by A. J. Demas
It had been a long time since anyone kissed him. Years. Not since Shahaz, he thought. Was that true?
Not that Shahaz had ever kissed him—that would have been very bold—but he had kissed her, and it amounted to the same thing. And since then … there had been encounters here and there, but kissing hadn’t been involved. It was an odd thought.
He sat down heavily on the bed. His own reaction to the kiss was the least important thing here. He tried to sort out the things that had just become clear to him.
Helenos had seen Varazda slipping out of Damiskos’s room, and—perhaps because he still thought of Damiskos as a kindred spirit, perhaps because he was so attached to his own prejudices that he didn't see Varazda as attractive—he hadn’t wanted to believe he had witnessed the end of a tryst. But Varazda had been at pains to prove that he had.
Why? Well, possibly just to be a bastard. But more likely because there was some other interpretation that he didn’t want Helenos to put on the scene.
He didn’t want Helenos to think that he and Damiskos had just been talking.
Of course he wouldn’t have kissed Damiskos otherwise. From the beginning of their exchange in the passage, he’d been afraid Damiskos had been coming onto him, and he hadn’t welcomed it. In fact—Terza’s balls—he’d thought Damiskos was trying to blackmail him into his bed.
Staring at him all through dinner, following him out into the hall, wanting to talk to him alone after intervening to defend him from guests who wanted him whipped. That was what “What do you want?” had meant. Then Damiskos had capped it all by asking whether Varazda was sleeping with his former master. Immortal gods. “It’s irrelevant to you,” Varazda had said—meaning, Even if I’m not, that doesn’t mean I want to sleep with you. And then he’d felt compelled to kiss Damiskos in front of Helenos. He must have had a very good reason.
Of course Damiskos wanted to know what that reason was, but it was quite true that this was all very much none of his business. Still, it would be only decent of him to let Varazda know he hadn’t misinterpreted the kiss. “I realize you didn’t do that because you wanted to, and don’t worry, I didn’t want you to either—there’s no question of my being attracted to you, that was all just a misunderstanding, and I spoke in your defence because it was the right thing to do.”
That was true, wasn’t it?
Shahaz was in his mind again—naturally enough, since he had just been thinking of her. He found himself comparing his memory of her to Varazda, which was perhaps less natural. They were really nothing alike. Shahaz’s hair was lighter, a warm brown, her skin honey-hued, her cheeks soft, dimpling when she smiled. She had plump hands and wore subdued colours, as befit a modest girl of her class. Or she had, six years ago. She was probably—certainly—a married woman by now.
Perhaps her accent and Varazda’s were similar; it had been a long time, and he didn’t remember Shahaz’s accent clearly, though he did remember her singing voice. He wondered whether Varazda sang. Some eunuchs were trained to it—but of course Varazda was a dancer.
After that, it was perhaps not surprising that he had another bad night’s sleep. Voices from the atrium woke him some time before dawn. They sounded agitated, but he couldn’t identify the speakers. A man and a woman, he thought. Or at any rate a man and someone with a higher voice. A third voice growled something about “calming down” and “dealing with it.” Damiskos heard brisk footsteps receding toward the back of the house, and then silence.
Damiskos woke the following morning wondering how soon he could decently leave Laothalia. He had only been here two days, but his business with Nione was virtually complete. He had satisfied himself that Nione’s factory would make a good supplier for the legions, and they had negotiated the details of the contract. He needed only to make payment for the first shipment of sauce and settle on a date for its delivery.
He should probably stay out the week; it would be insulting to Nione not to do so. He could manage five more days, and then he would make his excuses and apologies and go home.
He would tell Nione about Gelon attacking Varazda, and what Aristokles and Varazda had said to him about it afterwards—he’d do that as soon as possible. If she wanted him to stay longer to help her deal with them, well, of course he would. But he doubted she really needed his help. She had a whole villa full of staff, including her formidable steward, who could help her evict Aristokles if it turned out he was here to rob or defraud her or otherwise cause trouble. It wasn’t, as Damiskos had been repeatedly reminded, any of his business.
