HE RESUMED STRUGGLING in earnest, bracing his numb shoulder against the edge of the tank and kicking at the lid as hard as he could. He managed to shift it a fraction, so he kept at it, pausing between kicks to gather his strength and make each one count. It didn’t do much good; his position in the tank was too awkward, his lame leg too weak. He coughed and whimpered with frustration.
He was not going to die upside down in a fish-sauce tank. Except it seemed like he probably was.
Then he heard a voice—a voice he would have known anywhere—still distant, but calling his name.
“Here!” he shouted. “In here!” He kicked the stone slab again, trying to make as much noise as possible. He had his boots on, so this worked fairly well.
“Damiskos?” Louder this time.
“In! Here!” He broke off to cough violently, choking on smoke and the miasma of fish-sauce.
“Holy God.”
There was an agonizing pause, and Damiskos wondered what kind of hell-scape of smoke and flame Varazda was having to traverse to get to him, pictured him collapsing on the factory floor, overcome, wanted to shout at him to save himself—and then there was the scrape of stone from above him.
He imagined Varazda’s beautiful hands and slender arms struggling with the heavy slab, and only realized how hard he was biting his lip when he tasted blood. But in fact it didn’t take Varazda long to move the stone, and there he was, leaning down over the hole where Damiskos was wedged, eyes wide above the wet cloth that he had tied over the lower half of his face. Smoke billowed behind him.
He lay on his stomach and reached down to grab Damiskos under the armpits, which he was only able to do by slithering half over the lip of the tank, until Damiskos was convinced he was going to fall in too. But he didn’t; somehow he managed to brace himself so that he could haul Damiskos up, and dragged and manoeuvred him out of the tank onto the floor of the factory.
Varazda produced another wet cloth, one of his ubiquitous handkerchiefs, and held it over Damiskos’s nose and mouth. Together they made their way, shuffling awkwardly on their knees, with Varazda half-pulling Damiskos most of the way, across the room to the door, under the worst of the smoke.
Wordlessly, Varazda tugged the rope off Damiskos’s wrists, and they both filled foul-smelling buckets from the pier with sea water and forged back inside.
The fire was not the inferno that Damiskos had imagined. It had produced enough smoke to fill the factory and billow impressively out the door, but the flames were confined to a pile of oily rags and crates under the window. They were easily doused. It looked as though someone had started the fire by throwing a lit lamp in the window.
Damiskos focussed numbly on these details, and Varazda had to take his arm and draw him coughing out of the smoky building once more.
Outside again, Varazda hauled Damiskos across the dock and down the steps onto the sand. He didn’t stop until they had walked right out into the shallow surf, where he let Damiskos sink down to sit in the water, and knelt with him, pulling the wet cloth—it was his sash, Damiskos noted irrelevantly—down from his face.
Then he leaned forward, taking Damiskos’s face between his hands, and kissed him once, hard.
Damiskos collapsed against him as if his bones had all suddenly dissolved. He realized distantly that he was crying—sobbing—in Varazda’s arms, and he couldn’t stop. The amazing thing was that Varazda didn’t seem embarrassed or even surprised.
“You’re all right,” he kept saying calmly. “You’re all right. This isn’t then. This is different. I’m here.”
Varazda somehow, miraculously, understood.
It was such a relief that Damiskos felt he might choke on his tears. He buried his face in his hands. Varazda scooped up water to wet Damiskos’s hair, gently scrubbing through it with his fingers. It felt so good.
“I’m here,” he repeated. “This is not then.”
“No,” Damiskos managed. “I know. Thank you.”
He wiped his eyes, splashed water on his face, wiped them again, and finally managed to sit up. “Thank—”
Varazda held up his hands. “Please. It’s what one does.”
“So is saying ‘Thank you,’” said Damiskos.
“Right. So … what happened?”
It took an effort to remember the starting-point of the story. “I found Aristokles’s body.”
Varazda nodded. “I saw him in one of the beach huts when I was looking for you.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Me too.
“Gelon killed him—Phaia helped. From what I can make out, he told her he was an agent of the Boukossian government to try to impress her with his importance.”
Varazda groaned. “That’s the sort of thing he would have done.”
“So she and Gelon killed him, and the rest of the students have been trying to cover it up. What made you come looking for me?”
Varazda shrugged. “Someone said you had come down to walk on the beach, but you’d been gone a long while, and I had seen the students go down and come back. I was worried. Shall we get out of the water, and you can tell me the rest?”
“Good. Yes. I will.”
“Er, you might care to take off your clothes first. You smell a little fishy.”
“Divine Terza, that’s an understatement.”
Varazda helped him undress, tossed his tunic and boots back up onto the shore for him, and helped him wade further into the water to rinse himself off. By this time Damiskos was beginning to feel more like himself. In fact, he was starting to feel more like himself than he had felt in a long time.
