Saffron Alley

by A. J. Demas

  “Good idea.”

  Varazda tossed back the remainder of his wine and set the cup on the table. He drew up his legs and moved along the divan to rest lightly against Damiskos’s side. Damiskos brought his arm around Varazda’s bare shoulders; Varazda reached over and laid his arm across Damiskos’s waist. He breathed in Dami’s scent, clean and straightforward, felt the rasp of Dami’s stubble against his cheek.

  “I missed you,” Dami said, gathering Varazda a little closer. “And at the same time, I was happier than I’ve been in years, this last month, looking forward to this.”

  “I looked forward to this too,” said Varazda.

  There was much more that he wanted to say but could not—he was not experienced in speaking directly himself, and he had already made one exhausting confession.

  He wondered whether Dami wanted to know what had happened to the prisoners Varazda had brought back to Boukos, the details of the trial and its aftermath. He might, but probably not right now, which was fine, because Varazda strongly did not want to talk about that now.

  “This healed up well,” said Damiskos, drawing a finger very lightly along the fresh pink scar on Varazda’s upper arm. Varazda made an assenting noise.

  Damiskos had scars on both arms in roughly the same place, one on his forearm, the mark of a puncture-wound just under his left shoulder, and a long sword-cut across his ribs on the right. There was a straight, precise scar on his lame leg—hidden now by the pyjama trousers—that looked like it might have been from surgery to try to fix his knee.

  The fingers of Dami’s left hand carded slowly through Varazda’s hair. “Your family took good care of you?”

  “Yes.” His head was fully resting on Dami’s shoulder now. It was like warm stone. “They’re very sweet, really.”

  “Good.”

  Dami’s fingers burrowing in a little further now, touching the back of Varazda’s neck. “Talking of being direct … ”

  “Yes?” Varazda smiled. Direct was one thing Dami never had any difficulty being.

  “Just to be clear.” Dami coughed slightly, covering his mouth with his fist. “I’m still not feeling wonderful, so I’m entirely content just to cuddle right now. But if you want anything, just say the word. Or, you know, allude to some sort of flower and I’ll try to work out what you want.”

  Varazda snorted. “What I want is exactly this.” He pressed closer to Damiskos’s stroking fingers, cinched his arm tighter around Damiskos’s waist. Please let this be enough.

  “Is there a section in The Three Gardens on cuddling?”

  “There is. It’s the Lilac Bower in the Garden of Jasmine. Less of a practical guide, more of a lyrical appreciation.” He shifted comfortably against Damiskos. “One of the better pieces of poetry in the book.”

  “You’ve read it?”

  “Heard it read at a party. I … don’t read Zashian.”

  “Right. No.”

  After a long moment: “I barely read Pseuchaian. I’m sorry I didn’t reply to any of your letters. I tried—I made a start—but I’ve never written a whole letter before, and it didn’t go well.”

  Dami kissed softly into Varazda’s hair.

  “I didn’t expect you to write back.” After another pause he added, tentatively, “It’s something to be proud of, being able to read a foreign language—any language.”

  “You can read Zashian, I suppose.”

  “Ye-es. A little.”

  “I only know how to spell my own name because a friend at the embassy taught me. I don’t even know the rest of the letters. But everyone in the Basileon’s service is always sending confidential Pseuchaian notes to one another, and I couldn’t very well get my friends to read them for me, so I set myself to learn. I didn’t find it very easy—I suppose I am proud of it. I still sometimes have to get help with difficult words. There weren’t any of those in your letters,” he added hastily.

  “I’m not a difficult sort of fellow.”

  Varazda smiled up at him. “No. You’re not.”

  Damiskos’s left hand was fully immersed in Varazda’s hair. With his right, he cupped Varazda’s cheek, thumb touching the stud in Varazda’s nose. He trailed his little finger along the smooth line of Varazda’s jaw. There was a band of lighter skin on his strong, sun-browned wrist, where he usually wore the bronze bracelet of the Second Koryphos. Varazda tipped his head back, and Damiskos’s hand slid warm down over his throat, thumbed the dip of his clavicle, paused on his chest.

