Saffron Alley

by A. J. Demas

  “Did you want to be found?” asked the gardener, looking up at Dami and Varazda as if considering whether he should chase them off with his pruning hook or not.

  Tash mumbled something into his wine cup. The gardener seemed to come to a decision, and got to his feet, but only to walk to the other side of his door and bring back a couple of wooden stools, which he set down opposite the bench.

  “My name’s Giontes,” he said, resuming his seat.

  “Damiskos Temnon.” Dami offered his hand. “You have a beautiful park here.” He pulled one of the stools closer to the gardener’s side of the bench and sat. Gesturing to some plants near the cottage door, he said, “How do you get the rosemary to grow so well in pots? I’ve never seen it do so well potted.”

  “Ah,” said the gardener. “I can tell you about that.”

  Tash sat and stared with a look of astonished disgust as his friend launched into an animated discussion of the way to grow rosemary in pots. Then he glared up at Varazda.

  “What the fuck did you come here for? To talk about fucking rosemary?”

  “Not exclusively,” said Varazda, pulling up his own stool and dropping down onto it. “Marzana wants to talk to you.”

  “I’ve got nothing to say to him.”

  “I know, but I think maybe you should come up with something to say. Something other than ‘I killed Themistokles Glyptikos,’ because we all know you didn’t.”

  Tash swirled the wine in his cup and stared bleakly at it.

  “You want me to tell Marzana the truth, don’t you.”

  “I do.”

  “Because he’s your friend.”

  “Because he’s the chief of the public watch, mainly. But because he’s my friend—and your friend—I know you can trust him. If you killed somebody … ” He let that hang there, gently.

  “I didn’t kill anybody,” Tash replied irritably. “Nobody’s dead. I mean—I guess a lot of people are dead, but … ”

  “Not Themistokles.”

  “No, I guess not.”

  “Which is a good thing, right?”

  “Of course it’s a good thing!” Tash looked up, his face full of conflicting emotions. “Holy shit. I can’t even tell you. When I thought he was dead—God, I’m glad he’s not dead. He’s—he’s—I mean, I … ” He trailed off, unable to put his feelings for his master into words.

  The gardener had got up and fetched another wine cup and filled it for Dami. The two of them had moved on to discussing fruit trees.

  “Why did you think he was dead?” Varazda asked.

  “I … ” Tash hesitated a long time, then tossed back the remainder of his wine and said, “I thought I heard somebody say they’d killed him.”

  So I was right after all, Varazda thought. He was trying to protect someone. Things were beginning to make a tiny bit more sense.

  “Do you think,” he said with the utmost gentleness, “it’s possible that you misheard?”

  Tash dropped his head into his hands. “Not misheard, just mis … misinterpreted. Like an idiot. There wasn’t even time for them to have killed him, if I’d have stopped to think about it. I don’t even know why I was so sure that’s what they meant, I just—something about the way sh—they—said it … ”

  “How was that?”

  “So, so violently.”

  “It was something about … harming Themistokles in some way?”

  “Yeah, I guess. Yeah. But I don’t know why—I mean, I thought, if they’d done it, they must’ve had a good reason, you know? That’s why I … ”

  “That’s why you tried to protect them.”

  Tash nodded miserably.

  “Do you know who … this person … was talking to, when they said this?”

  “No. I never heard him clearly. Just a male voice. It doesn’t matter now, though, does it? Themistokles isn’t dead, or even—whatever.”

  “Even threatened?”

  “What?”

  “He isn’t even threatened? Are you sure of that?”

  “I, uh … ” Tash whimpered. “No, I guess I’m not. But I don’t think so.”

  “Maybe we had better let Marzana make up his mind about that. You did involve the watch, and he is personally concerned about you.”

  Tash groaned. “I just—I was trying—immortal fuck, why do I even try to do anything?”

  At that point the gardening conversation that had been going on at the other end of the bench hit a lull, and Dami caught Varazda’s eye with a questioning look.

  “We do owe Marzana an explanation,” said Varazda firmly.

  “But—we don’t have to tell him what really happened, do we?”

