Saffron Alley

by A. J. Demas

  Damiskos looked well, though, fit and fresh after the short voyage from the city of Pheme. He wore his usual not-quite-beard, a plain tunic, and a short travelling cloak tossed back from the shoulder where he carried his bag. His sword hung sheathed from his belt.

  He had stopped and was looking around the quayside. He looked sternly nervous, a brave man facing down a situation that made him irrationally anxious. His gaze passed over Varazda and Remi without pausing, roamed over the other people on the quay, and did not return.

  “Let’s go meet him,” said Varazda, lifting Remi down from the pylon and setting her on her feet on the dock. She clamped her arms around his knee and buried her face in the folds of his tunic and refused to move.

  “Come, Remi, let’s meet my friend.”

  It took him a few moments to get her moving; he could have picked her up, but he really rather wanted at least one hand free. By this time, Damiskos had started to walk down the pier.

  It was like him to think that Varazda might not be waiting for him on the pier. Damiskos walked faster and more easily with the cane than he had without, but it gave him an unmistakable look of an ex-soldier, someone whose disability was permanent. Varazda thought that might have been the whole reason he hadn’t used it at Laothalia.

  “First Spear!” Varazda called.

  Damiskos turned, and his eyes widened in surprise.

  “First Spear!” Remi squeaked, then hid her face in Varazda’s tunic, clinging to his leg again and vibrating with nervous excitement.

  That meant Varazda couldn’t move again, so it was Damiskos who came back up the pier to meet them.

  “Hello,” he said. He smiled, tentatively but beautifully, down at Remi. “Were you waiting by the ship?”

  “We were,” said Varazda.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t—couldn’t pick you out from the crowd.” He looked mortified. “I didn’t recognize you.”

  That was such a very Damiskos thing to say—to admit, when it was absolutely unnecessary, that he had not recognized his beloved after a month apart—that Varazda almost laughed aloud. He picked up Remi and propped her on one hip, giving up the idea of an embrace which Damiskos was obviously much too embarrassed for anyway.

  “You’ve never seen me in Pseuchaian clothes before,” he pointed out.

  “No. I didn’t know you ever wore them.”

  Varazda nodded. “Most of the time, actually. When I’m not working.”

  He could hear his tone growing slightly cold, his pride snapping to attention at the possibility—completely hypothetical—that Damiskos might not like him in this style of dress.

  He was wearing a short, wine-red tunic with simple sandals and almost no jewelry. He had put his hair up in a slapdash knot earlier in the day and hadn’t had a chance to do anything else with it.

  “You look amazing,” said Damiskos, looking both enchanted and desperately tense.

  At that Varazda did laugh out loud. Remi laughed too, because she always laughed when anyone else did.

  “If we were in a romantic novel,” Damiskos said, relaxing a little, “I would have to—I don’t know—perform a feat or, or go on a quest to prove my devotion after not recognizing you.”

  The way he was looking at Varazda, no one with a heart could have doubted his devotion.

  “There’s a good one in the prologue to the Tales of Suna that you might try,” said Varazda, deadpan. “I’ll tell you about it some time.”

  They stood an agonizing moment longer, then Varazda leaned forward and gave Damiskos a kiss on the cheek.

  “It’s good to see you,” Varazda said simply.

  “Yes. It is very good. I’m sorry it’s been so long.”

  “No, I understand. You had things to do in Pheme. This is Remi.”

  “Hello, Remi.”

  “Remi, this is my friend Damiskos.”

  “I saw a picture of you,” said Damiskos. “You are even prettier in person.”

  “What do you say, Remi?”

  “Thank you.” She clung to Varazda and kicked her feet excitedly.

  “Do you have to go through customs?” Varazda asked Damiskos. “Because of the sword?”

  “No, I get a pass for being an ex-officer.” He lifted his wrist with the bronze bracelet.

  “Ah, that’s good. I remember when we first came, they were very strict. I had to convince them that my swords were just for dancing.”

  “Are we going to have fritters?” Remi asked suddenly.

