by A. J. Demas
“Oh.” Ariston looked like he was trying very hard not to get up and start pacing again.
It wasn’t quite morning, and Varazda was not quite asleep, with his head resting against the stone wall, when he heard voices from the atrium of the watch-house.
“I’m surprised. This would be considered a perfectly reasonable hour in the Phemian army.”
“Does this look like the Phemian army to you?”
“No.” A crisp and understated insult, delivered in Dami’s usual grave style.
“Well, go on in,” the duty guard grumbled. “I don’t know who’s in there—they just pay me to watch the place, they don’t give me the details.”
Varazda could almost see the curt nod that would have been given in response to this. He heard a key being turned in a lock, a door swinging open, and Dami coming down the passage. He pushed back his hair and rubbed one bleary eye with the heel of his hand, then he looked down and saw his palm smeared with black and green and remembered his makeup.
Dami stood in front of the grille, looking in. He didn’t have his cane, but instead wore his sword, and the Zashian sash was gone. Varazda felt himself beginning to shiver again, and didn’t know why. Ariston was sprawled on the straw mattress beside him, fast asleep and snoring. A couple of drunks who had been put in with them a few hours ago were similarly asleep on the other side of the cell.
“What is this Sasian woman doing in here?” Dami demanded of the guard.
“I told you, I’ve no idea.” The guard came down the passage anyway to look in at Varazda. “Not bad-looking, if you like that type.”
Dami shot him an extremely stern look. “Is it usual in Boukos for women and men to be held in the same cell?”
“Uh … no. Actually. I don’t know what happened there. Want me to move her? I’ll do that.”
“No,” said Dami. “I have orders from your commander to remove this prisoner and her slave.” He withdrew a small scroll of paper from his belt. “I assume you would like to examine them?”
The guard looked at the scroll and snorted. “Yeah … I’m sure they’re fine. Here, I’ll open the door for you.”
The guard fiddled with his keys, found the one he wanted, and turned it in the lock. Then Dami was coming into the cell, standing over Varazda, and speaking in Zashian.
“Are you all right?”
“Yes. Yes. I’m not hurt, or … Just having a … ”
“Yeah. I’m going to get you out of here.” He nudged Ariston with the toe of his boot. “Wake up!” he ordered in Pseuchaian.
Ariston jerked awake and sat up, staring around in confusion. “Wha … who … huh?” His eyes lighted on Dami.
“You. Get up,” Dami barked, before Ariston could give him away with a shout of joyful recognition. “I’m taking you and your mistress out of here. Now move.”
“Yes sir.” Ariston scrambled to his feet. “My lady, let me help you up,” he added, holding out his hands for Varazda.
They made it out the door of the watch-house into the agora, where lights twinkled in a few of the shops, and wagons rolled past, making night-time deliveries now that the streets were open to wheeled vehicles. Dami led them around a corner into the nearest dark street before he turned and took Varazda gently and protectively by the shoulders and said, “Tell me what happened.”
“Someone murdered a watchman with Varazda’s swords,” Ariston supplied eagerly, “and Marzana isn’t convinced it wasn’t Varazda!”
“I know that,” said Dami, still looking at Varazda. “I heard it from Chereia when I went looking for Marzana. But … what happened at the jail?” He asked the question very softly, addressing it only to Varazda.
Varazda realized what he meant. He stiffened and tried to stand up straight in Dami’s grip. “Nothing. Nothing happened. Marzana showed me the swords with b … with blood on them, that’s all.” He shrugged off Dami’s hands. “It was nothing.”
“How did you manage to get an order from Marzana to release us?” Ariston wanted to know.
“I didn’t.” Dami looked away from Varazda finally.
“It was a bluff? Immortal gods, that takes balls!”
Dami gave him one of his stern looks. “I can assure you it doesn’t.”
Ariston gave a startled laugh. “Oh! I never thought about it that way. It’s just an expression, isn’t it?”
“Do you want to see what the paper is really?” Dami asked, holding it out to Varazda.
