Page 27 of Sword Dance

“Hestos! Phaidon!” Gelon called, waving. “Giontes? Good to see you!”

Damiskos hoped briefly that Gelon would take off across the beach to greet them, but he had enough sense to stand his ground and wait for them to come to collect him and Damiskos.

“So this is to be our new home, is it?” one of the students was saying to Eurydemos. “It’s all settled?”

“It will be soon,” Helenos interposed smoothly.

Gelon introduced Damiskos to the newcomers as a war hero, and they were all exaggeratedly deferential.

“First Spear of the Second Koryphos,” Gelon reported.

“We’re honoured!”

“Served in Sasia,” Gelon added.

“Like your cousin, Helenos.”

“Like my cousin. Only Damiskos came home alive.”

“Injured on the battlefield, though,” said one of the other students in a sententious tone, “in defence of the Republic. I hope they give you a generous pension for that.”

“I wasn’t,” said Damiskos. “Injured in battle.”

They didn’t know what to make of this, and so pretended he hadn’t said it.

There were five of them, all about Gelon’s age, all with the same prototypical Phemian looks as Damiskos himself—dark hair, olive skin—as if they had walked off of a painted cup. There was a fat one, a tall one, two utterly generic ones, and a shaven-headed one with a badly-healed broken nose. Gelon mentioned their names, but they did not stick in Damiskos’s mind.

Of course they wouldn’t leave him alone to poke around in the underbrush, but wanted to hear details of his war record and make pronouncements about the glory of Pheme. In this way Damiskos found himself herded back up the stairs to the garden in the midst of the party. Gelon followed, looking pleased with himself. He’d shown more cunning than Damiskos had given him credit for.

So Helenos was the one to watch. Damiskos could see it now that there were more students present: the way Eurydemos, their supposed master, faded into the background, not exactly ignored but subtly condescended to, while Helenos cooly dominated the conversation.

Was Eurydemos uninvolved in the events in Boukos? That fit with what Varazda had already ascertained about his sympathies. Perhaps Helenos and his cronies had masterminded the riot and the theft from the embassy without their master’s consent. But what, exactly, were they planning now?

There were no Zashian shops or embassies here for them to loot. There was just Varazda, abandoned by his patron. A completely innocent bystander, who had already been attacked once.

* * *

Varazda was in the garden when they arrived at the top of the stairs. He was sitting on a bench by the fountain with his feet tucked up, looking decorative and very, very Zashian. His hair was in two braids, looped up on either side and pinned behind his ears, framing the long pendants of his earrings. His eyes were dramatically painted.

“You there, slave!” one of the students called out. “Fetch us some wine.”

“Why is he still here?” Gelon asked loudly as Varazda swished away. “Didn’t I hear his master had been urgently summoned back to Boukos?”

There was a little pause.

“Did you?” said Helenos blandly.

“Uh,” said Gelon. “Oh.”

“The Sasian does not belong to the mistress of the house,” Helenos explained to the newcomers, subtly redirecting the conversation. “Her staff is more conventional, in keeping with the style of her house. It is a fine, old-fashioned place, don’t you think?”

Damiskos looked around, anxious to get back to the beach and investigate the place where Gelon had been hiding in the bushes. But Gelon was staying put, glancing in Damiskos’s direction every so often. There was no chance to sneak off without him seeing, and no opportunity to follow him surreptitiously down to the beach either. Damiskos ground his teeth as the students launched into a debate about virtue like caricatures of themselves.

Varazda returned with wine, followed by a female slave with cups. When they had finished serving everyone, the woman departed, and Varazda remained. He came over to the bench where Damiskos was sitting, and elegantly but rather fussily arranged himself on the ground, with his legs tucked to one side, at Damiskos’s feet.

“If you could try not to act surprised … ” he murmured in Zashian.

“Of course,” Damiskos replied automatically.