DAMISKOS WOKE IN the dark, jerked awake by a flurry of noise: the crash of the door hitting the bed on the opposite side of the room as it swung open; running feet outside. He pushed himself up, blinking blearily around the room. He’d been sleeping in an awkward position, face-down on top of the rumpled coverlet, with his tunic on and still belted.
Moonlight from the open door showed the other bed in the room still made—halfheartedly—and empty. He caught a whiff of smoke as if a lamp had recently been extinguished. He rolled out of bed and went to the door.
Varazda was coming up the stairs to the gallery, barefoot and pyjama-clad, with Damiskos’s short sword in his hand.
“Didn’t catch him,” he whispered when he reached the top of the stairs. “Not that I know what I’d have done if I had.” He handed the sword ruefully back to Damiskos. “It wasn’t Gelon, though. It was one of the others. Which is worrying, because it means it’s not just Gelon having it in for me personally. They all think I’m a threat. My cover, as we say in the business, appears to be blown.”
“That’s bad.”
Varazda nodded. “I scared him off, whoever he was, which means either they’ll leave us alone for the rest of the night—or they’ll send more than one next time.”
“I’ll take the watch now.”
“Good.” Varazda yawned elegantly. “I was going to wake you shortly anyway.”
They were back in the room by this time, but the door was still open, and Damiskos saw what he’d missed when he’d been jolted awake.
“Terza’s head, did I fall asleep in your bed?”
“Mm-hm. When I struggled back upstairs with the extra mattress, you were passed out there with the lamp still burning. I didn’t disturb you.”
“Gods. I’m sorry.”
“Oh, it’s fine. The other bed is just as comfortable. I left the light burning too—I’m not sure I’d have been able to keep awake in the dark. I just blew it out when I heard noises from outside, so they’d think I was asleep. I can light it for you again if you want.”
“No, I’m going to sit outside on the gallery. They know we know what they’re up to now—we don’t need to worry about the element of surprise.”
“Can I have my bed back, then?”
“Please.”
He collapsed gracefully onto it, pulling the covers around himself, and pressed his face into the pillow, drawing a deep breath.
“Mmmm. Smells like soldier.”
“I’m sorry,” said Damiskos stiffly.
One dark eye looked up at him from the pillow. “I don’t know if you’ve worked this out, First Spear,” came Varazda’s muffled voice, “but I fancy soldiers.”
Varazda took the last watch of the night, and he was out on the gallery, leaning on the railing, when Damiskos woke with the first light of morning. He yawned hugely as Damiskos came out to stand beside him.
There had been no more nocturnal visitors, and now the slave quarters were busy with early risers going about their tasks in the thin dawn light.
“Can you go back to bed?” Damiskos asked. “You look as if you need it.”
Varazda rubbed his eyes. “Yes, I think I might. I’m not good for much else.”
“A two-man watch is hard,” said Damiskos, giving in to a yawn himself. “At least we don’t have to march anywhere this morning.”
“Ugh.”
They remained standing there for a moment, leaning on the railing side by side.
“Last night—the earlier part—was very enjoyable,” Damiskos said finally.
“I’m afraid my contribution was rudimentary,” said Varazda, making a wry face. “I’m … I have been accustomed to being given orders, and I may not have done very well without them.”
“No! No, it was … ” It was you, Damiskos wanted to say. That was what mattered. “It was great. The whole thing.”
Varazda nodded. “It was. If we get a chance to do it again, I’d like that.”
Damiskos didn’t reply at first, afraid that anything he said would sound too eager. There was an awkward pause. Varazda yawned again and turned toward his bedroom door. Damiskos finally thought of something to say.
“If I had a copy of The Three Gardens, I’d study it for you.” That didn’t have the lightness that he had been striving for.
Varazda looked back. “It’s only a few pages from the Honeysuckle Garden that truly appeal to me, First Spear. And, I must say, you’ve got Training the Vine down quite well already.”