He took it and unrolled it. It was a prayer, or a charm, addressed to Dami’s patron god, Terza, asking, in fairly graphic terms, that he grant the bearer stamina in bed.
“A friend got it for me when he heard I was coming to Boukos to visit my lover. It was the only piece of paper I had handy.”
Varazda looked up and managed a weak, appreciative smile. If Dami wanted to help him pull himself together, it was a good gambit.
“What is it?” Ariston was clamouring. “Let me see!”
Varazda tucked the scroll down the front of his gown. “It’s mine now,” he said.
“I look forward to the results,” said Dami, without emphasis. “We shouldn’t stand here in the street talking. I’m supposed to be escorting prisoners.”
“What are we going to do?” Ariston wanted to know. “We have to find a way to clear Varazda’s name!”
Dami hushed him and led the way further down the street. He stopped in front of the columned porch of the Temple of Hesperion, quiet and deserted at this time of night.
“Up here,” he suggested, and glanced around the street before shepherding the two of them up the steps and into the colonnade.
There was a bench against the temple wall, where they sat. Varazda tried to wipe away his ruined eye makeup with the inside of one sleeve, but probably only made it worse.
“Darling,” said Dami after a moment, “I’m sorry to have to ask this, but I think it likely to be important. When Marzana showed you the swords—where on the blade was there blood?”
The image rose up readily in Varazda’s mind: his beloved bronze swords, their hilts chased with the patterns of his ancestors, the blades darkened with half-dried blood.
“All … down the length. Of both blades.”
“Not just down one edge?”
“No … ”
Dami let out a breath. “Divine Terza. That’s what I was hoping you’d say.”
Varazda nodded. “Because that’s how it would look if they’d been used to stab someone—”
“—but you couldn’t stab anyone with those swords. Exactly.”
“Huh?” said Ariston.
“Marzana will figure that out,” said Varazda. “The blades are just sharp enough to cut, but the points are dull on purpose. Everyone in my clan knew some story of a dancer who’d dropped a sharp sword on their foot or stabbed someone in the audience by accident.”
“Marzana will figure it out,” said Dami, “but he hasn’t yet. I’d like to get a look at the body.”
“Why?” Ariston grimaced.
“So we know what kind of weapon we’re actually looking for.”
“Oh.”
“Would they have taken it to the Temple of Nepharos? Do you do that here?”
Varazda nodded. He had twice had occasion to visit the mortuary behind the temple of the Pseuchaian death god. It was where they took the bodies of people who had died in the city by violence or under mysterious circumstances.
“I’ll go by myself,” Dami assured both of them.
“I’d like to come,” said Varazda slowly. “I feel … I should see the man’s face.”
Ariston made a small noise that was not quite a whimper, and then said, with an attempt at bravado, “I’ll tag along too, if I may.”
“You do realize,” said Dami sternly, “that I may be able to bluff my way into the mortuary the way I did at the watch-house, but I can’t bring just anyone in with me.”
“Oh, come,” said Varazda, shaking out his skirt briskly. “I’m a grieving widow, and Ariston, a
s we’ve already established, is my servant.”
“What?” said Ariston. “Oh. Oh, right.”
The man’s face was white, his eyes closed; the blood staining his garments looked black in the shadowy vault of the mortuary. He was, as Marzana had said, very young, almost a boy. Varazda’s hands clenched into fists at his sides.
“It’s as we thought,” said Dami in a low voice, as they stood with heads respectfully bowed by the side of the bier. “He was stabbed, not slashed. You can see most of the blood came from this wound on his left—this was what killed him. This wound on the other side hardly bled at all, because it was made after he was already dead, for the look of the thing. So that it would appear he had been stabbed with two swords.” He bent to look closer at the body, then straightened up. “It’s hard to see in this light, but the wounds are messy, because a larger, blunt weapon was forced into them—so we’re looking for a smaller blade, maybe a dagger or a knife.” He glanced sharply to one side. “Steady there, Ariston.”
