Strong Wine

by A. J. Demas

  “You’ve just had enough of being insulted by his family,” Nione suggested, “and you’ve every right to stay away. I’m sorry I pressed you on it, truly.”

  Varazda waved away the apology with a smile. But he couldn’t stop thinking of Ariston saying, “Have you not noticed that he’s good at basically everything?” He didn’t think Dami actually wanted to go into politics—that sounded like an idea that came from Ino’s mother—but it wasn’t a ridiculous one. And if it was actually something he wanted, at some time in the future? If he couldn’t even get an advocate to defend him with Varazda at his side, he certainly couldn’t get elected to anything.

  It was at this point that Niko popped his head into the peristyle to announce the arrival of Timiskos, bearing the message that his father was out of the house for the day, along with the poisonous Simonides and Korinna, and would Varazda like to visit again?

  “Of course,” Varazda said smoothly. “I’ll go on my way to the agora this afternoon.”

  It was cold in the apartment, and damp, and Damiskos’s knee hurt more than it had in years. He felt restless and tired at the same time, missing his usual exercise at the Baths of Soukos and leisurely walks through the streets of Boukos before and after with Varazda. After lunch he wrapped himself in his warmest mantle and went and leaned on the rail of the balcony and looked out over the withering grass of the garden and the rooftops of the neighbours’ houses. Timiskos came out to stand beside him.

  “Did you deliver the message?” Damiskos asked. Timiskos had been gone since before lunch.

  His brother gave him an aggrieved look. “I’m fine, how are you? Yes, I delivered the message. You know that house where he’s staying belongs to Nione Kukara, the Speaker of the Maidens?”

  “Ex-Speaker, and it’s actually her freedwoman’s house, and yes. Nione and I are old friends.”

  “Well, you’ve really been keeping me up-to-date on the details, haven’t you? Sorry.” Timiskos shrugged. “I just got back from Philo’s, that’s all. The wine shop that we went to the other night? I’m not welcome there any more, apparently. Pandares’s men leaned on Philo, and told him they’d ‘cause trouble’ if he went on serving me. It was my usual place. I feel like a shit for getting Philo in trouble.”

  “It’s not your fault,” said Damiskos wearily. “Maybe I can write to someone at the Quartermaster’s Office and see if I can get a loan until I can collect my pension.”

  Timiskos was giving him a strange look; Damiskos would almost have called it calculating. Then he shook his head. “If you can raise money, you should put it toward paying your bond so you can get out of this house. Don’t you think?”

  “Not worth it,” Damiskos replied curtly. “I’ll get out soon enough when the date is set for the trial. Mother and Father’s debts in your name are a much more serious matter.”

  Timiskos shrugged. “Yeah, and you could help me with those if you could get out of the house.”

  Damiskos dropped his head into his hands. “You’re right. I’m not thinking clearly. If I can borrow money to pay my bond, I can get out of the house, then go to the Bursar’s and draw my pension—though I’m not sure how much that will be … No, Timi, it’s no good. Then we’d just owe more money, and my pension won’t be enough to cover Mother and Father’s debt. I could sell Xanthe, if I owned her any more, which I don’t—and even if the fellow in Thumia gave me back the money I gave him, it’s only three hundred because he was selling her back to me cheap.”

  “And … you really don’t have anything else you could sell?”

  “No! She was the most expensive thing I owned.”

  “Yeah? Mm. It’s too bad we can’t stage a kidnapping, like that fellow Olympios was talking about.”

  “What?”

  “You remember—he said a client of his staged his own kidnapping. I suppose it was to get the ransom money.”

  “Timiskos, no one could pay to ransom you—that’s the whole problem.”

  Timiskos was giving him that strange look again. “Yeah. I guess you’re right.”

  “Boys, boys!” Philion put his head out through the balcony doors. “Get in here. Olympios is back and says he’s willing to take the case after all!”

  “Oh,” said Timiskos wanly, “you’re home.”

  “Yes, yes, I met Olympios in the street and came back here directly. Come on, both of you.”

