by A. J. Demas
Damiskos opened his mouth to say something about letting Varazda sleep, but Eurydemos got in first.
“You know how much I have sacrificed to my desire. If I had been better able to conceal it, I might have kept the respect of my students longer.” He sighed. “And yet it is entirely unjust. You understand. Desiring a creature like him, neither woman nor man, that does not make either of us a degenerate. If anything, we have more refined tastes, able to appreciate such rare, fragile loveliness. While others see something contrary to nature, what I see is a product of civilization, a work of art almost. Cruelty is always inherent in the great work of art—the cruelty of deception, the statue that fools the eye into seeing a living form, the tale that beguiles us without being true. Just as he beguiles and deceives, blending the forms of male and female—without the frailties of womankind or the virtues of a man.”
“I think you should go sit somewhere else,” Damiskos cut him off finally. “If you keep talking, I’m going to punch you in the mouth.”
Eurydemos blinked at him, genuinely surprised, but he did get up, with a muttered apology, and took himself away as far as the other side of the fire pit, where he lay down with his back to Damiskos.
Varazda showed no sign of having woken to hear any of that. Damiskos was glad, though it wasn’t much of a comfort. Varazda had probably heard things like that before. He was probably used to Pseuchaian men rhapsodizing about his dual nature and how he lacked womanly this and manly that.
What bothered Damiskos was the thought that some of what Eurydemos had said might not be utter bullshit. He was right that Varazda wasn’t “contrary to nature.” And Varazda had been physically shaped for a particular civilization that had a use for people they could classify as not-quite-men. Of course there wasn’t anything wrong with finding him attractive; Damiskos didn’t think there was anything wrong with finding anyone attractive. But what about the rest of it?
Eurydemos was a bloviating asshole who thought Varazda especially desirable. Damiskos found Varazda desirable too. Did that make him an asshole? Was he doing without meaning to what Eurydemos was doing very consciously: thinking of Varazda as a beautiful thing?
It bothered him as he tried to fall asleep, and he slept badly, thinking of this every time he woke. Was this the real reason why Varazda couldn’t return his love? Because it wasn’t love at all, just fetish—a worship of his body as if he were a work of art? He didn’t think so, but would he know, if it were so? He wasn’t a philosopher.
Part of the reason he didn’t sleep well was because Varazda was a very restless sleeper. The position Damiskos had tried to adopt when he settled down to sleep himself, curled around Varazda, leaving Varazda’s head pillowed on his thigh, meant that every time Varazda flung out an arm or stretched or rolled over in his sleep, one or both of them would wake at the resulting collision. Eventually Varazda got up and went in to sleep with the women, leaving Damiskos with the blanket they had been awkwardly sharing.
CHAPTER XXI
DAMISKOS WAS WOKEN by a shriek. He bolted upright in the sand to find that it was fully light, and their stronghold was under siege again.
“Don’t you tell me what to do, you—you—you harpy!” one of the women wailed behind him.
Another gave an outraged gasp. “What did you just call me?”
“Girls, girls!” Nione cried, literally wringing her hands. “Please, you mustn’t fight like this.”
Damiskos suppressed a grin as he realized what was going on. They were putting into practice his strategy to make the enemy think they were on the verge of mutiny. They were doing it beautifully.
He got to his feet, looking out at the besieging force, which consisted of most of the fishermen, some of the porters, and the broken-nosed student. They were armed with clubs and kitchen knives, but they didn’t look particularly eager to approach.
“Silence!” Aradne roared from the doorway of the nearest beach hut. “Inside, all of you! Now! You, soldier, make yourself useful, can’t you?”
The women scurried meekly into the huts, stones in their hands and bundled into their skirts. Damiskos joined Aradne in the doorway.
“Sorry about that,” she murmured. She had Damiskos’s hunting bow in her hand and its quiver slung across her back. “Wanted to make it look good.”
“No, not all. I’m impressed.”
Varazda stood inside the hut, his swords under one arm. “Morning,” he said brightly.