  “Does this still count as part of the lilac whatever,” Dami whispered, “or are we heading to a different part of the garden?”

  Of all the adorable things about Damiskos, this—stopping to find out what Varazda wanted, asking permission, giving him time to react—might have been the most adorable.

  The other men Varazda had gone to bed with, almost without exception, had made a big show of being unable to restrain themselves. They tore off clothes or bit to leave a mark, they used words—when they used words at all—like conquer and devour. Varazda had no doubt that Damiskos could have done all that with a partner who asked for it, but even then he thought Dami’s heart wouldn’t have been in it.

  He hoped so. He hated the thought of reaching the point where he would no longer be able to satisfy Dami with the limited range of things that he enjoyed.

  He gave Damiskos a soft, light kiss, a teasing non-answer to the question. That won him another low, delicious chuckle. Dami’s mouth tasted like ginger and honey.

  The door from the terrace into the kitchen rattled open and banged shut.

  Damiskos stiffened and drew back, but did not let go of Varazda, his grip becomingly instantly, instinctively protective. From the dark kitchen they heard the sound of a heavy object dropping and rolling, and Tash’s voice wailing, “Anaxe’s tits!” In another moment Tash himself appeared in the archway, hopping on one foot and rubbing his shin.

  It was late, and Varazda was tired. Also, he didn’t care what Tash thought. He remained sitting on the divan, with Dami’s arm lying along the cushions behind him.

  “You’re back late,” he remarked. “This is Damiskos. Damiskos, this is Tash.”

  “Ariston,” Tash corrected him, fiery-eyed. He gave Damiskos a bleak look. “My name is Ariston.”

  This was quite new, and Varazda had honestly forgotten about it. “Sorry,” he said, rather sourly.

  “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Ariston.” Damiskos swung his legs down from the divan and got up, extending a hand Pseuchaian-style.

  Tash remained where he was, on the other side of the sitting-room. Varazda could feel all his tension returning, amplifying, a headache clenching like a vise at his temples.

  Tash was dressed for the dinner party where he had been headed earlier, in a flashy blue tunic and a white mantle that now looked creased and shopworn. He had taken off one elaborately laced sandal but not the other—probably what had caused him to bark his shin in the kitchen.

  He was a tall young man, with the gangly look of a boy in the middle of a growth spurt. With his unbroken voice, he could pass for a large fifteen-year-old. In fact, he was twenty-one and was beginning to want people to know it. He wore his dark brown hair cut short and straight across his forehead in a style that made it look oddly like a hat; it was apparently the height of fashion.

  To Varazda’s surprise, after a moment more of standing rudely in the archway ignoring Damiskos’s outstretched hand, Tash finally moved, reached across the table, and shook it limply. He did it with the worst grace in the world, but he did it, which was more than Varazda had expected. Looking up at Damiskos’s face, Varazda saw why. He’d seen that expression before; it was pure First Spear of the Second Koryphos. Tash was no match for it.

  Damiskos gave one of his curt nods and resumed his seat, all ease and friendliness again, draping his arm back across the pillows where it had been before.

  Tash flopped down onto one of the other divans and gave his attention to his elaborate sandal, which h
e tossed under the table when he had got it off. He sat with his elbows on his knees, looking into the lamp flame. Damiskos shot Varazda a questioning look and tilted his head subtly toward the door of his room. Varazda shook his head minutely.

  He would have liked to go in to bed with Damiskos, if only to spend some more time in the Lilac Bower, but he knew Tash well enough to know that he had something he wanted to say.

  Tash was looking at them now, his expression sullenly pained. Then he leaned his head back and looked at the ceiling. Then he looked down at the lamp flame again.

  Then he said, “I’ve killed a man.”

  Chapter 4

  Varazda’s first impulse was to say, “No, you haven’t.”

  He bit his lip to keep from saying that. He had realized that never being taken seriously wasn’t helping Tash learn to be a person who deserved to be taken seriously.

  “In a fair fight?” said Damiskos into the silence. “Or by accident.”

  Tash looked up at him as if he had spoken gibberish.

