Saffron Alley

by A. J. Demas

  “Shield me, blessed Soukos,” he croaked. “What do you want? No, no, I don’t care—send for help! Call the watch!”

  Ariston looked as if he was about to obey before he remembered that they were fugitives from justice.

  “What has happened?” Dami asked commandingly, stepping inside the house to place a heavy hand on Lykanos’s shoulder.

  The merchant tried feebly to shrug him off. “I don’t know!”

  There was a crash from deeper within the house. The shouting voices were female, and Varazda recognized one as Kallisto’s.

  “If you’ve hurt her—” Ariston pushed his way past Varazda into the hallway, brandishing Dami’s lute in front of Lykanos’s face.

  Lykanos reared back, but was held in place by Dami. “Hurt who, for the gods’ love? They’re in there, fighting like a pair of she-lions, and I’ll be damned if I know what’s going on. You—” he waved a hand at Varazda, “you’re that jumped-up dancing-girl from the Sasian embassy, and you’re Themi’s apprentice, but who in the hells are you?” He gave Dami an aggrieved look.

  “We ask the questions, not you!” Ariston barked. “What have you done to Themistokles? Did you or did you not try to kill him?”

  Varazda felt this was wasting time. The noises from inside the house were sounding to him like a brawl. “I’m going inside,” he muttered to Dami as he edged past. Dami nodded.

  “I did not!” Lykanos was protesting. “Kill him? Blessed Orante, what do you take me for?”

  “Be quiet,” Dami ordered. “Both of you.”

  Varazda had reached the inner door from behind which the noise was coming. He edged it open warily and looked inside. A whip snaked through the air and snapped like a thunderclap. Involuntarily, Varazda jumped back.

  The room beyond the door had lush red walls and a large couch surrounded by filmy curtains. Kneeling on the bed, naked and with the coverlet clutched to his chest, was Themistokles. Between him and the door were Leto and Kallisto.

  The whip was in Leto’s hand. Kallisto had a chain wrapped around one fist and in the other hand a short leather scourge of a kind that Varazda hadn’t seen since his childhood in Zash, and had never very much wanted to see then. His first thought, accompanied by a cold lurch in the pit of his stomach, was that he was witnessing a scene put on for Themistokles’s benefit, and that Lykanos was overreacting in the same way Ariston had when he overheard Kallisto a week ago. He almost snapped the door shut at that. Then he saw that Kallisto was bleeding, and that Leto had a knife as well as the whip.

  “You bitch, you Sasian bitch, I should have known!” She was in tears of fury. “They’re right—you’re like a plague on Boukos, you and your horrible beardy men. We have to drive you all out!”

  “Leto, calm down.” Kallisto was obviously struggling to keep her voice level. The blood was trickling from a long scratch on her arm. She did not have a scrap of clothing on. “I have never intended you any harm.”

  Leto slashed the air with the whip. She knew what she was doing with it. “You stole Lykanos from me!”

  “You keep saying that, Leto, but it isn’t true. I never accepted him as my principal client—if he told you I did, he was lying.”

  “Yes, you crazed slut!” Themistokles piped up from the bed. “She’s—”

  “Shut up!” both women roared at him. Themistokles clamped his mouth shut obediently.

  Dami had come up behind Varazda, with Lykanos in an armlock and Ariston on the other side of him making menacing faces.

  “I don’t know what’s going on,” Lykanos was whimpering. “I swear by all the gods, I don’t know—”

  Kallisto looked toward the door, and she and Ariston stood frozen, staring at one another. It struck Varazda, in one of those moments of strange, slow clarity in the midst of a crisis, that she was what a goddess of battle would really look like: naked and bloodied and powerful, with her hair down around her shoulders and weapons in each hand.

  And then Leto’s whip was whistling through the air again, and Varazda dove into the room, dodging under the lash and spoiling her aim, so that on the return stroke she hit him—a dull thump cushioned by his embroidered gown—instead of Kallisto.

  “Get out of here! Horrible thing!” she shrieked at him.

  From the doorway Ariston was shouting too. “No! Varazda! Kallisto! Leto, stop!” He gave a grunt as someone—Dami—silenced him.

