by A. J. Demas
“Actually, I came overland.”
“What, through the mountains?” The husband, Kleitos, looked aghast. “But why? It must take three times as long—not to mention the risk of bandits.”
“I didn’t encounter any trouble,” said Damiskos stolidly. “There are quite good inns all along the road. It does take longer, but it was a matter of economy. My office would have had to hire a vessel and crew to transport me here by sea, but I was a cavalry officer—I already had a horse.” And he strongly preferred riding to sea travel, but he did not admit that.
The guests seemed divided between approving of his frugality and thinking him mad.
“What was your legion?” asked Helenos, when everyone was finished exclaiming.
“Second Koryphos,” said Damiskos, looking into his wine cup.
Murmurs of admiration and surprise circled the couches. Damiskos kept his hands in his lap, not particularly wanting anyone to notice the bracelet on his right wrist that might have told them what his rank had been. These days he often wondered why he still wore it, but somehow he had yet to take it off.
“You’ll have served in Sasia, then, won’t you?” said Aristokles, using the Pseuchaian name for the kingdom rather than attempting the mildly difficult consonants of “Zash.” He didn’t look down at his slave, whom he seemed to have all but forgotten.
“Yes,” said Damiskos. “I was stationed for several years in the colonies, at Seleos.”
“I long to see Sasia,” said Aristokles. “But the journey.” He shuddered. “Still, one day I will attempt it. To see the great walls of Suna, and the gardens of Ratases!”
“I don’t imagine you had much time for that kind of thing,” said Helenos dryly, casting another conspiratorial look at Damiskos. “Serving in Seleos. What with the warring clans and so on.”
Damiskos would have liked to agree with Helenos, but he felt the need to be honest. “We were certainly kept busy, but I was there for several years. I have been to Suna and Rataxa. They were … worth seeing.”
Aristokles sighed enviously. His slave had shown no sign of following the conversation, but sat with eyes discreetly downcast, face expressionless, apparently studying the floor.
“You can settle a dispute for us, Damiskos,” said Kleitos. “We were talking of Sasia earlier, of the barbarity of their so-called ‘justice.’ Is it true what they say about how they punish criminals in that backward place?”
“I don’t know—what do they say?”
“Oh, you know,” said Kleitos, waving a hand, as if surprised to be asked to substantiate his slurs. “Horrible stuff. Cutting off hands for thieving, putting out eyes for looking at another man’s wife, breaking the kneecaps of runaway slaves with—”
“Come now,” Aristokles interrupted. “Not in front of ladies, if you please. Unnecessarily grisly.”
“And the part about looking at other men’s wives isn’t true,” Damiskos felt the need to add.
“But the others are?” Phaia pressed, eyes wide, casting a playful glance at Aristokles.
“Yes, the … ” Damiskos gripped his wine cup. “Yes. Those are punishments that may be meted out. Amputation and the breaking of bones, as you describe. As well as various other things. But we have known equally brutal punishments in Pheme not so long ago.”
“Oh, gods, let’s not go into it,” said Aristokles faintly, looking ill. Obviously not concerned so much about the “ladies” as about his own sensibilities.
“In the Ideal Republic,” Gelon spoke up, “punishment would not exceed the bounds of reason.”
“Sasia is neither a republic nor ideal,” said Eurydemos dryly.
“No,” Damiskos agreed, because the philosopher’s remark had seemed to be addressed mostly to him. “It is a very large kingdom, very difficult to govern. Reforms have been attempted—indeed, made successfully, in certain regions—but over such a vast territory, with so many different peoples, you cannot expect overnight change.”
“But they’re barbarians, though,” Kleitos insisted. “Fundamentally different from us.”
“Fundamentally!” Gelon echoed, raising his cup unsteadily to his lips.
“You have fought them,” said Helenos, smiling enigmatically at Damiskos. “You must have a different understanding of them than those of us who have stayed at home, debating good government in the safety of our schools.”