They stepped out of the doorway together, once all the women were inside. Damiskos drew his sword and rolled his shoulders. Varazda swung one of his swords in a couple of lazy arcs, the bronze catching the early-morning sunlight. Aradne lifted the bow and nocked an arrow with convincing form.
“Something you men want?” Damiskos called out.
Two of the fishermen were backing away already.
“By all the gods,” the broken-nosed student growled, “I wish we’d drowned you when we had the chance. You’re a disgrace to the legions, consorting with barbarians and slaves.”
One of the remaining fishermen lost his nerve completely and turned to pelt back along the beach. The porters, to show they were made of tougher stuff, swaggered closer.
“I’m sorry,” said Damiskos, “did you come to parlay, or … Because you don’t seem to be doing anything else.”
“I’m here to speak to ex-Maiden Nione Kukara.”
After a moment, Nione peeked out from among her women, doing a lovely job of appearing cowed and terrified.
The student jerked his chin disdainfully. “Hiding behind your slaves, I see. You’ve every right. But you’re lucky they’re loyal. It would be a shame if anything happened to shake that loyalty, wouldn’t it? I can’t guarantee it, though. The longer you hold out here, the more chance something might happen that you’ll regret.”
Varazda leaned toward Aradne to whisper something, and she lifted Damiskos’s bow, pointing the arrow up, hauled back on the bowstring, and released it, sending the arrow soaring up and tumbling down in a sharp arc on the other side of the barricade, narrowly missing one of the porters.
Their bravado dissipated quickly after that. “Where the fuck did she learn to use a bow?” one of them yelped as they backed away from the stronghold. A couple of women emerged from the beach huts to fling stones, and the men hurried away.
“What was that about?” one of the women asked scornfully.
“Just bluster,” said Rhea. “That’s all they have.”
Damiskos turned to the others.
“We need to act right away. I was wrong. They are going to use the male slaves as leverage. That’s what he meant about shaking your loyalty. He’s thinking you might be induced to switch sides to save your fellow slaves.”
A hush, and then a murmur of alarm ran through the group. Some of the male slaves were the fathers of the female slaves’ children. Some of them were their sons.
“I will not let that happen,” said Nione fiercely. “What do we have to do?”
“All we can do,” said Damiskos. “Get everything set up, and pray the postal ship arrives on time.”
“Better go out and pick up that arrow,” said Aradne, handing Damiskos back his bow and quiver. “Did you know you’ve only got two good ones in there? The rest are broken.”
“I know.” He had checked his equipment after arriving at the camp, and guessed that the arrows had been broken in their escape from the villa, when he fell on the saddlebags on the roof. “I don’t suppose it would do any good to ask where you learned to shoot?”
“Oh, you know,” she said vaguely. “Looking at frescoes and things. Not that I could hit anything. Pharastes told me what to do just now.”
As he retrieved his arrow and helped gather up the thrown rocks from outside the fortifications, Damiskos tried to recollect how he felt about Varazda that morning. He had confessed his love, and it hadn’t gone as badly as he had feared—or as well as he had hoped. Varazda had been very nice to him afterward, and that might h
ave felt insulting, but it hadn’t. And then Eurydemos had sown that horrible seed of doubt in Damiskos’s mind, and that was why this morning everything felt slightly off, like a melody played on a badly-tuned lute.
He could not talk to Varazda about this. It would not be fair. What could Varazda say to him? He would have to offer reassurance, no matter what he really felt. Besides, there was unlikely to be an opportunity any time soon. There was work to be done before the postal ship arrived.
And maybe there was no point in trying to discuss his feelings with Varazda anyway, because the term of their acquaintance was drawing to a close. Varazda would go back to Boukos on the postal ship, and that would be the end of it.
