Strong Wine

by A. J. Demas

  “No, no, quite the opposite. Carry on—if you want to.”

  Dami chuckled and resumed combing. Varazda’s hair was freshly washed and still damp, and the combing was a practical necessity as well as a pleasure. Varazda wished he could have enjoyed it a little more.

  “I’m sorry we weren’t able to continue the investigation,” Dami said. “I’d like to have known who did kill Helenos.”

  Varazda closed his eyes and let his head fall back. “Maybe you were right. Maybe he did it himself.”

  They had spent the previous day rounding up witnesses for Chariton: one of Dami’s fellow officers from the Second Koryphos; two of the men he had commanded, who were eager to testify to his good character; the new Quartermaster, who had taken over from Dami after his brief tenure in the role. One of Chariton’s clerks had gone back to the Skalina and found a couple of reasonable-looking people who had witnessed the altercation with Helenos in the street and could testify that it looked like a minor squabble, not a prelude to murder. Varazda had wanted to go on that mission himself, but he had to acknowledge that he was becoming too well known in that corner of the city to do an effective job.

  Chariton, meanwhile, had been busy selecting the jurors for the trial. There would be twenty of them. He was cautiously optimistic that they would be sympathetic; over dinner he’d given an account of some of the worse candidates that he had been able to eliminate. There had been a man who spat every time he said the word “Sasia,” and another who was well known for a satirical poem he had written on the subject of “unmanly lusts.” Varazda had tried not to look too openly pained at the thought that Chariton was having to object to jurors because of him. If it hadn’t been for him, no one would have looked at Dami and thought unmanly or Sasian-lover.

  It was nice that Chariton didn’t think he was a liability, but Varazda wasn’t sure he agreed. Still, he was doing his best to look respectable. He had borrowed the blue-and-white mantle from Nione again; it was laid out on the bed next to Dami’s military cloak, a gorgeous red garment that Varazda had never seen him wear.

  “I’m going to get you to do this all the time,” he said, leaning back on his hands as Dami drew the comb carefully through his hair. “But if there are tangles, you don’t have to be so gentle.”

  Dami snorted. “Easy for you to say.”

  Varazda wasn’t sure quite what that meant, but he smiled. He pictured Dami with someone he really did have to treat gently, instead of just someone he liked to be gentle with. A baby, for instance. He could see that so clearly, all of a sudden: Dami cradling a tiny baby, holding it against his shoulder, trying to get it to go to sleep, the way Varazda had done sometimes with Remi when she was tiny and the wet-nurse had gone home or fallen asleep herself.

  He sat up too abruptly, causing the comb to tug at his hair and Dami to draw an audible breath.

  It had never bothered him very much that he couldn’t father children. It was supposed to be the big tragedy of his life, but he really didn’t care particularly. He had built himself a family—he was Remi’s parent, legally as well as in his heart. Dami should have that too, he thought. It would be wrong for him not to. Varazda wished he could have given that to him.

  They finished dressing and went out into the main receiving room of the house to meet Chariton. Aradne and Nione were there already, although it was still very early. It was cold, and the lawyer was warming himself over the brazier, still wearing his heavy cloak. His face looked strained, but he smiled as he turned to see Dami and Varazda enter.

  Timiskos and Ino arrived before breakfast, having, as they reported, sneaked out of the Temnons’ apartment separately and met up in the street.

  “I know we can’t do anything to help,” Timiskos said, “but we thought, you know, friendly faces and all that.”

  In fact, Varazda thought Timiskos seemed to be looking for an opportunity to talk to his brother alone, but wasn’t quite bold enough to ask for it outright. He never got it, because Dami immediately introduced him to Aradne, and said, “If you’re thinking of redecorating your new house, my brother might have some ideas for you. He’s just done some work for my mother that she was very happy with.”

  Aradne began peppering him with surprisingly technical questions about ornamental mouldings and east-facing windows, which he did his best to answer.

  “I don’t think you’ll be convicted,” Ino told Damiskos. “You have a very honest manner. I think the jurors will believe you when you say you didn’t do it.”

