Page 18 of Sword Dance

That was true, wasn’t it?

Shahaz was in his mind again—naturally enough, since he had just been thinking of her. He found himself comparing his memory of her to Varazda, which was perhaps less natural. They were really nothing alike. Shahaz’s hair was lighter, a warm brown, her skin honey-hued, her cheeks soft, dimpling when she smiled. She had plump hands and wore subdued colours, as befit a modest girl of her class. Or she had, six years ago. She was probably—certainly—a married woman by now.

Perhaps her accent and Varazda’s were similar; it had been a long time, and he didn’t remember Shahaz’s accent clearly, though he did remember her singing voice. He wondered whether Varazda sang. Some eunuchs were trained to it—but of course Varazda was a dancer.

After that, it was perhaps not surprising that he had another bad night’s sleep. Voices from the atrium woke him some time before dawn. They sounded agitated, but he couldn’t identify the speakers. A man and a woman, he thought. Or at any rate a man and someone with a higher voice. A third voice growled something about “calming down” and “dealing with it.” Damiskos heard brisk footsteps receding toward the back of the house, and then silence.

* * *

Damiskos woke the following morning wondering how soon he could decently leave Laothalia. He had only been here two days, but his business with Nione was virtually complete. He had satisfied himself that Nione’s factory would make a good supplier for the legions, and they had negotiated the details of the contract. He needed only to make payment for the first shipment of sauce and settle on a date for its delivery.

He should probably stay out the week; it would be insulting to Nione not to do so. He could manage five more days, and then he would make his excuses and apologies and go home.

He would tell Nione about Gelon attacking Varazda, and what Aristokles and Varazda had said to him about it afterwards—he’d do that as soon as possible. If she wanted him to stay longer to help her deal with them, well, of course he would. But he doubted she really needed his help. She had a whole villa full of staff, including her formidable steward, who could help her evict Aristokles if it turned out he was here to rob or defraud her or otherwise cause trouble. It wasn’t, as Damiskos had been repeatedly reminded, any of his business.

Having made this decision, he felt a weight lifted from his spirit, and paradoxically found himself determined to enjoy what was left of his stay at the villa.

Nione was not in the garden, and her servants thought she was not up yet, so he went down to the fishing pier. He found Kleitos already there, with a line in the water, wrapped in a mantle and looking like he hadn’t slept. Helenos arrived while Damiskos was baiting his own hook.

“Good morning,” said Damiskos.

Helenos looked at him assessingly for a moment, then sat on the pier beside him. “What’s going on, Damiskos from the Quartermaster’s Office? What was the Sasian eunuch really doing in your room last night?”

He seemed genuinely to expect an answer to that, not just to be teasing. It left Damiskos at a loss.

“I’m not going to give you a detailed account,” Damiskos said, feeling that this struck the right note while being literally true.

Helenos looked at him for a moment with plain confusion. “Oh,” he said finally. “Well, I suppose you must take your pleasure where you like. Far be it from me to dictate the terms of your private life.”

“Not at all,” said Damiskos equably. Aside from those remarks about Sasians the other day, the fellow had been quite friendly.

“I seem to have been mistaken about you,” Helenos remarked. “I see that now.”

“Do you.” That wasn’t so friendly.

“Yes, I had imagined you were an ally to our cause. Given your military record. I thought you saw the importance of preserving Phemian purity and felt a distaste for the Sasian slave.”

They sat in uncomfortable silence for a few minutes. Damiskos was becoming more and more annoyed. What possible business was it of Helenos’s whether he and Varazda were sleeping together?

Maybe it had to do with their rubbish about masculine and feminine principles. Damiskos had no bent for philosophy, and had always thought the ascetic strictures of the Marble Porches—what he knew of them—incompatible with a soldier’s life.

They would say it was natural for men to desire women, but if you spent too much of your time with women, or took them too seriously, it made you unmanly. Men ought to reserve their purest affections for other men, they said. But they meant something quite specific by that. They liked to trot out examples of legendary heroes dying in each other’s arms, and primly remind you that the poets said nothing about them doing anything else in each other’s arms beforehand—as if that proved anything, except about the philosophers’ own preoccupations. Their idea of the virtuous man was someone who didn’t love anyone, male or female, really heartily. He wouldn’t have any use for a person so ambiguous as Varazda, except as an object-lesson on the unnaturalness of barbaric Sasians.

Of course, Damiskos had no use for him either. Obviously.

It wasn’t a matter of “use.” Anyway, it was irrelevant.

“What does it really mean, ‘Phemian purity’?” Damiskos asked suddenly.

“It means purging the Republic of the poison—”

“Not the metaphors. What does it actually mean?”

Helenos looked at him. “It means our ancestors were great men, and we are pitiful by comparison. It means banishing the foreigners from our streets and from our shores. It means putting pressure on Boukos to do the same. It means—as I’m sure you realize—war with Zash. The Republic was forged in the fires of war and has never been stronger than when it has stood against Zash. That is what I mean when I say ‘Phemian purity.’ And how are we to achieve that, you ask? Wait and see, my friend. Wait and see.”

That was deeply unsettling, and Damiskos did not immediately know what to say to it. Helenos did not look as though he expected an answer. In fact, he looked rather like someone who had picked up an edged weapon in the middle of a training bout and felt pleased with the result.

Damiskos knew how to turn away a sharp sword with a wooden one, but he didn’t really know what to do here.