by A. J. Demas
“Charming neighbourhood, isn’t it?” Helenos drawled.
“Go sleep it off,” Damiskos recommended sternly.
“You know,” said Helenos, suddenly sounding more sober, “I really did have hopes for you. Such a principled man. I would have expected you to be easily won to our cause.”
Damiskos had already turned toward the stairs, but he stopped and looked back. Helenos still leaned indolently against the wall, but his gaze was keen.
“I thought you didn’t believe in any of your own bullshit,” Damiskos said.
Helenos’s eyebrows rose and he smiled unpleasantly. “Really? You thought I couldn’t look out for my own interests and at the same time desire the restoration of Phemian glory? How simplistic. How—one might even say—naïve.”
“I should have left you in the street,” Damiskos muttered, and went back down the stairs.
The hostler’s friend in Thumia didn’t want to sell Xanthe back to Damiskos, but not for the reason he had expected.
“She was miserable, stabled in the city—she needs space and freedom to roam,” the man said, and looking at Xanthe trotting across the pasture toward him, of course Damiskos could see that it was true. He’d paid—thought he’d paid—Kleon to take Xanthe out regularly, to make sure she was ridden and had a chance to roam and graze freely, but once the money stopped coming, she had probably been neglected.
“I’ll sell her back to you,” the farmer said, “if you’ve got somewhere better to keep her, but not otherwise.”
Damiskos did have somewhere in mind: the meadow at the end of Saffron Alley, and its adjoining farm and stable, which were owned by a friend of Varazda’s. Damiskos had been to visit and talked horses with the man, and knew he’d be excited about Xanthe. But he hadn’t mentioned this to Varazda, and he hadn’t thought of bringing Xanthe over this trip. He hadn’t thought of making this trip at all at this point, though in respect of his horse it was lucky he had.
“I understand,” he said, “and I’m glad you have got the care of her. I’ll pay you for her now—half today, and half when I’ve been to the Bursar for my pension—and you keep her for me until I have a place for her.”
They agreed on a price, and Damiskos walked back over Skalina Hill and across the river, feeling ashamed for having neglected Xanthe. Just because he had been wrapped up in his own feelings for Varazda didn’t mean he should have forgotten about her. Varazda managed to care for his whole family and his network of friends across Boukos, all while pursuing the only love affair he’d ever had in his life. Damiskos apparently couldn’t even manage to look after a horse.
Chapter 3
Damiskos woke in his apartment on the Vallina Hill for the first time in a month, and stared at the ceiling, remembering where he was.
It wasn’t a depressing place like the hole Helenos was hiding in; it was a pleasant room in a decent part of town, with an alcove for his bed and a privy down the hall and a respectable landlady who kept the place clean. But it wasn’t Varazda’s house in Saffron Alley. It might as well have been a hovel.
He got up and began packing his things in the bags and trunk he had bought yesterday. Outside, the view from his third-floor window was foggy again down toward the river, and the room was cold, but he didn’t bother to light the brazier. Packing didn’t take him long. The clothes that he hadn’t taken with him were folded in a trunk already, including the thick winter cloak that he had begun to miss the last week or so in Boukos. He nestled his lute in on top. He had a few books, the box of his grandmother’s jewellery, an ugly bronze lamp that his brother had given him once as a joke, and a collection of things from Zash—a couple of inlaid daggers, a small bottle in the shape of a pomegranate, an enamelled statuette of a horse—all gifts from people long gone from his life, some gone from the world of the living altogether.
When he had packed everything, collected it all into the centre of the room, and secured his favourite stool to the larger of the two trunks with cords, he went down to knock on his landlady’s door. His rent was paid until the end of Eighth Month, and the remainder of his furniture—his bed, a table, and a couple of chairs—he offered to the landlady. He should probably have tried to sell them, given the current state of his finances, but the landlady had been good to him, and he’d have given her some other kind of present if he could. He arranged to have his packed belongings transported to his parents’ apartment, and finally, since he couldn’t in good conscience avoid it any longer, he set off there himself.