  “Put that thing down before you break it.” That was Dami too, presumably talking about the lute.

  Varazda dodged the whip again, slid around to Leto’s far side, and seized her whip hand at the wrist. He was stronger than she was, but not by a lot, and she had a knife. The blade caught in the embroidery of his gown, and he twisted, pulling her off balance. Dami caught her under the arms as the knife dropped, and she struggled and kicked as he pulled her away from Varazda.

  Ariston was already at Kallisto’s side, offering her a mantle to wrap around herself. Leto slumped in Dami’s grip, defeated.

  “You fucking men,” she muttered petulantly.

  Varazda picked up the knife from the floor and caught Dami’s eye. Dami raised his eyebrows, wordlessly asking if Varazda was all right. Varazda nodded.

  “Well!” said Themistokles, swinging his legs off the bed and standing, still holding the blanket. “That was exciting.”

  He was met by a wall of baleful glares. Only Lykanos, a little unsteadily, laughed.

  Dami had let go of Leto, who was breathing heavily and glowering, but seemed otherwise to have calmed down.

  Lykanos chose that moment to say, “I don’t know what all this was about, dear, but under the circumstances I must reiterate that it is over between us.”

  “I know that!” Leto spat. “It’s because I slept with that nasty Sasian for you, isn’t it?”

  “What? No, of course—I don’t know what you’re talking about. I think I had better be—”

  “Don’t even think about it,” said Ariston, and Dami moved toward the doorway to back him up.

  “Don’t even think about it,” Leto echoed mockingly. “Tell them about your plan to ‘get the Sasians out of Boukos,’ Lyky darling. What a joke that was! You don’t really care at all about that, do you?”

  Lykanos held up his hands in a caricature of earnestness. “Look. I’ve nothing against Sasia or Sasians, in the grand scheme of things. It’s just business. I’m in the spice business, and Sasian trade is not good for that business. That’s all it is. So when I heard that some young firebrands were planning to stir up trouble to get the Sasians out of Boukos—well, it would be good for my business. So I helped them out. I gave them a little money. I introduced Leto to them because I thought she could help—she’s very, you know … she can get men to tell her things.”

  “You should hear some of the things he’s told me,” Leto sneered.

  “So you told her to join the group,” said Varazda, “but then she became a true believer.”

  Lykanos waved a hand impatiently. “I didn’t know that was going to happen. If you want the truth, I thought that was the last thing in the world that would happen, because I always thought she was all business, just like me.”

  “It didn’t occur to you that I might think for myself, is what you mean.”

  “Probably,” said Varazda, looking at Leto. “So then he got you to pursue an affair with a clerk from the embassy to get information for his ‘firebrands’?”

  She wrinkled her nose. “He paid me for that, but it wasn’t his idea. It was mine.”

  “And what sort of things did Shorab tell you?”

  “Well … ” She looked away. “Secrets, you know. Things he shouldn’t have. He’s a stupid man.”

  “Did he tell you, for instance, about a Zashian diplomat visiting Boukos this past summer, carrying important military documents?”

  “Yes, yes. He told me about that—he said he thought I’d be pleased to know Sasia and Boukos were ‘drawing close together—just like you and me.’” She rolled h
er eyes. “Then my friends stole the silly things and took them away to Pheme to sell them, and then someone from the embassy … ” She broke off and looked sharply at Varazda. “He told me about you, too. He didn’t know exactly what you do, but he said you weren’t what you seem—he said you’re always around the embassy and probably up to something. It was you, wasn’t it? On Pheme in the Month of Grapes. It was you, I know it. I was right to think we needed to get rid of you. Not,” she added quickly, “that I had anything to do with that.”

  “Of course not,” said Varazda. “And did Lykanos know that you had ‘warned’ us he meant to kill Themistokles at the Palace of Letters last night?”

  “What?” Lykanos gave a sharp laugh. “She’s got completely off the leash! I had nothing to do with that. Women! What can you—”

  “No,” said Dami, “no, you don’t get to appeal to us for manly sympathy, you sack of shit. You bankrolled a riot that left three men dead, you helped the guilty parties escape justice, you introduced your girlfriend to a group of dangerous criminals, and—if I’ve got this part right—you also tried to spoil your ex-boyfriend’s moment of triumph last night by making a piece of his frieze fall off the wall? You’re culpable as fuck.”

