by A. J. Demas
“And those earrings,” Chereia said, coming around the table to inspect them. “They’re new, aren’t they?”
“Hello, darling,” said Marzana dryly. “Lovely to see you.”
“Oh, yes, yes,” said Chereia, leaning over to give him a teasingly perfunctory kiss on the cheek. “But let me get a look at the earrings. They’re just exquisite. Where did you get them?”
“They are nice, aren’t they? They were a gift.”
“From … your soldier?”
Varazda nodded.
“He’s here, you know,” Marzana put in, with a glint in his eye.
“Where?”
“Out front. Minding the counter with Sorgana and Tash. Ariston, I mean.”
“You put him to work?”
Marzana shrugged. “It was Varazda’s idea.”
“Actually, it wasn’t,” said Varazda. “It was his own idea. Damiskos’s.”
“I’m going to go take a look at him,” said Chereia. “May I?”
“Of course. Be my guest.”
“Why did she ask your permission?” Marzana asked, looking confused.
Chereia went to the door and opened it to peek out. Varazda, following her, saw Dami behind the counter, running the sweet shop with military precision. He had got Sorgana making change and Ariston packing orders while he dealt with customers, and the milling crowd had somehow coalesced into an orderly line.
“Well!” said Chereia, turning back to Varazda with raised eyebrows. “If he wants a job … ”
“What?” said Marzana, coming to the door himself. “I was doing all right myself.” He looked critically at Dami’s operation. “That’s all very well, but now there’s no one to refill the dishes or put the trays back until the crowd dies down. They’re sacrificing everything for speed.”
“Why don’t you go out there and help them?” Chereia suggested. “I want to talk to Varazda.”
Marzana gave her a kiss and obeyed, and she closed the shop door behind him. She rolled her eyes.
“I can run that shop by myself,” she said. “And it takes four of them?”
“Only two of them have elite military training,” Varazda pointed out, to be fair. “The other two are Sorgana and Ariston.”
Chereia laughed, then looked thoughtful. “We were surprised, Marzana and I. When he met Damiskos at your house.”
“Yes,” said Varazda a little stiffly. “Everyone has been surprised.”
“He looks very nice—and I do mean very nice—but more importantly, Marzana had nothing but good to say about him. We just didn’t know you were … well. Quite frankly, we didn’t know you were in the market for handsome soldiers—but perhaps you didn’t know that yourself?”
“I … I did and I didn’t.” He wasn’t surprised, or particularly disappointed; he knew he’d always kept that aspect of himself secret. But it was still a somewhat lonely feeling, realizing that even Chereia and Marzana, two of his most perceptive friends, had not guessed the truth. “I’ve always liked men, actually, and I’ve always liked that type of man—don’t ask me to explain exactly what I mean by that, please—but I never thought I wanted a lover. I didn’t even really like … ” Could he truly talk about this, even to Chereia? No, he decided, he could not. “I’m still not sure that ‘having a lover’ is something I can do properly.”
“Oh, nonsense—you can do it brilliantly. You’re a wonderful friend, and it’s all the same skills, all the important parts. What do Tash—Ariston, I mean—and Yazata think of him?”
Varazda considered various ways he could answer that, none of them quite honest.
“Ariston has taken to him,” he said finally. “Yazata is being very odd.”
“Odd how?”
“He’s trying very hard to be hostile—it’s not really in his nature, but he’s putting a lot of effort into it. And it’s also as if he thinks he’s doing me a favour, somehow? As if he thinks I need protecting. He won’t explain himself—he just keeps giving me significant looks.”
“That is odd.”
“Perhaps I failed to prepare him adequately—probably I did. But I told him my plans nearly a month ago, and if he had objected then, I would not have gone ahead with any of it. The work on the house … ” He spread his hands hopelessly. “He had plenty of time to talk to me about it, if he had misgivings. But instead, a couple of days before Damiskos’s ship was expected, he suddenly seemed to come to the realization that I was making a terrible mistake and he couldn’t be a party to it. On the day Dami’s ship was due, Yazata made sure to be out of the house.”
