Sword Dance

by A. J. Demas

  They reached the front door, and the Zashian, to Damiskos’s surprise, did not follow his patron inside to his room, but saw him through the door and then turned back.

  He must have seen Damiskos’s puzzled look in the moonlight, because he gestured toward a building on the other side of the yard, and said, “I’m headed back to my own room,” rather dryly.

  “Oh,” said Damiskos. He hoped it wasn’t obvious that he had assumed the eunuch shared Aristokles’s bed. But if he didn’t, then Damiskos was at a loss all over again. He realized the building on the other side of the yard was the slave quarters. “Why did you let them put you out there?”

  The Zashian sighed in a way that seemed somehow very genuine. He looked at the ground for a moment, and then he shrugged, looking up. “It is what I’m used to.”

  “I see.” That was rather sad, but it made sense. “Let me see you safely there?”

  “That’s … unnecessary, but thank you.” He made a gracious, automatic gesture, something between a nod and a bow, which Damiskos had seen often among Zashian courtiers.

  Pharastes, his master had called him. It was the Pseuchaian rendering of an old and dignified Zashian name that meant “warrior.”

  “Your name is Varazda, isn’t it?” Damiskos ventured.

  “Varazda son of Nahaz son of Aroz of the clan Kamun.” He made a more studied version of the same courtly gesture. “In Boukos I generally go by Pharastes.”

  Son of Nahaz son of Aroz. He had been an aristocrat. He was probably from one of the warring clans in the southeast, whose territory and conflicts Damiskos knew well. Many of their women and children ended up as slaves when their men were massacred in raids. Damiskos’s throat felt suddenly painfully constricted. Whatever he had meant to ask after that—and he wasn’t at all sure what it was—went unsaid, and they crossed the yard to the slaves’ quarters in awkward silence.

  At the bottom of the exterior stairs that led up to the second-storey rooms, Varazda turned and bowed once more.

  “I—am very grateful, truly,” he said in a subdued voice. “For your intervention. I cannot thank you enough.”

  Damiskos shook his head. “I am sorry I couldn’t have done it in a more … couldn’t have intervened without causing you more distress. I’m sorry I misinterpreted what I saw.”

  It must have been awful, especially for a civilian, to think you’d got the better of your attacker only to find yourself seized from behind by someone who might easily have been his accomplice. Worse still if you had ever spent time in slavery.

  Varazda looked slightly surprised. “You sorted it out,” he said. “That’s the main thing.” He looked down rather ruefully at the raisin cake Aristokles had given him, then held it out on one decorated palm. “By any chance were you going to the kitchen for a snack yourself? Because I don’t think I’m going to eat this.”

  CHAPTER IV

  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 w
hipped.”

  “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 fis
hing 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.