  “That’s usually what’s meant by ‘an explanation,’ yes. He thinks you might have killed someone else by accident. You’ll need to disabuse him of that notion, and it will need to be convincing. I’d suggest the whole truth.”

  “Oh. Well, I’ll tell him, but … I mean, I’ll tell him.” Tash looked shifty. Varazda was not satisfied, but he left it at that.

  “Let’s go home, Ariston,” Varazda said, unfolding himself from the stool.

  Tash looked up at him, wide-eyed, for a moment confused by his chosen name.

  “Oh. Right. I guess we’d … we could. I don’t—I mean, I don’t have anything else to do right now.”

  Dami thanked the gardener for his hospitality, the gardener said, “If you ever want any cuttings, come see me,” and they shook hands like old friends.

  Tash’s gaze flicked warily to Dami, then back to Varazda. “Is he all right?” he asked in an undertone, in Zashian. “Yaza didn’t—with the frying pan—did he?”

  “Yazata almost broke his own nose,” Varazda said, in Pseuchaian, “and Damiskos speaks Zashian, so that’s not an effective way to talk behind his back.”

  “Oh,” said Tash, chastened. “Sorry.”

  “Maybe say that to him?”

  “Right. Yeah.”

  And he did, fumblingly but sincerely, as the three of them walked back through the park toward the theatre.

  “It’s all right,” said Dami, with one of his serious smiles. “I understand that you were distraught.”

  “Yeah, but … I was lying, too. I didn’t think I’d killed my master. I thought somebody else had, and I … ”

  “You wanted to protect that person,” Dami supplied after a moment, when Tash seemed to have run out of momentum. “Varazda guessed it was that.”

  “Yeah. I just … It was like a nightmare.” Tash shuddered, and didn’t pull away when Varazda put an arm around his shoulders and gave them a slight squeeze.

  “So,” said Varazda, “Ariston. How do you feel about going to talk to Marzana?”

  Ariston sighed. “I don’t really want to. Could it wait … until tomorrow?”

  “Tomorrow’s the Asteria,” Varazda reminded him.

  “Shit, yeah. I forgot.”

  “Which one is the Asteria?” Dami asked. “Is that the festival where everybody, uh, gets drunk and has sex?”

  “That’s the Psobion,” Ariston supplied. “The Asteria is in honour of Kerialos.”

  “Oh, right, of course. The one where the women take over the city.”

  Varazda nodded. “And men are expected to stay home unless they have a chaperone.”

  “I’ve heard they can be quite strict about it.” After a moment, looking at Varazda thoughtfully, he said, “What do you do?”

  The question pleased Varazda. He liked that Dami didn’t take it for granted that he knew which side Varazda would fall on, when the city divided itself by sex.

  “I usually dress up and go out,” he said. “I have to be a bit careful where I go—some people think of it as cheating. But I have friends who understand, and I generally go out with them. This year, of course, I’ll only go if you want to come.”

  “I wouldn’t want to cramp your style—but I don’t particularly want to stay home with Yazata’s cooking and the murderous goose, either. I’ll come.” After a momen
t he added, “I look forward to seeing you dressed up.”

  “What did Yaza cook?” Ariston asked curiously.

  “Labash,” said Varazda.

  Ariston wrinkled his nose. “That stuff’s disgusting.”

  “I quite like it,” said Dami, “but it was very spicy.”

  Ariston laughed a little wanly. “Varazda, can we wait until after the Asteria to tell Marzana?”

  “No … why?”

  “He’s not going to be able to do anything about it today.”

  “He might. It depends what he has to do. Who, for instance, he has to look for.”

  “It’s no one, it’s … I mean, look. Suppose we just wait. They wouldn’t be able to find h—the person—today, because I know where they are, I tried to get to them today, and they just wouldn’t.”

  “What?”

  “Marzana and his watchmen wouldn’t be able to find the person who was—or is—planning to kill Themistokles,” Damiskos translated. “Who Ariston thought had succeeded, and whom he wishes to protect.”

  “No, no, nobody’s planning to kill Themistokles! It was all a misunderstanding. I just—I want to talk to somebody first, before Marzana finds out.”