Having made this decision, he felt a weight lifted from his spirit, and paradoxically found himself determined to enjoy what was left of his stay at the villa.
Nione was not in the garden, and her servants thought she was not up yet, so he went down to the fishing pier. He found Kleitos already there, with a line in the water, wrapped in a mantle and looking like he hadn’t slept. Helenos arrived while Damiskos was baiting his own hook.
“Good morning,” said Damiskos.
Helenos looked at him assessingly for a moment, then sat on the pier beside him. “What’s going on, Damiskos from the Quartermaster’s Office? What was the Sasian eunuch really doing in your room last night?”
He seemed genuinely to expect an answer to that, not just to be teasing. It left Damiskos at a loss.
“I’m not going to give you a detailed account,” Damiskos said, feeling that this struck the right note while being literally true.
Helenos looked at him for a moment with plain confusion. “Oh,” he said finally. “Well, I suppose you must take your pleasure where you like. Far be it from me to dictate the terms of your private life.”
“Not at all,” said Damiskos equably. Aside from those remarks about Sasians the other day, the fellow had been quite friendly.
“I seem to have been mistaken about you,” Helenos remarked. “I see that now.”
“Do you.” That wasn’t so friendly.
“Yes, I had imagined you were an ally to our cause. Given your military record. I thought you saw the importance of preserving Phemian purity and felt a distaste for the Sasian slave.”
They sat in uncomfortable silence for a few minutes. Damiskos was becoming more and more annoyed. What possible business was it of Helenos’s whether he and Varazda were sleeping together?
Maybe it had to do with their rubbish about masculine and feminine principles. Damiskos had no bent for philosophy, and had always thought the ascetic strictures of the Marble Porches—what he knew of them—incompatible with a soldier’s life.
They would say it was natural for men to desire women, but if you spent too much of your time with women, or took them too seriously, it made you unmanly. Men ought to reserve their purest affections for other men, they said. But they meant something quite specific by that. They liked to trot out examples of legendary heroes dying in each other’s arms, and primly remind you that the poets said nothing about them doing anything else in each other’s arms beforehand—as if that proved anything, except about the philosophers’ own preoccupations. Their idea of the virtuous man was someone who didn’t love anyone, male or female, really heartily. He wouldn’t have any use for a person so ambiguous as Varazda, except as an object-lesson on the unnaturalness of barbaric Sasians.
Of course, Damiskos had no use for him either. Obviously.
It wasn’t a matter of “use.” Anyway, it was irrelevant.
“What does it really mean, ‘Phemian purity’?” Damiskos asked suddenly.
“It means purging the Republic of the poison—”
“Not the metaphors. What does it actually mean?”
Helenos looked at him. “It means our ancestors were great men, and we are pitiful by comparison. It means banishing the foreigners from our streets and from our shores. It means putting pressure on Boukos to do the same. It means—as I’m sure you realize—war with Zash. The Republic was forged in the fires of war and has never been stronger than when it has stood against
Zash. That is what I mean when I say ‘Phemian purity.’ And how are we to achieve that, you ask? Wait and see, my friend. Wait and see.”
That was deeply unsettling, and Damiskos did not immediately know what to say to it. Helenos did not look as though he expected an answer. In fact, he looked rather like someone who had picked up an edged weapon in the middle of a training bout and felt pleased with the result.
Damiskos knew how to turn away a sharp sword with a wooden one, but he didn’t really know what to do here.
“I cannot agree,” he said stiffly at last. “I cannot approve of any of that.”
“Mm,” said Helenos. “As I said, I was mistaken about you. Still, respect is due to the service you gave the Republic.”
At that moment Damiskos’s line jerked in the water, and he was occupied with landing a large bonito, so it was Helenos who had the satisfaction of getting up and walking off without another word.
