by A. J. Demas
“He is,” muttered Chariton furiously. “He’s going to stab himself or—poison himself—in front of my court. I’ll—I’ll defile his corpse.”
“I think,” said Lysandros soothingly, “you don’t have to worry about that. I think he’s of the opinion that suicide is a good option for people who aren’t him.”
Damiskos had to press a fist to his lips to keep from laughing.
In the end, the advocate Eulios rallied enough to shut Eurydemos up definitively, in the middle of posing the riddle that Lysandros had predicted.
“Wisdom,” Lysandros whispered, cocking an eyebrow. “That’s the answer. No, I don’t know what it’s supposed to mean, either.”
“It was very good of you to come,” said Chariton, looking weak with relief, “but I do not think there was much in his testimony—if you can call it that—that needs to be refuted. Nor that you could discredit him much more than he has already done himself.”
Lysandros nodded, with his wolfish smile. “You probably don’t need more than one philosopher testifying at your trial. I might get up there and start blathering about slavery, myself.”
“Slavery?” said Damiskos.
“I’m a radical. I want to see slavery abolished.”
“Oh, good for you.” He was about to ask some question, or perhaps share some anecdote about the household of freed slaves in which he had lived for the past month, before he remembered that he was still on trial for murder.
“It’s our turn to present evidence,” said Chariton. “And, as you may recall, that means it’s your turn to speak.”
“Oh,” said Damiskos, who had forgotten. “Oh, right.”
He had been standing still for so long that his leg was incredibly stiff, and he had to lean heavily on his cane as he walked out to the middle of the dais.
“Uh, hello,” he said, looking at the jurors on their benches. “I’m Damiskos Philiades. Well, you know that, I suppose.”
Divine Terza, he was going to sound like he was trying to win them over with a display of folksy likeableness. He had to pull himself together.
“I want to, er, to thank Master Chariton for all the kind things he said about me—and Eulios, you said kind things as well, though I do understand that was strategic—and Chariton, thanks for what you said about Varazda. He’s … he’s my whole life, and it’s nice to hear that other people have noticed what a good person he is. That’s—obviously not—I just wanted to say that.”
He cleared his throat. “On the afternoon of Xereus’s Day, the 18th of Eighth Month, I arrived in Pheme from Boukos. The crossing was uneventful, and we docked around the seventh hour. I had made the trip in order to see my family and to transact some business preparatory to relocating permanently to Boukos. My first objective was to secure possession of my horse, who had been stabled on the Tetrina but had recently been moved to a location outside the city in Thumia. Accordingly I proceeded to Thumia, taking a route which led me through the neighbourhood of the Skalina Hill … ”
Varazda crouched behind the wood pile in the sandal-maker’s yard, trying to rewrap his mantle quickly and discreetly. He had stayed on the roof of the house long enough to hear the sound of footsteps going up the stairs inside, and catch a glimpse of a plaid cloak through the window, then he’d descended to the yard. He wasn’t exactly trapped—there was no back gate, but he could get over the wall if he had to, or slip out through the shop while Phaia was upstairs—but getting himself off the property was not the main problem here.
He looked down at the mantle, thinking it looked as sloppy as any philosopher’s. That gave him an idea.
He ran lightly across the yard, eased open the back door and crept across the deserted shop. He could hear Phaia moving around upstairs as he unbolted the front door and slipped out. He took off down the street.
In a few minutes he was back, forcing himself to walk as he approached the shop so that he would not appear out of breath, and knocked soundly on the door. He had to repeat the knock several times before the door opened a crack and a white face with familiar dark eyes peered out.
“The shop is closed. Tono is gone to visit his mother. Go a—” That was when she recognized him.
“Phaia?” he said.
She opened the door wide in order to stare scornfully at him. “You!”
“Pharastes,” he supplied.
“I remember!” she snarled. “You don’t think I’d forget you? You’re the snake who was spying for the Basileon, who seduced that soldier and ruined our plans. We could have restored the glory of Pheme if it hadn’t been for you.”