  Timiskos shot his brother a worried look as they followed their father into the house. “I told Pharastes … ”

  “I know. It can’t be helped.”

  “Now don’t get too excited, Old Blade,” said Olympios, who stood with his fists on his hips in the atrium. “I’ll take this case on one condition. You and your lady friend need to get married yesterday. By which I mean, as soon as possible.”

  “Do you think that will help?” said Philion eagerly.

  Damiskos remembered how he had felt only a week ago: like a trapped animal, ensnared by his duty to his self-destructive family. He didn’t feel that way anymore.

  Olympios gave Philion an eagle-eyed look. “It’s the only thing I can think of that might.”

  Mostly what Damiskos felt now was tired. Since no one was asking for his opinion yet, he let them continue to talk without him.

  Myrto emerged from her room at the sound of the advocate’s voice, with Gaia trailing behind her, hair falling down as usual.

  “Wonderful news!” Philion called. “Olympios will take the case after all, as soon as Damiskos and Ino agree to marry.”

  “But darling,” said Myrto, “they’re not going to.”

  “Of course they are, of course they are. Hush. Gaia, bring us something to eat! Where are Korinna and—oh, they’re out, I remember. It doesn’t matter. Now, Olympios—come in, sit down, all of you. We’ve had a visit from some lackey from the Hall of Justice this morning, and the date is set for the trial. Next Xereus’s Day at noon.”

  Olympios blanched visibly. That was only five days away.

  “Gods curse them, they must have bribed someone to rush it through,” he said as he sat down in the chair Philion pulled out for him. “Right! Well, I have a thought. We might be able to get a day’s delay—and wring the jury’s hearts a little in the process—if we do this. On Hesperion’s Day in the morning, when they let you out of the house to go to the Hall of Justice, you and your fiancée make a quick stop at the Great Temple and make the marriage libation. Then beg the court to grant a delay for your wedding night. Eh?” He struck a pose as if expecting applause.

  Damiskos had not taken his own seat. He had folded his arms across his chest in a way that one of his junior officers had once told him was known throughout the legion to signify trouble.

  “Damiskos is a follower of Terza,” said Myrto before her son could speak. “He wouldn’t get married in the Great Temple. There’s some very charming thing they do in their own temple—isn’t there, darling? A kind of an oath or something?”

  “Oh, they don’t have to do that to get married,” said Timiskos, chiming in for some reason. “I know lots of Terza men from the army. Besides, you can … uh … ” He seemed to realize he was not being helpful. “You can worship Terza in the Great Temple.”

  “Perfect,” said Olympios briskly. “So that’s settled.”

  “No,” said Damiskos, sounding angrier than he meant to, though not as angry as he felt. “It’s not. We are not going to do that.”

  “Why not?” Philion demanded, looking up with surprise from where he had been selecting a raisin cake from the table.

  “Why am I not willing to take a blasphemous oath—it’s an oath for lovers, not for people marrying so they can inherit businesses in Kargania and escape murder charges. Or why am I not willing to degrade Ino and myself by entering into a marriage that could leave her a disgraced widow, just for the possibility that a jury might think it was cute?”

  There was quite a long silence following this. Damiskos did not normally speak this way to his family.


  “So am I to understand,” said Olympios frostily, “that you reject my advice?”

  “No no no,” said Philion, coughing as he tried to swallow his raisin cake at the same time. “I’m sure we can come to a compromise. He needs time to get used to the idea.”

  “Oh,” said Gaia, who had been setting out more dates on the table, “there’s the door!”

  And there, coming through the door, as Gaia blushed and stepped aside after opening it for him, was Varazda.

  He was dressed in Pseuchaian clothes today, a dark blue tunic peeking out from under a flawlessly wrapped white mantle with a blue border, the quintessential outfit of the Pseuchaian citizen male. Damiskos had never seen Varazda wear anything like it before. He looked radiant, his eyes painted in blue, his hair up in a careless knot, the henna on his hands still fresh and red.

  Olympios saw him and exploded out of his chair. “What?” he demanded, glaring around at the family. “What is he doing here again?”