Chereia sighed. “And he won’t have it out with you, of course, because he’s much too Zashian. Blessed Orante. That’s miserable. I don’t know how to advise you, except … no,” she corrected herself, “I’ve really no idea.”
“What were you going to say, though?”
She hesitated. “Just that I think there’s usually a lot of negotiating involved in anything … anything permanent, even when passion is involved. In a marriage, for example. Marzana and I had to do a lot of negotiating, and we started off as a love affair that we didn’t really expect to last.” She smiled. “You didn’t know that about us, did you? We were lovers for two months—a little more than two months—before we were married. All the while thinking that Marzana could be summoned back to Zash any day.”
Varazda’s eyebrows had risen in spite of himself. He had known that Marzana stayed in Boukos for Chereia’s sake, having come to the city on the first diplomatic mission from Zash. It hadn’t occurred to him that they might have been lovers before they were married. It wasn’t the sort of thing he spent much time thinking about, in relation to his friends; and besides, Marzana was such a model of rectitude, and Chereia, for a Boukossian woman, so wholesome and matronly. He wondered if it would have changed his opinion of them to have learned this a month ago instead of now.
Chapter 11
When they came back out into the shop, custom had died down and the men were chatting behind the counter while Ariston and Sorgana refilled and rearranged dishes of sweets.
“And of course in the summer,” Marzana was saying, “there are plenty of good beaches for sea bathing. I’ll introduce you to my trainer.”
“I have to go fetch Sandy from Audia and Phoros’s,” Chereia told her husband, “and then Audia and I are going to the temple just quickly before dinner. Varazda, do you want to leave Ariston with us for the evening? You and Damiskos might like to walk home together.”
“Hey,” said Ariston from the kitchen, “I’m not a kid.”
“It’s the Asteria,” Varazda and Marzana reminded him in chorus.
“Yes,” said Varazda to Chereia. “Thank you. Shall we?” He looked at Dami.
Dami nodded and retrieved his cane. He said a warm goodbye to Marzana and his family.
“I like your friends,” he said when they were out in the street.
“Marzana and Chereia are wonderful,” Varazda agreed.
It felt a little awkward to be alone again after all the events of the day. Varazda had to look at the sky to remind himself what time it was. Only early afternoon; it felt as if it should have been much later.
“Marzana was telling me I should take up swimming,” Dami said. “Apparently it’s excellent exercise—he says it’s his main way of keeping fit. I’ve never swum much myself, not living near a good pool or having a coastal villa or anything.”
“If you want to practice, I can take you to the Baths of Soukos—they have the best pool in the city.”
“So you said.”
“Ah, I did, didn’t I.”
After a moment, when Varazda didn’t come up with anything more to say, Dami went on talking about exercise regimes. Varazda had never thought much about what people who didn’t dance could do to keep their bodies fit, or how much work went into maintaining a physique like Dami’s when anything that involved much bending of the knees had to be avoided.
He wanted to say that Dami need not worry
on his account, that much as he enjoyed Dami’s muscles, he didn’t expect Dami to be able to keep them up forever. He didn’t expect himself to be able to stay fit enough to dance forever; it was something he had thought about a lot and had made his peace with.
He wanted to say, “I’d love you even if you got fat.” But he’d never told Dami that he loved him, and that would decidedly not be the right way to say it. Supposing that he decided to say it at all.
“I don’t expect to be able to stay fit forever,” Dami said, as if he’d heard Varazda’s thoughts, or some of them. “I’ve known that at some point I’ll have to sacrifice my vanity if I want to keep walking at all—almost everything I do wears away at my bad knee, and it’ll only get worse over time. So I suppose swimming might be good.”
“I’ll take you,” said Varazda firmly. “Tomorrow, after I finish work. Oh. I have to work tomorrow. A dance class in the morning, and then a shift in the music shop in the afternoon, and in the evening I have an engagement at the embassy.”
