by A. J. Demas
“So the thing with the shit … ” He rolled over onto his back and passed a hand over his eyes, laughing ruefully. “Terza, it’s almost too perfect, isn’t it? The absurdity of it. Ino has this inheritance that her parents won’t let her touch unless she marries, and they picked me for the honour of going to Kargania with her and getting rich selling fertilizer, in order to—as they imagine—restore the fortunes of her parents and mine.”
“Can they do that? Keep her from touching her inheritance like that.”
“I suppose so. She would need her father’s permission to inherit.”
“In Boukos, she wouldn’t. I wonder what the law is in the colony where the will was made.”
“Hah. I never thought about that. I assumed the law would be the same as in Pheme, but you’re right—it could be different. They’re doing things differently in the colonies, especially since Tios declared its independence.”
“That’s what I was thinking. Though it may not matter—she’s here, and so … ” He shrugged. “I don’t know which law applies.”
“Neither do I.” Damiskos rolled onto his side again. “I’m sorry—to be here with you, finally, and talking about all this … But it’s been so hard to work out where my duty lies in all of this. Or whether ‘duty’ is even the right word. I wish I’d had you by my side through it all. But in a way I did—if that makes sense.”
“Mm. I think so, but tell me.”
Damiskos smiled. “You’ve taught me so much about love. I don’t think I would have understood, before you, that saying ‘yes’ to my parents over this—sacrificing my happiness for something that wouldn’t really be good for any of us—might be dutiful, but it wouldn’t be loving. You taught me about happiness, too. You make me actually believe in it.”
Varazda smiled back at him in the dark. “So … you said no?”
Damiskos felt cold. Had he not actually said that? “Repeatedly.”
“I would have understood, if you had felt you had to say ‘yes.’ Your family has to come first.”
“I still don’t know what’s best to do for them.”
“I wasn’t finished,” said Varazda gently. “I would have understood, but I would have fought for you. They may be your family, but they’re not mine. And they don’t deserve you.”
He spoke with that silky ferocity that was so much a part of him, and all Damiskos could say in response was, “I want to live the rest of my life with you.”
“I’d like you to,” said Varazda simply. “I love you. It may be true that I knew about love before I met you, and I knew how to find happiness and hang onto it. But you—you open me up, like the sun opens up a flower. I love you so much.”
It hung in the dark between them, the simplicity of it. They both wanted the same thing.
After a long moment, Damiskos rolled over onto Varazda, bracing himself on his forearms, letting just enough of his weight settle onto Varazda’s slender body.
“I want,” Damiskos whispered, “to spend all night getting you off. If it’s all right with you.”
Varazda shivered slightly. “It’s not going to take all night, First Spear.”
Varazda fell asleep in the middle of a fairly incoherent sentence about how he was not going to fall asleep, and Damiskos lay looking at him in the moonlight that filtered through the shutters. He was sleeping with his face mashed into the pillow, his hair strewn over his back. Damiskos pulled the covers up over them because the room was cold.
It was almost like being back in their own bed in Boukos. Almost. But that bed was there, waiting for them, in the haven of Varazda’s home.
He rolled over to lie on his back, linking his fingers behind his head and listening to Varazda’s quiet breathing.
Maybe—the thought popped into his head from nowhere—they could adopt another child. That could be nice. When Remi was a little older, after Ariston and Kallisto moved out, or whatever they were going to do, and there’d be extra room in the house …
He remembered that he still stood accused of murdering Helenos, and there were four days until his trial.
They had talked over dinner, Varazda and Aradne telling Damiskos everything they had learned in their investigation.
Right. So Eurydemos was the obvious suspect. He’d written a letter inviting Helenos back to Pheme, full of fulsome rhetoric about citizens of the Ideal Republic and vague promises that he could get the charges against Helenos dismissed using his great influence. He had lied to Varazda about the letter’s existence, and anyway didn’t seem to have much influence left, in Pheme or anywhere. He’d brought the bottle of wine that Helenos had been drinking when he died.
But the bottle of wine didn’t seem to have been poisoned. Helenos’s neighbour had finished it off and suffered no ill effects.
Helenos’s neighbour had to be considered a plausible suspect himself, and it was too bad, as Aradne had reported, that she hadn’t been able to carry off her fortune teller act long enough to ask him if he had any powdered thorn-flower on hand to complete a spell, which had been her plan.
There was also this rather thin story about the pickle-seller, and a possibly unreliable witness who said he’d seen a courtesan visiting Helenos in the evening.
Damiskos thought about the state Helenos had been in that day when they met in the street. Stinking and unwashed, drunkenly flirting with Damiskos with an air of mocking self-disgust. It was by no means implausible that he had killed himself. Poison was perhaps an odd way to do it, but the fact that it was a poison used judicially in Boukos was suggestive. It seemed like something that a philosopher at the end of his rope might very well do.
It would be hard to convince Varazda of this. For one thing, Varazda seemed very determined to find a murderer to offer to the judge in place of Damiskos. And Zashians never really understood about suicide, that for Pseuchaians it wasn’t always a choice of sordid desperation, but could be a dignified exit, the last way to do the honourable thing. If Helenos had killed himself, even in such a strange and inconvenient way, Damiskos was inclined to think he had finally done something decent.
