Strong Wine

by A. J. Demas

  Aside from Eurydemos, the witnesses on the opposite side of the dais included a couple of people Damiskos vaguely recognized from the Skalina, and a clerk from the Quartermaster’s Office, an incompetent fellow with whom Damiskos had been lenient for longer than he deserved before giving up and letting him get himself dismissed.

  “If that philosopher really intends to speak for the opposite side,” Chariton was saying, “I will produce that letter he claims he didn’t write, and be damned to him. I’ll send Tiko to my office for the letter now.”

  “But, er, we’re pretty sure Eurydemos didn’t write it.” And he thought they had all agreed that the less said about Varazda climbing in windows the better.

  “That doesn’t matter. If he has a motive for trying to incriminate you, that will discredit him.” Chariton’s brow furrowed as he looked around the courtroom again. “Where has your friend gone?”

  “Probably to find a public toilet,” said Damiskos, who was getting tired of having this conversation with his lawyer.

  Varazda did not reappear before the ceremonial lighting of the torches at the front of the courtroom and the reading out of the invocations that began the trial. But as the jurors were taking their seats, a boy passed a note to Chariton, which he passed on to Damiskos. It read: Gone to find real murderer. Back soon. Will send someone to help with E. – V

  Chariton gave Damiskos a worried look but refrained from saying anything. Damiskos just smiled.

  The advocate acting for Helenos’s family was an orator named Eulios. “All style and no substance,” was how Chariton had characterized him. But he was famous for winning several high-profile cases, and even Damiskos had heard of him.

  He was a tall, hawk-nosed man with intense dark eyes, his mantle flawlessly wrapped, his hair slicked back.

  “My friends,” he began in a ringing voice, “the act that brings us here today is among the most wasteful acts imaginable. Wasteful? You may ask yourselves why I use that word. I say ‘wasteful’ because a citizen was killed who was not only the son of one of the Republic’s leading men, not only a man in the prime of life, not only … ”

  Damiskos made an effort not to listen to this part. It was all a bit basic: if you’d ever fought on a battlefield, you had probably thought through most of this many times over. You’d cut short someone’s life. They had a family who would be diminished by their loss; they’d had a path in life that they would now not walk, and you didn’t know but that it might have included great things, better things than you would ever do. They might have been a wonderful person, or they might have been a piece of shit. They might have been a piece of shit who would have gone on to change and become a good person, except that you’d killed them. That was about the best that you could have hoped for with Helenos, and you never knew—these things were in the hands of the gods—but Damiskos personally doubted it.

  The advocate moved on from describing Helenos’s potential for greatness, briefly admitted that during his life Helenos had not entirely lived up to that potential and had in fact been in unofficial exile and hiding in the slums at the time of his death, then moved on to describing Damiskos.

  “Here we have a young man of the same age as Helenos Diophoros, like him of a good family, like him full of potential. Where Helenos Diophoros devoted himself to philosophy, Damiskos Temnon chose a military career. He distinguished himself quickly.” And so on, until, voice rising in volume as he described the triumphs of Damiskos’s career, he stopped, looked around at his audience, and said, “You are now asking yourselves, ‘For which side does this man think he is acting? Has he forgotten that he is here to make the case against Damiskos Temnon?’ No, my friends, I have not forgotten.”

  “Trying to take the wind out of my sails,” Chariton muttered. When Damiskos glanced at him, he saw that he was smiling, rather wolfishly.

  “I wish merely to paint for you a picture of the heights from which Damiskos Temnon fell. For fall he did.”

  Pious Zashians often carried strings of beads to count while they prayed. Yazata had a set that he brought out sometimes. Varazda, who was not particularly pious himself, had bought Damiskos a string of blue and white glass beads at a Zashian stall in the market a couple of weeks ago. “I suppose there’s some sort of prayer to Terza you can say with them,” he’d said, somewhere between shy and arch.