He got to his feet, streaming water, but for a moment Varazda did not. Damiskos looked down at him. He was kneeling in water up to his waist, still fully dressed, looking up at Damiskos, who was naked but for his wet loincloth. Just looking at him.
It wasn’t a lascivious look. It was appreciative, but it was a little detached, almost wistful. It didn’t seem like the kind of look you would normally give a man you had slept with the night before. Damiskos didn’t know what it meant.
He held out a hand to help Varazda up, and Varazda accepted it and rose gracefully. His sodden trousers clung to his legs as they splashed up onto the beach. He pulled off his shoes and tried to wring some of the water out of his clothes.
They walked up the beach, away from the smoky, fishy smell of the factory. Damiskos was limping so badly that he did not refuse when Varazda offered him a shoulder to lean on.
“Did they put you in there to kill you?” Varazda asked.
Damiskos stopped to think. “Helenos said he didn’t want any more bodies. He wasn’t happy about the Zashians in Boukos being killed—perhaps he felt it reflected badly on the school, I don’t know. The others think any dead Zashian is a blow struck for their cause, but Helenos focusses on the big picture, which I suppose is hundreds and thousands of dead Zashians. The others wanted to drown me, but Helenos wouldn’t let them. I don’t remember if they discussed what they were going to do with me. I was … ”
Varazda put a hand lightly on his arm. “Don’t go back there if you don’t want to.”
“I … Thanks. I don’t think I was really there at the time, so I can’t … But they dumped me in that tank, and I was there for … ” He looked up at the sky. It had been early morning when he came out here, and the sun was past the zenith now; it was mid-afternoon. It hadn’t just felt like hours inside the fish-sauce tank. “Hours. Hours before somebody set that fire—it hadn’t been burning long when you found me. One of the students must have come back and set it. They must have thought the fishermen weren’t coming back.”
“They know they’re not. The fishermen are up at the villa, demanding extra pay for working while the Opos-worshippers are on holiday. It was the students’ idea. I heard them talking about it on Hapikon Eve.”
“Terza’s balls.” Too late, the oath struck him as tactless. “Oh—sorry.”
Varazda shrugged expansively. “Presumably he has them. I’ve never heard that he didn’t.”
Damiskos felt a strong urge suddenly to hug him. He resisted because it didn’t seem the time or place, and he wouldn’t have wanted it to be misinterpreted. Or correctly interpreted, maybe.
“Anyway,” said Varazda, “it wasn’t the students who set the fire—it was the fishermen. They were threatening to do it—to let the place burn unless their wages were increased.”
“Huh. Clearly a bluff. That fire wasn’t going to burn the place down.”
“Might have damaged the merchandise, though. Does fish sauce burn?”
“I couldn’t say. I don’t want to think about fish sauce right now.”
“Right. Sorry.”
Damiskos’s attention had been caught by figures on the path down from the villa. It was a number of Nione’s slaves, six or eight of them, led by the steward, Aradne, hurrying down the path with shovels and buckets in hand.
“They must have taken the fishermen seriously,” Damiskos said. “Good for them.” He wasn’t sure about the other women, but Aradne he thought might be capable of putting out a burning building all by herself.
“Planning to sit here and watch while the mistress’s factory burns?” Aradne demanded as the group of women approached.
“It’s not burning any more, actually,” Varazda replied brightly.
“We put it out,” Damiskos added.
The steward gave him an impatient look. “That is not smoke coming from a fire that has been put out.”
Damiskos and Varazda looked back at the factory. There was indeed still smoke rolling out of the window.
“Let me guess,” said Aradne, “you just threw a couple of jars of water over it and called it done. I suppose you’re sure there’s no one inside?”
“There’s no one inside now,” Damiskos clarified. “Varazda got me out.”
Aradne cast him a look which suggested that getting trapped inside fish-sauce factories without his clothes was about the level of competence she would have expected of him, and pushed a bucket into his hands.
The fire was mostly out. It was smouldering more than it had been when Damiskos and Varazda left it, but Aradne admitted that it probably wouldn’t have rebuilt into a serious blaze. The women, who were well-muscled slaves from the vineyard, made short work of dousing the pile of debris thoroughly and spreading out the charred remains with their shovels.
Their job finished, they came back outside and lounged in the sand. Damiskos lay flat on his back, one hand tucked under his head. Varazda dropped down elegantly beside him and spent a minute taking his hair down, shaking it out, and combing it through with his fingers, then putting it up again. Damiskos watched him with a kind of stupefied fascination. His whole body hurt, and he was beginning to feel hungry.
“Why don’t you put your head in my lap and sleep for a bit?” Varazda rearranged his legs in the sand and patted his thigh indicatively.
It was a lovely thought. He could even have done it without embarrassment; everyone here already thought he was Varazda’s master. It was his own stubbornness that kept him from succumbing to the temptation.
“I’m all right,” he said, sitting up and doing his best to look it.
Varazda tipped his head to one side and gave him a sceptical look, but he did not try to argue.