“I’m fine,” murmured Ariston, and clutched Dami’s shoulder for support.
They stole softly back out of the mortuary, Dami tipping the guard at the door, and out through the dark temple of Nepharos with its rows of skulls and black marble altars, and emerged on the street.
Ariston bent over and put his hands on his knees and took deep breaths for a minute.
“All right,” he said heartily, straightening up, “what do we do now?”
Dami had put his arm around Varazda’s shoulders, just a light, undemanding touch. Varazda was surprised to find how much it helped. Dami looked at him now.
“Now we want to take a look at the place where the young man’s body was found,” Dami said. “It will be morning by the time we get there, and we’ll be able to look around, but we’d better do it quickly before Marzana’s men get there too.”
Varazda nodded.
“What—what would we be looking for at, um, at … ” Ariston attempted.
“Whatever’s there to be seen,” said Dami.
“So we’re going back to the Palace of Letters,” said Varazda.
“Wait!” said Ariston suddenly. “What about Themistokles and Kallisto?”
Dami frowned. “What about them?”
“Are they all right? Did Lykanos try to kill Themistokles, or frame Kallisto, or, or—and why did he try to frame Varazda at the same time, and—”
“Whoa,” said Dami forcefully. “Slow down. I don’t know anything about what may have happened to Themistokles or Kallisto. As far as I know, they’re not involved in this.”
“But did Themistokles make it to the party? Oh, God! I should have been there. What will he say when he learns I was in jail when I was supposed to be assisting him at the unveiling?”
“Steady, Ariston,” said Dami again.
Varazda’s feet hurt by the time they arrived back at the Palace of Letters. He wished Dami had brought his cane but did not say so. The city was beginning to waken by this time, the sky lightening overhead as shopkeepers put up their awnings and the vehicles of the night rumbled out of the streets.
“I must look a wreck,” Varazda remarked, running a hand through his hair.
Dami looked at him assessingly. “A beautiful wreck.”
Ariston snorted.
The door to the Palace of Letters was open, and Heron the party-planner was inside, supervising the removal of his decorations.
“Oh, Pharastes! Immortal gods, what happened to you?”
Varazda wasn’t sure whether the question was about where he had gone last night or why he looked in such a state this morning.
He settled for saying, “It was a long night.”
Heron rolled his eyes. “For all of us! Were you still here when they found that poor boy stabbed?”
“No—we were gone by then. What happened?”
“Well, nobody knows. I didn’t see it myself—the watch was keeping everyone away. It was one of their own, poor fellow. Oh … oh, that’s right.” Heron’s expression turned confused. “Someone said the watch was here to arrest you. That’s not … is it?”
“It was a misunderstanding,” said Varazda quickly. “But it does explain my pathetic appearance this morning.”
“How awful! Some people are still so quick to think ill of Sasians. I don’t know how they have held onto their prejudice so long with everything the way it is. But you must be back for your things—you left some of your belongings behind last night. I remember seeing your lute,” he told Dami.
“Thanks,” said Varazda. “All right if we go in and fetch it?”
“Of course, go ahead. The watch has cleared out now.”
Ariston nudged Varazda in the ribs. “Ask him whether Themistokles ever made it to the party.”
“What’s that?” said Heron, having overheard. “There was no party after they found the murdered boy. Themistokles was here, by then.” He rolled his eyes. “And not too pleased to have the unveiling cut short. But the poor boy was lying dead up on the scaffolding—they couldn’t very well step over him to go on their tour, could they?”
“Quite,” said Varazda.
Dami’s lute lay undisturbed in the corner where they had left it with Varazda’s swords. Dami picked it up.
“So Themistokles made it here after all,” said Ariston. “That means … what does that mean?”
“Fuck if I know,” Dami muttered. “Ariston, do you think there’s something important that you need to check up on the scaffolding just now? Something to do with the volume of shapes and the balance of the fiddly bits?”
“Huh? Oh! Uh, yeah. Sure. Themistokles wanted me to make sure the watch didn’t damage the paint carrying the body out.”
