WHEN DAMISKOS WOKE the following morning, the first thing he saw was Varazda’s floral-patterned handkerchief on the table by the head of the bed. He propped himself on one hand and lay looking at it and recalling the events of the previous night. Gelon’s knife was on the table too. Damiskos had eaten the raisin cake.
He wondered what he should do about last night’s incident. His instinct, born of a career in the army, was to report it to someone. But who? If Aristokles hadn’t been there at the time, it would have been appropriate to report it to him, as involving his slave—or his freedman, or whatever Varazda was. But Aristokles had been there, and frankly his response had been one of the more peculiar parts of the incident.
He should tell Nione—though Aristokles would no doubt do so himself, perhaps already had. Aristokles might also complain to Eurydemos about the behaviour of his student. That would be very appropriate.
Damiskos got out of bed and went to the portable shrine to Terza that he had set up in a suitable corner of his room the previous morning. It was a day for burning incense, but he had used up all his small supply on the journey over the mountains. The rubrics specified only a sweet smell, so it was possible to use something other than incense. His eyes fell again on the handkerchief by the bed.
On impulse, he picked it up and brought it to his nose. It smelled of perfume. He had rinsed out the traces of blood the night before, and it was still slightly damp. He shook it out and draped it over the incense burner in his shrine and made his customary brisk and unemotional morning prayer.
He heard voices from the winter dining room on the other side of the atrium as soon as he emerged from his room.
“Gelon says your slave attacked him last night—and I say you should have him beaten for it!”
“I suppose it’s my business what I choose to do with my own slave, sir.”
“Not when he begins attacking free Phemians, sir! Then it’s everyone’s business to see he’s punished.”
“Some of us”—here Damiskos thought he recognized the voice of Helenos, calm and reasonable as ever—“wonder that you would see fit to bring such a slave into a Phemian household.”
Damiskos stepped through the dining-room door. The men inside looked up at his arrival.
Along with Aristokles and Helenos, Gelon was there, looking distinctly shifty and rather sick, his white face decorated with a livid bruise under one eye. Kleitos was there too; he was the one who had been remonstrating with Aristokles. Varazda was not present, and Damiskos did not know whether to think this a mercy or not.
“First Spear,” said Helenos smoothly. “Ah, my apologies—Damiskos, I mean. You and I were speaking yesterday of the matter.”
Damiskos frowned at him.
“You agreed with me,” Helenos continued undaunted, “that no Pseuchaian should own a creature so contrary to nature. I believe the word you used was ‘repellant.’”
Damiskos carefully said nothing. Behind Helenos, Gelon was looking as if he wished he was dead. Aristokles was looking rather queasy too, come to that.
“Repellant!” Kleitos exclaimed. “That’s a polite word, especially coming from a soldier.” He laughed heartily and looked as if he would have slapped Damiskos on the shoulder if he had been standing nearer.
“What exactly are you speaking of?” Damiskos asked severely. It would be bad form—and giving up a tactical advantage—to admit he had overheard any of their conversation.
“Ah.” Kleitos took over eagerly. “Gelon here appeared this morning with a bruised face, as you can see, and when I asked him about it, he said the Boukossian’s eunuch lay in wait for him last night and launched a cowardly attack. I naturally sought out the slave’s master and laid the matter before him, but he refuses to take action—perhaps because he doesn’t believe Gelon’s word, or perhaps—”
“He shouldn’t believe it,” Damiskos interrupted, “because Gelon is lying.”
Kleitos gaped, but Damiskos thought it clear he was enjoying himself. He was obviously a busybody.
Damiskos had been told that he had no flair for the dramatic. He went on stolidly: “It may have been Aristokles’s servant who gave Gelon that bruise, but I think it more likely I did it myself. I came upon the two of them fighting last night, and it was very clear to me that Gelon was the aggressor. He ran when I took away his knife.”
Kleitos turned on Gelon. “Is this true?”
“No! I mean, I did have a knife, and I was—but I didn’t start it. He attacked me—or, anyway, I thought he was going to. I was defending myself.”
