Page 1 of Sword Dance

Chapter 1

The last leg of the journey down to the villa would indeed have been easier on a mule. The man at the inn that morning had said so. If he hadn’t followed that up with a frown and a little up-and-down flick of the eyes, and if he hadn’t said, “You might find it easier, sir,” with the emphasis in just the wrong place—just a little too sympathetic—Damiskos might have listened to him and left his horse behind.

Instead, as the sun began to set over the water, he was descending the steep track toward the coast on foot, limping badly, and leading Xanthe, who had refused some hours ago to proceed in any other way.

“This is embarrassing for both of us, you know,” Damiskos remarked, reaching up to pat the mare’s neck as they stopped for a break. “I hope you feel it as I do.”

Xanthe gave a shudder which might have been agreement.

Damiskos looked down the hill toward the villa that was his destination. It perched on a heavily terraced green promontory cantilevered out into the bay below, white walls gleaming pink in the fading light. It was a smallish, old-looking place, with nothing smart or fashionable about it. From here, you couldn’t see any sign of wharfs or boats or the factory that must be somewhere nearby.

It looked like the kind of place where you might be greeted by a bearded gentleman-farmer wearing a homespun mantle with no tunic, offering you a dish of salty cheese and a cup of his own wine, and congratulating himself on not being interested in your news from the city. But, as Damiskos knew, the current owner of the villa was about as different from that type as it was possible to be.

It was full night by the time he and Xanthe reached the front gate, though with a bright moon. He had stopped to eat the last of the bread and smoked sausage he had brought with him from the inn before making the last of the descent, and when the road levelled as it ran out onto the promontory, Xanthe condescended to let him ride again, so their arrival was dignified enough.

The gate was opened promptly; they had obviously been expecting him. The slaves made no comment on his lateness or his inappropriate mount. One took Xanthe to the stables, another carried off Damiskos’s saddlebags to the room where he would be staying, and a third told him that the mistress of the house and her other guests were in the summer dining-room if he wanted to join them after he had bathed.

“Thank you,” he said, and winced inwardly at how grim he sounded. “I’ll just wash quickly and see her directly.” He should have tried to feign enthusiasm at the prospect of other guests, but the truth was, his heart had plummeted as soon as he heard them mentioned.

The slave, a lanky boy with curly hair and a crisp, white tunic, trotted ahead of him through the yard and into the house. It was a warm night, and windows and doors stood open, the moonlight supplemented sparsely with lamps burning in brackets.

How many other guests? Damiskos wondered. The villa had no near neighbours, which meant anyone at dinner would presumably be staying the night, or longer. Had Themistos sent him here in the middle of a house party?

He realized he should have been prepared for the prospect. “Think of it as a working holiday,” his commanding officer had told him. “Less work and more holiday—fishing, hunting, country air, and good company—you could use it.” Damiskos disliked being told things like that, but he had kept his feelings to himself.

In the atrium, the slave boy was met by a woman, big and intimidatingly beautiful, in the plain dress of a household servant. Her skin was topaz-coloured, and she wore her hair in an exuberant cloud framing her broad, strong-featured face. She gave Damiskos an unimpressed look.

“Damiskos Temnon, I think? So you’ve arrived after all. Thought you might. We’ll put him in the yellow room, Niko,” she told the boy.

The yellow room was on the ground floor, off the atrium, and Damiskos tried not to assume that this was because the intimidating woman thought he couldn’t manage stairs. He shed his sword belt, changed his hobnailed boots for sandals, and unpacked a few items from his saddlebags before shoving the bags themselves to the back of the closet. Then he followed the waiting Niko to the bath. The woman—she must have been a steward or overseer—had disappeared.

The bath was an ancient, austere set of rooms to which a few modern comforts had been added. Damiskos bathed efficiently, towelled off, and emerged sooner than Niko had been expecting, to judge by the way the boy started and jumped to his feet. Damiskos gave him a smile that he meant to be reassuring. It probably just looked tired.

Niko led him out into a torchlit garden, the first sign of real luxury in the villa. Symmetrical paths were laid out between beds of flowers and herbs, black and white and rose-coloured gravel twinkling in the torchlight as though sprinkled with gold dust. In the middle of a large square pool, water trickled from a fountain beneath bronze figures of female dancers, delicate and enigmatic in the darkness. The summer dining room was set into a vine-covered arbour on the far side of the walled enclosure of the garden. Light and laughter spilled out like honey from a comb. It was full of people.

For a moment Damiskos felt a strong desire to turn around and simply leave. Mutter an excuse to the slaves, retrieve his horse and his belongings, make camp somewhere at the base of the mountain trail, and be on his way back to Pheme in the morning.

He had emergency rations and a hunting bow in his pack, and plenty of experience sleeping out of doors. He’d actually made a move to reach out to the boy on the path ahead of him, to alert him to his intention, before it struck him how insane all of this would sound if he tried to explain it to anyone. To Themistos, for instance, when he arrived back in Pheme to report on the success of his journey.

Actually, I didn’t even meet with her. I arrived there all right, but she was entertaining a lot of other guests, and they were drinking and having a good time, so I turned around and came home. And what would Nione herself say if she found out he had been here and turned around without seeing her?

Instead, he let himself be led up to the glowing dining room full of people, still limping worse than usual, wishing he’d taken the time to comb his hair with something other than his fingers and to put on a better tunic.

“Damiskos Temnon of the Quartermaster’s Office,” the boy announced, into a lull in the talk and laughter among the couches.

“Damiskos!” said a sweetly warm voice from the far side of the dining room. “I had almost given up on you for the night.”

Damiskos looked across at his host. He had not seen her in more than ten years, and she looked older, as must he too, but he would have known her anywhere. Of course, most people in Pheme might recognize her, if not from seeing her officiate at a ceremony then from her portrait in the Civil Palace. Nione Kukara, retired Maiden of the Sacred Loom: she looked the part, even three years after leaving the Maidens, in a country villa surrounded by worldly guests.

She wore her hair uncovered now, its dozens of braids swept up into a knot on top of her head. Her gown was demure and pale blue, her only jewellery a necklace of large white pearls, gleaming against her richly dark brown skin. She was tall and thin, striking without being beautiful, poised between youth and middle age. She had been not only a sacred Maiden but the chosen Speaker of the Maidens, representative of the goddess Anaxe, the only woman invited to speak before the Citizens’ Assembly. She retained an air of simple holiness imparted by two decades in the most sacred temple of Pheme. In some ways her house suited her very well.

Damiskos wondered how he looked to her. Older, broken-down, with new scars and a new defeat in his eyes. And of course the lame leg.

He waited tensely for the pity to appear on her face, but she kept it well hidden. She had always been better at sparing others’ feelings than guarding her own vulnerabilities. Damiskos spoke some words of apology, which were waved away with a gentle smile, and in a moment he found himself on the vacant end of a couch, a wine-cup being filled for him.

“And what brings Damiskos Temnon of the Quartermaster’s Office to Laothalia?” one of the guests asked. Damiskos could not see the speaker past the woman who was serving him.

“Business,” Nione answered for him. “Which of course will keep until tomorrow. And old ties of friendship. Damiskos served in the Honour Guard at the Maidens’ House when he was a youth.”