“How,” said Damiskos suddenly, “how did you know what to say? Earlier. ‘This is not then.’”
Varazda looked surprised. “Did I say that? It just slipped out, I guess. I’m so used to comforting friends whose memories have got the better of them. I grew up in a household of eunuchs. Everyone I knew had things that would sneak up on them like that and set them off. Stick around long enough and you’ll find out what mine are, I suppose.”
Damiskos didn’t know what to say. “I’d like that,” would have sounded ghoulish, though in a way it was true. He didn’t like to think of Varazda feeling the helpless panic that had gripped him when the students had tied his hands behind his back, but if it was a thing that happened, he absolutely wanted to be there to do what he could to help.
They were all still sitting in the sand when Nione and the rest of the women of the household, some with children in their arms or holding their hands, came down the cliff path to the beach.
Nione gathered up her skirt and ran from the base of the path to where the women were clustered. Her braids had come down and swung wildly about her shoulders as she ran. Her gown was torn at one shoulder, the clasp dangling from the frayed fabric. Damiskos, suddenly alert again, raked his eyes over the rest of the women. Some of them were crying. The ones with children were clutching them protectively, their expressions fiercely focussed. A few were carrying objects—a rolling pin, a broom, the lid of a basket—that they had either brought away in their haste or perhaps grabbed to defend themselves.
“Something’s happened up at the villa,” Damiskos said unnecessarily.
“There you are!” Nione cried, reaching out to Aradne with obvious relief. Damiskos thought she looked as if she wanted to hug the steward but didn’t quite dare.
“We have things under control here, ma’am,” said Aradne. “The fire was small and didn’t really pose a danger to the building.”
Nione looked as though she wasn’t really taking all this in. The other women reached the bottom of the stairs behind her. More than one child was wailing.
“Wait,” said Aradne. “What’s happened?”
It took Nione a moment to collect herself, but she replied calmly enough. “The students have taken over our house.”
“Terza’s—” Damiskos censored himself with an effort.
Varazda said something under his breath in Zashian about goats and ancestral tombs.
“Taken over the house,” Aradne repeated. “What does that mean?”
“They have Eurydemos locked in his room,” Nione said, her voice shaking a little, “and they were going to do the same to me. I didn’t know where you were—you hadn’t told me where you were going.”
“I was in the vineyard, and you always tell me I don’t need to inform you every time I’m leaving the house,” Aradne retorted. “Why are they locking people in their rooms?”
“I don’t know. I gathered up as many of the girls as I could find and got out. It was Tyra who warned me, but I don’t know where she is now. I looked for her, but there was no time. I had to get everyone else out. Everyone who would come—the men insisted on standing their ground, to help us get away.”
“There’s been fighting?” said Damiskos.
Nione nodded. “Two men have been killed. Gelon stabbed Tionikos, and one of the fishermen pushed Demos down the stairs. Neither of them had a weapon.” She spoke bitterly.
“I wish I had been there,” said Aradne.
“I’m glad you weren’t.”
Damiskos turned to Varazda. “Let’s get everyone inside the warehouse,” he said. “Sit them down and pass around wine.”
“Good thought.”
To Aradne he said, “You know these women. I’ll take my lead from you. I think the first thing to do is keep everyone calm.”
“Uh. Yes.” She wasn’t looking particularly calm herself. “That is very important.”
Varazda began helping gently to lead the women and children toward the shelter of the warehouse, where Aradne brought out an amphora of the villa’s best wine, and they handed around cups of it. Someone else went to the cove with the beach houses, where there was a freshwater spring, and brought back water to drink as well.
By speaking to Nione and several other women, Damiskos pieced together an account of what had happened at the house. Nione had decided to tell Eurydemos what his students were accused of doing in Boukos, and Eurydemos had then rashly confronted Helenos and the others about it. That was what had pushed them into action.
They had shut Eurydemos in his room, gone looking for the mistress of the house, encountered resistance from some of the slaves, and violence had broken out. Nione, warned by Tyra of the students’ intentions, had been able to get away with most of her women—all her women, in fact, once the ones who had already been down on the beach were accounted for. She downplayed her own role, of course, but from what the others said, it was clear she had placed herself in considerable danger—been seized and threatened with a weapon and nearly pushed down the stairs herself—in making sure as many of her slaves as possible could flee the house. She bitterly regretted that she had not been able to save all of them.
The fishermen were still up at the house, being whipped into a frenzy by the students. Some of the household men had been suborned, either with threats or rhetoric. Looting seemed imminent, if not already in progress.
“I think I have a good grasp of the situation now,” Damiskos said to Varazda after summarizing all this. “Except for one thing. The documents the students stole from the Zashian embassy. When you told me about it before, you were pretending to be Aristokles’s servant, and I took it for granted you didn’t know what the documents were. But you were never Aristokles’s servant.”
Varazda nodded. “And in fact I know all about it. Yes.”