by A. J. Demas
“What’s a asshole?” she asked when she had righted herself.
“A word that Tash isn’t supposed to use in the house.”
“He’s Amistron now, Papa,” Remi informed him earnestly.
“Yes, you’re quite right, and I’m sorry.” He had thought that Remi might not yet have adapted to the new name, but of course she had. Even if she couldn’t quite pronounce it.
Dami said thoughtfully, “You don’t think this … threat, if it was a threat, that you heard someone utter against Themistokles, might have had something to do with his politics?”
“No! The person who—the person I thought might have killed him, they’re not an enemy, or in politics or anything. I thought … ” Ariston picked fretfully at his hard-boiled egg. “Honestly, what I thought was that if they were driven to those lengths, it must have been because of something he did—I don’t know what, but he could have done something—and I still think maybe he did, so I just want to make sure this person’s all right.”
Varazda considered that for a moment, and from Dami’s expression he was doing the same. Their eyes met briefly across the table. Varazda thought they were both reaching the same conclusion.
“That seems quite reasonable,” Varazda said, and Dami nodded. “We’ll help you make sure you get to see them tomorrow.”
Ariston nodded awkwardly. “Thanks. So—earlier, Yazata interrupted you guys sparring, or … ”
“Something like that,” said Dami. Varazda could have kicked him.
“Something like that?” Ariston repeated.
“What’s sparring?” asked Remi.
“Play-fighting,” Varazda supplied.
“Yeah,” said Ariston, with a salacious emphasis, “play-fighting.”
Varazda did kick him.
“Play-fighting,” Remi repeated, with an exaggerated eye-roll.
“I’ll take care of the dishes,” said Varazda, getting up from the bench.
“I can do that,” Dami offered.
“You made dinner.”
Ariston brought out a bottle of wine, and he and Dami were soon deep in a technical discussion of how to sculpt drapery. At least, Ariston was deep in the discussion; Dami was doing his thing, listening as seriously as if he were being briefed on the strategy of some important campaign. Remi played under the table with the wooden horse Dami had brought her, and Varazda washed dishes. By the time he was finished, Dami was on his feet, demonstrating with a pot lid how to hold in a shield in combat, in answer to some question from Ariston, while Remi danced up and down and feinted at him with a wooden spoon.
Varazda took Remi up to bed, thinking to make some sort of joke—don’t let me find you fighting again when I come back, or something—but finding he didn’t have the heart for it. Dami and Ariston were in the sitting room when he came back, now discussing politics.
“I’m going to take Yazata up some food,” Varazda said, putting his head in the door.
“Want me to—” Ariston started.
“No, thank you. I should talk to him.”
He went up Yazata’s staircase with a dish of leftovers and knocked on the door of Yazata’s room.
“Who is it?” came Yazata’s voice, sounding wary.
“It’s Varazda.”
After a moment, “What do you want?”
“I’m sorry about this afternoon. Sorry that you were alarmed, and that I got angry with you.” He drew a breath. “Look, Yaza. He’s only staying a week. Then he’s going back to Pheme. Not because you’ve made him unwelcome—” Though God knows you have. “—but because that was the plan all along. He has a job and a family to go back to.”
Yazata pulled the door open suddenly, staring. “A family?”
Varazda sighed. “Parents. A half-brother.” He thrust the dish of food into Yazata’s hands. “You should have some dinner.”
“Ah.” Yazata glanced down at the food as if confused by it. “Where did this come from?”
“Tash and Damiskos cooked. Apparently Tash’s ex-girlfriend, the one who works in a bakery, taught him to do a few things in the kitchen. It was a surprise to me too. And they teach cookery in the Phemian army, I suppose.” The joke, unsurprisingly, failed to land.
“I thought he was going to stay longer.” Yazata looked up from the dish, brow furrowed. “The room—I thought you intended for him to live here.”
“I did—I won’t say, ‘I do,’ because if this is how it’s going to be, if you dislike him this much, it’s not going to work. He’ll see that as well as I do. When he goes back to Pheme, you’ll be rid of him.”