  There wasn’t, really; you could repeat the epithets of Terza, but there weren’t as many of them as there were beads on the string, so you had to start over, and then there weren’t enough beads to finish. But the beads were smooth and cool to the touch, and Damiskos wished he had them with him now. He would have focussed on the feeling of the beads running through his fingers and let the advocate’s words fade into meaninglessness. At least he would have tried to.

  “ … devastating defeat … ”

  “ … captive in the hands of a vicious Sasian … ”

  “ … tortured for … ”

  Here Eulios was mercifully short on details, and Damiskos did not have to listen to a description of exactly what Abadoka’s men had done to him. He was already feeling the beginning of that sensation of floating free of his body, which was not a good sign. He tightened his grip on the handle of his cane.

  “ … left permanently lame, his brilliant career in ruins, relegated to an ignominious job procuring supply contracts for the legions.”

  Damiskos opened his eyes. “It wasn’t that bad,” he said through clenched teeth.

  “Oh, he’s just alienated all the merchants on the jury,” Chariton whispered back. “And I made sure there were plenty.”

  “Returning to Pheme, he found the woman he had once been engaged to marry lost to him, unhappily tied to a lowly tradesman.”

  “Keep going,” Chariton whispered gleefully.

  “That’s not even true,” Damiskos whispered back. “I had no idea she was married until the other week, and they were very happy.”

  “Why he moved out of his wealthy family’s home to live in a shabby rented room in the squalor of the Skalina Hill, one can only speculate. Was it shame on his part, or were they embarrassed to acknowledge him as their son after his spectacular fall?”

  “Where was your place?” Chariton asked. “Not in the Skalina.”

  “No, the Vallina.”

  “Shabby?”

  “Not really.”

  “He had always been devoted to the cult of Terza, into which he had been initiated as a youth, but now his religion became increasingly important to him—it became the consuming passion of his life, taking the place of everything else that had been stripped from him.”

  Chariton shot Damiskos a slightly wary look. “Is that true?”

  “N-no. Not the way he makes it sound.” Perhaps it was just as well he didn’t have the prayer beads.

  Eulios went on, offering more inaccurate details about Damiskos’s life and making more vague speculations. He represented Damiskos as possibly being in debt, as erratic in his work and disliked by his colleagues, a pitiable wreck. What surprised Damiskos, listening to it, was how little of it convinced him now. A couple of months ago, he thought he would have agreed with the advocate’s general characterization, even if not with some of the details. He had thought of himself as a wreck and a shadow of his former self. Now, he could see that was never what he had been. His job had not been very enjoyable, but he had worked at it conscientiously and taken pride in his work. He had exercised, recovered full use of his less-injured knee, and kept up his skill with a sword, during a period when getting out of bed every morning had felt like the hardest thing he’d ever done.

  Then Eulios came to the week at Nione’s villa. He leaned heavily on the absurdity of the fish-sauce-factory-owning former Maiden of the Sacred Loom. (“Another mistake,” Chariton muttered wolfishly.) He characterized Helenos and his fellow students as misguided patriots, seeking to restore the greatness of the Republic but hampered by naïveté and infighting. He hinted coyly at a romantic rivalry between Helenos
and Damiskos, then went on to describe their political differences with reasonable accuracy. Where Helenos had been a passionate if slightly too ruthless lover of Pheme, Damiskos was a bitter apostate, disillusioned with the Republic for which he had suffered so much for so little reward, preferring Sasia and Sasians to Pheme and Phemians, and slavishly devoted to his religion, which, as everyone knew, itself had roots on Sasian soil.

  Eulios was a skilled orator, Damiskos had to admit, and this part of his speech was strangely convincing. Perhaps it was because he had taken care to admit some of the good qualities of this “Damiskos Temnon” character he was building, and to allow that his “Helenos Diophoros” character had had his flaws. It wasn’t the truth, but it was a story that Damiskos could imagine having been true.

  He wondered where Varazda was and what he was doing.

  Chapter 18

  Varazda was leaving the Marble Porches and wondering what was the fastest way to the Skalina. He chose what looked like the straightest street heading north, hitched up his mantle, and set off at a jog.