He’d had no idea she had such a high opinion of his achievements; it was honestly rather flattering.
“People change,” he said, looking at her levelly.
If he hadn’t known who would answer the door, he might not have recognized Phaia. Her black hair had been cut military-short and only just begun to grow out. Probably that was part of the regime at the convent, but it must have helped her impersonate the blonde Ruta by pulling up the hood of her plaid cloak. The short hair almost suited her.
“What do you want with me?” she demanded.
He raised his eyebrows. “I could want to return you to Choros Rock, couldn’t I? If I were still the snake you think me, if I still worked for the Basileon.”
“You don’t.” She looked sceptical.
“I’ve come to warn you. Eurydemos sent me.”
“He didn’t.” She frowned. “Did he?”
“Well, in a manner of speaking.” Varazda smiled, as if fondly. “He asked me to find you, but he had no idea where to look. That’s why it has taken me so long.”
“Why would Eurydemos ask you to find me?” But she was looking less sceptical now.
“He saw you come out of Helenos’s place, the day Helenos died. Oh, did you know Helenos was dead?” She said nothing, and he forged on. “Eurydemos wants me to warn you that you may be under suspicion. For murdering Helenos.”
She looked at him for a long moment, dark eyes narrowed. He could imagine what she was thinking. Eurydemos might well have been near Helenos’s lodging that evening; he had met with Helenos earlier in the day, and perhaps he’d come back, still hoping to persuade his wayward pupil to embrace his new teaching. And if he had seen her, and then found Helenos’s body, or learned of Helenos’s death, nothing was more likely than that he would try in some cockeyed and belated way to protect her, whether he thought she had done it or not. The only part that was unlikely …
“I know what you’re thinking,” said Varazda dryly. “Why should he send me? What am I even doing here, in Pheme? Dressed like this?” He spread his arms, displaying his sloppy mantle.
Phaia’s smile was slow and sly. “You and Eurydemos. He always did like you. So the soldier, he was just a means to an end?”
“I felt sure you would understand.”
She tossed back her head with a laugh, as if charmed. “Oh, you’ve no idea! Here.” She swung the door open and stepped back, waving him through. “You’d better come in.”
He entered the sandal-maker’s shop, looking around as if the place were new to him.
“The shopkeeper’s away,” Phaia explained, shutting the door behind him. “He’s renting me the upstairs room.”
“Eurydemos was surprised to see you in Pheme,” Varazda said. “He had sent his sister to Choros Rock with a gift for you only a few days earlier, and she said that she had delivered it to you. I suppose that wasn’t really you?”
Phaia laughed. “Of course not. We all look the same in those veils—that was what made it so easy to get away. I made a ‘friend,’ a barbarian whore, who offered to trade places with me when she heard my sad story.”
Varazda chuckled appreciatively. “We should have known that Choros Rock could not hold you.”
“You should have. Tell me—what did Eurydemos see?”
“What there was to see, which wasn’t much, I suppose. He guessed that you were visiting Helenos for purely
… er, sentimental reasons.”
“He what?” Phaia looked angry.
“Well, he knew that there was something between you and Helenos. He assumed that Helenos would have been behind your escape from Choros Rock, but I said I thought you could have done that on your own.”
Phaia gave him a long, considering look. “You were right,” she said. “Come upstairs and help me pack my things. I am going to heed my old master’s advice, one last time, and leave the city.”
“Good,” he said. “I think that’s wisest.”
He followed her up the stairs. There were two ways he could see this going. She might have more sense than to let herself be goaded into boasting that she had killed Helenos all by herself—but that was only the easier option.
In the upstairs apartment, Phaia began gathering things up from the chair and table. She took the oilskin bag over to the bed and began rummaging through it, with her back to Varazda. She looked over her shoulder. “Pass me those cups on the table, will you? Help me finish off this bottle that I have here—it’s too little to take, and too good to waste.”
