by A. J. Demas
“Do you want to plant some jars of rosemary in our yard?”
As soon as it was out of his mouth, he realized it was an absurd thing to say. Dami wasn’t settling in for good; it didn’t make sense for him to plant things in their garden.
“Sure,” said Dami easily. “If you have any idea where I could get jars big enough. And, you know, you have to plant it in the spring.”
“Right.”
“Beets and turnips you can plant in the fall, though. Yazata might like to have some of those growing in the garden. Or perhaps he does already? I, uh, didn’t see any in the yard, but I haven’t looked around much—just some quick goose reconnaissance.”
“Come look at it now. I’ll defend you from Selene.”
He led the way back through the house to the doors, which already stood open. Dami looked out into the yard.
“It’s a little sad.”
The yard was a long strip of land behind the two houses and the music shop, badly cobbled in places, packed earth and patchy grass in others. On Yazata and Ariston’s side an area was fenced off for the chickens, with a muddy pond for Selene. Remi was in there now, scattering grain. She waved furiously at Dami, dropping half the grain in her excitement.
Along the back wall, which screened them from their neighbours’ yards, a couple of blocks of inferior marble, with preliminary chisel-marks, stood on wooden trestles. Cast-off tools from Ariston’s master were jumbled up under the workbench and across the yard.
“None of us has the least idea about planting things,” said Varazda. “We had almost no useful skills when we were freed. Palace eunuchs—what could you expect? Yazata set himself to learning to cook and keep house. But agriculture was beyond even him.”
“Horticulture,” Dami corrected him. “That’s what you call it when it’s a garden.”
“You see what I mean.” Varazda headed for the chicken enclosure to rescue the rest of the grain from Remi. “I think they’ve had enough, sweetheart.”
“You could do a lot with this yard, though,” Dami said, following him, careful to keep the gate between himself and Selene. “It gets good sunlight, even with the high wall on that side—and the wall would be good for training vines. What’s that, under the tarp?” He pointed to the far corner where the music shop met the neighbours’ wall.
“Clay. Belongs to Ariston. I don’t know where he got it or what he plans to do with it.”
“Have you thought about putting in an ornamental pool?”
“Uh. No?”
Dami gestured, walking down the middle of the yard. “Yes, you could put something in right here. Tiled, you know, in Zashian style. The goose would like it.”
“Are you thinking of trying to win her over by making her a pond?”
“You don’t think it would work?”
They spent some time discussing what Dami thought they could do with the yard, until Remi lost patience and insisted Dami come play with her, stamping into the house and returning with a jointed wooden doll which she thrust into his hands.
“You have to be a giant,” she told him firmly. “And I am a centimaur.”
Varazda retreated into the house, leaving Dami to his fate. Yazata was in the sitting room, darning a hole in one of Ariston’s tunics with ferocious concentration, the needle clenched in his big fingers. Varazda stood in the doorway looking in at him. He wondered if Dami knew how to sew. It was possible; perhaps Phemian soldiers needed to be able to repair their own clothes on campaign, just as they apparently needed to be able to cook their own dinners.
“Yazata,” Varazda said, “did you happen to see Damiskos’s sword? It was hanging up by the front door.”
Yazata looked up with that resolute expression and nodded once.
“It’s just that it’s not there any more.”
“No.”
“Did you, in fact, hide it?”
Yazata drew a deep breath and nodded again.
“Yaza, what is going on? Why are you doing this?”
Yazata glanced past Varazda at the kitchen, obviously making sure they were not overheard. “I’m worried about you,” he said finally. “I think you are getting in over your head.”
Varazda took a moment to consider what that could mean. It wasn’t particularly flattering. “I don’t want you to worry about me,” he said carefully, “but as for ‘getting in over my head,’ perhaps I can better be the judge of that?”
“I know how it seems to you. You go out in the world while I stay at home, you know the customs, and of course you have your sense of duty. But I have my own knowledge of people, and I know you. You are very strong, but you are not invulnerable. When you came back from Pheme, you had been so badly hurt. I don’t mean your arm—”
“You mean my nerves, I know. I was in a state. But Yaza, when you say, ‘my sense of duty’—”
Remi, in the character of a centaur, came pelting into the kitchen, whinnying and shrieking with laughter. Dami came stamping in after her, giving leisurely chase.
“You won’t get away!” he called.
“Yes, I think the weather will continue fine,” Yazata said loudly. “But if you’ll pardon me, I have work to do.”
“Oh for the love of … ” Varazda turned away from the doorway, rolling his eyes.
Remi barrelled into his legs, and he scooped her up and tossed her in the air, to her surprise and delight.
“Papa, are you going to play with us too?”
He wanted to hug her and bury his face in her soft hair, but instead he set her down with a flourish and said, “I am, and you’ll never get away from me!”
If only the same could be said of everyone in the household.
Chapter 12
Dami’s invitation to Chereia and Marzana’s was for an hour earlier than dinner in Saffron Alley, so Varazda walked with Dami part of the way to the sea wall.
“This is where we part ways,” Varazda said when they reached the agora. “I’ve an errand to run in this direction.” He nodded across the agora to the south. “You’ll be able to find your way?”