“You interrupted the eunuch in some suspicious activity, didn’t you?” Helenos prompted.
“Well, I—that is, I—we’re not going to talk about that?” It was an appeal to the older student, as if Gelon feared they were veering off some script agreed beforehand. That was interesting.
“I’m sure we can all imagine the sort of thing,” said Helenos delicately.
Kleitos shuddered. “Well, however it got started, it ended with a Sasian eunuch laying hands on a Phemian citizen, and I remain firm in my opinion that he should be whipped.”
“I feel bound to say,” said Damiskos, “that I saw nothing to support that judgement. If we were in the city and the matter were taken to law, I would testify to it.” He would also mention the fact that Varazda was apparently free, which changed the legal character of the matter considerably.
“Thank you,” said Aristokles with a pathetic dignity. “I shall consider what you have said and decide what to do with my own slave, as is my right.”
After a little more muttering and blustering, the two students and Kleitos left the dining room. Aristokles lingered as if anxious to let them get well ahead of him. He glanced back at Damiskos with a wan smile.
“Much obliged, I’m sure.”
“What are you doing pretending that Va—Pharastes—is your slave if you’ve freed him?”
“What am I … oh, well, it’s just easier. Everyone assumes, you know.”
Damiskos frowned. That didn’t make much sense. “Still, you were there last night. And surely Pharastes told you what happened. I am surprised you did not defend him more strenuously.”
“Surprised” was maybe not the right word. “Disgusted” might have been a better one.
“I—I don’t know what happened,” Aristokles protested—nervously, Damiskos thought. “I mean, Gelon’s a monomaniac, isn’t he? Perhaps he saw Pharastes outside that philosopher’s door and thought he was sneaking in for an assignation!”
This was such a strange answer that it took Damiskos a moment to absorb it.
“Was Pharastes outside Eurydemos’s door?” he said finally.
“Well, I don’t know! He might have been.”
“He’s your servant. Shouldn’t you know where he is?”
“Not all the time! I can’t keep track of him all the time!”
“I see.” Then Damiskos remembered something. “He can’t have been having an assignation with Eurydemos last night—at least not in Eurydemos’s room—because Eurydemos wasn’t in his room. I saw him in the garden, and then I met him coming in from the garden on my way back to bed.”
“I know he wasn’t having an assignation with—with … But the point is, Gelon doesn’t know that, does he?”
And anyway, Damiskos was about to add, Eurydemos is in love with Nione. Then he remembered that he had assumed Eurydemos was in love with Nione on the strength of that poem about a fruitless tree … which possibly meant something else entirely.
Had Eurydemos been waiting in the garden for Varazda, who hadn’t arrived because he had retreated to his own bed after the scene with Gelon? Somehow that didn’t quite fit. What had Aristokles been doing, if that were the case?
“Well,” said Damiskos, “as you say, he is a monomaniac. I hope he will not cause you or your servant any more trouble.”
Aristokles shuddered.
“Have you told our host?” Damiskos asked.
“What? Told her what?”
“Told her,” said Damiskos patiently, “what happened last night. That one of her other guests attacked Pharastes.”
“No, no.” Aristokles waved a hand. “Nothing to do with her.”
“I beg to differ. If it had happened under your own roof, to one of your own guests, I’m sure you would want to know.”
“Yes, yes, of course, and I will tell her at the—at the appropriate juncture.” Aristokles had been looking away impatiently toward the door, but now he glanced back sharply at Damiskos. “I beg you would not say anything yourself.”
That sounded quite sincere, and Damiskos found it somewhat alarming.
“I don’t know what you’re up to, Aristokles,” he said, “but I don’t like it. Refusing to take action when one of the other guests attempts to rape your freedman—”
“Attempts to—? No, no—you’ve got it quite wrong. That wasn’t what he was doing at all.” The Boukossian seemed surprised by the suggestion.
“How do you know?” Damiskos countered. “Did you ask your servant what happened?”
“Of course I did,” Aristokles snapped. “Look, you simple little soldier, you have no idea what is going on here. There are things in motion—affairs of the highest—you have no idea.”