“You’ll be rid of him,” Yazata breathed.
“I don’t want to be rid of him! For God’s sake, Yazata.” He unclenched his jaw. “Sorry. I understand you think he’s not good for me, but … ” But he is. He is so good for me, and I wish you could see that. “I don’t want to be rid of him,” he repeated.
Yazata flinched, but then he nodded. “I understand. But … that’s what Maia said you would say, too.”
“What? No offense to Maia, but what does she know about it? I don’t confide in her.”
“I do.”
“I guess you do. And she is entitled to her opinion of Damiskos. As are you. But if the two of you could stand to be civil to him for the short time that he is here, I would count it a favour.”
“Of course. I would do anything for you. You know that.”
“I—” I’m the one who is making a sacrifice here, he wanted to say. “I know that, Yazata. I’ve always known that. I’m—sorry that I asked too much, this once.” That sounded too bitter, so after a moment he made himself say again, “I’m sorry.”
“Time I called it a night!” Ariston announced stagily, bouncing up from the divan when Varazda reappeared in the sitting room. “Well! See you both tomorrow!”
Varazda waited for his footsteps to recede up the stairs before he subsided onto the divan, not too close to Damiskos. Dami nudged a full cup of wine along the table toward him.
“Poured one for you.”
“Thank you. I hardly think I deserve it.”
“It is your wine.”
Varazda reached for the cup and took a long swallow. “You were justifiably angry with me, this afternoon.”
Dami had to pause for a minute, perhaps trying to remember what Varazda was talking about. “Oh. I don’t know about justified, but I was angry. I was angry that you don’t care enough for yourself—you tried to do something to me that you obviously hate and have every reason to hate, you couldn’t do it, and you made me … you made me party to that. You made me into a stick to beat yourself with. That’s not what I want.”
Varazda digested that for a moment, taking another swallow of wine. “You weren’t angry that I concealed from you what I had really been?”
“No! Fuck euphemisms. You were a dancer. You are a dancer. If some assholes in some provincial palace couldn’t see that, that was their mistake. You shouldn’t have to carry any guilt over that.”
“Thank you. I don’t, very much, any more. And Gudul was a sleepy place. You shouldn’t imagine there were ever very many … ”
“Yeah, but fuck them. You were a boy—”
“A eunuch.”
“—a young person, and you shouldn’t have had to endure that. I’ve never wanted to hurt anyone as much as I want to round those men up and … ” He squeezed Varazda’s shoulder slightly. “But I wouldn’t if it would distress you. Or I might, but I’d make sure you didn’t have to watch.”
Varazda laughed. “You’re a marvel, First Spear, you really are.”
He wished he could say that as sincerely as he meant it.
“So we’ve sorted that out, then, right?” said Dami.
“I suppose so.” After a moment he admitted, “It does trouble me that there are things—like the Stalk of the Lily—that I can’t do for you. You’ll … miss them.”
“I’ll live,” said Dami sternly. “If you can’t take pleasure in it, I don’t wa
nt it.”
“Did you take pleasure in doing that for me, at Laothalia?” Varazda’s mind took him back to that bedroom in the slave quarters again, Dami’s mouth on him, the impossibly thrilling intimacy of it.
“Gods. Yeah. Of course.”
“Oh.” That was a revelation, actually. He hadn’t thought Dami had hated it—clearly he had not—but he had assumed … what had he assumed? Just that Dami was very generous. He forgot for a moment that this was all ending in a week, and said, “In that case, it may be that I could learn to like it too. But—you would have to let me practice.”
Dami laughed. “If you insist. Later, though. Not today.”
Varazda nodded. “I got some books for you from the embassy.” He pulled the scrolls across the table and flipped over the tags that showed their titles.
“What’s this one?” Dami pulled one out of the pile.
“Oh, that’s—I thought you might like that. It’s fables from Suna. For children, really, but I thought, if you haven’t read Zashian in a while, it might be good practice.”