By the time Damiskos’s fish was safely in a basket on the pier, Phaia had come down to speak to Helenos. She looked worse than Kleitos, her eyes dark-ringed and her hair wilder than usual, though it suited her in a way. Helenos drew her away to talk privately.
Eurydemos arrived, with his mantle over his head, and sat down on the pier beside Damiskos.
“So how was he?”
Damiskos looked up. “Excuse me?”
“Aristokles’s exquisite Sasian. I hear you’ve beaten me to the finish line there.”
The words were archly coarse, but his tone was wistful.
“I didn’t—don’t know what you’re talking about,” Damiskos managed stiffly.
Of course that wasn’t true. He remembered that poem about the unfruitful tree. But Eurydemos smiled and let the subject drop.
Terza’s head, what a lot of ghastly people Nione seemed to have gathered around herself. Did he really have to stay out the week?
Damiskos took his fish and went back up to the house. He asked for the mistress, anxious to have that conversation that would determine how much longer he need stay in this wretched place. He was told she was out in the vineyard.
He took the fish to the kitchen himself—the slave offered to do it, but he said there was no need—and from there went across the yard to check on Xanthe. He spent some time chatting with the stable hand about the merits of different feed and grooming techniques. He felt as if there was something else he needed to be doing, but he reminded himself that he was on holiday; he was supposed to be enjoying himself. He enjoyed talking to people about horses.
He left the stable feeling somewhat more sanguine about the world again.
The villa’s stables lay next to the slave quarters, and there was a small, sunlit yard between the two. As Damiskos emerged into this space, a trio of domestic slaves—two young women and an elderly one—sat working in the yard and watching an impromptu performance. Varazda was practicing, dancing without music in a flat, sandy area between the stairs and the wall.
He was barefoot, his hair loose down his back. He wore a plain dark coat that swung around him, the fabric as much a part of the dance as the two swords that flashed in his hands. They were long, Zashian-style, singled-edged swords, and he handled them effortlessly, twirling them in elaborate arcs and slices as he moved. It was delicate and martial at the same time, a far more impressive and dignified use of the weapons than Damiskos had imagined. He stood with his hand on the stable door, watching, transfixed.
Varazda flipped the two swords to hold the hilts together, the blades pointing in opposite directions, and spun them as if they were one fearsome, twin-bladed weapon. He leaned gracefully back, long hair swinging free, as he flipped them up above his head. Then he separated them and swept them out to the sides as he dropped to one knee, the skirt of his coat settling around him. His audience—the ones he was aware of—applauded.
He got to his feet, smiling a kind of modest, genuine smile that Damiskos had not seen on his face before. Neither he nor the women had noticed Damiskos.
“Finished already?” said the older women, obviously disappointed, as Varazda picked up his swords and tucked them under one arm.
“It is getting late—I must go dress and attend my master.”
The women made regretful noises.
“If you want help with your hair or your makeup,” said one of the younger women, “let me know.”
The others laughed. It was at that moment that Varazda looked across the yard and saw Damiskos. His smile faded slightly.
“Thank you,” he said, replying to the women. “I think I’ll be all right.”
He turned and disappeared into the space under the stairs along the front of the slave quarters.
“Good morning, sir,” said the older woman, noticing Damiskos at last and scrambling to her feet. “Can we help you? Are you looking for someone?”
“No, no, thank you. Don’t mind me.”
The slaves went back to their work. Damiskos crossed the yard to the shadowed space under the stairs. He would compliment Varazda on his dancing and then bring up the subject of last night, he decided, after having established a more friendly mood.
Varazda was stripping off his coat in front of the fountain set into the wall of the slave quarters. He wore dark trousers under it and no shirt. It was a little surprising, Damiskos thought, that he would strip down more or less in public. Zashians were peculiarly reluctant about displaying skin; it was one way they held themselves distinct from the barbaric westerners. And after all, most of the kingdom was cold for large parts of the year, so they could afford their taboos.