Damiskos toiled down the stairs from the gallery, greeting the few women whose names he knew as he passed them, and returning the rather knowing smiles of several others. It was a little odd to think that he now legitimately had something to be embarrassed about. They might well have heard him and Varazda last night; goodness knows, Varazda especially had been making enough noise. But even the knowingest looks of the slaves were friendly.
It was still too early for any of the guests or their host to be up. Damiskos returned to his room, put his sword, along with his hunting bow, away carefully at the back of an upper shelf in his closet, took a clean tunic, and went to the bath. He still smelled of sex and Varazda’s perfume.
Clean and dressed, he made his way through the quiet house to the garden, assured Rhea when she asked that he didn’t need anything, and then as an afterthought asked her to tell the mistress, when she was awake, that he had gone down for a walk on the beach.
He took his time climbing down the track to the beach, thinking that he should have swallowed his pride and asked Rhea if there was such a thing as a walking-stick in the house. Reaching level ground, he strolled at an easy pace. The sunrise was at his back, casting long shadows out over the white sand. He passed the fish-sauce factory and rounded the spit of land into the sheltered cove with the beach houses.
He was looking for something that he hoped very much not to find, but as soon as the sheltered beach came into view, he knew that he had. The body lay at the fullest point of the beach’s gentle curve, half in and half out of the surf, a dark, wet heap.
Damiskos made his way over to it, grasped the sodden tunic, and turned the body over to be sure it was Aristokles. It was. He had been in the water some time; the corpse was bloated and ugly, but it was quite recognizable.
Nobody could claim that he had died by drowning. The front of his tunic was torn in several places, the blood washed away by the water but the stab wounds still visible beneath. A frayed rope trailed from one of his ankles; evidently the weight used to sink him had come loose, letting his body bob to the surface.
Damiskos stood looking grimly down at the corpse for several minutes before he roused himself to action.
He had to get the body out of the surf and find Nione and Varazda. He bent and grabbed the wet clothing again, and heaved the corpse up so he could grasp it under the armpits and drag it along the beach. It was awkward work; Aristokles had been a big man, Damiskos’s height, and with wet clothes he was very heavy. Damiskos’s knee was protesting by the time he reached the beach hut—the same one where he and Varazda had put on their show for the students on Hapikon Eve—and rolled the body onto the dry stone floor. He collapsed onto one of the benches and rubbed the throbbing joint.
He remembered Varazda catching him the night before, bolstering his weak side as Damiskos bent over him on the bed. He remembered the sword fight earlier in the afternoon, the way Varazda had given ground only in slow steps, refusing to dart around and put Damiskos at a disadvantage. It hadn’t struck him before how much courage it must have taken to do that, to resist the urge to flee from a stronger, more experienced opponent.
Gods, what was he going to do when Varazda went back to Boukos? He would miss him like fury.
A shadow fell across the threshold of the beach hut, across Aristokles’s body on the floor. Damiskos looked up. Helenos was standing in the doorway.
He must have been down on the beach already when Damiskos was dragging the body. Perhaps he had followed Damiskos down.
“Damiskos from the Quartermaster’s Office,” he said, his voice as calm and uninflected as usual. “And … is it Aristokles? How awkward.”
Damiskos got to his feet, regretting that he had left his sword in his bedroom, and wishing once again that he’d asked Rhea for a walking stick. In a pinch, a good stick served as a pretty effective weapon.
Helenos came into the hut, stepping around Aristokles’s body, and Damiskos saw he was not alone; Gelon and Phaia stood on the threshold behind him.
“Ugh!” said Phaia, pointing in at the body. She turned to look at Gelon. “I thought you got rid of him.”
“You stupid cow,” Helenos barked, his tone suddenly so violent that Damiskos was genuinely shocked.
“What?” Phaia rounded on him, obviously not as surprised herself. She gestured at Damiskos. “He obviously knows everything.”
“Now he does,” said Helenos, looking at Damiskos, calm restored to his voice. “The question is, what is he going to do about it.”