“Really.”
“Really. Now leave me and Pharastes alone.”
Damiskos narrowed his eyes at the Boukossian. “I will … if you’ll leave Nione Kukara alone.”
“Oh, yes, yes, yes,” Aristokles crowed. “I knew this was about jealousy at heart. I could tell you—the things I could tell you. You’ve no idea.”
“So you keep saying.”
Damiskos could tell that Aristokles was making a colossal effort not to tell him absolutely all about it, and he had a feeling that if he just waited long enough, and looked unimpressed enough, the Boukossian would lose the struggle. Unfortunately, they were interrupted by a slave with a broom peeping through the dining-room doors to see whether she could come in to sweep, and this gave Aristokles all the distraction he needed to think better of whatever he had been about to say. He pulled himself together, sleeking back his hair with one hand, and cast Damiskos a dark look as he stalked out of the room.
Still turning the conversation over in his mind, Damiskos went out to the garden, where he was met by an entirely normal scene of Nione breakfasting at her private table with Phaia. She beckoned him over to join them.
“Shall we take a walk down the shore to look over the factory this morning?” Nione suggested when he had taken a seat.
“Yes. Excellent.”
He was startled to catch an obviously hostile look from Phaia. It was gone in an instant, and he thought perhaps it hadn’t had anything to do with him. Sometimes he himself was accused of frowning forbiddingly at people when he thought he was simply giving them a neutral look.
“May I come too?” Phaia asked, turning to their host. “I haven’t seen the factory.”
“Of course, if you like.” After a moment, almost shyly, she added, “I should love to show it off to you.”
Damiskos ate in silence while the two women talked. He wasn’t inclined to honour Aristokles’s request that he say nothing to Nione of what had happened last night. But he wasn’t inclined to talk about it in front of Phaia either, so for the moment he had little choice but to keep quiet.
After breakfast, the three of them walked down from the villa to the complex of buildings by the shoreline that housed the fish-sauce operation. The path descended the cliffside with the aid of several steep flights of stairs. Damiskos was embarrassed by how slowly the two women were forced to go for his sake.
“Will you be staying long?” Phaia asked him coolly.
“At least a fortnight, I hope,” said Nione before he could answer.
“Really?” said Phaia. “That seems a long time to spend buying fish sauce.”
Nione laughed.
“My commanding officer thought I needed a holiday,” said Damiskos, “after … There was a lot of trouble with the grain shortages in the winter. I hope I hadn’t complained, but I suppose I must have been looking tired.”
Once he’d been able to lead troops into battle after days of hard riding through the hostile coastlands of Zash, but these days apparently a few late nights in an office were enough to make him look like he needed a holiday.
“I see,” said Phaia. “Well, for my part, I’m sure I shall never want to leave.” She smiled, intimately and dazzlingly, up at Nione.
“Oh, come,” said Nione, but she looked as if she was suppressing a smile of her own.
Damiskos wondered if that was what it looked like—women had different ways of behaving with one another, so it didn’t do to make assumptions—and whether Phaia had been glaring at him after all because she thought he was trying to flirt with Nione too.
He also thought that he was going to need another holiday after this one.
The fish-sauce factory was set on a white sweep of shoreline below the promontory that held the villa. The buildings, of whitewashed stone, stood near the waterline, and a pair of neat fishing boats were moored at the end of a stone jetty. Workers were busy processing the morning’s catch at a long table on the shore.
The smell hit them almost as soon as they arrived on the beach: a wave of fishiness, with undercurrents of decay and fermentation and salt. It got stronger as they approached. Damiskos tried to think what to say about it, but couldn’t come up with anything polite.
“Occasionally, when there’s a stiff wind, you get a whiff of that in the garden,” said Nione. “But only occasionally.”
“I suppose you wouldn’t be out in the garden much in a stiff wind,” said Damiskos.
“No,” said Nione, “that’s true.”
Phaia looked nauseous.
