Page 39 of Sword Dance

“Neither do I, First Spear. I don’t like anything about it. I will see you soon.”

* * *

It was still well before dinner, and the sun was still high in the sky. Damiskos had been reading in the library—well, sitting in the library with a book open in his lap—for an hour when Helenos, Gelon, and Phaia came in.

“Oh look,” said Gelon, “it’s Damiskos.”

“First Spoon of the Quartermaster’s Office,” Phaia supplied.

Gelon giggled. “Oh, that’s rather good!”

“Stop it, you two,” said Helenos mildly. “It is not a laughing matter.”

“I thought it was sort of funny,” said Damiskos equably.

“You took a wrong turn, Damiskos Temnon,” said Helenos, “but you could have the respect of the whole Republic again, if you tried. I don’t believe you are really so far gone.”

In a moment he was going to say something that would really hurt. Something about Damiskos searching for meaning, not being the man he used to be—Helenos’s solution would be that Damiskos should join with him in fomenting war with Zash so that he could restore his lost honour, and Damiskos didn’t think he would find that tempting, but he really had no desire to find out for sure.

While he was searching for something to say to shut Helenos up, he looked past the students and saw Varazda arrive in the doorway.

Varazda had been out walking, and it had put some colour in his cheeks. His hair was a little tugged-about by the wind, a few strands escaping the neat knot from the morning. His sleeves were rolled up to his elbows, his shirt unfastened at the throat.

Damiskos swung his legs down from the footstool and stood, dropping his scroll, which unrolled across the floor. He heard a scornful laugh from the students. He honestly didn’t care.

“Darling,” said Varazda. He said it in Zashian, but the way he said it, one didn’t need to speak the language to know what kind of term it was.

Damiskos remembered kissing him the night before, the scent of his perfume, the softness of his lips.

“Uh. You’re back.”

Varazda came across the room to pick up the dropped scroll, roll it back up, and hand it to Damiskos.

“Let’s go,” said Damiskos.

“The Painted Urn?” Varazda said as the door closed behind them.

“What?”

“The Painted Urn. What you were reading. An interesting choice. Not Tyreus’s most popular play, but a good one, I’ve heard.”

Damiskos looked at him. “You don’t need to prove to me that you can read.”

Varazda said nothing, and Damiskos thought he might have scored a rather roundabout point there. He wondered why he felt the need to think of it that way.

“So did you find anything?”

Varazda gave a one-shouldered shrug. “No one saw Aristokles in the village or down at the factory—though there’s no one there but the fishermen now. The man who received the note to give to Nione said he got it this morning from one of the students, but he couldn’t remember which one.

“Oh, and a rowboat went missing last night and reappeared on the beach this morning, and the factory workers think someone broke into one of their outbuildings and moved things around without taking anything.”

“I see.” Damiskos didn’t like to spell out what that might mean in connection with Aristokles’s disappearance.

Apparently neither did Varazda. “It’s not much and may not be related, but it is what I’ve been able to come up with.”

“You’ve been very thorough,” said Damiskos, because it was the truth. “I think you have done all you can for today.”

“Mm. You may be right.”