“Not really your question to ask, is it?” said Damiskos. “I’ll do whatever I see fit. Of course if you want to tell me truthfully how this happened”—he pointed to Aristokles’s body—“it could influence my decision.”
Helenos gave him a pained look, like a reasonable man reluctantly tolerating someone else’s unreasonableness. “We know that your friend here was working for the Boukossian government,” he said. “He told Phaia so, in the course of bragging about his own importance. Apparently the Boukossians harbour unfounded suspicions about Master Eurydemos.”
“Rubbish,” said Damiskos. “They know that you and your cronies started a riot and killed men in Boukos.”
Helenos’s eyebrows rose. “Is that what he told you?” He poked Aristokles with his foot.
“He didn’t know which of you was the ringleader,” Damiskos embroidered. “I worked that part out for myself.”
“You didn’t, by any chance, hear it from Aristokles’s—pardon me—from your eunuch?”
“Him? I doubt he knows anything about it.”
Helenos frowned. “Giontes says last night when he went to the eunuch’s room, the Sasian chased him off with a sword.”
“Yeah? I’m surprised Giontes was willing to admit to that.”
“Where did the eunuch get the sword?”
“You saw him dance the other night. He’s got swords.”
“It was a Phemian sword.”
“Oh. Why didn’t you say? That was probably mine.”
“What was he doing with it?”
“Chasing Giontes, apparently.”
“Were you in the eunuch’s room?”
“Yes, of course. I thought we’d maybe have some privacy out there. I’m sleeping with him, remember?”
“But you’re not.”
Damiskos spread his hands hopelessly. “I don’t know what to tell you. That is what I was doing in his room last night. Look, you saw him kiss me on Xereus’s Day, you saw us making out in here on Hapikon night. Last night, we were in his bedroom making love. I don’t know what’s so hard to fathom about all that. Do you think that because I was a soldier, if I’m not fucking somebody up against a wall half an hour after meeting him, it means I’m not interested?”
Helenos was giving him the look of distaste that he had been hoping for. It was really very satisfying.
“I tell you who I feel sorry for,” Damiskos added, looking at Phaia, “is you. His idea of seduction seems pretty piss-poor.”
“That’s enough!” Helenos snarled. “You have no idea what I’ve done for her.”
“You mean trying to clean up her mess after she murdered Aristokles Phoskos?”
“You see,” said Phaia, “I told you he knew.”
“What?” said Gelon, sounding affronted. “You didn’t kill him—I did. All she did,” he added to Damiskos, “was lure him to the garden for me.”
Helenos pinched the bridge of his nose and made an exasperated noise.
“Oh,” said Phaia lazily. “Look.”
Damiskos turned to see the rest of the students standing in the open front of the beach hut.
He took a step back, but Aristokles’s body was behind him, and he couldn’t move any further without tripping over it. The students stood shoulder-to-shoulder in the wide entrance, their stance casual, their faces sneering. They were unarmed, but then so was Damiskos. They were tall, athletic young men, soft compared to Damiskos, but there were five of them, plus Gelon, Helenos, and Phaia behind him, and none of them were lame.
He opted to pretend he didn’t notice any attempted threat, and simply shouldered his way through the line of students. They were too surprised to stop him, and he knocked one of them down and was walking quickly away from the beach hut when he heard Helenos’s voice behind him: “Stop him, you clowns.”
Damiskos took that as permission to fight. He swung at the first student to catch up to him, hitting him in the stomach. The student staggered, but he was a big fellow and did not fall. Damiskos grabbed him by the hair and the front of his tunic, and pushed him backward into the man coming up behind him, and they both went over together.
The third student was the one with the broken nose. He didn’t give Damiskos time to get in a blow before he kicked him, with devastating accuracy, in the right knee.
His leg buckled under him in an explosion of pain, and he landed on his side in the sand. He managed to pull the broken-nosed student down to join him, and they grappled inelegantly. By that time the rest had arrived, and the two he had felled earlier were getting up, and at another irritable order from Helenos, they gave up all pretence of fighting fairly and simply piled onto him.