“I have no love for Zash,” said Damiskos, not wanting to prolong the conversation. But that was a bare-faced lie, the bleat of a man whose mistress has left him claiming, “I never cared for her anyway.”
Helenos raised his eyebrows. “Perhaps,” he addressed the other guests mildly, “we should let Damiskos enjoy some refreshment after his hard journey instead of interrogating him about Sasia.”
The others laughed, and Damiskos nodded gratefully to Helenos. The conversation moved off into other channels.
It was true, as Helenos had reminded them, that Damiskos had fought Zashians, but most Phemians forgot what that really meant these days. Pheme was not at war with Zash, and the job of the legions on the Deshan Coast was to defend the Phemian colonies from the local warlords, themselves rebels and enemies of the crown.
This meant that the Phemian soldiers found themselves on the same side as the Zashian king and his armies, often cooperating with the king’s men to subdue troublesome warlords, camping in Zashian territory, shopping and drinking and taking their pleasures in Zashian towns. It was jarring for them to come home and hear people talk as though what they had been doing was bravely holding the Republic’s last frontier against the might of Zash. Damiskos thought Helenos understood the situation better than that, and he was glad to feel he had at least one ally here.
He looked at the Zashian slave, wondering how much of their conversation he was able to understand. The eunuch was still looking at the floor, so it was impossible to tell.
CHAPTER II
THE INTIMIDATING STEWARD, or overseer, or whatever she was, appeared at Damiskos’s door the following morning while he was dressing. She was unapologetic—and apparently unembarrassed.
“The mistress would like you to join her in the garden for breakfast. I’m sure you won’t want to keep her waiting.”
He finished pulling his tunic over his head. “Of course not.”
She gave him an approving nod and graciously waited for him to buckle his belt and fasten his sandals before marching him out into the garden to report to her mistress. He barely restrained the urge to salute when he arrived.
“Here he is,” she said, presenting him as if he were a dish that the kitchen had worked hard on but that she privately thought unappetizing.
“Thank you, Aradne,” said Nione, smiling at her. “Damiskos, will you join me?”
She was seated for breakfast at a table in a little secluded nook on the far side of the garden, with a beautiful view out over the bay. She was alone, and there was only one other chair pulled up to the table. Damiskos sat, a little stiffly, stretching out his right leg. His knee was sore this morning, though not as bad as it had been last night.
“Your garden is beautiful,” he said.
“Thank you. It is the one part of the house I have completely redone to my satisfaction so far.”
“One thing more, ma’am,” said Aradne. “You asked me to tell you how Gion was doing—she’s much better this morning.”
“Oh, I’m so glad. Tell her to take it easy the rest of the day, and I’ll visit her in her room later this morning. What about Niko? How is he coming with his lessons?”
There was a short conversation about Niko’s lessons, the progress of someone else’s pregnancy, and an account of how a dispute among the vineyard workers had been settled. Then the servant departed, and as she left Damiskos suddenly had a memory of a sturdy little girl with topaz-brown skin.
“There was a slave named Aradne in the Maidens’ House when you were a girl.”
Nione smiled. “The very same. She belonged to the House, but she
purchased her freedom three years ago—at around the same time that I retired. I offered her the job as my steward. She’s splendid.” She passed Damiskos a dish of fruit from the table. “How long has it been since you and I met?”
“Since we first met? Fifteen … sixteen years. Immortal gods. Yes, it must be. I was sixteen when I started in the Honour Guard.”
“Were you really? Only sixteen?”
He nodded. He had been young for a recruit, a rising star, beginning his glittering ascent.
“I miss the Maidens’ House,” Nione said.
“Yes.” He should have asked about that rather than waiting for her to mention it. That was surely what a good friend would have done. “You always loved it there.”
