left hand, tossing the head of the tool out onto the mulch and then grasping the middle of the handle and lifting, dragging it back. The activity caused sweat to break out on his forehead instantly in the sunny bailey, and his increased heartbeat caused his arm to throb like a rotten tooth.
    After several moments of Constantine glancing back at Roman with ever darkening glares, the general stalked to the archway and tossed his rake against a wall before disappearing inside the doorway that led to the gatehouse. Roman followed with a silent prayer of thanksgiving as the cool darkness flashed over his fevered brow. After a quick glance around, he stepped up behind the statue of Michael and ducked into the twisting corridor.
    Stan had left the silent stone door standing ajar, and Roman pushed it to carefully, noting that the general had taken up a place before the secret library’s only window, a