The postal ship could arrive any time between dawn and the fifth hour, depending on the conditions of wind and sea and when they left Boukos. The plan was that Varazda and Aradne would go down to meet it and explain what they needed. Meanwhile, the women would be hidden throughout the woodland around the villa, with articles of flashy Zashian clothing—Damiskos had made sure to tease Varazda about this while explaining the plan—and every vaguely weapon-like shiny object they could lay their hands on. Nione and Damiskos would wait by the front of the house for a signal from Varazda, and then would ride through the gates on horses supplied by the grooms and smuggled out through the stable’s back entrance. The other horses would be in the woods with the women.
At Varazda’s signal, the women would begin making noise in the trees as if they were a troop of soldiers advancing to surround the villa. In the meantime, the sailors from the Boukossian ship—provided they agreed to help—would come up from the shore to make a real barrier on the garden side of the house. Damiskos and Nione would demand the students’ surrender, telling them that the house was surrounded. Aradne would go in search of the imprisoned slaves while Varazda waited in the garden with the sailors to take the students into custody and bring them back to Boukos.
The morning was spent assembling imitation weaponry—Varazda offered his swords, and there was fierce competition over who would get to wield one, before Damiskos suggested that Varazda should probably keep them—dividing up Varazda’s clothes, and finding lengths of rope to tie in the trees to create the illusion of movement through the branches. Everything else would have to wait until the ship was sighted. And the day was still and hot, the water of the bay glassy. The sun climbed overhead, and there was no sign of the ship.
“Could we do it without the sailors,” Aradne wondered, standing with Damiskos by the water’s edge, hands on her hips.
He shook his head. “I don’t want to risk it.”
“We don’t know they’re even going to help.”
“If they won’t, Nione can get on board and go to Pheme for help. In a few days the factory workers and the villagers will be back anyway. If it weren’t for what that bastard said about shaking the women’s loyalty, I’d have said we’d be better off waiting.”
“This will work,” said Aradne stoutly. “If not today, then tomorrow.”
Damiskos turned to look back up at the villa, shading his eyes with his hand. He would have liked to know what was going on inside. How many dead bodies were there by this time, and whose? The fishermen and the porters seemed to have stuck with the students so far. But there had been a clear rift among the students themselves, and it was anyone’s guess how that would have played out by now.
Varazda and Nione walked over from the beach huts. Varazda slung an arm casually around Damiskos’s shoulders—not exactly a comradely gesture, but not exactly a lover’s, either. Nione beamed at them, and Aradne raised an eyebrow but said nothing.
“I think we’re finished our preparations,” Varazda reported.
“Just in time,” said Nione, pointing. “Look.”
There it was, a speck on the bright water, moving with the freshening breeze from the Tentines toward the coast of Pheme.
The women of Nione’s household went up through the vineyard to take their places around the house, following the instructions that they had all gone over carefully early that morning. Tyra and a couple of the indoor women stayed behind in the beach huts with the babies and younger children; the older children went with their mothers, serious-faced and intent on their grown-up task. Damiskos, watching them go, felt as confident as he ever had in any soldiers under his command.
Of course the women were not really going into danger, Damiskos reminded himself. Their job in the woods was crucial, but it was only those who were going into the house who faced potential violence. Much depended on the state of affairs inside the house, whether it was complete chaos yet, or whether Helenos had things under some sort of control.
Eurydemos, who had waffled and debated about the morality of their plan all the while they were discussing it last night and this morning, had finally made up his mind to participate and had been on the point of leaving for the woods with the women when he had a change of heart and decided to stay behind after all. Damiskos was privately relieved.
Now Damiskos stood on the jetty with Nione, Aradne, and Varazda, watching the postal ship approach. It would soon be time for him and Nione to go up to the front of the house, as they had planned, but something was worrying him now, something that had only occurred to him within the last few minutes. It was a feeling that was familiar to him, a kind of suspicion that crept up sometimes before a carefully-planned engagement. Listening to it had more than once made the difference between victory and defeat on the battlefield.
The sun was almost directly overhead, flashing off the water, making it difficult to look out at the ship for long. It had approached close enough to the shore now that Damiskos could make out the figures that crowded the deck.