  “I have some news,” said Varazda, coming across the atrium toward the seating area, clearly not realizing what he was walking into. Damiskos was on his feet and moving out around his chair toward him. “I’ve found another suspect.”

  “That was fast,” said Damiskos. He reached Varazda and leaned in to kiss his cold cheek. “I’d invite you to sit down and warm up,” he murmured in Zashian, “but I don’t think you’re going to want to stick around.”

  “You’ve found a what?” Olympios strode right up to Varazda, pushing his face up threateningly close to Varazda’s—which involved looking up, as Varazda was taller than him.

  “A suspect,” said Varazda, leaning away a little without taking a step back, as if he might have been trying to avoid the smell of Olympios’s breath. “Hello again. I wasn’t expecting you here. A ‘suspect’ means someone else who might have done the murder. Is that not the term you use here?”

  Olympios’s face twisted into a snarl. “Listen you, you cr—euugh,” he broke off with a grunt as Damiskos grabbed him by the front of his tunic.

  “That’s enough,” said Damiskos evenly, releasing him with only a token shove (he’d learned his lesson with Helenos).

  “I beg your pardon?” Olympios glared at him, fiery-eyed. “I’ve never been so insulted. You’ll rue the day. I wash my hands of all of you.” He wheeled to distribute his glare evenly around the group. “I will send you a bill for my consultation.”

  “The hell you will!” Philion yelped. “Nepharos’s balls, Damiskos, what are you playing at? And you, you painted Sasian hussy, how dare you come back here?”

  Varazda’s hand was gripping Damiskos’s rather hard.

  “Philion, don’t be rude,” said Myrto, cutting across the men’s voices without raising her own. “I told him he was welcome back any time, and I’m delighted to see him.”

  “I’m not!” Philion bawled.

  “I wash my hands, I absolutely wash my hands,” Olympios declared.

  “Oh good,” said Myrto. “Then I wish you’d dry them too and get going.”

  “Shut up, woman, shut up! How do you expect me to pay for an advocate to defend your son if you drive Olympios away? Don’t you know we’ve no credit left anywhere?”

  “Holy God, Dami,” Varazda murmured, “I’m so sorry. I wouldn’t have come if I’d thought—”

  “I know. Timiskos told you it was a good time. He made a mistake.”

  “Ye-es. He did.”

  Olympios was on his way to the door, Philion running after him shouting that he could bring his son and his wife to heel—“And the Sasian is as good as gone, I swear!”––while Olympios held up his hands and repeated his line about washing them.

  “Honestly!” said Timiskos, finally propelling himself up from his chair. “Are you two trying to destroy this family?” He scowled at Damiskos and his mother.

  “Sweetheart,” said Myrto with a little laugh, “we are this family. Who do you think you’re talking to?”

  “I’m talking to my brother, and I’m talking to you, Myrto. Look, it’s all very well for Damiskos to have a lover or whatever—sorry, Pharastes—it’s just, this is a real situation that we’re in, and I know you don’t pay attention or even care, Myrto, but Damiskos, you should know better. We’re not going to get out of this without help, and you’re driving away the only person who can help us!”

  “Get out of what, darling?”

  “You stupid—” Timiskos managed to cut himself off before he called his stepmother something unforgivable, but only just. “Get out of this debt! This hole Father’s dug us into—you and Father—you with your senseless spending and Father with his stupid real estate schemes and his gambling. I know you think it’s not that bad, that something will turn up because it always does, but it is that bad—you’ve been stealing from your own children, that’s how bad it is. You borrowed money in my name and now I’m being turned away from wine shops and hounded by Gorgion Pandares’s thugs—you spent the money Damiskos was sending you for his horse and she got sold, and none of us has the money to pay Damiskos’s bond to get him out of this house!”

  “Timiskos,” Damiskos spoke evenly but very, very firmly. “Calm down.”

  The front door slammed.

  “I hope you’re pleased with yourselves!” Philion roared across the atrium. “There goes our last chance to prove Damiskos’s innocence and save our family name, so I hope you’re all very pleased with yourselves!”

