by A. J. Demas
More grunting and scrabbling came from the roof, then a sound of sliding, a yell, a thump, and a groan from the side of the hut. Damiskos and Varazda, parted again, looked at one another and shook with silent laughter.
The chanting had stopped, the torchlight moved off. The group of watchers was breaking up and losing interest. Damiskos could hear them collecting the fellow who had fallen off the roof and heading back to the bonfire to refill their wine cups and argue some more about virtue. He propped himself on his elbow again, looking down at Varazda.
“Before you ask,” said Varazda, “no, ‘that wasn’t so bad.’”
Damiskos chuckled. “I was going to ask.”
“I knew you were.”
“I suppose we ought to wait a while before going back.”
“Mm. Yes.”
He didn’t want to look round to make sure they were really alone, so he still spoke quietly in Zashian. “Do you think it … worked?”
Varazda glanced past Damiskos’s shoulder toward the front of the hut. “They’re gone. I don’t know if Helenos will be entirely convinced, but I think he operates mostly by manipulating his underlings, and he’ll have a harder time now convincing them that you’re up to anything more complicated than romancing your new slave. Thank you for suggesting … ” He gave an elegant little gesture.
“You’re quite welcome. It was … really the only option. I’m not sure what kind of demigods you’ve been acquainted with, but, er, there’s no way I could have performed under those circumstances.”
“Oh.” Varazda looked deeply embarrassed. “I do apologize. But—I am sure you could have.”
“Now, look! I’m not confessing to impotence. Nobody could get it up with an audience like that, jeering and looking down the smoke hole and making rude jokes.”
“Is that … not what they do at Phemian weddings, then?”
“You’re joking, right? No, it’s not what they do at weddings. They sing a decent version of one of those hymns, they process to the couple’s house, they sing another one while the bride and groom go inside, and then they leave. They don’t watch.”
“Oh. Oh, I see.” He sounded entirely sincere.
“You really didn’t know that.”
“Well, it’s not what they do at weddings in Boukos, I knew that. I’d just—honestly—never known an intact man admit there were times he couldn’t get … you know, ready to perform … unless it were his partner’s fault.”
“That’s a Zashian thing—I remember that. You say, ‘Sorry, my dear, I’m a bit tired,’ and she bursts into tears because she thinks it’s something she did.”
“Ah. I thought it was … I didn’t know it was a Zashian thing.”
The voices of the students had long since receded into the distance. Of course now that they had started talking about it, Damiskos found that he was aroused after all, with a fierce and urgent warmth. It warred with the instinct of protectiveness he had been feeling for Varazda all evening, but it fired it up, too, because now he felt he needed to protect Varazda from him.
He turned carefully to lie on his back, propping his good leg up, knee bent, so that the skirt of his tunic draped discreetly. He tucked a hand behind his head.
“When I was serving at Seleos, I got engaged to a girl from Suna.”
Varazda gave him a curious look. “Did you?”
“It was an entirely respectable thing. Her father hosted a dinner for the officers of my legion, and I met her when he invited her to play the lute at the party. I asked the family’s permission to call on her again, we met a number of times with a chaperone, and eventually I asked if she wanted to marry me and negotiated a bride price. Then I found out how her father made his living.”
“Oh yes?”
“Well, he was a merchant, I had known that. I thought he dealt in Parkan rugs, but it turned out that was only a part of his business. His main trade was in boys. Eunuchs. I found that out when he explained the business to me. Because I was set to join the family, you see.”
“But then you didn’t.”
“No. The whole thing horrified me. I wanted no part of it. I considered asking Shahaz, my fiancée, to run away with me, but that wouldn’t really have made either of us happy—she wanted a respectable marriage, and I wanted … well, I wouldn’t have wanted to disgrace her. So I broke it off.”
“I see.” Varazda’s voice had become remote. “I wonder what lesson about you it is that I’m meant to learn from that.”
