Strong Wine

by A. J. Demas

  “Yes? What?” The speaker sounded old and female, and as if she might have been trying to peer through the keyhole of the door.

  “Good day, mother. They told me downstairs I should speak to you.” Varazda tamped down his Zashian accent and let his voice return to its natural pitch, thinking it might make him sound less alarming. “Are you the one they call Ora?”

  “What’s it to you?”

  “I want to ask you what you know about the young man on this floor who was killed this past week.”

  “Have they caught him yet?”

  “Caught who?”

  “The murderer! Thug with a sword. I saw him with my own eyes.”

  Varazda gave the door a sour look. “No murderer has been caught yet. That is why I’ve come to speak to you.”

  “Big Tio told me they’d caught him! I knew he was lying to me. I’m not opening this door if he’s not been caught. I already told those other boys everything, why do you need to come around too?”

  “I am acting on behalf of another party in the case,” said Varazda, hoping that the legal-sounding language would impress her. It evidently didn’t, because she snorted. He added quickly, “Did you see a bearded man with long grey hair come upstairs on that day?”

  Ora was silent for some time, and when when she spoke, her voice had become fractionally more friendly, although the door remained firmly closed. “Of course. Nobody comes up here without my knowing about it. He was here in the morning, early. Chatting away with Hilaros, or whatever his name was, on the way up the stairs. And he had a bottle of wine. First thing in the morning, and he had a bottle of wine. Mind you, Hilaros, or whatever his name was, was drunk more often than not.”

  “Was he drunk then, do you think?”

  Again she gave the question some thought. “No,” she said decisively. “Not drunk, and not looking like he’d just rolled out of bed, either. Like he’d tried to spruce himself up a bit.”

  She was actually quite a good witness, Varazda thought, in spite of her unwillingness to open the door. It was too bad she would not be allowed to testify, being a woman.

  “Thank you,” he said, “this is very helpful. Do you know whether there was a woman, later that day, who came to see Helenos?”

  “Eh? Yes, there was. How’d you know about that? It must have been, oh, nearly dusk. I’d my door closed that time—after that thug came up—but I looked out when I heard someone on the landing. It was one of them loose women from across the road. She knocked and knocked on his door, but I don’t know if she ever went in. Of course he was dead by that time, poor bastard, so he couldn’t have let her in.”

  “But you say she might have gone in, all the same. Did he habitually leave his door unlocked?”

  “Doesn’t have a lock,” she replied contemptuously. She added hastily, “Mine does!”

  “That must be a comfort. I understand you found Helenos’s body.”

  “I did.” She said that very quickly, and she sounded defensive. He wondered what that meant.

  “How did that come about?”

  “None of your business. The door was open.”

  “In the morning? But if—”

  “It was open. I saw him on the floor, and I’ve seen dead men before. I went and told Big Tio, there’s a dead man in the room next to mine, he was killed by a thug with a sword yesterday afternoon, get someone to come take him away.”

  There was much about this that did not make sense, but Varazda judged from her tone that it was time for the interview to end.

  “And you leave Old Cosmo alone,” she added, her tone sharpening again. “He’s stone-deaf and mad as a fish pie. He’ll tell you nothing at all.”

  “Thank you,” said Varazda. “I can tell that you are a very keen observer, and I am most grateful for your help.”

  He bent to slip a silver nummos under the door and heard her hiss of surprise when she saw it, then nothing further. He couldn’t tell if she had even picked the coin up.

  He looked at the two remaining doors on the landing. One had a chalk sketch of an eye surrounded by flames and a number of unconnected Zashian characters scrawled on it. That would be Old Cosmo’s. Varazda crossed the landing and tried the third door.

  It opened easily onto an obviously empty room, the cold wind blowing in at the open shutters of the single small window. Varazda slipped inside and closed the door silently behind him.

