by A. J. Demas
“Then I saw what he did last night, and I realized I had no reason to be afraid for you. I—you see—I had spoken to Maia about it, and of course I could not tell her exactly what I feared, because she cannot know about your work, but I told her that I was afraid the man you were bringing here would not be good for you. Of course she thought she knew what I meant by that.”
“Someone like Stamos,” Varazda supplied.
Yazata nodded. “I told her he didn’t seem so bad, but she said they don’t, at first. They charm you, and then they reveal their true nature.” He shuddered again. “My first master was like that. I remember how he was with the women and children … ” He trailed off, because this was a story he had no need to rehearse for Varazda. “Well, last night when I saw Damiskos in the street, I thought I had seen his true nature, and it was nothing like what I had imagined.”
“I’m so glad, Yazata. I’m so very glad.”
“And you are truly in love with him?” He asked it not with reluctance but with an almost childlike wonder.
“I … I don’t know. Do you think that’s something I’m even capable of?”
“Do I think … Varazda, I think you are the most loving person I know.”
“Don’t be absurd.”
“I am not being absurd. Look at how you keep bringing people into your household. First it was me: ‘Yazata,’ you said, ‘you should come live with me. I’ll work, and you can keep house.’ Just as if that was the sort of thing that friends do for one another all the time. Then, ‘Young Tash has nowhere to go, he should move in with us.’ I took some convincing, as you will recall. Then Remi was going to be taken in by that horrible family, and you said, ‘Yazata, I think we could raise a child. Don’t you think so?’ You had to convince me again, and every day I thank God that you did. So you see, it’s entirely like you to want to take in a lame soldier and add a room to the house for him so he doesn’t have to climb stairs. And if you get something from him that you’ve always wanted and never got to have, well, you deserve it.”
“How do you know that I’ve always wanted … ”
Yazata shrugged uncomfortably. “It—it always seemed obvious to me. You like men.”
“Mm. I hadn’t thought it was obvious.”
“I’m sorry—I really was so convinced that you were courting him for the sake of your job, you know. What a terrible fool I have been. And now … ”
“And now?”
“He’s left.”
“He’s what?”
“There’s—there’s a note.” Yazata hauled himself up from the table to fetch a tablet which was lying on the workbench. “He left it on the table. Tash had already gone, or I would have asked him to read it. I … I’m so sorry.”
He put the tablet gingerly down on the table in front of Varazda, who looked at it in cold incomprehension for a moment. Then he began to laugh.
“What?” Yazata demanded, alarmed.
“It’s Bread Day. There’s some religious observance. He’s gone to the shrine of Terza. That’s all.” He rested his head in his hands. “Holy angels, Yazata, you nearly stopped my heart for a moment there.”
“You mean—he’s not gone? He’s—he’s coming back?” Yazata stared at the tablet as if he thought the words might suddenly become plain to him. “You’re sure?”
“I think if he’d meant, ‘I’m going to the shrine and then I’m off home to Pheme, thanks for last night,’ that’s what he would have written. He’s a pretty straightforward man.”
Yazata groaned. “I have been thrice a fool—one hundred times a fool! What can I do to make amends?”
“You’ve already done it. All that stuff about me being the most loving person you know … If you’re happy for me, if I haven’t made your life intolerable … ” Tears were sliding down his cheeks. “I love you so much, Yazata.”
“And I love you! Never doubt it.”
“I know,” said Varazda, wiping his eyes. “I know.” After a moment he added, dryly, “There are one or two things you could apologize to Damiskos for.”
“Hello, can I come in?” called Maia’s voice from the front door.
“Maia!” Yazata bustled off to the hall. “Are you all right? I saw the terrible scene last night. He didn’t come back, did he?”
Maia joined them in the kitchen. “No, he didn’t come back. Thanks to your friend. Is he here? Your friend. I wanted to tell him—how grateful I am.”
“He’s gone to do his devotions at the temple of Terza,” Yazata explained importantly. “I have been telling Varazda how sorry I am for believing the worst of him.”