  Dami smiled. “I hope you’re right. I expect you are—I think it will all turn out well.” There was a moment’s awkward silence, then he said, “When this is all over, you will have to tell us where your stepson’s silver shop is, so I can buy one of those bracelets with the snail on it for Varazda.”

  “We don’t sell those in the shop,” she said, “but I can do you one as a special order.” She turned to Varazda. “Would you rather a snail or one of those bugs that are good luck in Gylphos?”

  Over breakfast everyone tried to talk about things that had nothing to do with the trial or the murder. This meant that there were frequent awkward pauses in the conversation. Chariton had brought his notes with him into the dining room but was trying not to look at them. He broke into the conversation unexpectedly when Ino was telling Nione and Aradne about her inheritance in the colonies.

  “But of course,” she was saying, “my father won’t let me accept it.”

  “Did I not hear you say that you are a widow?” said Chariton.

  Ino looked at him. “Yes. My husband died six years ago.”

  “Then you do not need your father’s permission to inherit.” He shook his head sadly. “I do not understand why this is not more widely known. You would, of course, have needed your father’s consent to inherit if you had never married, and while your husband was alive, you would have needed his consent. However, after his death that power does not of necessity pass back to your father. Your husband could have left it to someone in his will, even to your father. Did he?”

  “No.”

  “Then you have unimpeded power to accept any inheritance in your name.”

  “I … ” Ino started. She stopped, and stared down at her hands. “I do, do I?”

  “Even property in the colonies?” said Aradne.

  “Especially property in the colonies,” said Chariton. “There any woman can inherit property—married or unmarried.”

  “It’s a new law,” Nione added. “First introduced in Tios, when they declared independence. But it was a local custom already, I think.”

  “You were right,” said Dami, looking at Varazda with a smile.

  “Well, I don’t know about ‘right.’ It was just a guess.” He was pleased, all the same.

  “So what do you think?” Aradne was saying. “Do you want to move to Kargania and run a, uh—you know—business?”

  “I don’t want to live in Kargania,” said Ino after a moment, looking thoughtfully into the distance. “At least, I don’t think I do. But if I can inherit the business, I can sell it.” She looked at Chariton. “That’s right, isn’t it?”

  “Of course. If you own it, you are at liberty to sell it.”

  “Or,” said Nione, “you could hire a local overseer to help you run it, so you didn’t have to live out there. That way, if the business does increase in value—from what you were saying, it’s mostly potential now—you can sell it later for a much greater sum. That’s what I would do.”

  Aradne chuckled. “You two had better talk business for a bit. Come, Timiskos—tell me more about what I should do with the mosaic in the foyer. Are tiles worth the extra expense, or are pebbles more hard-wearing, would you say?”

  Chapter 17

  They all walked to the agora together, accompanied by two women and a man from Nione’s household—or Aradne’s household. Damiskos wasn’t quite sure which they belonged to, technically. Perhaps it didn’t matter very much, except on payday, now that they were all
free.

  The day was bitterly cold, and everyone huddled in their cloaks and walked briskly without talking. Damiskos thought nostalgically of the sedan-chairs that were everywhere for hire in Boukos.

  When they arrived at the Hall of Justice, their party had to split up. Varazda kissed Damiskos on the cheek with cold lips, and stood in the porch with the women while Damiskos followed Chariton through the pleaders’ door into the court. Damiskos glanced back for a final, comforting look before stepping inside. Varazda’s eyes met Damiskos’s, and he smiled.

  “Have you attended many trials before?” Chariton asked, as they walked through the chilly hallways of the court.

  “Only military tribunals. I don’t know if they’re the same.”

  “Neither do I. What will happen is that the prosecutor’s advocate will present his case first, then I ours—that is, the truth. The prosecutor will then call his witnesses. I assume they will consist mostly of the people in the Skalina who saw you and Helenos quarrel in the street, but they may also attempt to raise other suspicions about you—they may have assembled some people to speak to less-than-flattering incidents from your past, in an effort to blacken your character.”