“So many of the other girls didn’t. Some of them were almost … in mourning, for the women they could have become if they lived in the world. Wives and mothers, normal things. Well, they can still have some of that, if they want—men line up to marry ex-Maidens—but I suppose it is a long time to wait for the life you want.” She spoke as if making an earnest effort to understand something that made no sense to her.
“But you never wanted that life.”
He had known this about her for—well, sixteen years, more or less. She had been so happy in the Maidens’ House, wearing her regalia as if born to it, performing all her duties with zeal. It was why she had risen to be Speaker of the Maidens, almost inevitably. It was one of the things that had made Damiskos like her.
“I never did,” she said. She glanced at him with an unreadable expression. “And so I’m doing my best to spend my retirement allowance as quickly as I can, repairing this old place and setting myself up in business.”
Damiskos wasn’t quite sure how that followed, but he didn’t ask.
Someone had come out of the house into the colonnade at the edge of the garden. It was Aristokles’s eunuch slave, already painted and decorated for the day, in spite of the early hour. His hair was in one thick braid today, and the long jacket he wore over his tunic was sleeveless, perhaps a concession to the heat, but everything else was much as the night before. He moved with a precise grace, and his figure under the close-fitting layers of his clothes was wasp-waisted and effeminate. He squinted slightly in the sunlight as he came out from under the colonnade.
“Oh, it’s Aristokles’s servant,” Nione murmured. “He danced for us yesterday, Damiskos, before you arrived—I’m sorry you missed it. He’s very good.”
“Ah,” said Damiskos, unable to think of anything else. He had seen many different kinds of dancing in Zash, but found it hard to picture any of them taking place in Nione’s old-fashioned Pseuchaian villa. The idea of the Zashian being put on display like that was distasteful, but not surprising.
“Hello, my dear,” said Nione as the eunuch came around the fountain to approach their bench. “Does your master need something?”
Aristokles’s slave gave a slight, elegant bow and presented something in his open palms over the table. It was a small, round box, carved with stylized flowers: probably another product of the trade agreement, like its bearer. Nione’s expression clouded slightly.
“Oh. How lovely. Do convey my thanks. Tell him … he needn’t have, but I’m sure I will like it.”
She set the box down on the table without opening it. The eunuch bowed again and retreated.
Only when he was gone into the colonnade did Nione lift the lid of the box. She looked into it for a moment, then pushed it across the table to Damiskos with a miserable expression. A pair of earrings lay jumbled inside. Zashian style, with long pendants of enamelled beads.
“A generous gift,” Damiskos said neutrally. “But you look as though you’re not happy with it.”
Nione sighed. “No—though they’re lovely.” She lifted one earring out of the box, then dropped it back with distaste.
They weren’t the sort of earrings that a respectable Zashian woman would have worn; the colours were flashy, and, in Zash, would have been considered masculine. Damiskos did not say that, but he thought of Aristokles’s slave with his nose-ring and henna. Clearly the Boukossian knew nothing of the kingdom he professed to admire.
“I am trying not to encourage him,” Nione said, “but … I don’t seem to be very good at it.”
“Perhaps you need to go so far as to discourage him.”
“Well, one cannot insult a guest … ”
“Of course.” That was an iron law, and one a woman as sweet-natured as Nione would have a hard time even bending.
“But he isn’t really in love with me. He’s only been here a few days.”
“You don’t believe one can fall in love in the blink of an eye?” He said it with a smile, because he didn’t suppose it was something she would even have formed an opinion about.
“No,” she said, more seriously than he had expected, “no, I wouldn’t say I don’t believe it, exactly—I think sometimes one can … can develop an attachment very quickly, but only if you come to know the other person intimately in a short space of time.”
“Yes,” he said, feeling the need to back away from this topic now, though he wasn’t exactly sure what he feared. “Yes, I expect you’re right.”
“And Aristokles doesn’t know me at all.”
“Right.”
He ate a couple of spoonfuls of yogurt and said, after what he hoped was a suitable pause for a change of subject, “So your factory is down by the shore, I suppose?”