That was an annoying way of putting it, but as an insight it wasn’t too far off. “I wanted to settle in Zash. Shahaz is a beautiful and talented woman, and would have made an excellent wife—is, I’m sure, an excellent wife now, to someone else—but it was the city of Suna that I was really in love with.”
“And then we spoiled it for you with our barbarian ways. I see.”
“No, you don’t! I was trying to … oh, forget it.”
Trying to express sympathy, he’d been about to say. Trying to show that he understood, better than the average Pseuchaian, that he’d even been willing to make some personal sacrifice on account of that understanding.
They lay for a little while in silence, Damiskos feeling irritable and slightly nauseous with cooling lust. Sounds from the bonfire were fading as revelry gave way to quiet conversation. The oldest and youngest of the merrymakers were probably heading home to bed.
“Will you be safe when we go back up to the house?” Damiskos asked finally.
“Probably.” Varazda sounded irritable too. “Who knows. They’ll expect me to be in your room, and I don’t think they want to deal with you right now. If they’re still suspicious of me, they’ll wait until they can get me alone.”
“Had you better be in my room, then?”
“I’m sure that would be delightful, but I don’t believe it’s necessary.”
“Look.” Damiskos pushed himself up on his elbow again, looking down at Varazda. “I’m not going to press the point. I know you know what you’re doing. But if I haven’t already made it quite clear that I would not take advantage of you, in any way—I wish you’d tell me why.”
Varazda looked up at him for a long moment. The air between them felt heavy as a thunderstorm, but what it was charged with, Damiskos could not have said.
“No, First Spear, I know that,” Varazda said finally, reverting to his old, acerbic tone. He moved away from Damiskos a little to sit up. “I think we have drawn this out long enough.”
“Absolutely.”
They both moved at the same time, Varazda pushing himself up and swinging a leg over Damiskos to get off the couch, Damiskos turning on his side to manoeuvre his stiff knee, and there was a very slight collision. Very slight but very telling.
Varazda had slithered off the couch in an instant and was grabbing up his shoes and his crumpled shirt and pretending it hadn’t happened. Damiskos wasn’t entirely sure it had.
“Was that … Are you … uh … turned on?” That changed things considerably.
Varazda’s dark eyes flashed up at him, furious.
“Holy God. You just can’t leave anything unsaid, can you? It does work, yes, after a fashion. And I don’t—as it happens—prefer women.”
“Oh,” said Damiskos, at a loss. “I see.”
CHAPTER IX
A LETTER FROM Aristokles arrived the following morning. Damiskos was at breakfast with Nione and Tyra when the young slave Niko brought it in. The students, mercifully, were too hungover to be present, and their master had not come down either.
Damiskos and Tyra waited politely while their host opened the tablet and read its contents. Nione set it on the table by the basket of bread, frowning. She shook out her skirt as if to rise, then subsided into her chair and looked at Damiskos.
“I don’t want to embarrass you, Damiskos,” she said, clearly embarrassed herself, “only I wondered if you might have some idea why Pharastes lied to me about his master’s—his former master’s—whereabouts?”
&nb
sp; Damiskos desperately wanted to unfold the full story to her on the spot, but he couldn’t do it in front of Tyra—couldn’t do it at all, in fact, without betraying Varazda’s trust.
“I … I can only think that Aristokles must have instructed him to do so.”
“Yes, I suppose that may be.”
“Would you like me to speak to him for you?”
“Perhaps we could send for him now.”
Well, it had been worth a try.
She sent Niko to fetch Varazda. Damiskos half expected the boy to come back alone to report that Varazda had vanished now too, but he didn’t. He came back followed by Varazda, who looked to Damiskos’s eyes as though he had neither slept much nor had any breakfast. His hair was pulled back in a simple twist, and he had no earrings in or kohl around his eyes. He was wearing the trousers he had worn yesterday, with a plain white shirt.