  “They’ve had a lot longer to work on the case than you have,” said Damiskos. “I’m sorry about that.”

  “As I understand it, it is not your fault. In any case, I am not especially concerned about what they may have dug up. After our witnesses have spoken, the jury will vote, and, in the case of a guilty verdict, the judge would deliver a verdict—in your case, of course, not.”

  Damiskos smiled. He appreciated the lawyer’s straightforward confidence. He couldn’t quite share it, but that was not Chariton’s fault.

  There were marble benches at the back of the courtroom, behind a balustrade, for female spectators. The men had to stand, but at least they would have a view of the proceedings. Since they were there early and the space was not close to filling up, Varazda came into the women’s section with Nione and Aradne and their attendants and sat down.

  Of course the place was grander than its equivalent in Boukos, with a soaring ceiling and columns down the sides. But it was cold and cheerless, painted in austere shades of dark red and green.

  “Chariton is very good,” Nione said, touching Varazda’s arm. “I have every confidence in him.”

  “I know,” said Varazda. “We can’t thank you enough for getting him.”

  “Of course.” She gave his arm a squeeze. “I’d say, ‘Don’t worry,’ but that’s asking too much, isn’t it?”

  He smiled wryly.

  He was trying not to worry. He knew Nione’s lawyer was good, and Dami’s case was strong. Rationally, he knew he should have felt confident in the outcome of the trial. But he felt instead a kind of formless dread, like a premonition that had nothing to do with rational cause and effect.

  Perhaps it was just that he’d wanted to find the murderer, and hadn’t, and that made him uneasy.

  A shadow fell across his lap, cast by someone standing in front of the next row of seats. He looked up to see the older woman from the Temnons’ apartment: Ino’s mother. The servant with the falling-down hair was beside her, looking like she would rather be anywhere else.

  “What do you think you’re doing here?” Korinna hissed at her daughter, in a voice that made Varazda think of Remi’s pet goose when she was mad. “I told you to stay home, you were forbidden from leaving the house, and instead you are consorting with that—” She jabbed a finger at Varazda.

  “We have all come to support Damiskos,” said Nione sternly. “Our friend, who is wrongly accused. Are you a relation of Ino’s?”

  Korinna stared fiery-eyed at Nione, whom Varazda suspected of knowing exactly who she was. “I am her mother, and I am ordering her to come with me. Gaia—you’ll escort her home.”

  “I—I—” The servant glanced around miserably.

  “I’d like to stay here,” said Ino, looking at the floor. “I think I’ll stay here.”

  “As for you,” Korinna said, turning back to Varazda, “have you no decency? Do you want all the world to know about Damiskos’s sordid weakness? Do you want it known that he jilted my daughter for a Sasian catamite?” She actually did stick her neck out like an angry goose as she said that.

  Aradne, of course, was on her feet by this time. “You don’t dare speak to my friend like that, you stupid sack of—”

  “Shh!’ said Nione commandingly. She stood, towering over Korinna herself, and from the look on the older woman’s face, Varazda thought she’d recognized the former Speaker of the Maidens now. “Creating a spectacle at this point will serve none of us. Do you wish your daughter’s name to be linked with two convicted criminals?”

  “Sosikles Phostikos hasn’t been convicted yet,” Korinna protested weakly.

  Myrto, who had been speaking in the aisle with her husband and stepson, now followed Korinna into the women’s section.

  “Oh, Varastes, don’t you look adorable in that mantle!” she exclaimed. “Gaia, are you all right? You look as though you’re about to faint. Sit down, girl.”

  “Did you know about this?” Korinna demanded of Myrto, flinging out an arm to indicate Varazda. “Did you arrange this to humiliate me and my daughter?”

  “Immortal gods,” said Myrto, looking at Ino, who by this point was rocking in her seat and clutching at the skirt of her gown. “I can’t see what Varastes sitting in the women’s section—if that’s what you’re talking about—has to do with your daughter. I daresay he can if he wants to. I know if I had something where people said I wasn’t ‘really a man’—you know, if I was a man—I’d certainly take advantage of it to get myself a seat.” She laughed.