Dami picked up the scroll and untied the ribbon. “Want me to read to you?”
Varazda looked at him for a moment in the lamplight. Maybe he had grown too used to having his own way, he thought, because he could not reconcile himself to losing this man. He wasn’t going to let him go back to Pheme and stay there. He didn’t know what the solution was, but if there was a solution, he was going to find it.
“I’d like that,” he said.
He arranged himself on the divan with his head in Dami’s lap. Dami unrolled the scroll of fables. In his low voice with its thick Phemian accent he began to read: “Long ago in the city of Suna there lived a poor shoemaker … ”
On the morning of the Asteria, Varazda was up early. It was a crisp, bright day, the kind of fall weather that he loved. He pushed open the shutters in his room to let in air and sunlight.
Remi was asleep in her little bed, on her stomach, one leg stretched out and the other drawn up as if she were executing a gazelle leap in her sleep. She had tossed her blanket off as usual; he went and gently replaced it.
He picked out clothes for the day. He had a couple of Pseuchaian-style gowns, one a pale blue that didn’t really suit him, but was useful for times when he wanted to impersonate a certain type of woman—the other a deep, rusty orange. He would stand out more in that one, certainly, and that might not be wise on the Asteria. But he wanted Dami to see him in that orange gown. He unfolded it from the chest and shook it out.
He sat before the mirror at his dressing-table to do his make-up—kohl, lip-rouge, powder, and a hint of gold on his eyelids—and put in his earrings, a small pair of hoops that matched the gown better than any of his others. He put up his hair in a simple twist, held in place with a filmy scarf in the style that many of his female friends favoured these days.
For himself, he liked the way that the bodice of the gown draped, but it did show off his lack of breasts. He picked out a dark red mantle that harmonized interestingly with the colour of the gown, and wrapped it in a style that accentuated his waist and disguised his flat chest. He picked up the mirror and held it up and at arm’s length to get the best view he could of the whole.
In truth, Varazda didn’t think he made a beautiful woman. When he dressed in women’s clothes he began to notice how bony and stern his face was, that his hands, for all their delicacy, were rather large, the muscles of his arms developed from a lifetime of dancing. And he was tall, reasonably tall even for a man. He looked like the sort of woman who would be described as “striking rather than beautiful,” and honestly he liked that.
He wondered what Dami would think.
Remi was stirring by this time, and woke to exclaim and laugh delightedly over Varazda’s clothes. She had been too young to understand what was going on last Asteria, and Varazda didn’t know if she would remember what he had worn. He occasionally dressed in women’s clothes for work, but she didn’t usually see that.
They went out to the landing and found Dami at the bottom of the stairs, looking up. He gasped.
“Oh, darling! You look so lovely.”
The endearment seemed to have burst out of him against his will, and he looked ready to be cringingly embarrassed of it. Varazda wanted to run down the stairs to him and ask to hear it again.
“He’s wearing a dress,” Remi explained in case Dami had missed it.
“She is,” Dami agreed. “Don’t you think she looks pretty?”
He looked tentatively up at Varazda, who felt rather breathless. Of course they were going out in public, where Varazda would be passing as a woman, and Dami would have to remember to say “she” then. But for him to do it now, so seriously, when he didn’t need to, felt like a little gift.
“Oh, Papa’s a ‘she’ today,” said Remi, as if that were a normal thing.
Varazda came the rest of the way down the stairs as Remi went pattering off down the hall, calling out, “Yaza, Amistron—Papa is wearing a pretty dress!”
“Here, I got something for you.” Dami held out a tiny cloth bag. “I … I forgot to give it to you earlier.” He wore his usual mortified-Damiskos expression.
“Shocking. I’ll add another item to the quest you’re going to have to undertake to prove your devotion.”