  “Warn them, in effect?” Varazda raised an eyebrow at him.

  “Find out what really happened,” Dami suggested diplomatically.

  “That,” said Ariston. “Yeah.”

  “Right,” said Varazda. “And when you say ‘we’ will be able to go out tomorrow, just what do you mean?”

  “You know. Whatever. Dressing up. If you can get away with it, so can I.”

  Varazda didn’t bother to point out that he could pass for a woman because he had long hair and hips and pierced ears and in fact looked reasonably like a woman, and that Ariston didn’t.

  “Ariston, when I dress in women’s clothes and go out for the Asteria, I do it because it means something to me. Not because I ‘can get away with it.’”

  Ariston rolled his eyes. “I’m not you, Varazda. I’m a man, all right? But I can pretend to be a woman. It doesn’t have to mean anything.”

  “Ariston,” said Dami gently, “this person we’d be going out to find tomorrow. Are you sure you’d like to show up dressed as a woman—considering that you’d prefer people know you’re a man—when we find them?”

  It was a master stroke. Varazda would never again accuse Dami of lacking subtlety or being awkward with people. He’d got the measure of Ariston, he’d put the suggestion tactfully, and he’d got through to him.

  “Yeah,” said Ariston. “I mean no. I mean, if I’m with you, Varazda, I can dress however, right?”

  Varazda nodded. “Right.”

  And if he was dressed in men’s clothes, he couldn’t wander off by himself, Varazda realized. Brilliance. Sheer brilliance.

  “I was thinking,” said Dami, as they reached the street at the edge of the park, fronting the theatre, “that I might give the two of you a chance to talk privately. I’m going to take a chair home, if that’s all right.”

  “What?” said Ariston. “That’s not—”

  “That is perfectly all right,” said Varazda, smiling.

  Chapter 7

  “Papa,” said Remi, climbing up onto the divan beside Varazda, “Why does Yaza call me the wrong word?”

  Varazda looked up from the note he was trying to write to Marzana. “You mean Umit?”

  “Mm-hmm.”

  He sighed. “Well, my sweet, in Zash, where Yazata and Tash and I used to live, sometimes girls have two names, and so Yazata wanted you to have two names: Remi, and Umit. But Remi is your real name.”

  She was silent for a moment, frowning. “But why did he call me the wrong word in the house?”

  Oh, God. She’d understood more than Varazda had given her credit for. “You mean because Umit is the name he usually calls you outside the house, right?”

  Should he lie? He tried never to lie to Remi if he could help it. He wanted her to learn to value honesty herself. So perhaps he ought to explain that when Zashian girls had two names, one was for use within their own families, the other for strangers, so that the girl’s true name would not be spoken by unauthorized lips. He could explain that Yazata had wanted Remi to have a public name because it was traditional, but that even he rarely used it because nobody else did, and that he used it now, in their own home, as a deliberate insult to Damiskos. Remi could probably have understood some of that.

  Damiskos almost certainly understood all of it already.

  “I think,” said Varazda in a conspiratorial tone, “that maybe he forgot.”

  “Forgot my name?” Remi squeaked.

  Varazda nodded solemnly. “I think maybe.”

  Remi laughed her sweet, silvery laugh, and bounced down off the divan to run out into the kitchen calling, “Yaza, my name is Remi! Remi! Yaza, did you forget my name?”

  Varazda looked across at Dami, seated in the corner of the divan, and shrugged apologetically. Dami smiled, but it was a rather sad smile.

  “This is what I’ve written,” Varazda said, tapping his stylus on the edge of the tablet. “Ariston has been found safe and assures us that he has not killed anyone. He was trying to protect someone. What do I say after that?”

  “‘We do not think there is any cause for alarm but will brief you as we learn more.’”

  “Will what you?”

  “Brief. It’s a military term.”

  “How do you spell it?”

  Dami spelled out the word for him, then scooted over on the divan to put his chin on Varazda’s shoulder and look down at the tablet.

  “It looks like a child’s handwriting, I’m sure,” said Varazda sourly.