  “Now look here!” Themistokles protested. “I told you Lykanos would never do such a thing!”

  “Well, somebody did,” said Varazda. “A whole panel fell off early this morning, when we were there searching for the knife that killed the watchman last night.”

  “What?” said Themistokles.

  “Knife?” said Leto. “He wasn’t killed with a knife—he was killed with your swords.”

  “What?” said Kallisto and Themistokles at the same time.

  Varazda gave Leto a long look. She paled.

  “He was killed,” Varazda said slowly, “by your lover—the other one, Shorab—with a knife, but at your instigation. I wonder what story you told Shorab to get him to do it. That the young man had offered you some insult? Or maybe that he was a member of the anti-Zashian faction himself. Shorab lost a close friend in the riot. I can imagine he might have been willing to take the law into his own hands. And you know—” He shrugged. “We Zashians like to do that.”

  “Why would I have wanted Soh-rab”—Leto mispronounced his name carefully—“to kill some watchman who was doing nothing but guarding a stupid scaffold?”

  “I think it was because you saw an opportunity. I’d left my swords unattended—all you had to do was slip up after your lover had done the messy part and plant them on the body. You had already set me up to be arrested, on your information and thanks to your warning to Ariston. When the frieze fell off the wall, of course, that would have proven I’d been ‘up to something,’ but how much better if I had actually killed a man. And if Shorab were caught instead—well, you wanted to be rid of him anyway.”

  “That is all utter nonsense,” said Leto, but she was very pale by this time.

  “I came here this morning to tell her it was over between us,” Lykanos put in irrelevantly. “I knew she had something to do with that murder last night. I saw her hide a knife in her couch cushions, and there was a look of triumph on her face … ” He shuddered. “I couldn’t afford to keep up the association any longer. Besides, I knew Kallisto was about to lose her principal lover, and I thought it only right that I should finally step into that role. I tried to break it to Leto gently, of course.”

  “But Kallisto is not about to lose her principal lover,” said Themistokles grandly. “What else do you imagine I’m doing here? You spoiled my moment of triumph as you desired, Lykanos—I had no idea you nurtured such jealousy, after all these years, honestly it’s rather flattering. You may not have done it the way you intended, but by unleashing that little slut on my party, you ruined the unveiling of my finest work and the announcement of my candidacy for the Basileon. I’m sure I’ll forgive you for it in time—I always do—but you’re not getting Kallisto away from me, not now.”

  Varazda looked over at Kallisto. She stood wrapped in her sky-blue mantle, and Ariston was beside her, nestled against her side, in fact, with an arm around her. While everyone else had been making accusations and excuses, they had obviously been talking in low voices. They looked oddly perfect together, her with her broad shoulders and brown skin, him willowy and pale. She still held the chain, though it dragged on the ground now. She had to lean down to let Ariston whisper something in her ear. A slow smile spread across her face.

  “That might be nice,” she said aloud, in Zashian that sounded rusty with disuse. She looked up at the others in the room. “Themistokles,” she said, “please put your clothes on and go home. I took you in last night because you were so clearly in distress, but it is over between us, as you mentioned last night. Lykanos, I never want to see you again in my life. Leto, I am sorry—if it were just the conflict between the two of us, I’d be happy to put it behind us, but it sounds as though you’ve murdered someone, more or less, so I’m afraid we will have to call the watch. I suppose her accomplice can be found at the Zashian embassy?”

  “Actually,” said Varazda, looking through the door into the hall, “he is coming in right now.”

  Shorab looked as white-faced as Leto, and froze when he saw Varazda.

  “What are you doing here?”

  Varazda stepped out into the hall. “I’m sorry about this, Shorab.”

  “What? Has something happened to Leto?”

  “Sohrab!” came Leto’s voice, raised in a wail, from inside the bedroom. “Darling! Help me! They’re—unh!” She broke off with an obviously feigned grunt.

