by A. J. Demas
Philion shot her a look. “Here’s what it is. Ino stands to inherit a fortune.”
“Oh, well … ” said Korinna, simpering.
“A fortune,” Philion repeated. “A business, to be precise, that stands to do very well, very well indeed. Her great-uncle in the colonies left it to her, and she needs a husband to manage it for her. Of course you couldn’t expect a woman to run a business. So, here we are.”
You could expect a woman to run a business, Damiskos thought, and in fact he could imagine Ino being pretty good at it, though she might want someone to help her with the parts that involved a lot of talking to people. But that wasn’t the main point here.
Damiskos was still holding the napkin which he’d been using to wipe honey off his fingers. They were still somewhat sticky.
“I’m sorry, sir,” he said. “I’m sorry, Ino. I’m not in a position to marry. If—if that’s what you’re suggesting.”
“Oh, pssh,” said his father. “I knew you’d have some kind of scruples about it—didn’t I say so, Myrto? Didn’t I say he would have some kind of scruples?” He sounded indulgently proud of it, in fact.
“You did, dear.”
“But you see, it’s perfect. We all know you and Ino should have married years ago when you were young. We all see that now.”
Korinna murmured agreement.
“And,” Philion went on, “there really is a lot of money to be had. You needn’t worry on that score.”
“Sir, I am not concerned about money. I am not in a position to marry because I am not free to do so.” It sounded better than, “Because I don’t want to.”
“Myrto!” Korinna cried, in a way that was probably meant to sound arch but just sounded angry. “You assured me that he wasn’t married or engaged!”
“All a waste of time,” Simonides muttered.
“He isn’t,” Philion declared. “Xereus’s head. He’d have told us if he was.”
“Of course he would,” said Damiskos’s mother. “Oh, but perhaps he was about to. Darling, did you meet a girl while you were in Boukos? How exciting!”
“I’m not engaged,” he said, because he wasn’t about to begin spinning a web of lies. “But I am not free to marry.”
Once or twice Damiskos had thought about how he might tell his family about Varazda. It would be in the context of explaining why he was moving to Boukos, and it would be nicely vague. Varazda’s whole family could be invoked, in fact, as a household of Zashians with whom he was going to live. Later, perhaps, they could meet Varazda and be free to wonder just what was going on there—but it wouldn’t matter, because they would be resigned by then to their once-brilliant son living out his days as a pottering bachelor in a backwater republic. Except that evidently they weren’t. And he had never imagined he would have to explain Varazda as his reason for not being free to be anyone’s husband.
“The business is flourishing,” Damiskos’s father was saying. “Expanding—lots of profit in it, and it’s a sure thing, not like real estate. It’s in Kargania, so you’d have to go there, at least for a couple of years, to oversee it.”
“But Ino will like that,” said Korinna. “Won’t you, dear.”
Ino looked at her hands in her lap.
“She’ll like to get out of the public eye, I expect,” said Myrto. “With the charges being laid and everything.”
Korinna shot Myrto a poisonous look. “They’re nothing to do with us. I assure you.” Turning to Damiskos with an attempt at a smile, she said, “Ino was briefly engaged to Sosikles Phostikos.”
“The politician.” Damiskos was glad he didn’t have any food in his mouth to choke on. “I didn’t know he was—um—engaged. To Ino.”
“Of course not,” Philion scoffed. “And it won’t come out. He wasn’t about to advertise the fact that his bride-to-be was a commoner. Not that—you know. Nothing to be ashamed of.”
Damiskos sighed. If it had been possible to sell aristocratic status the way you could sell decrepit country villas and ancestral lands, they would have been a family of commoners themselves long ago. In practice they might as well have been.
“And, as Korinna said,” his father went on, “nothing he did has any connection to Ino or her family.”
“All the same,” Myrto persisted, “it might be nice for her to get away from Pheme while the trials are going on.”
“Quite,” said Philion, “quite.”