His parents lived in Upper Goulina, an old neighbourhood in the heart of Pheme, full of big houses in ill repair, many of them former city estates now divided up into apartments. His parents’ place was in a smaller house, in better shape than some. It had three stories, and they rented the whole of the middle one. Their downstairs neighbours ran a barbershop in the front of the house, and were engaged in a constant feud with the Temnons over the use of the garden.
The downstairs door, next to the barbershop, was normally unlocked, so Damiskos walked in and up the stairs to the first landing, where he knocked on his parents’ door. It was opened, after some hurrying footsteps and the thump of something being set down, by Gaia, his parents’ sole remaining slave.
“Oh! Damiskos! Mistress, it’s Damiskos!” she yelled back inside the house. “Come in,” she said, holding the door wide and beaming at him. Her hair was coming down untidily around her face, and the thing she had set down was a large, unopened jar with the seal of an inferior olive merchant. She had a blunt-looking knife in one hand.
“We haven’t seen you in so long,” she went on, closing the door behind him and picking up her jar again. She began hacking at the seal with the knife. “They’re in the d—in the winter dining room.”
“Would you like a hand with that?” Damiskos asked.
“Oh, would you?” She passed off the jar and the blunt knife. “Oh, but you’ve got a bag. Let me take it for you.” She tried to take the bag off his shoulder while he was still holding the knife in that hand. He switched hands hastily in order to pass the bag to her.
He pried the seal out of the jar and waited until she had found a place to put his bag before handing her back jar and knife.
“It’s so nice to have you back,” she said, beaming at him again.
“Blessed Orante, girl, why are you standing there babbling?” Damiskos’s father, Philion, strode out of the dining room—the only dining room in the apartment, which they insisted on calling “the winter dining room”—and clapped Damiskos on the shoulder.
“My boy! Here you are at last. We’re just finishing breakfast. Come see who else is here.”
“I am glad to see you well, sir.” For a moment Damiskos did not move from where he stood.
He wanted to say, “What did you do with the money I sent you for Xanthe’s board?” But he knew he wouldn’t get a straight answer if he did. It would be his mother’s fault, he’d be told, or they’d made a mistake and thought all the money was for them, in spite of the clear instructions he had sent every week. And he would be justly rebuked for greeting his parent with complaints instead of filial affection.
His father was bustling toward the dining room now, so Damiskos followed him. Gaia took the olives back to the kitchen.
The dining room was surprisingly full when Damiskos entered; he’d expected perhaps one guest, but there were three, along with his mother, lounging on their couches with fruit-peels and bowls of yogurt littering the tables between them. Myrto, Damiskos’s mother, started up with an expression of mock-surprise, gold bangles chiming, as he entered. She was dressed in a deep purple gown, her hair arranged in the crisp waves that she favoured.
“Mother,” he said awkwardly, hurrying to clasp her hands and kiss her on the cheek. “I’m sorry it has been so long.” He looked across at the occupants of the other couches. “Sir, Madam. Ino. This is a surprise.”
Korinna and Simonides were older than his parents, or at least they looked it now. It had been ne
arly fifteen years since Damiskos had seen them. Korinna’s hair showed a stripe of silver along the roots, where it needed to be dyed, and Simonides’s face looked even more like a candle left in a hot room, slowly sagging as it melted. He was looking at the floor, but Korinna looked at Damiskos, with an expression of undisguised pity.
“Poor Damiskos,” she said. For a moment he had no idea what she meant by it.
Their daughter, Ino, was alone on the third couch. She had the same slim figure as she had at sixteen, the last time Damiskos had seen her, and the clinging folds of her lavender-coloured gown showed off her long legs. She wore her golden-brown hair in a sleek style now, looped back from her face, with a veil of a lighter shade of lavender in the back, trailing from an elaborate gold comb thing.