  He had chosen well, for once, and the street let him out at the riverbank near a pier with boats for hire. After a slightly hair-raising ride across the strong current of the river, he arrived on the opposite bank and headed up into the slum. He paced himself well and arrived only mildly out of breath at the corner with the brothel and the wineshop and Big Tio’s apartment building. Big Tio himself was down at the Hall of Justice in his cleanest tunic with his greasy hair tied back, waiting to testify to his theory about the pickle-seller and the story of the mad neighbour who drank the leftover wine. Varazda felt a momentary pang, wondering if he should have been there himself, to speak to the finding of the letter in Helenos’s room. But they had agreed that it was better not to go into details about climbing in windows if they could avoid it.

  In any case, right now he thought he could be more useful here. He knocked on the downstairs door that he thought he remembered entering when he came here the first time.

  “Come in!” a woman’s voice called.

  He opened the door on the room where the young man Straton lived with his mother and aunt. The two women were there, and a baby whom he recognized after a moment as Simoe’s was crawling on the floor.

  It took the women a moment to recognize him. “Oh, it’s you! Did you find the murderer?”

  “Not yet, but I hope to, very soon. Is Straton here?”

  “Straton?” said his aunt, jumping to her feet. “Why? He didn’t do anything! Did he?”

  “No, no, nothing like that,” said Varazda soothingly. “But I believe he saw something.”

  “Oh, he tells stories!” the aunt protested. “He can’t help it, poor boy. He means well, you know.”

  Straton’s mother got to her feet. “He doesn’t tell stories, Sister,” she said quietly. “He doesn’t always understand what he sees, but he is very good at remembering things, and he never lies.” To Varazda she said, “He’s out in the courtyard. I’ll get him. Sister, look to Doros, will you?”

  The baby was crawling industriously toward the front door in a bid for escape. Without thinking, Varazda bent and scooped him up. He was one of those sturdy, solidly built babies, and came up off the floor with his limbs all pulled in tight to his body. Very different from Remi at the same age, who had been softer and smaller and somehow floppier.

  “Oh, thank you,” said Straton’s mother, surprised.

  “Not at all.” Varazda got out of the way so she could go out the door into the hallway, where he heard her calling for her son. The aunt made no move to take the baby, so Varazda propped him on his hip and went on holding him.

  The young man with the rosy cheeks came in promptly and had no difficulty recognizing Varazda in his Pseuchaian outfit. He was very amused by the sight of Varazda holding the baby. The women, Varazda observed, were also amused but trying to hide it.

  “Straton,” he said, “I wanted to ask you about the woman you saw coming to visit the man who was killed.”

  Straton nodded. “Ruta.”

  “Yes. She is a friend of yours?”

  “Um.” Straton looked sadly at his hands. “No, she’s not my friend. I don’t think she’s my friend any more. She used to like me, we had fun together, but now she doesn’t talk to me. Maybe I did something wrong.” He shot Varazda a hopeful look, as if looking for reassurance that it wasn’t his fault.

  “She didn’t stop speaking to you,” said Straton’s aunt. “She left.”

  “Shh,” said the mother.

  “Straton,” said Varazda, “how did you know it was Ruta when you saw her on the stairs?”

  “Her cloak,” he said promptly. “She has a cloak with different-coloured squares.”

  “Plaid,” the aunt supplied. “She’s from Kargania, and she wears a plaid cloak. Beautiful blonde girl. I think she came here as someone’s mistress, and then he left her, and what was the poor girl to do?” She tsked, and her sister shushed her again.

  “Thank you, Straton,” said Varazda, then paused for a moment to extricate his mantle from the baby’s grip before it came unwrapped and fell in a heap on the floor. “So … Ruta didn’t speak to you this time either?”

  Straton shook his head.

  “And did you see her face?”

  He shook his head again. The women gasped. Then Straton himself frowned.

  “Do you think maybe it wasn’t her?” he asked Varazda. “Do you think maybe it was someone else wearing her cloak?”

  “I think maybe,” said Varazda.

  “I told you he doesn’t lie,” said Straton’s mother.