“Phostikos is a two-faced shit,” said Simonides in a violent mutter.
“Language, darling,” Korinna hissed.
“Never should have trusted him.” He lapsed into silence again.
For a while they were all awkwardly silent. The things that Damiskos might have said to his parents couldn’t politely be said in front of Ino and her family. The things he might have said to her weren’t really appropriate for their parents’ ears. He didn’t have anything at all to say to Korinna or Simonides.
“It’s so nice to have you back, Damiskos,” Myrto said finally. Her smile was just a little sad. “What were you doing in Boukos? Work?”
“No. I’m thinking of moving there.”
“Oh!” His mother looked surprised in a mild way. “I’ve heard it’s a nice place to live.”
Korinna gave a little gasp. Ino was trying to hide the fact that she was moving her fingers up and down in her lap, over and over again. She was rocking back and forth a little, too, but her mother hadn’t noticed yet.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” said Philion. “What about your career?”
“I’ve already left my post at the Quartermaster’s Office. It wasn’t going anywhere.”
“Poor Damiskos.” Korinna slid back into the conversation, loudly. “You had such a bright future, when Ino and you were young. But, you know, that’s perfect in a way. You can travel to Kargania with her and run the fertilizer business, and—”
“Fertilizer?” Damiskos repeated, feeling hysterical laughter bubbling up his throat. This thing got worse and worse. “Fertilizer—you mean … ”
“There’s serious profit in it,” his father repeated sternly. “Don’t be silly.”
“It is a little funny,” Myrto murmured. “But it’s … you know … it’s very important to the farmers. And you liked living in the colonies.”
“I liked living in Zash. Kargania is a whole different situation.”
“It’s a perfect place to make a fresh start.” Korinna took over again. “And a perfect start to your political career.”
“My political career,” Damiskos echoed.
“If you wanted to have a political career,” said Korinna, in a tone which Damiskos had heard her use before with her husband. The words which you do were strongly implied.
The silence stretched out again. Damiskos realized, with a feeling like a dark mouth slowly swallowing him, that he was not going to go on saying, “No.” How could he? His parents were asking for his help; Ino, from the look of things, actually needed his help. He should have realized that his life with Varazda couldn’t last.
The front door rattled in the silence, and hobnailed boots clattered in the hallway. Damiskos looked up.
“Timiskos is home?”
“Mm,” said his father, sounding uninterested. “Didn’t we tell you?”
Damiskos tossed the sticky napkin onto the table, swung his legs down from the couch, and was out of the dining room in a couple of strides.
His younger half-brother was in the hall, getting his boots off with one hand while holding a couple of writing tablets in the other. He looked up.
“Damiskos, you’re back! What brings you—just coming to see the parents, I guess.”
“And you! Well, except I didn’t know you were in Pheme.”
“Yeah. I got back a couple of weeks ago.”
Timiskos looked older, although it had been less than a year since Damiskos had seen him. He was dressed in civilian clothes, aside from the boots. He wasn’t wearing a sword, and he was clean-shaven. He’d left his legion, Damiskos gues
sed, and he probably didn’t want to talk about it.
“You’re staying here?”
Timiskos shrugged wanly. “I’ve got nowhere else. Father and Myrto borrowed money in my name while I was away, so I’ve got debts now that I didn’t know about. And I didn’t manage to save much from my pay. Can’t afford to go anywhere else.”
“Wait,” said Damiskos. “They did what?”
“You know. They did what they do. You’re all right? I heard you went off to Boukos without telling them what you were up to.”
“I told them what I was doing, they just didn’t pay attention. I was visiting a friend. A lover, actually.”
“Oh. Sounds fun! I was never able to get into all that.”
“All what?”
“You know. In the army. Brothers in arms and that sort of thing. I mean, with women it’s fine, I guess, but with another man?” He shrugged again. He was doing too much shrugging, Damiskos thought, and not enough meeting his brother’s eyes. “Just couldn’t see it. It’s great for you, though, I bet. To have someone like that.”