Maia winced. “I’m the one who should apologize, Pharastes. I’m afraid I put ideas into Iasta’s head.”
“Nonsense,” said Yazata stoutly. “It was no one’s fault but my own.”
“No, I can’t let you say that.” Maia turned to Varazda. For a moment she seemed distracted by what he was wearing. Varazda realized he was still in Dami’s unbelted, oversized tunic. “I, uh. I imagined he was someone like Stamos—I told Iasta he should do whatever he could to get rid of him, for your sake. And then—and then he was the one who got rid of Stamos, and I’m so very grateful, I can’t tell you. So you see I’m terribly sorry. Can you forgive me?”
“Of course. My dears, of course I forgive both of you. You were trying to look out for me.”
Yazata gathered them both into an embrace, and Varazda had just finished kissing him on the cheek when the front door opened again and Dami came in.
He wasn’t alone. A woman followed him in whom Varazda recognized after a moment as Kallisto’s servant Leto. It was the first time he had seen her fully coifed and ready to go out.
“Hello,” said Dami, leaning his cane in the corner by the door. “You got my note?”
“Yes,” said Varazda, disentangling himself from Maia and Yazata, who were both looking at Dami with expressions so overflowing with pathos that after a moment Dami noticed and began to look alarmed. None of them was quite dry-eyed, but only Varazda had obvious tear-tracks down his face. He rubbed them away hastily.
“I met Leto coming up the street,” Dami explained awkwardly. To her he said, “I assume you’re looking for Ariston.”
Leto gave the group in the kitchen a smile so half-hearted it was more like a sneer. “No.”
“Who’s Ariston?” said Maia.
“Tash,” Yazata explained. “He is calling himself Ariston now.”
“Oh, I didn’t know that.”
“It’s not him I want to see,” said Leto impatiently. “It’s—” She flicked her fingers in Varazda’s direction. “—that one.”
Dami gave her a hard look, which she didn’t notice.
“Come inside then,” said Varazda unenthusiastically, gesturing toward the sitting room.
Yazata bustled Maia off to his side of the house, and Leto came in, scanning the rooms as she passed through them with unconcealed—and unsympathetic—curiosity. Varazda beckoned to Dami, who was standing sternly in the hall as if awaiting orders. He proceeded smartly into the kitchen.
“How was your, uh, your religious thing?” Varazda asked, when Leto had gone through into the sitting room.
Dami answered distractedly. “It was—The shrine is beautiful—Are you all right? You’ve been … Have you been … ” He trailed off, paralyzed, as his instinct to be considerate warred with his instinct to be blunt.
“Crying?” Varazda suggested. “Mm. Not in a bad way, but—I might start again if I try to talk about it now. I’ll tell you later.” Tipping his head toward the sitting room, he said in Zashian, “This is about work.”
Dami nodded curtly. “I’ll make myself scarce.”
“No, you can come hear what she has to say—I’d like you to. I’m not going to keep secrets from you.” After a moment he revised, “Any more. I’m not going to keep secrets from you any more. Though to be fair this is less a secret and more something that I haven’t wanted to be bothered to talk about.”
; “I see,” said Dami. “Lead the way.”
Chapter 15
“The other day,” Leto said to Varazda, as she sat perched primly on the edge of a divan, “you said that you thought Lykanos Lykandros might be jealous of Themistokles.”
“I did say that. You weren’t in the room at the time.”
“No, I was listening at the door,” she said, as if he was being very stupid and she was being very forbearing. “The thing is, you’re right. He’s wild with jealousy.”
“Really.”
“Oh yes. Not just over Kallisto, but because of the sculpting, too. He used to be a sculptor, you know, but he gave it up—I guess he wasn’t very good. But he’d do anything to be revenged on Themi.”
“Interesting,” said Varazda. It was interesting, but not in the way she presumably hoped. She was managing to tell him things he had already guessed in a way that made him not believe her. He wondered why that was. “Specifically, what might he do?”