He thought again about how Helenos had behaved when they met in the Skalina. How unexpected, and yet how fitting …
Damiskos turned on his side and shook Varazda’s shoulder gently. “Varazda, I’ve just remembered something.”
Varazda stirred and peered up from the pillow, and Damiskos immediately felt like an idiot.
“Mmm?”
“Oh, uh. Sorry. It’s nothing.”
“Hm?”
It wasn’t nothing—it might even have been important—but Damiskos couldn’t think about it at that moment. Varazda had rolled onto his back, sweeping his hair out of his face and stretching under the covers with a sound that was somewhere between a sigh and a purr.
“Did I fall asleep? I wasn’t going to fall asleep. I left you unsatisfied.” Once he would have said that with some kind of defensive anger that masked real embarrassment. Now it was very nearly a joke.
Damiskos leaned over and kissed him, long and deep. “You could never leave me satisfied,” he murmured against, Varazda’s lips, “because there is no such thing as enough of you.”
Varazda gave a gratified little snort.
“Mind you,” Damiskos added, drawing away slightly, “there probably is such a thing as too much of me.”
Varazda responded by hooking a leg around Damiskos and tugging him over again so that their hips met. He gave a little slither against Damiskos, sleepily uncoordinated—for him—and half-aroused.
Still Damiskos hesitated, wondering if he should offer to let Varazda go back to sleep.
“I’m all right, actually,” Damiskos admitted. “I took myself in hand, after you fell asleep.”
“Mmm. I’m sorry to have missed that.” His hips made a tight, irresistable undulation, and Damiskos was instantly hard again. “Didn’t do a very good job, though, did you?”
“I—” He stopped when Varazda put his fingers to his lips.
>
“Don’t start. Apologizing for your virility, or whatever you were going to do.”
“What if I say I wasn’t going to do that?”
Varazda leaned his forehead against Damiskos’s. “Then I’d say we’re making progress.” He slid his knee between Damiskos’s thighs and nudged. “Sit up.”
“Mm?”
“Up. That direction. Good job.”
Varazda had slithered off the bed, pulling some of the covers with him, and took a moment arranging himself on his knees on the floor, tucking the blanket under him and wrapping it around his shoulders, so that he looked quite cosy down there. Damiskos looked at him for a moment. The cold air of the room felt bracing against his hot skin. He pushed back the remaining blanket and slid himself over to sit on the edge of the bed.
“Be gentle with yourself, all right?” he said, his voice rough with a mixture of desire and affection.
Varazda nodded. His hands moved up Damiskos’s thighs, fingertips stroking and teasing the curls of hair. Damiskos leaned back on his hands and let Varazda spread his legs wider, cup his balls, his thumbs moving over the sensitive skin. He let his head fall back, eyes closed, and groaned as Varazda’s tongue flicked over his skin and Varazda’s fingers curled around the base of his cock.
The room was utterly silent around them, and Varazda was the only source of warmth. Damiskos hauled one hand off the bed, shifting his weight onto the other, and plunged his fingers into Varazda’s silky hair.
Varazda looked up at him, his eyes black in the moonlight, his lips swollen and red. Damiskos couldn’t suppress a thread of anxiety, willing Varazda to keep within his limits. But he did, licking and touching with a cautious assurance.
Damiskos felt as if he were offering himself like a gift: his sex and his pleasure, entirely at Varazda’s disposal. It was like some astronomical pattern, he thought dreamily: his pleasure sliding into Varazda’s, which circled back on itself, and around and around like a dance of planets. And now the blanket around Varazda’s shoulders had fallen away and parted in the middle as Varazda reached down to touch himself. Damiskos watched that, Varazda’s right hand sliding between his white thighs, while his left was wrapped around Damiskos’s cock and his mouth on the tip had become softer, clumsily hungry.
Damiskos held on only a few moments longer before he reached down to cup Varazda’s jaw and gently tip his head back. Varazda let himself be held there, open-mouthed and ecstatic, while they both came.
When the spell was broken, Varazda began to giggle.
“Oh, Terza!” Damiskos let go of him.
“I’m a mess,” Varazda observed happily.
“You are—I’m sorry.”
“No, you’re not.”
Damiskos took Varazda’s face in his hands and leaned down to kiss him softly. He thought of the first time he had kissed Varazda, on the beach at Laothalia, how tense Varazda had been, how much he had allowed himself to surrender since then.
“I love you,” he whispered.
“I love you too,” said Varazda.
Chapter 14
“Why did you wake me last night, anyway?” Varazda asked as he was fastening the ties of his trousers. “There was something you wanted to tell me, wasn’t there?”
“Oh.” Dami sat amid the bedclothes, still naked and rumpled, and at least part of the reason Varazda put his question now was to keep him from getting up and dressing and composing himself for the day. “I remembered something Helenos said. He mentioned seeing someone else, Giontes, as if Giontes was connected in his mind with me. Was he one of the students from the summer?”
Varazda nodded. “The tall one. He was released along with Helenos, because there wasn’t enough evidence to try him.”