“It’s not someone from the army, actually. How much debt did they run up in your name?”
“I don’t even know, Damiskos. At this point … ”
Damiskos folded his arms to keep from grabbing Timiskos’s shoulders to stop the shrugging.
“Gods. Don’t look at me like that—you look like my commanding officer.”
“That’s just how I look. Let’s go in before they come out here looking for us.”
Chapter 4
When breakfast was finally over, most of the household melted away. Myrto and Korinna went out to the market, Philion went down to the barbershop, apparently to pick an argument with their neighbours, and Simonides and Timiskos retired to their rooms. It left Damiskos and Ino alone in the dining room, obviously by design. He moved to the couch opposite her, and they sat a little while in silence. She looked calmer, but still uncomfortable. As well she might, he thought. He felt uncomfortable.
“It’s good to see you again,” he said finally.
She gave him a look which suggested she thought that was a lie.
“It is,” he insisted gravely. “I always wished you well, and I wondered how you were doing. I guess … you’ve been back in your parents’ house for a while now?”
She nodded, guardedly.
“Do you still paint?” he asked after another silence.
At that, her face lit with a tentative smile. “Yes. But not as much as I used to. I found something else I love even more.”
“Really? What is that?”
For a moment she seemed to be weighing whether she should tell him. It was probably—certainly—something she had been told she shouldn’t love. Even her painting had never met with approval from her family; she’d been too interested in the technical details of mixing pigments and making her own brushes, and she had wanted to repaint all the frescoes in the house. He wondered if she’d ever gotten to do that.
She said, “My late husband was a silversmith. He taught me his trade.”
“No! You know how to make things out of silver?” It was both entirely unexpected and somehow obviously perfect. “I’ve always thought that was sort of like working magic. What kinds of things do you make?”
“Cups and bowls. I like the round shape because you can incorporate a whole scene with people and a background, just as you would in a painting, only in relief rather than in colours. I sometimes do smaller things—I made this bracelet.” She held out her wrist. “But I don’t enjoy the small work as much.”
Damiskos leaned across the table to look at the wide silver bangle, decorated with an impossibly intricate tangle of leaves. On one of the leaves there was a little snail. All he could think of was how much Varazda would like a bracelet like that.
“It’s gorgeous,” he said finally. Ino never minded if you took a while to figure out what to say.
“Do you want to hear about how you make things out of silver?” she asked shyly.
“I would love to.”
She glowed and swayed to and fro as she described in incredible detail, with historical anecdotes and an exhaustive list of all the books that had ever been written on metallurgy, the craft that she had learned from her husband. He listened, smiling and nodding and trying to ask interested questions, because he remembered that this was a way of being nice to her—and it was easy enough.
When she had finished describing the process of chasing a silver bowl and stopped for breath, he said, “Is it true that your marriage was unhappy?”
She looked surprised, then shook her head. “Oh, no. Mother says that. Because we didn’t have children, I think? And she never wanted me to marry Photios. I had to pretend to be carrying his child to get her to let me.”
“I’m sorry,” said Damiskos. From the way she’d described her husband teaching her his craft, it had sounded as if they had been something like soulmates. “You must miss him.”
She nodded. “We were happy. He was a very good husband to me. But he was old, and his health was always weak. We had ten years together—we were lucky.”
“That’s a good way of looking at it.” After a moment he said, “What do your parents think about the silversmithing?”
“They don’t know about it.” She spoke with an almost alarmingly fierce satisfaction. “I pretend to visit a friend, and instead I go down to Photios’s son’s workshop—Photios had a son, before he married me, who’s an adult now, and carries on his trade—and I help him with commissions. He always says that he’ll give me my share of the proceeds, but I tell him to spend it on more materials—the business is not doing as well as it used to, and Photios would want me to take care of his son. Besides, I don’t know what I would do with the money.” She was silent for a moment. Then she said, “Do you want to hear about the commission I got from the Temple of Kerialos?”