“Of course,” said Dami, with an amused smile. “It’s not that big a city.”
Varazda remembered one of the hand signals Dami had taught him on their night reconnaissance in Nione’s villa. He held up a hand with forefinger and thumb pinched together. Message received. Dami laughed and leaned in to kiss him on the cheek.
When Varazda knocked at the door between the swan reliefs, it was opened by Leto again. Her hair was pinned up this time, her makeup half done; she seemed to make a specialty of answering the door in a state of deshabille.
She gave Varazda an irritated look before turning to call into the house: “Mistress, that Sasian woman is here again—dressed as a man. Do you want me to get rid of her?”
Kallisto emerged from a door halfway down the hall. “Of course not. Varazda, come in. Leto, will you bring us wine?”
Leto tossed her head and wandered off toward the back of the house.
“Come in,” said Kallisto warmly to Varazda. “I’ve been hoping you would come back, my dear. I see you’ve left your man at home today.”
“Today he can fend for himself,” said Varazda, returning her smile.
“I love your coat,” Kallisto said, reaching out to finger the fabric of his sleeve as he came inside. “I have often wanted a coat like that.”
She led him into a private sitting-room, elegant and unfussy in its decor, where she offered him a seat and brought out a plate of biscuits without further troubling Leto. Her manner was very warm but not at all flirtatious. On the surface, it might have made Varazda’s job here easier. In fact, it made him wary.
Leto returned with the wine, and Kallisto met her in the doorway. Instead of handing over the bottle, Leto beckoned her mistress into the hall and pulled the door closed.
“I hope you know what you’re doing with that,” Varazda heard Leto say from behind the closed door. He wondered if she thought she was speaking quietly enough not t
o be heard, or just didn’t care.
“Excuse me?” said Kallisto.
“I said I hope you know what you’re doing. It won’t be good for business if it gets out that you entertain women.”
Kallisto gave a contemptuous snort. “It won’t be good for business if anyone finds out you were seeing that young man who was executed.”
“Do you have to keep mentioning him all the time? He was just a friend.”
“You’re not still keeping company with the others, are you? The group of them.”
“How could I be, when they’ve all been exiled?” She made a disgusted noise. “Honestly. If you wanted to keep me from choosing my own friends, you should never have freed me, should you?”
Nothing more was said, and Varazda could only assume that in the ensuing silence, Kallisto snatched the bottle of wine from her servant, who was gone by the time the door reopened.
“I beg your pardon,” she said to Varazda as she resumed her seat. She looked genuinely embarrassed.
“Not at all.”
She poured wine for each of them. “Ariston is well?” she said. “I haven’t seen him since the Asteria. I hope he hasn’t suffered any lasting harm from that episode. It was such a mess.”
“It was,” Varazda agreed. “But he is fine. I don’t think he suffered anything worse than embarrassment.”
“Oh. Oh good. I hoped you hadn’t come to give me bad news of him. You must tell him to come visit me soon. Will you? Of course, as his sister—”
“I am not Ariston’s sister.”
Kallisto smiled. “I know you and he are not related by blood—he has told me that—but you are his sister, aren’t you?”
Varazda gave her a long look. “Why,” he asked finally, “are you pretending not to know what I am?”
She widened her eyes at him innocently. “What you are?”
“You’re Zashian, Kallisto. You know ‘Varazda’ is a man’s name.”
“I know you’re not a man.”
“You know that doesn’t make me a woman. And I’m very sure Ariston has never called me his sister.”
She laughed, a little like a cat purring. “You might well be a woman. Who am I to judge? I have known women whom all the world called men. I thought you might be one. But I see that’s not what you are. All right, you win. Ariston calls you his brother, and I am Zashian. How did you know?”
There had been several clues, but he chose one. “You have a tiny scar, just here.” He touched the side of his own nose where he wore the little flower-shaped stud. “I don’t think a girl born in Boukos would have had her nose pierced.”
“I shouldn’t have thought that a person named Varazda from the Deshan Coast—by the look of you—would either.” She shrugged her broad shoulders. “But I see so many things in my work that nothing surprises me any more.”
He smiled, letting it reach his eyes this time. “I am delighted to hear it.”
He wanted to know, but did not want to ask, exactly what kind of person she had thought he might be. Was there a name for these women whom the world called men? He had known boy brides in Zash, who had given up their status as men when they married their husbands—but they didn’t have anything like that in Boukos. And it wasn’t quite what he was, anyway. He had never, to his knowledge, met anyone whose understanding of how they fit into the categories of male and female was as slippery as his own.
“So,” she said. “What do you want with me, then?”
He recalled himself to the matter at hand. “Your client Lykanos Lykandros … ”
“I never told you that was his name.” She paused, then winced. “Not until just now, I suppose.”
He kindly let that pass without comment. “Do you think that he knows you’re Zashian?”
She gave that a moment’s thought, eyebrows raised. “Yes,” she said decisively. “Yes, he does.”
“Is that unusual? You don’t advertise the fact, do you?”