  It was the second time he’d searched a room belonging to Helenos Kontiades. This room was very different from the bedroom in Nione’s villa that Helenos had shared with his acolyte Gelon. That had been strewn with the possessions of two men who had obviously moved in intending to stay. This room had been mostly cleared of Helenos’s personal effects, though there were still rumpled sheets on the bed and a couple of empty bottles in a corner.

  The cup with the residue of poison had been removed, and when Varazda sniffed at the discarded bottles, he smelled only strong, cheap wine. There was a fresh-looking, wine-coloured stain splashed across the floor. The murderer might have taken the bottle away with them, or the poison could have been put into the cup. Varazda looked for a second cup that might have suggested that Helenos and his murderer had drunk together, but there was none.

  In spite of the open window and the evidence that the floor had recently been washed, a slight sour smell lingered in the room. Nepharos’s Bell, unless administered very precisely, was not the kind of poison that put you to sleep gently, and Helenos’s death had probably been messy. If his next-door neighbour hadn’t been deaf, Helenos might have—well, probably not been saved, but at least not have died alone.

  Varazda went back out onto the landing and considered a moment whether to heed Ora’s directive not to bother Old Cosmo. He couldn’t see any good reason to do so. He tapped lightly at the third door, mostly for form’s sake.

  “What?” croaked a voice from inside.

  Ah. So “slightly hard of hearing” was what Ora had meant by “stone-deaf.” Varazda pushed the door open and looked in. The room was filled with a bizarre collection of things: dried herbs hanging from the ceiling, jars with labels in Glifian characters lined up on shelves, broken shards of pottery, carved figures in dark wood, bundles of rags. There were even, on the desk under the window, a couple of books, one of them unrolled and held open with a pair of nameless metal implements.

  The man sitting at the desk, with his back turned to Varazda, was small and thin and white-haired, his faded blue tunic hanging loose on his bony shoulders.

  Varazda coughed loudly, and the man turned, looking over his shoulder. He started, then quickly straightened up and gave Varazda a look of great, almost comical, dignity.

  Oh dear, Varazda thought. He’s been waiting for some emissary from the king for years, finally recognizing his brilliance and summoning him to the post of Grand High Court Madman or whatever it is—and he thinks I’m it.

  Varazda made only a slight bow, so as not to get Old Cosmo’s hopes up.

  “God guard your coming and your going,” he said automatically. “I am investigating the death of the young man who lived next door. Can you—”

  “What? Speak up!”

  “I beg your pardon. The young man next door, who died. Can you tell me anything about him?”

  The old man’s expression changed to outrage. Varazda had been half prepared for that, and quickly took a step backward. He hadn’t been prepared for Cosmo to surge up from his stool, shrieking something that might have been an incantation and brandishing one of his metal implements as if he would have hit Varazda in the head with it had he been tall enough.

  Varazda backed smartly out the door and collided with another small old person, steel-grey hair in a knot on top of her head, a heavy stone loom-weight in her fist. She would have succeeded in hitting him with it if she hadn’t been so astonished by his appearance that she froze.

  “Who in the name of Nepharos are you?” she shrilled.

  Varazda got to the head of the stairs, sec
uring his escape route, before he tried to reason with them. Old Cosmo was still shouting rhythmic nonsense.

  “We spoke a few minutes ago, mother—”

  “You!” Ora cried in astonishment. “I thought you were a woman.”

  “Can you—can you assure your friend that I mean him no harm?”

  “I don’t know that! What did you do to him? I told you to stay away from him.”

  Old Cosmo had disappeared back into his room, still ranting, and Ora had finally lowered the loom-weight.

  “I think your friend may know something about the crime,” Varazda forged on.

  “He knows nothing! Nothing!”

  That was not very convincing, and Varazda stood a moment longer at the head of the stairs giving her a look that told her he thought so. It was a moment that he regretted, because not only did she not soften in her determination, but Old Cosmo re-emerged from his room with a long brass pipe in his hand, put it to his lips, and blew.

  The pipe contained some kind of powder, which flew up in a cloud, perfectly aimed at Varazda’s face, stinging his eyes and half blinding him. He staggered and slid down most of one flight of stairs before he was able to right himself and limp down the rest of the way, holding onto the wall and wiping his streaming eyes on his sleeve.