“I don’t know, but he’s going to do it tonight at the Palace of Letters.”
“How do you know that?”
“He told me so.”
Varazda looked at her, and her cheeks flushed scarlet as she evidently realized what she had just confessed.
“Don’t tell Kallisto,” she snapped, a plea that sounded like an attempt at an order.
“Don’t tell Kallisto … ?”
“All right. Look. He comes to me, not the other way around. He likes variety, you know? I have different ways of doing … things … ” She took obvious pleasure in making Varazda uncomfortable with that. “And sometimes he likes that. So sometimes he tells me things, all right? And he told me that he’s going to do something to Themistokles on the night of the dedication at the Palace of Letters. That’s all I know.”
“Why are you telling us, though?”
She looked at him as if she couldn’t believe his stupidity. “So you can stop it?”
“You’re fond of Themistokles, then?”
“Th—him?” She looked genuinely stumped for a moment. “I’m not fond of him, no. But Kallisto is, and he’s her main client and everything. Of course I don’t want him to get killed or whatever.”
Varazda nodded. “Right.”
“So,” she said, gathering up her skirt, “that’s all. I thought I ought to tell you.”
There were various other questions Varazda thought he could have asked if he had believed any of this, but he had no interest in watching Leto tie herself into knots coming up with unconvincing answers.
“I see,” he said instead. “Thank you. I will show you out.”
He returned to the sitting room after closing the door behind her.
“That was odd,” said Dami mildly.
“Quite odd, yes.” Varazda ran a hand through his hair. He didn’t want to think about this now. It seemed the least important thing in the world. He gathered himself together. It wasn’t the least important thing—it was his job, and he was proud of doing it. “There is some context which I should explain.”
“Oh,” said Dami quickly, “no. You don’t need to.”
“No, I do. It’s related to things you already know, anyway. It’s past time I filled you in on all of this.”
He sat on the divan next to Dami.
“This has something to do with what happened in Laothalia?” Dami guessed.
Varazda nodded. “Do you know the outcome of the trials here?”
Dami looked at the ceiling. “Gelon was tried for murder, for killing Aristokles, and executed. Phaia was sentenced to Choros Rock for her part in it. Those were the only charges we heard about in Pheme. I assumed some of the others had been quietly exiled.”
Varazda nodded again. “The Boukossians who had a part in the riot and burning the embassy were sent into exile without a public trial. Some ministers in the Basileon were upset about that, but there’s a strong feeling we need to keep any of this from coming to the attention of the Zashian court.”
“I can see how there would be. What about Helenos? He was the ringleader. Was he charged with anything?”
“No,” said Varazda bitterly. “Helenos is Phemian. He couldn’t be convincingly tied to the murder of Aristokles or to the riot in Boukos—he was obviously very careful there—so we had nothing to charge him with. He was going to be sent back to Pheme under guard to be charged in the business at Nione’s villa—he and a few of the others—but someone paid off a clerk to lose a crucial letter, and they were released.”
Dami drew a breath. “Damn. That’s bad luck.”
“The money to pay the clerk seems to have come, in a roundabout way, from Lykanos Lykandros.”
“Kallisto’s man. The one who likes to be choked while hearing about Themistokles?”
“That one. He of course denies having anything to do with it—not that he’s been formally accused—and it’s possible, plausible even, that the thing was planned by someone who works for him, and he really doesn’t know anything about it. There’s no obvious candidate, though, so I’ve been investigating Lykanos himself. I danced at his house and asked some discreet questions. He’s not a die-hard anti-Zashian. He doesn’t consort with philosophers. He seems pretty harmless. I was just coming to the conclusion that if he did pay to have Helenos escape, it wasn’t to do with politics at all. Maybe he was doing a favour for Helenos’s mother, who’s an old flame of his. I don’t know. And it really doesn’t matter, if it was something like that. I mean it doesn’t matter to the Basileon or to the Zashian embassy. Nione is owed reparations for what happened at her villa, and that shouldn’t have been thwarted, but … ” He made a hopeless gesture.