“Of course,” he said. “Tell me.”
“So you’re out for good, are you?” said Damiskos, as he sat with his brother in a Lower Goulina wine shop that afternoon.
“What?”
“You’ve left the legions.”
“How did you know? Father told you, I suppose.”
“No, I just guessed. What happened?”
Timiskos, of course, shrugged. “I don’t know. Nothing. Nothing happened—I just couldn’t … I just didn’t want to do it any more. Don’t worry, I am ashamed.”
“You think I want you to be ashamed?”
“Well, you should. I was doing it for you. I was trying to have the career that you couldn’t have any more, I guess, but it was impossible. Not just because I don’t have your talents, but I … hated all the regulations, the discipline, the way you never had any time alone. And I hated Sasia. Immortal gods, Damiskos, I tried to like it there because I knew you did, but the people are so strange, the food is strange, the politics are strange—I could never pick up more than a few phrases of the language—there was just no way I could stick it out there. And I know there are plenty of other places to go, but I just wanted out.”
“I’m glad you got out. Sincerely. You should’ve—it’s not your fault, but you should’ve given up sooner if it was making you miserable. I should have paid more attention and realized something was wrong.”
Timiskos shook his head. “No, I was determined not to let you know.”
“I don’t care, you know. You don’t owe it to me. Divine Terza, I—you don’t, Timiskos. I encouraged you to join because it was good for me, it was a respectable career that Mother and Father were happy for me to take up, but it got me out—out of their house, out of the city, off the island—and that was what I wanted. And I stuck with it because it turned out to suit me, but I didn’t necessarily think you’d want to do that. I just hoped it would help you get some distance.”
“I guess it did,” said Timiskos, frowning. “Yeah. For a while.”
They sat in silence drinking their wine for a few minutes. Damiskos looked out the window
at the street, where sailors passed on their way up from the harbour, their shadows beginning to lengthen over the pavement. He wondered where Varazda was, what he was doing now.
Dancing, maybe, swords in his hands, black hair swinging loose, in some nobleman’s house. Or at home in his own house, playing with Remi while Yazata cooked dinner. Damiskos would have given anything to be there.
“About the debts,” he said. “I know you don’t know exactly, but roughly how much are we talking about?”
“Oh. You mean my debts?” Timiskos shrugged. “Two thousand or so.”
“Divine Terza. Who to?”
“A couple of shops and a jeweler—but most of it to one of Gorgion Pandares’s gaming houses.”
“Terza’s fucking—” Damiskos pushed his hands into his hair. “He’s gambling again. I thought that had stopped.”
Timiskos shook his head. “He stopped betting at the races, but he started going to these places … I’m not sure they’re even licensed, and the fellow who owns them, Pandares—”
“Yes, I remember him.”
“Bad news.”
“To put it mildly. Look, I … I’m not sure how much I can help right now. I was sending them money to pay for Xanthe’s board—”
“Oh, gods, they spent it.”
“They did, and the hostler sold Xanthe. I had to pay a deposit toward buying her back, so I’m cleaned out at the moment. I should be able to start drawing my pension again soon, but it’s not an awful lot of money.”
“I don’t know. It’s not your responsibility.”
“They’re my parents.”
A young man with bright red hair was waving to Timiskos from the door of the wine shop. Damiskos nodded in his direction. “Someone you know?”
“Soukios!” Timiskos hailed him with a bad attempt at cheer. “Come, join us!”
Soukios slid onto the bench beside Timiskos, flagged a waiter for an empty cup, and helped himself to wine from their bottle.
“I knew I’d find you here,” he said, elbowing Timiskos. He looked a little older than Timiskos and spoke with a slight Kossian accent. His red hair and his tunic were lightly powdered with marble dust. “This must be your brother.”