She shook her head. “I grew up in Boukos, or nearly. I was twelve when I was brought here—a slave, in one of the bigger Pigeon Street houses. That was, as you will have guessed, before the trade agreement. There were very few Zashians in Boukos in those days. My quaint ways, my thick accent, they served me well enough while I was in Pigeon Street, but as I saved money to buy my freedom, I began to see that if I wanted to rise in my profession, I would do well not to seem like a foreigner. It would limit my appeal. So I changed my name and worked hard to lose my accent.”
She paused. “But you were not asking for my whole history. You want to know whether I keep a secret of it. I don’t these days, not as much as I used to. I don’t need to, since the embassy came to Boukos. Themi knows my origins, because he asked once about my past. Lykanos … ” She smiled slowly, privately amused. “Oh yes, with him it was because he wanted me to dress up once. He’d bought this dreadful gown at the market, with doves on it. I told him it would be ridiculous for me to wear it because where I’m from, doves are for a young, marriageable girl. He asked where that was, and I told him.”
“How did he react?”
“Embarrassment, mostly. And he seemed surprised. He’s brought it up a few times since—silly things, you know. ‘I didn’t think Sasians bathed,’ and ‘But you speak Pseuchaian so well.’” She rolled her eyes. “All quite sincere. I don’t think he’s much accustomed to thinking of anyone’s feelings but his own.”
“Quite,” said Varazda, who knew the type well.
“Why do you ask?”
Varazda leaned back in his chair, recrossing his legs and smoothing out the skirt of his coat.
“About Lykanos. I’ve met him. I danced at a party at his house. He didn’t seem to me to be a man who hates Zashians, though I can believe what you say of his ignorance. I got the usual comments, ‘I thought you would be fatter,’ and so on. But I’ve heard that he has been involved in something more troubling. Do you remember the riot in the Month of Grapes?”
Her eyebrows went up. “You mean that business when the Sasian embassy was burned? I heard about it of course, but no more than that. You’re not, surely, saying that Lykanos had anything to do with that?”
“It would trouble you if he did?”
“Well … ” She had to give that some thought. “No, I suppose not, really. I wouldn’t fear for my own safety, if that’s what you’re thinking. But he is a valuable client. I’d be sorry to have to give him up.”
“Of course. I haven’t heard that he was directly involved in the riot, but he may have approved of it, because he helped some of the culprits escape from justice.”
“I thought they’d never caught the men who did it.”
“I’ve a friend in the public watch who says they did.” It was strictly true, though that was not where his own information came from. “But they weren’t able to prosecute.” He shrugged as if naturally he did not know more about it than that.
She frowned. “I see. And Lykanos is supposed to have had something to do with that.”
“That is what they say. What do you make of it?”
She gave him a long, thoughtful look. “I might ask what your own interest is in the matter.”
“You might, and I might say that I’m wondering whether to accept any more invitations to dance at his house.”
“You might,” Kallisto agreed. “And I might think there was more to it than that. But then, I might choose not to ask. I should say, from what I know of Lykanos, that if he’s exerting himself in any matter, it’s because money is involved. He tells me often how well his business is doing. Apparently he has some lucrative thing going on involving safflower.” She shrugged.
“Is he generous with you?” Varazda asked.
“Generous enough. He’s not a miser. Before you ask, though, the reason I’m not exclusive with him is because I don’t like him very much. And I do like Themi. I’ll miss him when he enters political life.”
Varazda nodded sympathetically. “What are his views, by the way?”
> “He favours the Sasian alliance, in general, and he’s not a radical, but he has sympathy for the abolitionists.”
“Really? You should tell Ariston. He said he doesn’t know what Themistokles’s views are, and he was afraid he might not like them.”
She winced slightly. “I try not to talk to Ariston about Themi. I don’t want him to feel jealous.”
Varazda didn’t really know what to say to this. Here they were far outside his field, and he felt it. He should know more about this now, shouldn’t he? After all, he was in love himself. Probably.
“I’m sure that’s wise,” he said evasively.
She looked at him thoughtfully for a moment. “Does he talk about me much?” she asked suddenly.
“Who—Ariston?” Ugh, that was amateurish. “Well. He’s mentioned you, but not by name—not until, you know, the other night, with the misunderstanding.”
“The misunderstanding, yes. He tried to protect me, didn’t he. It’s rather touching.”
“I’m sure.”
“He is a very nice boy. I don’t want him to get hurt. You would tell me, I hope, if you thought he might be hurt by our acquaintance?”
Varazda thought about that for a moment. “No,” he said finally. “No, I don’t think I would.”
“No?” Kallisto looked curious rather than offended.
“I don’t have enough experience of that … side of life … to advise anyone, much less to go to work behind anyone’s back.”
“I see.”
“I do love Ariston like a brother, though, and I would defend him by any means from anyone who had hurt him.”
She gave her purring laugh again. “I am glad to hear it.” After a moment she added, in a different tone which Varazda could not interpret, “I like him very much.”
She leaned forward to refill Varazda’s cup.
“This business about ‘What I did to Themistokles,’” he said.
She looked wary again. “Yes?”
“Pardon me for returning to it. Was it normal for Lykanos to want details about what you’d done to some other man?” He needed her to confirm for him that Lykanos was the man Ariston had heard her with.