He was winded, kicked in the head, spots dancing before his eyes, his knee a red-hot agony. Four of the students hauled him up from the sand between them, grasping his wrists and ankles, and began carrying him across the beach.
They dumped him down on a warm wooden surface that he guessed from the smell was one of the docks outside the fish-sauce factory. Most of them sat on him again—the only effective way they had of containing him—while one of them went into the empty factory.
Why was the factory empty? It clearly was; he could tell from the stillness all around them. But shouldn’t the fishermen, the ones who weren’t celebrating Hapikon, still be there, receiving extra pay while the slaves were on holiday?
The student who had gone inside—the broken-nose fellow again—returned with a coil of rope. Damiskos felt his stomach clench with nausea.
They rolled him over, and he fought again, was kicked and sat on, had his shoulders nearly dislocated, and finally his hands were bound behind him. And he was back in Abadoka’s stronghold on the Deshan Coast, naked and shivering and bloody, with Abadoka’s torturer standing over him. It was the last time he’d had his hands tied behind his back.
“The fight’s gone out of him,” he heard a woman’s voice say, with a mocking laugh.
In Abadoka’s stronghold, the fight had never gone out of him. He had struggled against his bonds, attacked the jailers every chance he got, snarled obscenities at Abadoka and his men even when he was too far gone to be sure what language he was swearing in. But that was five years ago, and he’d been a different man. He lay slumped on the warm wood of the dock, trying to stop shaking.
He couldn’t go through it again. It couldn’t happen again. It couldn’t. It couldn’t. It couldn’t.
“Let’s drown him in a vat of fish sauce,” a voice suggested. Others laughed and murmured agreement.
“We don’t need any more corpses,” someone snapped coldly. “It’s bad enough that you had to kill all those people in Boukos.”
“They were Sasians—the world is better without them.”
There was some more discussion after that which Damiskos’s mind was racing too frantically to follow. In the end they dragged him inside the factory, pushed him head-first into an empty fermenting tank in the floor, and dragged a heavy stone slab over it.
He was left in thick darkness. The fall had stunned him, and a fiery pain in his right shoulder suggested it might really be dislocated now. He lay huddled, half upside-down in the tank, with no room to move in any direction. And the smell. The overwhelming, sickening stench of fish left to rot in the sun for weeks. The stone under his cheek was slimy with it; the walls pressing in around him had soaked it in for years.
He couldn’t breathe properly, couldn’t move, could barely think. He focussed all his remaining strength on not throwing up, because some shred of memory told him that if he did, he might choke on it.
Time passed. He knew where he was now, knew that this was going to be different. It was not happening again. But still memories of the Deshan Coast washed over him. He knelt in front of Abadoka, hands tied, two guards holding him down because that was the only way he would stay on his knees.
“They are going to think you are my man one way or another, Damiskos Son of Philion. Why not make it so in truth, and gain the benefits?”
He hadn’t known what that meant until later.
His shoulder hurt, but it was not dislocated. There was a faint line of grey around the rim of the tank where the stone slab did not fit tightly. He couldn’t move enough to put his good shoulder to it, but he could kick it with his sound leg.
It wasn’t enough to move the slab, and on the third try his shoulder slipped in the slime on the bottom of the tank, and he cracked his head against the side. He clenched his teeth and breathed shallowly until the pain faded.
He wasn’t going to get out that way. Better to conserve his energy until he heard the fishermen returning to the factory, when they would hear him and let him out.
If Helenos and his followers had chosen this place to leave him, they must have some reason to think the fishermen were not coming back.
Time passed. The arm he was lying on was becoming numb, which was an improvement over the throbbing of earlier. Every so often he would imagine he was getting used to the smell, and then he would take an incautious breath, and another wave of nausea would hit him. Tears ran out of the corners of his eyes.
At first he thought he was imagining the change in the air, the hint of a new smell. But it grew slowly stronger, and he knew it was real. It was smoke.