  “I could go perch on the railing,” Varazda suggested archly. He got to his feet. “Ino, would you like to come with me and get a drink of water?” He held out a hand to her.

  She took his hand and pulled herself to her feet, and they went out together to find a drinking-fountain in the porch. Varazda took a long drink himself.

  “Thank you,” she said, drying her hands on her gown. “I feel better. It isn’t … ” she began after they had stood there a moment longer. She frowned down at the stones of the porch. “It isn’t always like this, being you, is it?”

  “You mean, people being rude?”

  She nodded.

  “No, it isn’t.”

  “Good, I’m glad. It isn’t always like this being me, either.”

  He wanted to say it shouldn’t ever be like this, but he had a feeling that she knew that. They ventured back into the courtroom, to find that the other women had sorted themselves out, with Korinna sitting several rows away from Nione and Aradne, who were saving an empty seat for Ino.

  It was as he was standing at the rail of the women’s section, waiting for Ino to take her seat, that he looked over the crowd in front of him and saw Eurydemos at the front of the courtroom. He was talking to a tall man whom Nione had pointed out earlier as the advocate acting on behalf of Helenos’s family.

  “I think it is time for me to go,” he said apologetically to Aradne and Nione.

  “What?” said Aradne. “No! That bitch won’t say anything. I’ll stop her myself.”

  “Shh,” said Nione. “He just means go stand among the men.”

  “Oh,” said Aradne. “Right. Well, good luck.”

  “Thanks,” said Varazda.

  He wove through the men gathered on the floor of the court, passing Damiskos’s father, who gave him a dirty look, and Ino’s father, who was staring at the floor and didn’t see him. He wanted to get close to the front not only so that Dami could see him, but so that Eurydemos could too. That absolute shit. It hadn’t been bad enough that he had failed to be provably the murderer himself, but now he was going to show up here and attempt to pin it on Dami? He would rue the day.

  A young slave slithered past Varazda near the front of the assembly, to stop breathlessly before the tall advocate.

  “He
re, sir! I got it!” He dug a small object out of the bag he carried and held it out, panting and bracing his other hand on his knee.

  “You fool,” the tall advocate spat. “Put that away and keep it safe!”

  Eurydemos was looking curiously at the thing the slave held. “What is that?” he asked.

  The advocate pushed the slave’s hand away, and the slave, stumbling and straightening up, shoved the object back into his bag.

  “It’s an important piece of evidence,” said the advocate loftily. With a casual cruelty he clouted the slave on the side of the head with the back of his hand. “Keep it safe, I said.”

  Varazda watched the slave creep up the steps of the dais to the spot by the back wall where other members of the prosecutor’s party were standing.

  The thing the slave had held out to the advocate was a lump of tarnished silver in the shape of a scorpion. Varazda had caught a clear glimpse of it, and the image hung before his eyes. He had seen it somewhere before, and in another moment he remembered where.

  “He was sitting at the back with the women for a little while,” said Chariton, craning his neck to see the back of the room. “But no, he is certainly not there now. He is hard to miss, isn’t he?”

  “Yeah,” said Damiskos.

  The lawyer gave him one of his wry smiles. “I hope,” he said, looking back out at the assembly, “that he did not take the words of your family’s legal advisor too much to heart and fears to compromise your case with his presence.”

  Damiskos shook his head and said he was sure not, but he wasn’t sure at all. Varazda was very secure in his own identity and unafraid of appearing eccentric, but Damiskos didn’t know how much that extended to their relationship, or how worried Varazda was about this trial. He might have decided he would be better out of the courtroom than in.

  There were benches for the jury on the dais at the front of the room, but the parties to the case were expected to stand throughout. Damiskos tried not to lean too obviously on his cane, not because he cared who saw it but because his defence depended on the claim that he could have killed Helenos in any way he liked without using poison, and he wanted to look the part.