  “Right. I did say we would. I’m sorry—I had to promise her fritters in order to get her out of the house, and I had to bring her because … well, it’s a long story.”

  “We’d better get fritters,” said Damiskos. To Remi, he added, “Do you like the sesame ones or the fruit ones?”

  He wasn’t exactly a natural with children, Varazda thought, but he was making an effort, in his serious, workmanlike way, and—as one would expect—he was doing a good job.

  “It’s this way,” Varazda said, after Remi had finished explaining her fritter preferences, which were complex and probably pretty unintelligible to Damiskos. “Our favourite shop is just inside the city gates.”

  “Good,” said Damiskos. He gave one of the curt, military nods that he probably didn’t realize were unspeakably cute. “Lead the way.”

  They set off up the long ramp that led from the harbour to the city. It was well maintained, the paving stones fitted neatly together, but it was steep. Varazda had never noticed these details before. He set Remi down so she could walk again, giving his arms and back a rest which they badly needed. She was too heavy these days to be comfortably carried long distances.

  “Is your stick for protecting people too?” she asked, tipping her head sideways to get a good look at Damiskos’s cane.

  “It could be,” said Damiskos seriously. “But mostly I use it to help me walk. You see? One of my knees doesn’t bend all the way.”

  “Why?” Remi asked, inevitably. Varazda gave fleeting thought to stepping in to nip this in the bud, but decided Damiskos could handle it.

  “Well,” Damiskos said, “it got hurt.”

  A pause, then: “Why?”

  “It broke.”

  “Broke?” Remi repeated sceptically, as if she thought he might have used the wrong word. “Why did it broke?”

  “It, well, it got hit with something.”

  An iron rod, specifically. While he was tied down and held in place. Varazda had seen it done—not to Damiskos, but to other men.

  “Why?”

  “Because I made somebody angry.” He was surprisingly quick with that one. He was getting the hang of this.

  “Why?”

  “Because I was doing my job. I used to be a soldier.”

  “Why?”

  “Because the Republic needs to be defended sometimes.” He didn’t miss a beat there.

  “Why?”

  “Because the gods have so ordered the affairs of mortal men that wars arise between nations.”

  “Ah yah,” Varazda murmured. “Well done.”

  “Thanks.”

  Remi frowned at Damiskos for a moment. “I like the gods,” she said finally. “Do you like them?”

  “I do. One that I like a lot is called Terza. Have you heard of him?”

  She nodded uncertainly.

  “You have heard of him, Remi, remember?” Varazda put in. “Sorgana talks about him. The one with the bull and the, uh—”

  Dami gave him a humorous, expectant look.

  “Well, there’s a bull, I know that much. And he wears a hat.”

  “The bull doesn’t wear a hat!” Remi scoffed.

  “She’s right,” said Damiskos.

  “No, I … I got confused. I meant Terza wears a hat.”

  “A floppity hat,” Remi added authoritatively.

  “A floppity hat,” Damiskos agreed.

  “Her friend Sorgana is very keen on the, uh, what do you call it, the pantheon? He’s seven.”

&n
bsp; Too late Varazda realized how condescending this must sound. As if he considered Damiskos’s religion basically a child’s game.

  “I hope I get a chance to meet him,” said Damiskos neutrally.

  They reached Chereia’s in the street by the sea wall, and Remi picked out a sticky fig fritter. The shop was busy, the girl behind the counter unfamiliar—a new hire, probably because the previous girl had had her baby—and there was no sign of Remi’s friends Sorgana and Lysandros, though of course she had to look for them and ask where they were.

  “Sorgana is at school, and I expect Sandy is shopping with his mother,” Varazda said, herding her out of the shop. Only then did he realize Damiskos had not followed them out but was still inside at the counter, buying a fritter of his own.

  “Sorry,” Damiskos said when he emerged, his cane tucked under his arm so that he had one hand free to steady the strap of his bag and the other to hold his fritter.

  “No, I’m sorry. I didn’t realize you wanted one.” He would have paid for it if he had. He was annoyed to have already failed in his duty as a host.

  “They looked so good.” After a moment, a little uncertainly, “Would you like a bite?”