“Of course,” said Dami. “I won’t be a burden. I can go sightseeing. I’ve a list of places I want to visit.”
That was very sensible of him, knowing that he would be left on his own in the city because Varazda worked for a living, and Varazda should not have felt aggrieved at the thought that he would miss showing Dami the sights himself. But he’d imagined his lover spending the time when they weren’t together relaxing at the house, getting to know Yazata and the neighbours, playing with Remi, and generally becoming a member of the family. He swallowed his disappointment and listened to Dami describe the places he hoped to visit and offered suggestions.
The next three days passed in a very strange kind of normalcy.
Yazata had taken Varazda’s request to heart and was being entirely civil to Dami. They even had a few conversations—initiated by Dami—which might have been described as friendly. As for Ariston, he continued to hang on Dami’s every word. The reading aloud from the Tales of Suna became a family event, with Ariston and Remi competing for space on the divan with Dami and Varazda, and Yazata, though officially remaining aloof, lingering in the kitchen and rather obviously listening.
Varazda taught his dance class on Moon’s Day morning in the studio next to his house, and Dami tagged along, sitting on the floor out of the way to watch Varazda warm up and put his students through their paces, and chatting with Hanem, their hired musician, after the class was over. They ate with Yazata and went out again to the music store with Remi in tow. Hanem was there eating his lunch, and he and Dami spent a long time talking lutes and comparing fingering techniques on the shop’s instruments, while Remi ran around dusting things that didn’t need to be dusted and distracting the customers. Eventually, when custom seem to have died down for the day, Varazda turned over the shop to Hanem, sent Remi to play with Maia’s children, and he and Dami went to the Baths of Soukos. Varazda showed off in the water, and Dami swam workmanlike laps and then got out of the pool and did his usual exercise, which was quite enjoyable to watch.
“I wish you could come with me to the embassy tonight,” Varazda said as they walked home in the early evening.
Dami slipped his hand into Varazda’s and gave him a gentle smile. “I’ve enjoyed spending the day with you.”
Varazda bumped his shoulder lightly against Dami’s. “So have I.”
“I thought I might go out and get my dinner at a restaurant, then take a walk. Where do you recommend?”
“Tono’s place, at the sign of the olive tree in Ironmongers’ Street, is excellent,” said Varazda. “And near the agora, which is a nice place to walk at dusk. I can give you directions.”
“Perfect.” Dami leaned over and gave him a brief, casual kiss, his lips soft and warm against Varazda’s.
“I might not be home until late,” Varazda said regretfully.
“I’ll be fine. I trust Remi to keep me safe from the goose.”
All the same, Varazda hoped he might be able to slip out of the embassy party early. But as it turned out, the thing ran even later than he had anticipated, and it was late enough by the time Varazda could get away that Shorab offered him a couch to spend the rest of the night, and insisted on arranging an escort for him when he was determined to return home. Varazda walked home listening to the embassy guard, a big Pseuchaian man, chat vacuously about politics, and found the house dark and silent. He dragged himself upstairs and fell into bed without changing his clothes.
His first engagement on Market Day was in the afternoon, and he was dancing with a troupe and needed to rehearse with them in the morning, so he could not afford to sleep late. He crept downstairs to the kitchen, half-dressed and with tangled hair and smeary makeup from the night before, hoping to sneak out to the yard and wash before anyone else woke. Instead, he found Dami at the table, drizzling honey on a bowl of porridge that he had made himself.
“Terza’s head. Do you need a drink? Or, uh, raw egg? Pickle juice?”
Varazda gave him an arch growl. “I am not hung over, First Spear. I never drink when I’m dancing.”
“Sorry,” said Dami very cutely. “Do you want some porridge?”
“I do. As soon as I’ve washed.”
He splashed water on his face, scrubbed off his eye makeup, and ran wet hands through his hair until he felt almost presentable. There was a second bowl of porridge steaming on the table with a spoon beside it when he returned to the kitchen.