“Good,” said Dami with a nod. “I’ll come up with you. Varazda, you stay down here and have a look around the couches, if you can. You’ve mislaid something small—a bracelet, maybe—and it could be anywhere. You’re looking for a knife or a dagger, with a blade about this long.” He held out his hands half a foot apart.
“Got it,” said Varazda.
Dami and Ariston climbed up to the scaffolding, and Varazda went back out into the dining area. Heron insisted on helping him look for his missing bracelet. Varazda said he remembered taking it off when he sat down with someone, and that it might have fallen between two couch cushions.
“Oh yes, I remember you were sitting over here with His Excellency the ambassador,” said Heron, heading for the couches on the right side of the room.
“Was I?” Varazda hunted absently under pillows on the opposite side of the hall.
“Yes, I think this was the ambassador’s couch—I remember one of the servers spilled wine on the floor just in front of it—or was it this one? Oh, gods! What’s this?”
Varazda looked sharply up to see Heron with a cushion in one hand, and in the other, dangling between his thumb and forefinger, a slim, mother-of-pearl-handled knife, its blade dull and smeared.
And a moment later there was a shout from above on the scaffolding, and a splintering crash as one large, marble panel of the frieze broke the boards of the walkway, tearing away one of the guide-ropes, and plunged down to smash on the floor of the library hall.
It had happened so quickly that no one even screamed. The slaves who had been cleaning up stood frozen. No one had been near the falling marble, but that was sheer chance. It had landed in the middle of the stage where the entertainers had performed the night before.
“Holy angels!” came Ariston’s wail from above. Varazda saw him teetering on the edge of the broken section of scaffolding, with Dami holding onto him. “Holy blessed Orante! Is anyone hurt?” he called down.
Heron swayed and folded forward, and the knife dropped from his fingers. Varazda just managed to catch him before he hit the floor.
Chapter 20
“All right,” said Dami, scratching his stubble, which was beginning to look rather more like a beard than usual. “So the knife was an ordinary Pseuchaian knife that might
have belonged to anyone, but it was hidden in the cushions of a couch where some member of the ambassador’s party was sitting. As far as Heron can recall. And the frieze was sabotaged, but either not very effectively, or not with the express purpose of killing Themistokles.”
“Did you do anything in particular to it, Ariston, before it fell?”
“Me? No! Oh, I see what you mean. No, I didn’t even touch it. We were looking at the boards for traces of blood,” he added importantly. “We hadn’t found any.”
“So,” said Varazda, “the panel was sabotaged to fall at some point, not specifically to murder Themistokles, but rather—perhaps—to ruin an important moment in his career? Whether it killed a tumbler or a flautist, or just spoiled everyone’s evening, wasn’t important.”
“It was Leto who told us that it was meant to kill Themistokles,” said Dami.
“She may have thought it was,” said Varazda. “Or she may have been exaggerating the threat to make sure we went to the party ourselves rather than just warning people. Because it was also Leto who told the watch that there were suspicious foreigners meddling with the frieze.”
“I want to go see Kallisto,” said Ariston suddenly. “I’m worried about her.”
“Finish your food,” said Dami firmly. “And then we’ll go straight to Temple Walk.”
They were standing in the half-open market behind the Palace of Letters, eating steaming pastries and sharing a small bottle of surprisingly excellent Kastian red wine. Dami, finished with his pie, licked his fingers and slung an arm around Varazda’s shoulders again. He plucked the bottle out of Varazda’s hand and took a swig.
“Mm done,” said Ariston, around his last, large bite of pastry. “Leff go.”
They could tell something was wrong at Kallisto’s house as soon as they approached the front door. It stood open, and muffled sounds of shouting came from inside. Dami passed the lute he was carrying to Ariston, and put his hand on the pommel of his sword.
As they hesitated on the doorstep, Lykanos burst out into the hall, hair standing on end, tunic and mantle rumpled. His eyes went wide at the sight of Damiskos, Varazda, and Ariston.