  Varazda leaned over and took an elegantly tidy bite of the fritter, catching a drip of honey with the pad of his thumb and licking it delicately off. It was a provocative display, and he knew it. He could have done it in front of another man, or even a certain type of woman, if it suited his purposes, and felt nothing about it. With Damiskos there was a thrill, and a promise, and somehow at the same time a safety in such a gesture that was unlike anything in Varazda’s experience. And all Damiskos did was give him a friendly, appreciative grin in response.

  “I enjoyed your letters,” Varazda said.

  “Did you?” Damiskos looked surprised.

  “Yes, they were … very like you.”

  Damiskos nodded with a wry smile. “Terse and awkward, you mean.”

  “Easy to read,” Varazda amended.

  Dami snorted.

  There had been three letters, all short and written in a clear, educated hand. The first had arrived a week after Varazda’s return to Boukos, along with a parcel containing the clothes he had left behind and his favourite pair of earrings, the ones Aristokles had talked him into giving away to Nione. In the letter, Damiskos had explained that Nione wanted to return them when she realized they were Varazda’s.

  The rest of the letter had said: I have returned to Pheme and will shortly tender my resignation from the Quartermaster’s Office. Owing to the demands of work and duty to my family, I will not be able to leave until the end of Euthalion Month. I wish it could be sooner.

  Come to think of it, it was a pretty terse letter.

  The other two had been a little less dispatch-like, basically conveying the information that Damiskos missed him and looked forward to seeing him again, and finally specifying which ship would bring him to Boukos.

  They had been like rays of light piercing the cloud that Varazda had passed under in the weeks after returning from Laothalia with his arm in a sling and his nerves in shreds. But that was not something he was prepared to explain to Damiskos. There was no need for Dami to know it; he would only feel guilty for not being there to help.

  “Is it far to your house?” Damiskos asked, licking honey off his own fingers without any seductive flair. He didn’t wait for an answer. “I remember from when I visited Boukos a few years back that there were lots of places to hire chairs. I wouldn’t mind that. And Remi can ride with me, if she likes, so you don’t have to carry her all the way back.”

  Varazda smiled warmly at him, glad that he had raised the subject—proud of him for it, in a certain way.

  “I wouldn’t mind that either.”

  They hired a chair, and Varazda walked beside it—they told the bearers to go slowly. At first Remi wanted to walk too, but she quickly tired of that and agreed cautiously to climb up into Damiskos’s lap. He brought out a present for her from his bag, a little painted wooden horse, and she swooped it around and made neighing sounds.

  The light was beginning to fail as they reached the sleepy suburb where Varazda and his family lived. They stopped outside a cookshop, because Varazda wasn’t at all sure that Yazata planned to cook dinner, and bought grilled lamb and cheese pies. They paid the bearers and walked the rest of the way, Varazda carrying Remi again. They were not talking much, but it felt comfortable rather than awkward. Damiskos looked around, taking in the details of the neighbourhood.

  The streets here were narrow, unevenly cobbled, overhung with flowering vines carefully tended by elderly people leaning out their upstairs windows with water pots. There were no columns or marble cornices, but the whitewash was fresh on all the walls, and the streets were always swept, the gutters almost pristine.

  “It’s a nice neighbourhood,” Damiskos remarked.

  “I like it. It’s a little out of the way, but it’s quiet, and there are lots of other children for Remi to play with. Here’s our street.”

  They had turned from Fountain Street into their cul-de-sac, the entrance to which was narrow enough that you could miss it if you weren’t looking for it. Damiskos gave an audible gasp.

  “Gorgeous,” he said.

  “I like it,” Varazda said again, trying to look only moderately pleased, failing, and not caring. He set Remi down, and she ran off to pick up Hermia and Doros’s cat, which was stalking across the pavement.

  From the narrow entrance, the street widened into a tiny plaza, paved in pale stone, with a worn wooden fence along the far end, beyond which was the vacant lot and a surprising glimpse of blue-green countryside in the distance. Three whitewashed houses, doors and windowsills and shutters painted in different colours, occupied each side of the street.