She glanced up at him and then away, with a little nod of greeting. He remembered that little nod, the way she avoided meeting your eyes if she could. She was Damiskos’s age, and he supposed she looked it, but really she had not changed much at all. He was glad to see that; perhaps it meant that life had not been too hard on her.
Belatedly he realized that Korinna had called him “poor Damiskos” because of how much he had changed himself. He had forgotten about that.
“Sit next to Ino, Damiskos,” his father instructed him, hauling himself back onto the couch with his wife and rearranging his mantle with a grunt. “Come now—you haven’t eaten, I suppose?”
He had eaten, hours ago. He sat at the end of Ino’s couch—she tucked up her feet, further than she needed to—and took off his own sandals before someone could bawl for Gaia to come and do it for him. His mother reached over to offer him a dish of cheese drenched in honey.
“We got that Kossian cheese that I remember you always used to love,” she said.
“Oh,” said Korinna, with an artificial brightness. “I remember that too. We used to serve it whenever you visited.” She laughed. “Such expensive tastes!”
There was a moment’s awkward silence, probably filled by everyone remembering why Damiskos used to visit Korinna and Simonides’s house, and why he had stopped. That was certainly what Damiskos was doing. He ate some cheese. It was as good as he remembered, though rather drowning in the honey. He wondered if you could get it in Boukos; he thought Varazda would like it.
“How was Boukos?” Philion asked, mouth full of bread.
“It’s—” Damiskos didn’t know how to answer. “Much as it always is. It’s a lovely city.”
“It’s so close, really,” said Korinna quickly. “It’s a shame we don’t visit more often.”
“We’ve never been,” said Simonides. His voice sounded rusty, as if he hadn’t used it in a while.
Out of the corner of his eye, Damiskos saw Ino glance at her father, a tiny smile on her face.
Philion snorted. “All very well to visit, but I wouldn’t want to live there. Their damned public watch crawling all over you, brothels on every street-corner, and the way they run their government! Dreadful place.”
Korinna laughed, flashing Philion a toothy smile. “You’re so like Simonides, with all your opinions!”
This was so far from true that Damiskos realized his eyebrows had risen before he could stop them. Ino’s father had opinions, certainly; you hardly ever heard about them, and in Damiskos’s experience, when you did sometimes you wished you hadn’t, but at least they were consistent and deeply held. Philion Temnon just repeated things he’d heard other people say. He’d reveal massive logical contradictions in the course of a single conversation and wave them away grandly. He just didn’t care.
“Simonides,” Korinna went on, “says that the Sasians will be the downfall of Boukos.” She shrugged. “I’ve no idea, but that’s what he says.”
“Foreigners,” Simonides creaked. “Full of bad ideas.”
Ino was no longer smiling at her father. She looked down at the cup in her hands, and Damiskos heard her give a little sigh.
“Oh, I like the Sasians,” said Damiskos’s mother with a bright, unselfconscious laugh. “They’re so interesting, with their beards and things. I’d love to go shopping in Boukos some time.”
“The trade agreement has been good for the local economy,” said Damiskos, feeling like a character in a badly written play.
“That reminds me,” said Myrto, “did you bring me back a present, darling?”
“Yes,” said Damiskos. “Only I … er.”
He hadn’t wanted to produce his mother’s present in front of Ino and her parents, because of course he had nothing for them. He got up, feeling that it didn’t matter what he did, and went to get the bottle of perfume he had bought for his mother, while his father yelled for Gaia to come do it for him, and Korinna tsked archly about “that girl of yours.”
Myrto exclaimed delightedly over the perfume. Korinna sniffed at it and said it was heavenly. Ino flinched and made a face when her mother shoved the bottle under her nose.
“It smells like sick,” she said in a tight voice.
“Stupid girl,” Korinna hissed, with a look of such violence that Damiskos thought if the bottle of perfume had not been Myrto’s, she would have thrown it at her daughter.
“Sorry,” he said, giving Ino an apologetic smile. “You don’t like strong smells. I remember that.”