  When he got to the ground floor, still barely able to see, his entourage seemed to have dispersed. The street—what he could see of it—was deserted. He remembered the fountain in the street below. He made his way sideways down the uneven stone steps, cursing under his breath, until he reached the pipe in the wall at the bottom. He gathered water in his cupped hands and splashed his face six or seven times, until his eyes felt better and his fingers were coming away streaked with black and green makeup. He scrubbed the rest off with his handkerchief and dried his face on his sleeve.

  He leaned a shoulder against a dry section of the wall and considered his options. Old Cosmo’s room looked like it might well repay a thorough search, but the old man also looked like he probably didn’t leave his room often, and even if he did, his protective neighbour would be watching out with her loom-weight in hand. Slipping in at night, while Cosmo was asleep, would be the only option, and that would mean searching the room in the dark without making enough noise to wake either Cosmo himself or Ora next door. It would be difficult to say the least.

  He also had to admit that he wasn’t entirely sure what he would be looking for. Remnants of thorn-flower? He didn’t know what it looked like or smelled like. Aradne probably knew, and perhaps she could tell him enough that he would be able to bring back samples for her to verify. He didn’t think he could bring her with him. Though perhaps she and Ora would get on. He wouldn’t be surprised.

  He looked up at a sound on the stairs, and saw a tall man with a scarred face coming down the steps. The scar sliced down the left side of his face, and his left eye was missing.

  “Waiting for someone, my boy?” the man asked with an oily leer, stopping on the steps a little above Varazda.

  This, Varazda thought, would be One-Eyed Dolon.

  “Because if you are,” One-Eyed Dolon went on without waiting for an answer, “you should know that this patch belongs to me, and I only let my girls work it.”

  Beautiful. Now I’m being taken for a prostitute.

  “I’m sure I don’t know what you mean,” Varazda said, laying on the Zashian accent thick again and opening his eyes wide. “But perhaps you can help me. I am looking for a friend. He said he was staying around here. Helenos Kontiades Diophoros?”

  The one-eyed man shrugged. “Never heard of him.”

  “He’s dark and thin, about—” About my age, Varazda had been about to say, but that would only confuse matters. “About thirty. He always wears one of those things that’s wrapped around. A mantle. He talks a lot.”

  “Beard?”

  “Yes,” Varazda hazarded. Helenos hadn’t worn a beard in the summer, but he might have grown one later. Phemians had such low standards when it came to beards, anyway—the least bit of hair on their chins apparently counted.

  “Yeah, I’ve seen him around. He’s dead.”

  “What?” Varazda didn’t really have the energy to act devastated, so he settled for a combination of annoyance and alarm, as if Helenos might have owed him money or promised him a favour.

  “Yeah, yeah, dead a week now. Killed himself, if you ask me.”

  “No! Please do not say so. Among my people, it is a great shame and a scandal to kill oneself. What makes you say that my friend did this?”

  Dolon cast a glance back up the stairs and gave a not-so-subtle signal to someone at the top before answering. Varazda had been tucking his coat back to show off Dami’s sword when he walked into the neighbourhood, but he realized now it had swung forward, concealing the sheathed blade. He looked like an easy target.

  “Always up and down, that one,” said Dolon. “One day he’s capering about telling everyone he’s had a letter from his old teacher, who’s going to fix everything up for him. Next, he’s drinking himself into a stupor and moaning to my girls about his lost ‘prospects.’ Day before he died, he’s all excited again, about meeting someone.” Dolon shrugged. “Speaking of meeting people—here’s a couple of my friends that you ought to meet.” He jerked a thumb at the two men descending the stairs above him.

  “No, thank you,” said Varazda.

  Reaching beneath his coat, he casually drew Dami’s sword and tapped One-Eyed Dolon lightly on the chest with its point. The two men on the stairs froze.

  “What in all the hells?” one of them muttered audibly.