  “We call it Saffron Alley,” said Varazda. “Yazata named it.”

  Damiskos laughed. “After the Saffron Valley, near Rataxa?”

  “Exactly.” Varazda beamed. “That’s where Yaza’s from.” He gestured to the three connected houses on the right-hand side. “These are mine.”

  “These?” Damiskos repeated.

  “Yes, I own everything on this side of the street. The one on the corner is let out as a shop, and there’s a dance school on the upper floor that I have a share in. The house at the other end is Yazata and Tash’s, and I have the middle one.” He pointed to the rose-coloured door and yellow shutters of his house. “Though as you’ll see, we’ve taken out some of the walls so they’re more like one house at the back. Come, let’s go in.”

  He stepped toward the door and held out a hand, looking back at Damiskos with a smile. He had been looking forward to doing this for a month.

  Chapter 2

  The house was shadowy and empty when they entered, with Remi darting around their legs, trying to keep hold of the cat, who didn’t want to be held. Damiskos propped his cane by the door and divested himself of cloak, bag, and sword. Varazda hung them all up on the pegs in the hallway.

  “I’ll show you around. This is the dining room.” He gestured through the arch on the right to the dark room beyond with its draped Pseuchaian-style couches. “We don’t use it much, only when I entertain. Remi, love, please let that cat go. He belongs outside. And this is my practice room, which I use every day.”

  He opened the door on the other side of the hall and walked across to push open the shutters, so that Damiskos could see the room, with its wood floor, perfect for dancing, its walls frescoed with flowers in sunset shades, Varazda’s bronze swords hanging on the wall opposite the door.

  Of course when the light entered from the window, Varazda noticed that there were some scarves and an apple core on the window sill, a coat crumpled up on a chair, and a hopscotch board chalked prominently in the middle of floor. He couldn’t remember whether he had even come into this room in his whirlwind tidying effort earlier in the afternoon.

  He smiled wryly. This was a side of him that Damiskos had already seen.


  “The kitchen is through here,” he said, stepping over the cat, which Remi had released in the hallway. There was still mud from the cartful of clay on the hallway floor, dried and crumbly now.

  “I’m hungry,” said Remi, eyeing the parcel of cookshop food which Varazda carried.

  “We’ll eat soon, my sweet.”

  He led the way into the kitchen, where he put the food down on the table with the shopping from the market, which lay untouched, evidence that Yazata had not been back. There was no sign that Tash had been either.

  “It’s a lovely house,” Damiskos remarked, looking around while Varazda lit a lamp. “This is where you took out the wall, I see.”

  “That’s right.” He brought out one of the cheese pies and cut it in half for Remi. “Here you go, love.”

  The two kitchens had been joined by a large archway through the middle of the connecting wall, making an airy room with two sections: a table and benches for family meals on Varazda’s side; pantry, shelves, stove, and workbenches on Yazata and Tash’s side. Louvered doors opened onto the terrace at the back of the house and the weedy, neglected garden with its blocks of marble and half-finished sculptures.

  “The upper storeys aren’t connected,” Varazda explained, “so there are two sets of stairs, mine and theirs. This is my sitting room, but we all use it really.”

  He gestured Damiskos through the arch on the other side of the stairs, and the light from his lamp fell on the room with its divans and patterned carpets.

  “It’s sort of a hybrid of a Zashian and a Pseuchaian room,” Damiskos remarked, smiling as he looked around at it.

  This was exactly what Varazda had wanted the effect of the room to be. The walls were painted in a bright, local style, the divans covered with a mixture of Pseuchaian stripes and Zashian embroidery, and the rugs lay over a simple black and white pebble mosaic. The lamps and braziers were Boukossian-made; the tables were Boukossian tables with the legs cut down to the level of the divans. Some people found the mixture of styles odd, but it was clear Damiskos liked it. Varazda was pleased. He hadn’t necessarily expected Dami to notice or care about the details of his house. But maybe it was obvious that Varazda took pride in them, so of course the considerate Dami would take time to sincerely admire them.