It was very clear that something was up, and Damiskos both desperately wanted and feared to find out what it was. His parents and Ino’s had been friends once—their fathers had briefly been in business together—but all that had ended spectacularly sixteen years ago, and as far as Damiskos knew none of them had spoken to one another since. He’d heard that Ino had married, and his parents had made disparaging comments about her husband, but he had not listened.
“Have you gone to see any friends since you got back?” said Damiskos’s mother, ploughing gamely ahead with the next stilted line in their script.
“No. I had some business to transact yesterday.” After a moment he added, neutrally, “It was about Xanthe.”
His parents exchanged puzzled glances.
“Who’s Xanthe, dear?” his mother asked finally, a little fearfully.
“My horse.”
“Oh! Oh, goodness, I thought for a moment you were talking about a daughter!”
Philion Temnon roared with laughter. “I was about to say that sounds more like a name for a horse.”
“I asked you to pay for her board at Kleon’s stable in the Vallina with some of the money I had sent from the Bursar’s office while I was in Boukos,” Damiskos went on. He shouldn’t say this in front of Korinna and Simonides, but he could not help himself. “Yesterday Kleon told me he hadn’t received anything. What did you do with the money?”
“Darling,” said Myrto, “I think we probably spent it. You know how it is.”
Korinna made a little noise that sounded like satisfaction, and Damiskos regretted his lapse. There was no question that Korinna and her husband knew what his parents were like, but it was still unfilial of him to put it so plainly on display.
“We were determined to be here when you got home,” Korinna was saying, and Damiskos realized she was talking to him. “Weren’t we, Simonides?”
Simonides muttered something, which Korinna ignored.
“They don’t keep a house in town any more,” said Philion. He wiped his mouth with a napkin, tossed it at the table, and missed. “So they’re staying with us for the moment.”
Damiskos did his best to keep the look of incredulity off his face this time. Incredulity and alarm, in fact. The Temnons’ apartment did not have enough rooms to accommodate a whole extra household. Were Simonides and his family in such straits that this was really their best option?
“Did you hear that poor Photios died?” said Korinna.
“Did he?” said Damiskos helplessly. He had no idea who poor Photios was.
“My husband,” Ino supplied in an undertone.
“Oh! I’m so sorry. I didn’t know.”
“It was six years ago,” she said. He�
�d always found it hard to tell if she was being deliberately deadpan or just not expressing emotion because it didn’t come naturally to her. He thought it might have been the former here.
Well, that explained why she wasn’t dressed in mourning. Had she been living in her parents’ house for the last six years? He was surprised they hadn’t made another attempt to marry her to someone—surprised she hadn’t jumped at the opportunity to get away from them, as she had before …
Then he realized what they must be doing here.
His most vivid memory of the whole awful business sixteen years ago was sitting with his mother, eating stale leftovers from what was supposed to have been his own wedding feast, because it had all been bought and paid for before Ino’s parents decided to call off the wedding and withdraw their consent. His father, out in the atrium of their old house, had been loudly supervising the removal of another load of furniture and art that was going to pay off the most urgent of the debts.
“I feel sorry for that girl,” Myrto had said, looking critically at a shrimp pastry she had just bitten into. “You would have made her a good husband.” She nibbled a little more of the pastry. “Not many would.”
That was more or less all she’d ever said on the subject, but at least she had said it. Damiskos’s father had not stopped talking about the insult to himself and his family for months, but it never seemed to have occurred to him that there might be any reason to pity anyone else involved.
And now Simonides and Korinna were sitting in the Temnons’ dining room as if they had all been the best of friends for the last decade and a half.
“It was never a happy marriage,” said Korinna, with a soulful look at Damiskos rather than at her daughter. “We would often talk about how it might have been different.”
“Oh.”
“Wouldn’t we, Simonides?”
Myrto gave a tiny snort of laughter, presumably at the idea of Korinna and Simonides talking “often” about anything.