  “It’s been lovely talking to you,” said Varazda.

  He backed away at a leisurely pace, sword extended, as Dolon stood rigid and staring. Before he reached the entrance to the narrow alley, Varazda turned, giving Dami’s sword a jaunty twist and sliding it back into its sheath with a flourish. He waited until he was well out of sight of the men to break into a jog.

  Chapter 10

  To tell the truth, Varazda did understand what Aradne meant when she said she had been too frightened to treat Nione as an ordinary mortal. He wouldn’t have said she seemed divine to him—it was true that he didn’t have a particularly good sense of what that would be like—but he’d always found her intimidating. One of the many things that had intrigued him about Damiskos from the beginning was the fact that he was genuinely friends with her.

  Varazda found himself sitting in the garden with Nione on the morning of Orante’s Day. He had been there by himself, kicking his heels because he couldn’t do anything until that afternoon, when she came out with a book. She looked at him for a moment, assessing, he thought, whether he wanted to be left alone or not. He didn’t, so he moved over on the bench where he was sitting, although it was not strictly necessary to make room for her.

  “You had a letter from home?” she said, indicating the tablet in his lap.

  “Yes. Everyone is well. My younger brother is debating whether or not to ask his lover to pose as a mermaid for his new sculptural commission.”

  “Oh,” said Nione. “That’s a delicate question, isn’t it? She might be flattered, but shy of having her image displayed publicly.”

  “I don’t think that’s the problem. It’s that the commission is for a public toilet.”

  “Oh dear,” said Nione. “He’s very young, Ariston, isn’t he?”

  He’d forgotten that Dami would have told her everyone’s name when he had written to her. He laughed. “Not young enough to excuse some of the things he does.”

  “Well, I hope you will be able to dissuade him from this one. After all, there will be other opportunities for him to carve her likeness. And how is your daughter? She must miss you.”

  They talked a little more, and he was reminded that she had been not only a priest but a public figure, almost like a politician, and if she wasn’t precisely easy to talk to, she was good at compensating for it. She also seemed much happier than she had at Laothalia in t
he summer. Well, that was to be expected.

  Aradne came out into the garden presently, kissed Nione lightly on the lips, and wanted to know what Varazda was doing sitting around.

  “I have nothing to do but sit around,” he said. “I can’t carry on with the investigation until this afternoon.”

  “Why don’t you go see Damiskos again?” Nione suggested.

  He winced. “I’m not brave enough to face his family.”

  “Were they so hostile?”

  “Well, no. They mostly kept themselves under control, but you knew it wouldn’t last. The threat of hostility was there.”

  Aradne was standing at the end of the bench, leaning against Nione, who had put an arm around her waist.

  “You could go,” said Nione, “to show them you’re not afraid of them.”

  “He just said he is afraid of them, though,” Aradne protested.

  Nione looked up at her. “Yes, but did you believe that?”

  “Well. No.”

  They both looked at Varazda.

  He laughed. “I’m not afraid of them—I’m afraid of their saying something about me, in front of Damiskos, that will hurt him.”

  “Oh,” said Aradne, chastened.

  “I think,” said Nione, “that you are afraid of giving them the opportunity to be themselves—which they’ve probably already taken behind your back. I’m sorry—I don’t mean to sound so harsh. I’ve never had a high opinion of Damiskos’s parents.”

  Varazda was silent for a moment. Finally he said slowly, “I’m afraid of their saying something about me that’s … true.”

  “Such as what?” said Aradne.

  With Eudoxia you could hold your head up in the agora …

  “That I’m not good for him. That he could live an easier life without me.”

  “But that’s—” Aradne sputtered. She threw up her hands.

  “Easier isn’t necessarily better,” said Nione.

  “Isn’t it?” Varazda shifted restlessly on the bench. “Wouldn’t it be better not to have to fight for every bit of happiness? No—” He ran a hand through his hair and managed a laugh. “I don’t know why I’m making this feeble argument. I know I am good for him—we’re good for each other. I just … ”