He plucked a pair of dirty cups from the table and handed them over. She turned her back on him again to fill them.
“It’s an awful place, Choros Rock,” she said. “Full of small-minded, religious women, atoning for things that they imagine they have done wrong. I have never liked the company of other women.” She turned with the full cups in her hands and walked over to where Varazda sat. She set both cups back on the table and picked up a discarded cloth from the floor. “Eurydemos must have known that it wouldn’t suit me.”
He looked at the two cups, which had been placed side-by-side. He wondered if this was exactly how she had done it with Helenos. He picked up the cup nearest him and cradled it.
“He said that he thought it was a waste for you to be imprisoned in such a place, as if you were just like other women.”
She nodded with a smile of satisfaction. She picked up the other cup and pretended to drink; her lips weren’t even wet when she set it down. He pretended not to notice.
“So, Helenos is dead?” she said, as if she’d just remembered that she wasn’t supposed to know this.
“He didn’t escape justice after all.”
“Justice?” she repeated, surprised. “Yes … I suppose it was justice, wasn’t it.”
She turned to take a scroll down from the windowsill. When she turned back, Varazda had emptied his cup, all except for a dark sludge in the bottom.
“Delicious,” he said, lowering it from his lips.
Phaia picked up her own cup, smiling, then fumbled it, letting it slip through her fingers to shatter on the floor. Its contents splashed out.
“How clumsy of me,” she remarked. “And that’s the last of the bottle. Ah, well. How did he die?”
“Helenos? Suicide. I suppose you might have had something to do with that.”
“What?” She whirled to look at him sharply.
“Well, you obviously didn’t patch things up with him when you met—you didn’t even seem concerned to hear that he’s dead—so I suppose you must have quarrelled. Perhaps that’s what drove him to it.”
She tossed her head with a laugh. “Helenos didn’t have the courage to kill himself, and he certainly wouldn’t have done it over me. He liked having me at his side—and in his bed, though he was never able to think of anything exciting to do with me when he had me there—because it gave him status. Eurydemos’s brilliant girl student. Everyone wanted me, and he had me—but he didn’t care about me. I never thought he did. I just thought he cared about our cause.”
“Your cause,” Varazda repeated slowly. “The one where you wanted Pheme to go to war with Zash again?”
She took a step toward him, looking up into his face, fiery-eyed. “We could destroy you.”
He looked back at her, eyebrows raised. “I’m a citizen of Boukos.”
“You’re a poison,” she hissed. “An infection. You don’t belong among Pseuchaians.” She glanced down, with a flicker of satisfaction, at the cup he was still holding. “You deserve the same fate that Helenos met. If only the gods would allow me to bring it down on Eurydemos too.”
“Oh? What fate did Helenos meet?”
“I killed him!” she said impatiently. “I told him we would drink together, from the bottle that our former master had brought him—drink to the glory of Pheme and the ruin of the Ideal Republic. I poured the wine and watched him drink. I watched him die, too. It didn’t take long.”
The silence that followed was broken by the sound of liquid dripping onto the floor. Phaia looked sharply over at the chair with its red leather cushion, which had briefly disguised the wine that Varazda had poured out onto it, and that was now dripping down through the wicker.
“You—didn’t drink.”
“No, I didn’t.”
She flew at him, with no clear plan except maybe to sink her teeth into him. He dodged, keeping hold of the wine-cup with its telltale residue of poison. He circled around to the stairs and ran down a few steps before vaulting over the railing into the shop below.
She pounded after him, grabbed an awl from the sandal-maker’s workbench, and lunged again. He twisted away, causing the point of the awl to catch in the folds of his mantle. He jerked at the fabric, and the whole thing fell off him and pitched her forward. She shrieked. He caught her, pinning her arms to her sides. That was when the door opened, and three of the guards from the armoury down the street burst in.