Varazda scooped up water from the fountain, splashed his face, and ran his wet hands over his throat and underneath the heavy fall of his hair. He looked up and saw Damiskos. He snatched up his coat exactly like a nymph caught bathing by a satyr.
Damiskos started and gabbled out an apology. Gods. He’d just been thinking that Zashians had different customs; he should have had the decency not to sneak up on Varazda when he was half naked. Not that he’d intended to sneak up, of course, but that must have been what it looked like.
Varazda had tossed down his coat and was simply glaring at Damiskos now, and Damiskos wondered if he should back away, or if he had already been standing there for too long to do that, or what in the world he should do.
Somehow it didn’t help that Varazda stripped to the waist was absolutely a sight that would have been worth sneaking up to see. He was thin but very fit, the muscles of his arms and torso crisply defined under his pale skin. It was not surprising, of course, after seeing him dance, but it was a beautiful contrast with the flowing grace that he presented when fully clothed.
“I’m sorry,” Damiskos repeated leadenly. He realized Varazda was probably less embarrassed to have been caught without his shirt than annoyed at having been startled into acting as if he was embarrassed.
Varazda narrowed his eyes at him. “For what?”
Really, the fellow was impossible. “For—for—I don’t know.” He gestured unhelpfully. “You seem offended by something, and I’m sorry for it. I saw you dancing just now. It was very impressive.” He sought for something more specific to say. “The swords that you use, are they weighted like real swords, or … ”
The swords were lying across the corner of the fountain. Varazda reached back and picked one up and tossed it to Damiskos. He caught it awkwardly.
“Ah,” he said, weighing it in his hand. “They are real swords. I see.”
“They’re not very sharp,” Varazda admitted.
Damiskos turned the blade to catch the light from the yard. It was beautifully crafted, made of bronze, and looked as if it might be quite old. “Not completely dull, either.”
He lifted the sword in his right hand, put his left on his hip, angling his body and the point of the blade in the best approximation of shu, the “ready” stance, that he could remember.
“It’s been a few years,” he said ruefully.
Varazda picked up the other sword. His stance was eleg
ant and precise—and he held it for only a moment before his sword flashed out and rang against Damiskos’s. Blade skittered against blade, and the tip of Varazda’s sword caught in the tracery of Damiskos’s hilt, gave a sharp twist, and sent the sword spinning out of his hand to clatter on the stones of the yard.
“Nicely done,” said Damiskos. He limped out into the yard to retrieve the sword.
Varazda dropped his sword’s point. “Mm. It’s a trick, and you were ready for it—you let go just as I caught the hilt.”
Damiskos shrugged. “Makes the sword fly further—and prevents me getting a sprained wrist.”
“I wasn’t trying to give you a sprained wrist. I’m aware I’m no match for you. I don’t really know how to fight—just tricks like that.”
Damiskos handed him back his sword, and Varazda laid both weapons on the edge of the fountain again.
“I used to be pretty good with a Zashian blade,” Damiskos said, “but it was only what you might call a hobby—professionally, of course, I used a Pseuchaian short sword.” He still wore one, much of the time, but only as a mark of status, a familiar weight at his side. “And of course, on horseback a spear and shield. The sword being only for close combat … ”
He realized he was on the verge of becoming boring—if not well past it. He cleared his throat. “I haven’t had much call to draw any kind of blade in the last five years.” And he wasn’t much use with one now either, with one knee unable to bend even halfway.
They stood a moment longer, regarding one another. The moment was different, somehow. Not less tense than their previous encounters, perhaps, but tense in a different way.
Damiskos remembered he had wanted to assure Varazda that he hadn’t put the wrong interpretation on that kiss in the doorway. He quickly decided this was not the right time for that.
It was Varazda who broke the silence—which, after all, had not gone on very long. “I have work to do. Was there something you wanted?”
“Yes. I mean no—I just happened by, and—yes, I’ll leave you to it. I really did enjoy the dance.”