“Are there usually so many passengers on the postal ship?” he asked.
Nione squinted out at the water. “I can’t see from this distance. How many would you say?”
“A few dozen,” Damiskos guessed. “It’s hard to say from here.”
Varazda shot him a worried look. Damiskos nodded grimly.
“You’re thinking … ” Varazda began.
“I’m wondering if Helenos is expecting reinforcements after all.”
“Blessed Anaxe,” Nione murmured.
Aradne muttered something much saltier.
“I miscalculated,” said Damiskos savagely. “I knew this was a possibility, but I didn’t properly take it into account.”
He cursed himself inwardly in worse language than Aradne had used. He had been too preoccupied last night with confessing his love for Varazda and then the dreadful fear that it wasn’t love at all. He should have done better.
“I thought of it,” said Varazda quietly. “Last night. But I thought the women would be safer hidden in the woods, if it did turn out that reinforcements were arriving.”
“You’re right,” said Damiskos.
He’d been on the point of panicking, doubting himself, falling headlong—and there Varazda had been to catch him. Yet again.
CHAPTER XXII
“IT MIGHT BE as well for you and Aradne to go back to the beach houses, my lady,” Varazda said to Nione. “Keep everyone hidden inside if you can, and be prepared to throw stones again if you can’t.” He glanced at Damiskos. “Don’t you think?”
“Yes, I think that would be best.”
Aradne nodded smartly and took Nione’s arm. “Let’s go, ma’am.”
“Of course if it turns out we’re wrong and there are no more philosophers on that ship, we’ll send word,” said Varazda.
Nione let herself be led away by her steward, and Damiskos and Varazda were left alone on the jetty.
“They’ll have seen us by now, I expect,” said Varazda.
“Yes, I expect so. Though the sun may be in their eyes.”
“Let’s stroll up the shore and go into the factory as if we’re not watching them. It’s probably the best we can do in the way of concealment.”
They walked back up the jetty and across the sand to the factory. Va
razda laid his hand on Damiskos’s arm as they walked.
“It’s still a good plan,” he said. “We’ll handle whatever comes.”
“Thank you,” said Damiskos warmly. “We will.”
Varazda gave his arm a squeeze and let his hand fall. They went in the nearer door of the factory and took a position under one of the windows, sitting on the floor with their backs to the wall. Varazda had Damiskos’s bow and his quiver with its two arrows as well as his own swords. Judging by how far away the ship still was, there would be a little while to wait.
They sat in silence for a moment. Damiskos thought about the ship approaching and what awaited them up in the villa, and thought this might be their last opportunity to speak privately before all the hells broke loose. There were things he did not want to leave unsaid.
“Varazda,” he said, “I regret some of what I said to you last night. I don’t want to leave you with the wrong impression.”
“All right.” Varazda clasped his hands around one knee, looking at Damiskos with his head a little tilted, a pose of listening.
“It seems absurd to say I’ve enjoyed myself this last week, but I have. Coming to know you has been the best thing to happen to me in years. I wish I had enough poetry in my soul to tell you what a splendid fellow you are—how brave and kind and beautiful. You probably don’t need to hear all that, so maybe it’s just as well I don’t know how to say it. But when I’m around you I feel … as if you cast your light on me. As if I’m a little bit better—a better man, a better person—because of you.”
He stopped, feeling self-conscious.
“There wasn’t anything wrong with that, as poetry,” said Varazda softly.
“But I regret the way I spoke last night,” Damiskos repeated. “You haven’t broken my heart—you’ve been more than decent to me. Terza’s head—that’s not what I mean. You’ve been generous and patient and magnificent. I will treasure the memory of the time we had together. I wish it could have been longer. But we—we’re on different paths in our lives, and you don’t have room for me in yours, and that’s absolutely fair. You have to go back to your home and your family and spying for your republic, and I have to go back to Pheme and—I suppose—see what I can do to expose the warmongers who would have bought those documents from Helenos.”