  Damiskos sat forward, taking Tash quite seriously. “How can we help?”

  “No one can help me!” Tash flung himself to his feet and tottered a bit as he stepped on the hem of his mantle. “I killed a man. And I’m—I’m not sorry.” He did not sound very convinced.

  “Whom did you kill?” said Varazda, mostly to come to Damiskos’s aid.

  “Themistokles,” said Tash miserably.

  This was more concerning. Themistokles was Tash’s sculpting master.

  “It was an accident, then,” Varazda prompted. “You and Themistokles are good friends.”

  “No! Yes. I don’t know!”

  “You were defending yourself?” Damiskos suggested. “That would excuse you in the eyes of the law, but it’s still hard to bear, I know—I remember the first time I killed a man.”

  Tash gave him a wild look.

  “He was a soldier,” said Varazda patiently. “Not whatever you’re imagining.”

  Tash relaxed a little. “I killed him … because … I was jealous. He said … he said he was going to let me work on the new commission for the Hall of Justice, and then, uh, he changed his mind. He said he would do it himself after all. So I was jealous.”

  That might sound like a convincing story the second time he told it, but this time it was clear he was making it up as he went along.

  Damiskos shot Varazda a wide-eyed, alarmed look. Then he turned back to Tash.

  “Ariston,” he said seriously. “What do you need us to do?”

  Tash looked at him for a moment as though the question confused him. Damiskos looked as though he was prepared for the answer to be, “Help me hide the body.”

  Was it possible that this was Tash’s version of Yazata’s gambit with the sick friend and the labash? It was possible, Varazda decided, that Tash would do something like that, but it would have looked different. His story would have been better rehearsed, and he would have given himself away halfway through by snickering or smirking. This was something else. He was lying, but something about his distress was genuine.

  The silence was broken by the sound of Remi’s little voice from the top of the stairs: “Papa?”

  Remi wanted a drink of water. Then she wanted the shutters by her bed opened. Then she wanted a song to help her fall asleep again, but before Varazda had got through the first verse there was shouting from downstairs. And a crash.

  “Let me go!” That was Tash’s voice. Dami’s response, lower and quieter, was impossible to make out.

  Varazda started for the door, but Remi bolted from her bed and clung to him with a howl. He had to pick her up and sling her onto his hip as he ran for the stairs. She started to cry.

  “It’s all right, my love—it’s just Tash being silly.”

  “Let me go, I tell you, let me go!”

  Tash was making a truly impressive amount of noise, and Varazda guessed what he hoped to accomplish—waking Yazata. It worked. By the time Varazda reached the top of his flight of stairs, Yazata was already thundering down the stairs on his side, hair flying, unbuttoned pyjama top flapping.

  “You let him go!” he shrieked in Zashian. Varazda had never seen him so agitated.

  Tash and Damiskos were in the kitchen. The light from the sitting room showed a dim silhouette of their forms: Tash squashed face-first against the wall, Damiskos pinning his shoulders with a forearm and twisting Tash’s left arm behind his back.

  Time slowed to the consistency of syrup. Varazda had time for a series of panicked thoughts—he’d somehow been wrong about Damiskos all along, what had he done, this would spell the end of his family and he should have known, Damiskos had clearly been too good to be true—in the split-second before he whirled to deposit Remi at the head of stairs, realized he physically could not get her to let go of him, and instead plunged down toward the kitchen still holding her.

  Yazata arrived first. He seized a frying pan from the stove and swung, aiming for Damiskos’s head. Damiskos ducked sideways, dragging Tash with him, but his weight landed on his bad leg, and he had to release his hold on Tash to grab the edge of the table. Tash fell in a tangle of grubby white mantle, writhing half-under the table. Yazata raised the frying pan again.

  Remi was howling and gripping Varazda around the neck with trembling ferocity. Varazda was shouting too, he wasn’t sure to what end. He grabbed a fistful of Yazata’s shirt with his free hand and tried to haul him away, but the cloth tore and slipped out of his grasp.