Inside, the factory was a model of efficiency, everything well-appointed and clean. There were outdoor tanks, a fermenting house, a smaller building where the finished sauce was bottled, and a warehouse which contained jars of sauce ready to ship, along with some wine and olives and other products of the estate.
Nione introduced her foreman, who proudly pointed out the improvements they had made, all the new work that had been done to the buildings since Nione bought the operation. The work of the factory was done by a small staff, six slaves under the oversight of the foreman, while the crews of the two fishing boats that supplied them were free contractors who leased their vessels from Nione and also sold fresh fish up and down the coast.
“The factory didn’t belong to my family,” Nione explained, as they came back out of the bottling house onto the sunlit shore. “It just happened to be for sale at the same time that I moved back to the neighbourhood. We haven’t changed the recipe or the method of production at all. My focus has been on improving distribution.”
“Very sensible,” said Damiskos.
He was envious, actually. She seemed to have found a new passion after leaving the Maidens. He wished he had something similar. He would have loved to run a business, to renovate an old house, to live quietly in the country—though to tell the truth he liked the city just as well. But his father had sold the family home years ago, and his parents lived in rented rooms. Damiskos had forfeited his pension by going back to work, and there had been no dowry for him when he left the Second Koryphos.
The foreman reappeared, followed by a boy carrying a tray with several small cups. Damiskos hoped fleetingly that this wasn’t what it looked like.
“I thought you would like to sample our product,” said the foreman.
“Of course,” said Damiskos neutrally.
The factory made three different grades of fish sauce, and the foreman had brought samples of each. Damiskos dutifully sipped them all. Phaia declined, not very politely.
Damiskos wasn’t picky about food; he didn’t mind a dish strongly flavoured with fish sauce, but he wasn’t one of those people who liked to slop it on everything. He certainly had never felt inclined to drink it straight, and the experience didn’t change his mind.
“Let’s walk a little further down the beach,” Nione suggested, after her foreman had departed.
“Yes, let’s,” said Phaia.
She tucked her hand through Nione’s arm, murmuring something about how hard it was to walk on the soft sand. She wore stout sandals, and Damiskos doubted that she was really having difficulty. They made a striking pair, Phaia wispy and delicate and pale, Nione tall and lean, with her braids and her dark brown skin.
He tried to fall behind discreetly, but they were walking slowly enough even for him. He was steeling himself to admit that his knee hurt—it did, but that wasn’t the main reason he wanted to go back to the house. He felt very much in the way, and was more and more convinced that Phaia resented his presence. He couldn’t even really blame her.
They rounded a spur of rock that jutted onto the beach, and a small, exquisite cove opened up before them. A pair of tiny, whitewashed, slate-roofed stone huts nestled at the top of the wide, white beach. They were sheltered from the smell of the factory here, and it was very quiet.
“Those were ancient houses,” Nione said, pointing to the little buildings. “The walls have been here as long as anyone can remember. I had roofs put on and turned them into beach huts.”
“How perfect,” Phaia breathed. “The whole setting. It will make an ideal exercise ground for our school, Nione. Running along the beach at sunrise—ah! So invigorating. Of course I can’t exercise with the men, but you’d keep me company, wouldn’t you?”
“Running?” Nione laughed. “Blessed Orante, I don’t think so. Not unless something were chasing me.”
“Just watching would be perfect.”
Nione turned to Damiskos, who was just opening his mouth to say that it was time he headed back to the house. “Did I tell you, Damiskos? Phaia is trying to convince me to let her fellow students take up residence at Laothalia.”
“Oh. Really. I see.”
“Yes, you see, Eurydemos is my first cousin, and he was robbed of his inheritance by our grandfather—it’s a long, sad story. But I do feel myself obligated to make things right, as best I can. I don’t mean to suggest that he views himself as having a right to my property … ”
“Of course not!” Phaia chimed in. “He would never say such a thing—even though it is true. He is happy just to be invited to stay here. But no one suggests—no one would dream of suggesting—you ought to give up the villa to him. We simply think it would be a lovely gesture if you made room here for his school. Besides, Laothalia would suit us so well.”