  “It’s beautiful,” said Dami, nuzzling up into Varazda’s hair. “Just like you.”

  It was such a silly compliment, so glibly delivered, that Varazda had to laugh.

  “I have prepared food for lunch,” Yazata announced loudly from the doorway.

  Dami sat bolt upright, and Varazda dropped the stylus, which rolled onto the floor.

  “I don’t think we’re hungry,” Varazda said, thinking of all the cake and stale pastries that they had eaten that morning. He looked at Dami, who looked stricken, as if he wanted to contradict Varazda but couldn’t. “We’re not hungry.”

  Yazata looked at them as if he suspected the phrase of some lewd double meaning. “I have prepared soup,” he informed them, and turned majestically back into the kitchen.

  Varazda went to pay Maia’s older son to deliver the note to Marzana, and returned to find Dami sitting at the table with Remi, politely nibbling some slices of pear, while Ariston, groggy after being woken from a nap, mechanically spooned soup into his mouth. The only conversation in the room was provided by Remi, who was telling Damiskos a long story about someone named Poobos, who may not have been real. Presently, at a pause in the narrative, Dami excused himself and beckoned to Varazda.

  “Is it safe for me to go out in the yard?” he whispered. “With the murder goose, I mean.”

  “I’ll check.”

  Varazda preceded him out the kitchen door. Selene was indeed wandering loose in the yard, along with several of the chickens. He shooed them back into their enclosure and shut the gate.

  “It’s all yours,” he said to Dami, gesturing toward the privy.

  “Thanks.”

  Yazata was at the sink washing dishes when Varazda came back in.

  “A word?” Varazda said, leaning against the counter beside Yazata.

  “Of course.”

  “Did you and Maia put Remi up to setting Selene on Damiskos this morning?”

  Yazata swished his dish-mop unnecessarily through the water for a moment. “We told Remi that Selene would not attack him—please do not blame her.”

  “I wasn’t thinking of blaming her!”

  “I can see now it was unworthy of us.”

  “Setting an angry goose on a lame man? Yes, I think I’d call that unworthy of you.”

&nb
sp; Yazata stood there looking at him as if he expected Varazda to say something more.

  “Please don’t do it again,” said Varazda, pushing off from the counter and stalking back across the kitchen.

  “Walking halfway across the city is well and good,” Dami said when Varazda met him in the yard, “but I could use some real exercise. I don’t suppose you’d care to … ”

  “What?”

  “Spar with me.”

  “God, I’d love it.” Varazda grinned. “Out here?”

  Ariston and Remi burst out through the kitchen door and began tearing around the perimeter of the yard.

  “Ah, maybe not. How about inside in your practice room?” Dami cocked an eyebrow. “An interesting challenge?”

  Varazda felt an anticipatory shiver chase down his spine. Sparring with Damiskos was thrilling. Almost—well, not almost, but very nearly somewhere in the same region—as good as sex with him.

  They went inside and through to the practice room, shutting the door behind them. Varazda caught down his swords from the brackets where they hung, in the fashion of his ancestors, while he wasn’t using them. He tossed one to Dami and tucked the other under his arm to fold back his shirtsleeves, watching from under his lashes the way Dami hefted the blade, reacquainting himself with its weight and balance. God, he was lovely when he was in his element.

  They stretched, each in his own way; Dami was much more businesslike, less delicate about it.

  “Can I show you something you may not know?” Varazda said daringly. “As a warm-up?”

  “Sure … ” Dami looked half-intrigued, half-sceptical.

  “Can you do this?”

  Varazda held the sword lightly for a moment, balancing it in his fingers, and then he spun it, just a simple half-twist.

  Dami gave a shout of laughter. “No! I can’t do that.”

  “I’ll teach you. Here.”

  He came around behind Dami, tucking his own sword out of the way in his sash, and reached around, his arm following the curve of Dami’s.

  “That’s a ridiculous way to hold a sword,” Dami said sternly as Varazda repositioned the hilt in his grip.

  “Hush.” He stepped away and drew his own sword again to demonstrate the beginning of the twist, as slowly as possible. “Try it.”