Varazda undid the drawstring of the bag and poured out into his palm a pair of impossibly delicate gold earrings. They had strings of tiny gold beads and pendants in the shape of adorable, big-eyed owls. And pearls, small but perfect. He looked up at Dami, wide-eyed as the owls and a little dismayed. Dami had represented himself as barely getting by on a miserable salary. How much had he spent on these?
“I didn’t buy them,” said Dami, half-admission, half-reassurance. “I inherited them. My grandmother—my father’s mother—left me some of her jewellery a long time ago, for my future wife. I thought you’d like these.”
“I—I like them very much. They’re perfect—so feminine.”
My future wife, my future wife, my future wife. The phrase clanged in Varazda’s head like a bell.
“I’ll put them in right now,” he said, reaching up to unfasten the hoops he was wearing.
He didn’t know what he felt. Terrified that Dami was giving him things intended for his future wife? Pleased that he was? Heart-sick at the thought that there were other pieces of jewellery that Dami might be keeping back for the actual future wife?
“I wanted to buy you something,” Dami forged on. “But then I remembered I had these, and I thought they would suit you. I think they belonged to my grandmother’s mother-in-law. She was a famous socialite in her youth.”
So they had been in his family for generations. They were practically his ancestral jewels. Fucking hell.
“Oh, they do suit you!” Dami looked ridiculously pleased.
“Thank you,” said Varazda. “They are lovely.”
They went through to the kitchen for breakfast. Yazata was there, frying salt fish on the stove. Remi was standing on a stool at the workbench near him, carefully dismembering some mushrooms with her fingers. Yazata glanced up, surveyed Varazda’s outfit, and an affectionate smile flashed across his face. He always liked it when Varazda dressed up. But he said nothing, just turned his attention back to the fish. Ariston came down shortly, dressed for the day in one of his plain, Pseuchaian-style outfits. Remi helped Varazda and Dami set the table.
“So how does this work?” Dami asked as they sat eating pickles and fried fish. “What do I need to know to avoid being stoned in the street or torn limb-from-limb or whatever it is that happens to men at the Asteria?”
“I don’t think they actually do that any more,” said Ariston, but he didn’t sound very sure.
“They’ve never done that,” said Varazda. “Outside of plays. All it is, is … ” He ticked off items on his fingers as he recalled them: “You have to stay in the house unless you have a female escort, you have to cover your head with your mantle when you go out in public, an
d you’re not allowed to speak or look any woman in the eye without permission. You can’t go in the theatre or the council house of the Basileon, most temples, that sort of thing. Places women used not to be allowed in on ordinary days.”
“Women still aren’t allowed in the civil assembly in Pheme,” said Dami.
“Right. And supposedly some of these other rules applied to women in Boukos in the distant past. You can’t buy or sell without the consent of your male relatives … I’m trying to think if there are any others.”
“Basically we have to behave like Zashian women,” said Dami.
“Exactly.”
“Respectable Zashian women.” Yazata added in an undertone.
“I’ve met a few of those, believe it or not,” Dami returned with a smile. He inclined his head. “Probably not as many as you.”
Yazata looked back down at his plate. Varazda wasn’t sure whether the exchange had been friendly or not.
“And what goes on?” Dami pursued. “For the festival.”
“Well, men aren’t allowed to work, except in businesses owned by women. So most shops will be closed for the day, but you know Marzana, whom you met yesterday? His wife owns a sweet shop—the one we stopped at on our way up from the harbour—so he’ll likely be working there while she goes out.
“As for what you do when you go out—there are rites at the Temple of Kerialos, but of course I’ve never participated in those. They also dance in the Basileon and put on a play in the theatre, though that’s less popular these days because women are actually allowed to perform in regular plays now. And there are a lot of local traditions. The sandal-makers’ wives host a picnic that I always try to get to. Today, of course, our first priority is finding Ariston’s friend.”
“Perhaps,” said Dami, “it’s time we knew who that was.”
Chapter 9
“She works at a house on Temple Walk,” Ariston said, staring fiercely at the table. “Owns it, actually.”
Varazda glanced at Dami to see if that meant anything to him. Evidently it did.