  Myrto was laughing. “Save our family name? Oh, Philion, please. Your name hasn’t been worth anything for decades—you know that. ”

  “Why are you still here?” Philion asked Varazda, looking like a child ready to stamp his foot and begin howling. “Get out of my house—shoo, shoo! We don’t want you at the trial, we don’t want you here, we don’t want you anywhere near Damiskos.”

  “Sir!” Damiskos shouted.

  Philion ignored him. “My son is a real man, and whatever Sasian witchcraft you worked on him to get him to think of you as anything more than a nice ass to fuck—it’ll wear off. So get out.”

  Varazda gave Damiskos’s hand, which he still held, another hard squeeze.

  “I was on my way to interview a suspect,” he said in Zashian. “I’ll go do that. And—I’ll be in touch, but obviously I won’t come again myself. Sorry.”

  He let go of Damiskos’s hand and stepped away, walking briskly across the atrium.

  “Right,” said Philion as the door closed behind Varazda. “Good. Might be just as well he’s confined to the house,” he added to no one in particular. “Gaia! Get me a clean mantle! I’m going down to the Crossed Oars.”

  Philion strode off, and Damiskos and his mother were left alone in the atrium.

  “That’s a gambling house, I guess,” said Damiskos dully. “The Crossed Oars.”

  “I … I think it must be. He does often complain of having lost money after he comes back from there.” Myrto looked at the floor. “He didn’t really do anything to you, in the way of witchcraft, did he?”

  “No, of course not.”

  “Good. I didn’t think so. Philion is so odd sometimes.”

  Chapter 11

  Today Varazda was dressed for going into a philosophy school. He hadn’t been yesterday, when he had first gone there; he had shown up in what he’d thought was a smart tunic and a cloak, and been told—fairly nicely, by some of the students—that you couldn’t go in without a proper, old-fashioned mantle, wrapped in the approved Phemian way. As it turned out, he had learned from the same students that the person he was looking for hadn’t been there but was expected today. He’d had time to acquire a mantle and learn from Nione how to wrap it; surprisingly, this seemed to be one of the few things Aradne didn’t know.

  He walked from the Temnons’ tacky neighbourhood to the agora, trying to focus on the task at hand rather than what had just passed in Damiskos’s family’s apartment.

  He can’t go around throwing everyone across the room who calls me a “creature.” It
would take up all his time.

  He laughed aloud, miserably. It didn’t escape him that in a sense, the whole murder charge was his fault. Dami had knocked Helenos down after he said something about a “Sasian whore.” Dami, bless his heart, had been defending Varazda’s honour. How absurd.

  Varazda arrived at the agora and looked for the squat, ancient building he’d visited the day before. He was again struck by how old and unimpressive it looked among the columns and statuary of the city’s heart.

  He’d heard the history of the Marble Porches of Pheme before. The building had been the meeting house of the citizens’ assembly, far back in the early days of the Republic, when the city had been much smaller, and the columned porches on each side had become popular gathering places for philosophers and their pupils. Later, when Pheme grew larger and the new government buildings were built, the old meeting house was entirely turned over to the philosophers and was now used as a school. There was some hierarchy concerning the porches and the interior of the building, something about where the traditionalists gathered as opposed to the radicals; Varazda neither knew nor cared about the details. He had been told the day before that Eurydemos could be found inside the school these days, so that was where he went.

  In spite of the cold weather, there were a lot of students milling on the famous porches of the building, huddled up in their mantles. Varazda got a few curious glances as he climbed the steps and wove through them to get to the doors, but no one spoke to him. Inside, his first impression was that it was surprisingly dark.

  Well, perhaps it wasn’t surprising, since the ancient meeting house didn’t appear to have been provided with any windows, just a square skylight in the centre of the roof. It was all one large room, and if anything at all had been done to convert it from a place for public assemblies into a school in the centuries since it had made that transition, Varazda couldn’t see it. The room was lined with ranked stone seating, bare and worn with age, and there were remains of some very faded frescoes on the walls, and that was all. It was viciously cold; given the choice, Varazda thought he would have preferred to stay outside on the porches after all.