“May I speak to him?” Nione asked, before Varazda had arrived at their table.
“What? Oh, yes, of course.”
“Pharastes, I hope you can clear up a misunderstanding for me,” Nione said. “I received a letter from your previous master this morning. He says he was called away by a family crisis—he had a message from home yesterday and left on the same ship that brought the letter. I do not know what ship that was, or where it docked—it cannot have been the ship from Pheme that we saw yesterday afternoon. And all this is quite different from the account of his departure that you gave me.”
Varazda let a moment pass in uncomfortable silence, an expression of shocked distress on his face.
“Indeed, my lady,” he said finally. “I knew nothing of this. He told me that he was travelling to the village—I can only think that his plans must have changed suddenly. But by the time of his departure, of course, I was no longer his slave. I suppose he does not mention me in his letter?”
Damiskos saw an opportunity and leaned forward to pick up the letter before Nione could do so. He flipped it open, turned it around, and held it out toward Varazda.
“You can see for yourself that he doesn’t,” he said.
Nione took the letter back from Damiskos, giving him a rather annoyed look. “He did not,” she told Varazda gently, assuming that of course he could not read.
Damiskos didn’t know that he could, but he was hoping that he might at least recognize Aristokles’s writing. If it was Aristokles’s writing.
“I suppose what you say must be true,” said Nione. “I can think of no other explanation. But it is strange that he should have packed all his belongings for a journey down to Laokia, and strange that he should not have told anyone when he decided to take ship suddenly instead. After all, he had time to write this message for me and leave it with one of the fishermen.”
“It is very strange, my lady.”
“He’s a bit of a strange man,” Tyra put in. “I had a really peculiar conversation with him. He kept talking about being afraid of something.”
“Perhaps, Damiskos,” said Nione, “you might inquire in the stables for me—did Aristokles take a horse when he left, and do they know where he intended to go?”
“Of course.”
“I’m sure it will all prove to be some kind of misunderstanding.”
“I expect so,” said Damiskos. He pushed back his chair. “I’ll go right now, if you don’t mind.”
He and Varazda left together.
“Do I find he took a horse, or no?” Damiskos asked when they were in the hallway leading into the house.
Varazda ground the heels of his hands into his eyes for a moment, an uncharacteristically inelegant gesture. “Yes. I think we want my story to hold up while theirs doesn’t. Or—I don’t know. This is rather a mess.”
“It is that.”
“Anyway, you can ask in the stables—I already paid the grooms to say Aristokles took a horse and someone from the village brought it back. And no, Aristokles didn’t write that letter.”
“I was going to ask. You’re sure?”
“Quite sure. It was nothing like his writing, wasn’t sealed with his ring—nothing about it looked right.”
“Divine Terza.”
“I am going to spend the morning on a tour of the villa, looking for places where one could hide a body.”
Damiskos digested that for a moment. “If that’s what you’re doing,” he said firmly, “I’m coming with you.”
“No, you’re not.”
“I am. I’m besottedly in love with you, remember? No one will think it odd if we’re inseparable all day. And no one will have the opportunity to murder you, either.”
Varazda gave him a look that could only be described as a silent snarl.
Damiskos did not exactly follow Varazda around all day, but only because it didn’t take all day to search the villa. He accompanied Varazda to the wine cellars, where he browsed among the bottles while Varazda looked in corners and behind barrels. When one of the household slaves came down to fetch some wine, Damiskos engaged him in conversation so that he would not notice Varazda, and accompanied him upstairs and then loitered around the cellar door, pretending to admire some mosaics, until Varazda returned.
“Oh, good,” said Varazda sarcastically. “You’re still here.”
“You didn’t find anything.”
“Of course not.”
In the stables, much the same process was repeated, with Damiskos chatting with the grooms while Varazda sneaked about. This time it was Varazda who was waiting outside the stable-yard gate, leaning against the wall and looking elaborately bored, when Damiskos finished admiring the horses and finally emerged.