  “You said Ruta went away,” Varazda pursued, flicking his hair out of reach of the baby’s fists. “Do you know where?”

  They all shook their heads, but after a moment the aunt said tentatively, “That place … what is it called? Where they all go to repent. The convent.”

  “Choros Rock?” Varazda supplied.

  “That’s it! I heard the girls across the street talking. I think she went there.”

  “My honourable colleague is asking you to believe that Damiskos Temnon, a man with an exemplary military record and well known for his integrity, met Helenos Diophoros in the street, quarrelled with him, did not at any time draw his sword, but rather assisted Helenos back to his lodging, where he proceeded to poison him using an unusual and slow-acting substance which would have ensured—since we know that Damiskos left the scene immediately—that he was not there to witness Helenos’s death. Nor even, in fact, to be sure that Helenos did die, which he might well not have done, had he, for instance, possessed an especially strong constitution which afforded him some immunity to the poison.

  “All of this, my friends, is very strange. Yet my colleague has offered no compelling reason why these strange things might have come to pass. He has spoken of a rivalry between Helenos Diophoros and Damiskos Temnon. On what basis they may have been rivals, he does not say. I submit that this is because he does not know, and I urge you to dismiss this baseless speculation.

  “My colleague has described Damiskos to you as a man beset by loneliness, bereft of love. In fact, he has a devoted lover, a Sasian-born citizen of Boukos, with whom he has been living. He came to Pheme two weeks ago to attend to family matters in the city in advance of a permanent move to Boukos. After his arrest, his lover followed him to Pheme and has since worked tirelessly to secure evidence of what really happened to Helenos Diophoros. In due course you will hear what he has uncovered.

  “It is conventional, when speaking of male lovers, to cite examples of legendary heroes whose love spurred them to martial feats and acts of courage. I will not do that. What I think of when I see these two together is the love that I bear for my wife, to whom I have been married forty years. I think of the love my daughter bears her new husband. I think that these two have been blessed by the gods to have found each other, and I think that they know it.

  “Varazda—that’s his name—it’s a little difficult to pronoun
ce, so he goes by ‘Pharastes’ in Boukos, but his name is Varazda. He has endured hardships that could have broken a lesser spirit. He was born an aristocrat in Sasia, but lost his family along with his freedom at a young age. Fate brought him to Boukos, where he was freed, but it was his own determination that built the life he enjoys there today, as a respected citizen and head of his household. He is, I dare say, entirely worthy of Damiskos Temnon, whose virtues I have already described to you—as, indeed, has my esteemed colleague.

  “So when you hear that the cause of the quarrel between Damiskos and Helenos Diophoros on the day of Helenos’s death was an insult offered by Helenos to Damiskos’s lover, Varazda, well—you will understand as I do why Damiskos laid hands on him. It was a particularly coarse insult—I am not going to repeat it, but when I imagine a man saying such a thing to me about my wife … I am not a young man, and it has been many years since I traded blows with anyone, but you can be sure that with such provocation, I would.

  “We need seek no further for the motive behind this altercation. There is no mystery here, no hidden motive. Helenos bore Damiskos a grudge for thwarting his plans—his treasonous plans, let it not be forgotten—Helenos insulted Varazda, whom Damiskos loves, and Damiskos hit him. That, my friends, is all there is to it.

  “Well, except that Helenos died by poison later that day. Now, Helenos was a young man who had made many enemies. He was in hiding in Pheme, afraid to be tried for his crimes on Phemian soil. Several people were seen visiting him in the course of that day. He boasted to neighbours of a letter received from his former master, the philosopher Eurydemos, and his hopes for a return to his studies. Eurydemos was seen entering his lodging-house that day, but, by his own testimony, he disappointed Helenos’s hopes. He was not able to help Helenos escape justice for his crimes. One can imagine that Helenos must have been left despondent after this blow, and indeed he was seen to be drinking heavily while the sun was still high, around the ninth hour. We know that the bottle of wine from which he drank was not itself poisoned. One of his neighbours drank the remainder and suffered no ill effects. You will hear more about that shortly.