“This is the sort of thing I should be doing for you,” Varazda complained as he slid onto the bench opposite Dami. “I am supposed to be the host here.”
“I’m not going to be recommending this establishment to any of my friends, it’s true. Too many frying-pan attacks, and you have to make your own breakfast.” Dami shook his head.
Varazda pulled the spoon out of the honey pot and watched the golden liquid slide off onto his porridge. He realized he felt very happy.
Market Day was a long day, especially coming on the heels of a late night. Varazda had to rehearse, dance in the afternoon, and then present himself at Lykanos Lykandros’s mansion not only fit to dance to his usual standard (in case he needed to get invited back) but also alert enough to gather information on Lykanos. The dancing went well, the merchant’s guests were duly impressed, and Varazda learned absolutely nothing of any use. He was beginning to wonder if this was because there was nothing of any use to be learned.
The third day was Xereus’s Day, and the Saffron Alley household had a longstanding tradition of hosting friends for dinner on Xereus’s Day. Varazda had forgotten to mention it to Dami, not thinking he would have made other plans, but he had; he had already accepted an invitation from Chereia, whom he had met in the market the previous day. Yazata, apparently, had told Dami that Varazda would be busy Xereus’s night.
“You’d better go,” said Varazda gloomily. They were standing in the hall by his front door. He leaned back against the wall, feeling defeated. “Yazata must have made a mistake.”
“I’m sure that’s what it was,” Dami said, in a toneless voice that must have served him well in the army, for instance when relaying orders that he knew to be ridiculous. Something caught his attention, and he looked sharply at the row of pegs on the wall by the door. “By any chance, did you move my sword?”
“No.”
“It was hanging there, wasn’t it?”
Varazda moved the cloaks that were hanging on the pegs and looked under them.
“Yazata must have … ” Varazda started.
“Tidied,” Dami finished for him quickly. “It’s quite all right. I only wear it out of habit. And I’m sure it will turn up.”
“I’m sure it will.”
They looked at one another. Varazda wasn’t sure whether he wanted to laugh or cry, and from Dami’s expression, he was feeling much the same way.
Dami sighed and ran a hand through his hair. “Look, I’ve no desire to come between you and your family—if he truly can’t live with me—“
; “You’ll go back to Pheme. I know. Do not say ‘I’m afraid I’m ruining your family’—I can see it in your eyes that you are a moment away from saying it. Do not.”
“I—But I—” He looked as though the effort not to say it would physically break him.
“Damiskos. I have held my family together through worse than this. And I will do it again if I have to.”
After a moment, as if with a great effort, Dami gave one of his curt nods. “If I can’t live here,” he said slowly, “there are other ways … I won’t go back to Pheme and stay there just because Yazata doesn’t like me. We’ll work it out.”
That was incredibly comforting. Varazda leaned in and kissed him. “Thank you,” he said. “We will.”
“Perhaps, at the moment, we could discuss strategy?”
“Mm. Could we arrange to have you save Yazata’s life somehow?”
“Defend him from the murder goose, maybe?”
“No, Selene likes him. He claims to have trained her not to shit in the house—which I don’t believe, because everyone who’s ever kept a goose tells me it isn’t possible, but it is a fact that she doesn’t shit in the house.”
“Fascinating. Not germane, but fascinating.”
“You could … ” A genuine idea occurred to Varazda. “You could make yourself useful around the house in some way.”
“I’d love to. I can wash dishes. I can help cook.”
“Dishes, yes. Cooking, no. Yaza likes cooking—that’s his domain, and he guards it jealously.”
“Yes, of course. I ought to have realized that’s why you don’t know how to boil water.”
“Exactly.”
“There must be something else I can do. Does he grow any vegetables? I know something about gardening. Of course it’s another one of those things I can’t really do with my bad leg—too much kneeling. But that gardener at the park was saying you can plant rosemary in jars, like strawberries, which I didn’t know, and I could manage that. You could make quite a nice garden that way, actually. And vines and trees, of course, would be manageable.”