“It is so far from the city, though,” said Nione doubtfully.
Damiskos thought he knew what Phaia would say to that.
“Oh, but that is an advantage! To be able to escape the clamour of the city would be bliss. To leave behind the cries of the marketplace and the wrangling of politicians … ”
Yes, that was about what he had expected.
So the philosopher was leeching off Nione on the strength of some injury two generations back, and his students were badgering her to give over part of her home for them to discuss their claptrap and go running on the beach. In Nione’s place he would have shut the whole thing down when it was first proposed.
Or maybe he wouldn’t. She missed the communal life of the Maidens’ House, just as he missed the camaraderie of the army. Maybe she would enjoy living among the students.
Finally he found an opportunity to announce his intention to return to the villa, but to Phaia’s obvious annoyance, Nione agreed that it was time for them all to go back.
“What about Aristokles Phoskos?” Phaia asked on the way back, in the midst of a conversation that Damiskos had been trying not to listen to. “Is he here to buy fish sauce too?”
“No! He’s here to meet Eurydemos—well, mainly. He’s a kinsman of a friend, who asked me to invite him as a favour because he was dying to meet your master.”
“Really? But he’s hardly spoken to our master. At least I haven’t seen them speak.”
“No? Oh, well. Perhaps he’s just shy.”
“That’s odd, though,” Phaia persisted. “Don’t you suspect something?”
“Suspect something?”
“Yes, that he’s up to something—you know.”
“I—I don’t, really. What do you mean? He’s … he’s trying to court me, if that’s what you mean. But that’s not suspicious, just … well.”
“Unwelcome?” Phaia suggested archly.
“Oh, very much so, I’m afraid.”
Phaia glanced over her shoulder at Damiskos, eyes narrowed. He looked back at her blankly.
As they climbed the steep track toward the villa, he considered the question of what Aristokles was doing there. It was, as Phaia pointed out, odd. He had clearly come under some form of false pretences and was lying about more than one thing. To learn that Nione didn’t really know him at all but had invited him at the request of a friend—that was unsettling.
Had he really come expressly to court Nione, ready with imported Zashian jewellery to offer her? It was certainly possible. But it didn’t explain his bluster that morning about “things in motion.”
Damiskos could think of one way he might find out more.
He spent the rest of the day in a less sociable—and less enjoyable—version of the sort of thing Themistos had recommended to him when sending him to Laothalia. He worked up the courage to ask the steward if she could arrange a packed lunch for him, and she did, without comment, and he took Xanthe out for a ride in the countryside around the villa. The cleared land of the estate was surrounded by thick scrubland, with a fringe of taller trees planted around the villa proper. There were not many places to ride, and he was preoccupied and out of sorts anyway. The lunch, which was excellent, was the only high point.
In the evening they dined outdoors again. Gelon was not there, but Varazda stood against a column behind Aristokles’s couch. His hair was done up like a scourge again today, and he wore a sleeveless coat of bright blue silk embroidered with poppies over a shirt of paler blue. His trousers matched the colour of the embroidered poppies. Damiskos thought that he looked tired.
Several times in the course of the meal, Damiskos found himself looking at Varazda and realizing that Varazda had noticed him doing it. Finally, towards the end of the meal, Damiskos looked across the couches and saw Varazda’s eyes on him. The eunuch tipped his head discreetly toward the twilit garden beyond the summer dining room. Damiskos tried to convey that he had got the message without being too obvious about it. He didn’t dare look at his fellow diners to see if he had succeeded. He waited, wine cup frozen in his hand, to see what Varazda would do.
Varazda was leaning down to speak to Aristokles, and Aristokles was nodding and reaching up to pat his attendant on the arm, gently dismissing him. Varazda moved around behind the couches and slipped out into the garden. Damiskos finished his wine.
“I think I had better … had better head to my room,” he said, reaching for his sandals.
“Of course,” said Nione, just as Eurydemos said, “So soon?” and Kleitos said, “What, already?”
Damiskos mustered a yawn. “I’m … rather tired.”