“So he’d also be in hiding if he was in Pheme. Damn.”
“Quite. But we could try to track him down.” Varazda pulled the shirt over his head and tugged out his hair. “You’re thinking he might have been in a position to forge the letter from Eurydemos.”
Dami shrugged. “It’s a possibility, right?”
“It would certainly be worth looking into.”
“What do you think of the, er, eccentric neighbours as suspects?” Dami pushed the covers aside and swung his legs out of bed. The room was bright with sunlight, and Varazda spent a moment enjoying the view.
“Right,” he said, businesslike again as Dami reached for his tunic. “It has occurred to me that if Cosmo was the one who poisoned the wine in the cup, he would have known very well that the wine in the bottle was safe to drink.”
“That’s true.”
“The trouble is, having met him, I’m inclined to think he’s just a confused angry person, who would have been more likely to drink the wine because he didn’t think it through than because he knew it was safe. If you follow me.”
“Sort of? You’re saying he’s too obvious a suspect, so you don’t think he did it.”
“Well, something like that.”
Damiskos sighed. “You’re probably right. Honestly, I think Helenos probably killed himself.”
“That shit? He didn’t have the decency. I think we were meant to think he killed himself—drinking alone out of a single, poisoned cup, just like a philosopher probably would do—and that it was the murderer’s bad luck you were around to be suspected, because if you hadn’t been, the thing might not have been investigated at all.”
“You mean if I hadn’t been around, you wouldn’t have got involved.”
“Exactly.”
They finished dressing—even with his head-start, Varazda took a lot longer to finish than Dami, who lay back on the bed in his clothes and watched with a smile on his lips. Then Varazda broached another subject that had been on his mind and that he thought ought to be discussed privately rather than in front of Aradne and Nione.
“Dami, your brother, Timiskos. How … how are things between the two of you?”
“Eh?” Dami looked surprised. “I don’t know. Good, I suppose. He’s ten years younger than I, so we were never close in that way, but I’ve always tried to look out for him.”
“I remember what that was like,” Varazda said, smiling as he put in his earrings. “From the other side, I mean. I had several much older brothers, when I was a boy.”
“Yeah?”
He turned to see Dami giving him a curiously soft look, and he realized it was because he never talked about his childhood.
“Four of them. I’ll tell you about them sometime. What I remember, which isn’t a lot.” Right now he wanted to talk about Timiskos. “It was different for me, though. I wasn’t illegitimate—I was the son of my father’s favourite wife, who was younger than my eldest brother.”
“Timiskos isn’t illegitimate,” Dami said after a moment, when it must have been clear to him that Varazda wasn’t going to say any more. He pushed himself up to sitting again and ran a hand through his hair. “He’s my father’s legitimate son by his second marriage.”
Varazda took a moment trying to think that through. If Dami had been born ten years before Timiskos, and the woman their father was married to now was the one who had given birth to Dami—and it was hard to believe, given how alike they looked, that she wasn’t—then …
“So,” he said finally, “are you the illegitimate one?”
“No! No, look, it’s very simple. My father has been married three times, twice to my mother.”
“What?”
“My parents were married before I was born—well before, thank you—and when I was eight, they divorced. It was because my father wanted to marry his much younger mistress—or I think more because her parents wanted him to marry her. So my mother and I went to live in a house that he bought us, and he was paying our expenses, so we didn’t have to go back to her family. They lived on their estate in the middle of nowhere, and Mother wanted me to be able to go to a good school and all that. At this point my father was … well, he wasn’t really rich, he’d already had to sell the villa, but he thought he was r
ich and that he could afford this.
“He couldn’t, of course. This was the point where he started dabbling in real estate and haemorrhaging money because he has no idea how to do business. He was on the brink of bankruptcy, no longer on good terms with his second wife, and he decided he had to choose only one woman to support. So he divorced Timiskos’s mother—Timi was two at the time—and remarried my mother. Sold the big city house he inherited from his parents and moved in with us. Timiskos came to live with us a couple of months later, because his mother’s family wouldn’t let her keep him.”
“I see.”
“Look, if you’re thinking ‘that’s ridiculous,’ yes. It’s ridiculous. And if you’re thinking it’s hard on Timiskos, yes, that too. He’s not the bastard, and my mother has always treated him as her own son, but … she wasn’t all that interested in raising another child when he came along. So, as I say, I’ve always tried to look out for him. As far as I could. Why were you asking about Timiskos in the first place?”
“Oh, just wondering.” He weighed for a moment whether to go on. “You know he told me to come to your parents’ apartment the other day when their advocate was there.”
“Yes. That was an accident. Father was out but came back unexpectedly with Olympios.”
“I see,” said Varazda. “I didn’t realize that.”
Dami sighed. “I think it was an accident. He doesn’t dislike you, but I think he’s … confused by us?”
Varazda nodded. “Right. He thinks you should want all this other stuff that your parents and Ino’s parents are trying to dangle in front of you—the marriage and the Karganian business and the political career—and he doesn’t understand why you’re not interested.”
“Exactly. Divine Terza, the political career, though—I’d forgotten that was part of the plan.” He shuddered. “Can you imagine me as a politician?”