The speeches in Damiskos’s defence were finally finished. There had been a lot of them, some very eloquent; one of Damiskos’s former standard-bearers had a gift for storytelling, and gave a long, suspenseful account of a battle in which Damiskos had distinguished himself. It didn’t have an awful lot to do with the case, but the jury and the audience seemed to enjoy it. Big Tio talked nervously about his pickle-seller theory, and several other men from the Skalina spoke, saying that they’d seen Damiskos leave Big Tio’s house very shortly after he had entered it, that Helenos had provoked Damiskos in the street with some rude remarks, and that the conflict between the two had not looked serious.
Finally Nione walked up to the dais from the women’s seats, to gasps and murmuring from the assembly, and said a lot of very nice things that Damiskos found hard to listen to.
The court official began to pronounce the solemn formula calling on the jurors to cast their votes, and a commotion from the door of the room interrupted him.
Damiskos looked up. He remembered Varazda walking out of Nione’s house to tell Helenos that he didn’t have hostages any more.
And there he was, marching into the courtroom, looking tired and triumphant, without his mantle, his hair falling down, carrying a wine-cup in one hand and something silver in the other. Behind him came several armed guards, escorting a short-haired woman whom Damiskos recognized after a moment.
“He did it!” said Chariton with wonder. “He did, didn’t he?”
“Well,” said Lysandros, with a gleam in his eye, “this is exciting.”
It became much more exciting in a moment, when Phaia tried to bolt past the guards, who failed to catch her. But someone stepped out of the women’s section at the back of the court and seized her around the waist. It was Aradne. She lifted Phaia off her feet as she hauled her back up the aisle, shrieking and clawing. Several more guards jogged down to assist, and Aradne turned her prisoner over to them, but not before pausing to look Phaia in the face and say something to her. Damiskos was too far away to hear what it was, but from Aradne’s expression, it was not hard to get a general idea.
Chapter 20
Varazda’s testimony was brief and (deliberately, Damiskos thought) undramatic. He explained that he had sought out Phaia because he remembered her owning a flask matching the stopper that had been found with Helenos’s body, and he knew that she had once been Helenos’s mistress and bore him a grudge. He recounted how, when he arrived on her doorstep, she had invited him
in and then tried to poison him using the same technique she’d used on Helenos, eventually going so far as to boast about how she had done it. Damiskos could tell there was a lot he was leaving out.
As businesslike as Varazda tried to make his account, it was still some time before the court settled down enough for the magistrate to finish pronouncing the address to the jury. By that time their unanimous vote of Not Guilty probably felt like an anti-climax to much of the assembly. To Damiskos it felt like the lifting of a weight that had started to feel familiar. It wasn’t that he’d thought he would be found guilty, exactly; he just somehow hadn’t believed that the trial would ever be over.
And it wasn’t—at least, not for the court officials, who had to deal with the new charge being brought by Kontios Diophoros against Phaia, who was shouting at Eurydemos that she wished she had killed him too. Eulios the advocate descended on Varazda, making sure to secure his testimony for the new prosecution. Damiskos and his supporters were rather unceremoniously told that they were free to go.
“Congratulations,” said Lysandros, shaking Damiskos’s hand. “Glad you didn’t need my help after all!”
“Don’t go,” said Chariton to the philosopher. “I want to talk to you. Damiskos, congratulations.”
“No, I—it’s all your doing. Thank you. From the bottom of my heart. I wouldn’t have expected a murder trial to be so … so … Well, listening to you and the others say such nice things about me—” He felt like a fool now, saying this. Of course Chariton had said all those things, but he’d had to. He had been trying to convince the jury that Damiskos was innocent. “I know you had to defend my character, but you didn’t have to say what you did about Varazda. My parents’ advocate didn’t want him mentioned at all. So … thank you.”
Chariton nodded. “It was an honour,” he said. Then he gave Damiskos a brief, dignified hug.
Damiskos looked for his family, but couldn’t see them in the crowd. He saw Aradne and Nione working their way up toward the dais, but his former standard-bearer had come up to congratulate him, so he waved to them with a smile.