“I get it,” said Dami. “Not really the mission objective. But now, something about all this has made you suspicious again?”
“I don’t know,” said Varazda with a frown. “I think it’s just a coincidence that he’s turned up in all of this, but it’s given me a new perspective on him. I went to see Kallisto yesterday.”
“Did you?”
“She’s Zashian, you know.”
“Is she really?”
“She is. I had to work that out on my own, though I suspect Ariston knows. I think they bonded over their shared history. I wanted to know if she’d seen any indication that Lykanos was anti-Zashian, and she hadn’t. But she did give me an interesting piece of information about Themistokles. He’s a progressive—favours the Zashian alliance, up to a point, thinks possibly slavery might be abolished, someday maybe.”
“Hah. So … now we have this very thin story about Lykanos intending harm to Themistokles because he’s jealous of him.”
“It might all be nothing,” said Varazda. “Lykanos just happened to do a favour for an anti-Zashian philosopher, and he just happens to have a personal grudge against a vaguely pro-Zashian sculptor with political aspirations.”
“Or there could be a connection.”
“A view that I incline to, honestly. I just wish I knew what Leto was trying to accomplish by coming here and telling us her story.”
“Maybe she has a grudge against Lykanos herself.”
“Oh, I hadn’t thought of that. I was thinking of her as being on his side, because of the … you know, because they’re … ”
“Fucking,” Dami supplied. “She’s obviously a bit disloyal in general. I’d be surprised if she was on anyone’s side but her own.”
“Well,” said Varazda, getting to his feet, “are you up for another walk? Because it looks like I’m on my way to Themistokles’s studio to warn him, or—I don’t know—hear his side of this story.”
“Of course,” said Dami, holding out a hand so Varazda could help him up. “I’ll come. But—first, do you think you could tell me what happened before I got here that made you … er … ”
“Oh, that made me cry.” He’d almost forgotten that he had.
“Or at least,” Dami hurried on, “tell me that it didn’t have anything to do with last night.”
“Last night? You mean … ? H
oly angels, Dami, last night was so good. I loved every moment of it.”
“Oh, that’s—that’s—”
“You are so good to me. Don’t tell me you’ve been sitting here worrying that I have regrets about last night.”
“I—I won’t tell you that.”
Varazda gave a slight whimper. “What happened this morning was that Yazata admitted—what I’d already begun to suspect—that he thought I was sleeping with you for work.”
Dami reared back with a look of shock, putting his hand over his mouth. “He—what?” he said when he took it away. “Varazda, are you serious? He thought that you were—that you—”
“I’ve never had to do that, never been asked to do anything like that,” Varazda assured him quickly.
“Yes. Yes, I remember.” Dami sounded a little calmer. “You told me that.”
“Yazata knows that too. But when I told him that you and I pretended to be a couple at Laothalia, he heard something different, and when I said you were coming to stay … ” Varazda shrugged, spreading his hands. “He knew I was still working on something connected with the events on Pheme.”
“He thought I was an assignment.” Dami looked sick. “Divine Terza, I’m sorry. I’m lucky he didn’t try poisoning my labash. He must—he must trust you quite a lot, actually. If he was willing to accept that you knew what you were doing, to the extent that he did.”
“Without asking me about it?” Varazda rolled his eyes. “I’m not sure I want that kind of trust.” He looked down at his hands. “But yes. He does trust me. And he and Ariston were both worried about me. When I came back from Laothalia … ” He’d so profoundly wanted to avoid talking about this before, but he found that was no longer the case. “It was lucky, in a way, that I was injured. It gave me an excuse to cancel plans and go out as little as possible. I’ve hardly left the house in the last month, before you came. I couldn’t sleep at first—I jumped at sudden sounds. Didn’t dance at all for two weeks, which—imagine if you could go for two weeks without breathing, how you would feel by the end of it. And then imagine if the reason you hadn’t been breathing was because you just didn’t feel like it. That’s what it’s like.”