“Not to worry,” said Nione. “You are supposed to be on holiday, after all. Take the opportunity to rest.”
Helenos was yawning too, and murmured something about following his example. Damiskos got his sandals on and made his escape back toward the house.
Varazda materialized from the shadows at the head of the passage that led into the atrium. Exactly like a court eunuch in a Zashian romance, Damiskos thought. Varazda disappeared down the passage, and Damiskos followed.
A lamp was burning halfway down the short corridor. Varazda stopped before reaching its pool of warm light, still in the shadows. He turned to Damiskos.
“So. What do you want?” He spoke Zashian, with his courtier’s accent.
“Want?” Damiskos repeated.
“You’ve been looking at me all evening.”
“Divine Terza,” Damiskos swore. “It was so obvious?”
“Maybe only to me.” He managed to make that sound patronizing.
“I—just—I wished to talk to you.” Damiskos’s Zashian was stilted and rusty, but he did his best.
“Yes,” said Varazda, with an air of great patience. “So I gathered. We are talking now.”
“Yes.”
This was a different person than the one who had thanked him the night before, who had looked surprised when Damiskos apologized. This was the same lacquered rudeness that had made Damiskos dislike Varazda initially. Only now Damiskos knew there was more to him than this.
“And?” Varazda prompted. “Perhaps you wish to remind me that you saved me from a flogging—or worse—this morning?”
“I told the truth about what I had seen—but you couldn’t have been flogged, you know. You’re no longer enslaved.”
“True.”
“I was in the army for a long time,” Damiskos offered. “Sometimes I forget that I can’t be reported for dereliction of duty anymore.”
Varazda leaned one shoulder against the wall. It was a relaxed pose, but he didn’t look relaxed. Damiskos found himself wishing that he could see him better, without the concealing shadows.
“Well?” Varazda prompted again. “What … do … you … want?”
“I don’t—Well. There is one thing. Something I wanted to ask you.”
There was a pause. Damiskos could not read Varazda’s expression in the dark, but he didn’t need to see him to feel the tension coming off him. Obviously Damiskos had said something wrong, but he couldn’t work out what.
He wanted to offer some kind of help, but didn’t know how to do it in a way that wouldn’t seem both condescending and overbearing. Besides, he had so little idea of what was going on here. He wasn’t sure whether to say, “I’ve got my eye on you two,” or “Call on me if you need anything.”
“Yes?” said Varazda finally.
A female slave emerged from the dark atrium and slipped past them. Damiskos waited for her to exit to the garden.
“We shouldn’t talk here. It’s hardly private.”
“Hardly.”
There was another pause. Varazda seemed to be waiting for something. Then abruptly he pushed himself away from the wall, hennaed fingers flicking back a stray braid.
“Lead the way,” he said. He had switched to Pseuchaian too; it didn’t put him at a disadvantage.
Damiskos took the lamp from its bracket and went down the hall and around the corner to the library anteroom, where he opened the door. Varazda stopped, a faint look of surprise on his face. He had obviously expected them to go somewhere else.
“Oh,” said Damiskos. “I forgot, I still have your handkerchief. Come, I’ll give it back to you.”
He led the way to his own door and held it open, noticing as Varazda walked through it that his posture and movements were much more masculine than they had seemed earlier, almost stiffly so.
“It’s right here,” Damiskos said, closing the door and gesturing toward the shrine in the corner.
Varazda frowned. “You appear to have dedicated it to your deity. I would not dream of taking it.” He walked closer and leaned in to inspect the figure in the shrine.
Damiskos plucked the handkerchief off the unlit incense burner and held it out. “I didn’t dedicate your handkerchief. Just the scent on it.”
He gritted his teeth in anticipation of whatever delicately snide comment was coming. Zashians loved to make jokes about the number and behaviour of Pseuchaian gods and the rituals with which they were worshipped.
“Oh.” Varazda took the handkerchief. “I’m sure Terza will have appreciated it. It’s very expensive.” He tucked the colourful cloth back into his sash. “And … your question?”