“Oh. Yes. I’ll take you on a tour later.”
They finished their breakfast and talked business, but Damiskos’s mind kept wandering from the discussion of prices per barrel and volume discounts and fish varieties.
“Men line up to marry ex-Maidens,” she had said. He could believe it. If nothing else, the retirement allowance they received could serve as a generous dowry. Damiskos would have pitied Aristokles Phoskos, pressing his embarrassing and futile suit, if he hadn’t already felt such disgust with the man. And an uncomfortable thought occurred to him. What if Nione thought Damiskos was here now, on the pretext of business from the Quartermaster’s Office, because he secretly harboured the same hope as Aristokles?
He had changed in the years since they had known one another; perhaps she thought his understanding of their friendship had changed too. Perhaps she thought it might have included this all along, that he had been waiting for her to be free from the Maidens’ House so that he could ask her to be his wife.
She knew he had been engaged to another woman, but she also knew he had broken it off. What if she thought that had been for her sake? What if she was planning to accept his inevitable proposal out of pity?
He was no kind of a match for an ex-Maiden, though, and she had to know that. She knew his family’s fortune was gone along with their reputation, sacrificed to his parents’ lavish lifestyle and bad business decisions.
Damiskos himself had risen to command of one of the most famous legions of the Republic by the time he was twenty-six, but he had only held the position for a year, and well as he liked what he did now—and he did like it, despite what everyone thought—he knew he no longer cut an impressive figure in the world.
He didn’t think Nione would enjoy being married to him, either.
They had both completely finished their meal by the time Tyra and Phaia came out to the table to remind Nione that she had promised them a game of Reds and Whites that morning.
Tyra asked if Damiskos would like to join them, and he restrained himself from replying that he hadn’t sunk quite that low yet. Playing a game of Reds and Whites with a trio of women, according to country villa rules and probably without betting, was no doubt exactly what Themistos had imagined Damiskos doing when he sent him on this trip. He politely declined, and the women left together.
He had not been left alone for more than a minute when the philosopher’s two male students came out into the garden from the house. They had hard-boiled eggs and were peeling them and scattering shells as they walked.
“Damiskos from the Quartermaster’s Office!” Gelon hailed him as they approached. “Good morning!”
Damiskos returned the greeting politely.
“We’re going out to admire the view,” Gelon said. “Will you join us?”
Since he had clearly not been doing anything else, Damiskos could not see an excuse to refuse. Nor did he particularly want one. Gelon seemed like a tiresome fellow, but Damiskos rather like Helenos. He followed them to a gate in the garden wall that led out onto the promontory beyond the villa.
The land here was wild, rock-strewn, and overgrown with shrubs, but there was a path leading out to the windy edge, and the students picked their way along it, eating their eggs and continuing some obscure conversation which Damiskos could not follow. They scrambled up and found seats on a large rock at the cliff’s edge.
Damiskos sat lower down and looked out over the water, shading his eyes with his hand. The wide bay into which the promontory of Laothalia jutted was calm and turquoise in the sunlight, scattered with a number of tiny islets. Further out, in the open sea, he could easily make out the beginning of the island chain of the Tentines, arcing away toward Boukos.
Helenos came slithering down the rock to close the gap between himself and Damiskos. He had finished eating his egg.
“Not exactly luxurious, this place, is it?” the student said conversationally, when he had settled himself on the rock and rearranged his mantle. “A bit ‘Ariatan,’ as they say.”
“I like it well enough,” said Damiskos. “But then, I was a soldier.”
Helenos smiled, and reached out to touch the wide bronze bracelet on Damiskos’s right wrist. It was an oddly intimate gesture. “You were First Spear in the Second Koryphos,” he said. “You were quite a soldier.”
To Damiskos’s relief, he didn’t follow that up with any expression of sympathy, just a thoughtful, sidelong look. He withdrew his hand.