“Sorry about that. Got caught up.”
“Mm. Fun for you.”
Damiskos sighed.
In the kitchen wing, Damiskos pretended to want a snack while Varazda pretended to be looking in the storerooms for the ingredients to make a special Zashian dish.
“I wouldn’t have thought he knew how to boil water,” the head cook remarked, looking after Varazda. “Begging your pardon, sir.”
Damiskos shrugged and laughed.
He probably didn’t. He came back empty-handed, claiming that they didn’t have whatever it was he needed; he also claimed, wisely, not to know what it was called in Pseuchaian.
“Still nothing?” said Damiskos when they had left the kitchen.
“Still nothing.”
“Well, I suppose in this context, ‘nothing’ is good.”
Varazda shook his head. “I don’t know. I’m going down to the fish-sauce factory to look around there, and then I’m going to walk to that village that I pretended Aristokles went to. Please don’t come with me, First Spear. I will be fine, and I think … I’m sorry, but I think you have already walked enough today.”
That caught Damiskos by surprise, not only the words but the tone in which they were said. Clearly Varazda realized he wouldn’t like to hear that—even seemed to understand, or at least to care.
“I—” Instinctively he wanted to say he was fine, but he wasn’t. His knee had been hurting all morning after walking so much yesterday without his cane, and the prospect of sitting down and resting it for a few hours was pitifully appealing.
“Wait for me in the garden or the library,” Varazda suggested, “and I’ll come find you when I’ve done. If I’m not back by sunset, you have my leave to raise the alarm.”
“I don’t like it, Varazda.”
“Neither do I, First Spear. I don’t like anything about it. I will see you soon.”
It was still well before dinner, and the sun was still high in the sky. Damiskos had been reading in the library—well, sitting in the library with a book open in his lap—for an hour when Helenos, Gelon, and Phaia came in.
“Oh look,” said Gelon, “it’s Damiskos.”
“First Spoon of the Quartermaster’s Office,” Phaia supplied.
Gelon giggled. “Oh, that’s rather good!”
“Stop it, you two,” said Helenos mildly. “It is not a laughing matter.”
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“I thought it was sort of funny,” said Damiskos equably.
“You took a wrong turn, Damiskos Temnon,” said Helenos, “but you could have the respect of the whole Republic again, if you tried. I don’t believe you are really so far gone.”
In a moment he was going to say something that would really hurt. Something about Damiskos searching for meaning, not being the man he used to be—Helenos’s solution would be that Damiskos should join with him in fomenting war with Zash so that he could restore his lost honour, and Damiskos didn’t think he would find that tempting, but he really had no desire to find out for sure.
While he was searching for something to say to shut Helenos up, he looked past the students and saw Varazda arrive in the doorway.
Varazda had been out walking, and it had put some colour in his cheeks. His hair was a little tugged-about by the wind, a few strands escaping the neat knot from the morning. His sleeves were rolled up to his elbows, his shirt unfastened at the throat.
Damiskos swung his legs down from the footstool and stood, dropping his scroll, which unrolled across the floor. He heard a scornful laugh from the students. He honestly didn’t care.
“Darling,” said Varazda. He said it in Zashian, but the way he said it, one didn’t need to speak the language to know what kind of term it was.
Damiskos remembered kissing him the night before, the scent of his perfume, the softness of his lips.
“Uh. You’re back.”
Varazda came across the room to pick up the dropped scroll, roll it back up, and hand it to Damiskos.
“Let’s go,” said Damiskos.
“The Painted Urn?” Varazda said as the door closed behind them.
“What?”
“The Painted Urn. What you were reading. An interesting choice. Not Tyreus’s most popular play, but a good one, I’ve heard.”
Damiskos looked at him. “You don’t need to prove to me that you can read.”
Varazda said nothing, and Damiskos thought he might have scored a rather roundabout point there. He wondered why he felt the need to think of it that way.