“I know it’s none of my affair, but … last night, Gelon tried to force himself on you, didn’t he?” He didn’t believe Aristokles’s assertion to the contrary, any more than he had believed Gelon’s weird, weak story about what had happened.
Varazda’s eyebrows went up. He had elegant, effeminate eyebrows, well matched to his painted eyes. “He didn’t, no. What gave you that idea?”
Now Damiskos was completely at a loss—and more than a little embarrassed. What had given him the idea?
“I—I don’t know, I just … ”
In fact, he remembered very clearly. He had looked at Varazda in the dark and been struck by how beautiful he was. Somehow this had suggested what Gelon’s motivation must have been. He could see now that this didn’t really make sense.
“Because he was carrying on about Kossian lovers at dinner?” Varazda suggested. “Did that seem a little pointed? Well, it doesn’t matter. That wasn’t what happened.”
“That’s—that’s good. I wouldn’t have said anything, only I thought … you hadn’t told your master—former master, and that you ought to, because … But if that wasn’t what happened, then … That’s good.”
“Is it?” Varazda’s tone was very dry.
“Yes, but—what did happen?”
“What did happen … ” Varazda considered him thoughtfully for a moment, clearly deciding what to tell him—clearly not caring that it was obvious this was what he was doing. “Aristokles wanted to visit the kitchen for a snack. I was waiting for him in the yard, alone, and Gelon snuck up on me and threatened me with a knife. We fought briefly—he found me more of an opponent than he had expected—and then you arrived, and you know the rest.”
“He ambushed you? But—immortal gods—why? Do you have any idea?”
“Mm. I have some idea.”
Damiskos looked at him expectantly. “And?”
“I appreciate that you’re trying to make this your business, First Spear. I’m grateful for your intervention last night, and for your defence today. But it isn’t, really. Your business.”
“Ah,” said Damiskos, chastened and—once again—embarrassed. Also annoyed, but he thought Varazda was being deliberately annoying, and he wished he knew why. “Well. You can’t say fairer than that, I guess.”
Varazda made his courtly little gesture.
“Having said that … ” Damiskos began.
“Yes?”
“Having said that, your patron is obviously up to something under my friend’s roof. You’ve more or less admitted as much, though it was already clear enough before you did. I don’t want harm to come to Nione, but I also wouldn’t wish to see you hurt—and you’ve obviously already been put in danger. I don’t think Aristokles is doing much to look out for you. I want you to know that if you need help, you can count on me.
“Also, if you’re up to something even slightly shady in my friend’s house, be assured that I will stand in your way.”
Varazda had been looking more and more surprised throughout Damiskos’s speech, and at the end he actually smiled, a broad, genuine, captivating smile.
“What was the phrase you just used? ‘You can’t say fairer than that’?”
Varazda moved toward the door, and Damiskos followed. He didn’t want to leave it like this. He sought for something more to say, something that might help to get them on the same side.
“If you’re showing loyalty to Aristokles because … ”
Varazda’s hand was on the door handle. He looked back, his expression guarded again. “Because … ”
“Because you’re lovers. I mean, I assume you are, and … ”
“Holy God.” Varazda dropped back into Zashian for the oath, and his accent was briefly provincial, no longer the polished syllables of the court. “You never stop. That is irrelevant to you, First Spear. That is the very definition of none of your business. Go back to negotiating about your rotting fish guts, or whatever it is, and forget about me and Aristokles.”
He pulled open the door, and would have slipped out and closed it behind him in one motion if Damiskos hadn’t caught it. Instead the two of them were framed there in the lamplight from the room, in full view of Helenos, who was crossing the atrium, headed for the stairs.
“Goodness,” said Helenos mildly, stopping to give them a humorous look. “I'm sure this can’t be what it looks like.”
“Certainly not, we were—”
“Don't be silly,” said Varazda, in a girlish tone and thick Zashian accent that Damiskos had not heard before. “Of course it is just what it looks like.”
And he turned in the doorway and lightly, precisely kissed Damiskos on the lips.
“Good night, First Spear.”