  It wasn’t obvious to Shorab. He charged past Varazda, knocking him back against the wall, and plunged into the room with his sword drawn.

  Varazda started forward in time to see Shorab charge at Dami, who was restraining Leto again. Dami swung her around behind him and drew his sword in one motion, smooth as a dance step. His blade clanged against Shorab’s.

  “Let her go, and I’ve no quarrel with you,” said Shorab, giving ground hastily.

  “I’m afraid that’s not true.” Dami parried a wild swing from Shorab and closed in another step, switching his sword from one hand to the other so that he could keep Leto more effectively behind him.

  “Sohrab, don’t let them! I’m so scared!” Leto wailed.

  It was not a big room, and there were now seven people in it, not counting Varazda in the doorway. What happened next was such chaos that Varazda could only reconstruct in hindsight who must have done what.

  He backed out into the hallway because he could see that Dami was forcing Shorab toward the door, to get his dangerously uncontrolled sword out of the way of the other people in the room. But Lykanos chose that moment to dive for the doorway himself, and attempted to wriggle out behind Shorab. There was a clanging crunch as Lykanos stepped on the lute that Ariston had left on the floor, and he fell, hitting Shorab and toppling him backward into the hall. Dami arrived in the doorway, and Leto tried to push her way under his arm. He stopped her, and she gave a howl of protest. As he turned to push her back into the arms of Kallisto inside the room, Shorab hooked his foot behind Dami’s knee, and Dami overbalanced and fell sideways into the hall, landing half on Lykanos, half on the floor, the broken lute giving out another crash. Dami’s sword was knocked out of his hand and spun to a stop at Varazda’s feet.

  In a moment, Dami would have risen, but he was slowed by Lykanos thrashing under him, and the remains of the lute, and Shorab was already getting up to his knees, sword drawn back to stab.

  He never finished the motion. Varazda had seized Dami’s sword from the floor and swung it, in a low arc that he had practiced thousands of times in his family’s dance, and a great spray of blood followed the motion, spattering across Kallisto’s hallway, before Shorab’s body swayed and collapsed backward onto the floor.

  He remembered Marzana saying, “One strikes a killing blow knowing that it may kill, yet not desiring the other man’s death.” So this was wha
t that was like. He wouldn’t have killed Shorab under other circumstances. He had never even wished him ill. Yet he had swung the sword knowing, and not caring, that it might take Shorab’s life.

  Dami was wiping blood from his face and looking up to meet Varazda’s eyes as he got to his feet. He looked at Varazda as if the other people in the house—Lykanos writhing on the floor, Leto now laughing hysterically in the doorway while Ariston shouted at her to shut up and Kallisto and Themistokles argued about something in the bedroom—might not have been there at all. In a moment Varazda felt as if they weren’t.

  “Thank you,” said Dami simply. He put a hand on Varazda’s shoulder. “Are you all right?”

  Varazda nodded slowly. He looked past Dami at Shorab’s body on the floor. The sword-cut had caught him cleanly across the throat, which was where Varazda had aimed it, and he was very obviously dead. There was a lot of blood.

  He felt surprisingly calm. “I will have to answer for that,” he said.

  “You have several very reliable witnesses,” said Dami. “He was going to kill me, and you had no time to consider how to stop him in a non-lethal way.”

  Varazda nodded. “I am all right,” he said.

  Chapter 21

  Dami and Varazda sat side-by-side on the divan in Varazda’s sitting-room. Dami had his leg up and a warm compress on his knee—Yazata’s idea, but Dami hadn’t protested. He and Varazda were both freshly bathed and dressed in clean tunics. Yazata brought in a pot of tea on a tray with cups.

  Remi breezed by from the yard, carrying Selene. “I’m going to play at Maia’s, Papa!” she called. “I hope your hurt goes away soon, Dami!”

  Varazda winced, but Dami laughed and called back, “Thank you.”

  “I’m going to go make lunch,” said Yazata, pouring out two cups of tea. “Can I bring you anything else?” He smiled tentatively at Dami.

  “No, thank you,” said Dami, smiling back. “This is lovely.”