  Yazata swung the frying pan a second time. Damiskos, still braced against the table, caught Yazata’s arm mid-swing with one hand and held off the blow as if Yazata were a child. Yazata screamed.

  “Drop it,” Damiskos instructed. Then as Yazata strained forward in an effort to drop the frying pan on Damiskos’s head: “Drop it over there.”

  Yazata flung the frying pan backward and then, while Damiskos was pulled fractionally off-balance by this manoeuvre, lunged forward and smashed his forehead against Damiskos’s.

  Damiskos staggered back, cracked his hip against the table, and was let down again by his injured leg, which couldn’t take his weight and pitched him sideways. He landed well and had pushed himself up on one hand again in a moment, blinking to clear his vision.

  Yazata, who had certainly never tried to knock anybody over with his face before, had crumpled to the floor with a whimper. Varazda managed to let go of Remi now only because she flung herself off him with a wail to wrap her arms around Yazata. Varazda strode forward to stand over Damiskos.

  “What. Were. You. Doing.”

  He got a look of almost feral, pain-fuelled ferocity back, but Damiskos did not rise from the floor.

  “Trying to prevent Ariston running out into the night to turn himself over to the public watch. Which—” He gestured toward the back door, open onto the dark yard, and Tash’s white mantle straggling empty over the lintel. “—he has now done.”

  Varazda got Yazata a cold compress for his nose, and Yazata sat at the table, breathing heavily and looking darkly over the top of the cloth at Damiskos, who sat on the opposite bench with a stern, closed-off expression on his face. Varazda wouldn’t have blamed him if he had walked out of the house.

  He couldn’t blame Yazata for the dark looks, either. Angels of the Almighty, but this was a mess.

  Remi fell asleep on Varazda’s lap.

  There was no point chasing after Tash. They had checked the yard, but of course he was long gone, through a gate in the corner that opened onto a tiny slit of an alley next to the music shop. In the dark streets he would be nearly impossible to follow, and they had no idea where he might have gone in his effort to track down the watch.

  They just had to hope that he wouldn’t be successful.

  “He must have said something to Tash,” Yazata said thickly, glancing at Damiskos. “What did he say to him?”

  “Nothing,” Varazda insisted wearily. “He tried to be helpful. Tash came in here babbling about having done a mu
rder, and Damiskos asked how he could help.”

  Yazata looked unconvinced.

  “But … ”

  Dami cleared his throat. “I laid hands on a member of your family. I have trespassed against the laws of hospitality—I realize that. I would not have used force if I hadn’t thought it necessary—and I regret that. I am not able to run. I was concerned I would not be able to catch Ariston if I let him go. Unfortunately he resisted—more strenuously than I expected—and began to shout the house down. And so here we are. I’ll leave if you want me to.” This last was addressed, gravely, to Varazda, but it was obviously intended for Yazata.

  “Why does he call Tash ‘Ariston’?” Yazata whispered in Zashian.

  “It’s his new name, remember?”

  “Oh. Oh, yes.”

  “Please don’t go,” Varazda added to Dami. “I’d tell you to sleep out here on the divan, but—under the circumstances … ”

  Damiskos looked confused for a moment and as if he was about to say, “Of course, whatever you want.”

  “That was an attempt at a joke,” Varazda clarified. “There’s really nothing to be done now except wait for morning and hope Tash turns up, having thought better of the whole thing. I am hopeful that he will. He clearly hadn’t thought about it for very long when he told us his story. With any luck, it will take him long enough to find the watch that he’ll have time to reconsider.”

  “Yes,” said Damiskos. “I can see how he might.”

  “Yaza, how’s your nose?”

  “Better,” Yazata admitted. “I don’t think it’s broken.”

  Varazda leaned across the table as best he could with Remi in his lap to look at it. “Oh, it’s not remotely broken. Would you take Remi to bed, please?”

  “I will take Umit to bed, yes.” Yazata got up from the table and gathered Remi up gently without waking her.

  “I really am sorry,” said Damiskos doggedly when Yazata had disappeared up the stairs. “I’ll sleep anywhere you want me to.”

  “No, please. You didn’t do anything wrong.”