Page 4 of Sword Dance

The others laughed, and Damiskos nodded gratefully to Helenos. The conversation moved off into other channels.

It was true, as Helenos had reminded them, that Damiskos had fought Zashians, but most Phemians forgot what that really meant these days. Pheme was not at war with Zash, and the job of the legions on the Deshan Coast was to defend the Phemian colonies from the local warlords, themselves rebels and enemies of the crown.

This meant that the Phemian soldiers found themselves on the same side as the Zashian king and his armies, often cooperating with the king’s men to subdue troublesome warlords, camping in Zashian territory, shopping and drinking and taking their pleasures in Zashian towns. It was jarring for them to come home and hear people talk as though what they had been doing was bravely holding the Republic’s last frontier against the might of Zash. Damiskos thought Helenos understood the situation better than that, and he was glad to feel he had at least one ally here.

He looked at the Zashian slave, wondering how much of their conversation he was able to understand. The eunuch was still looking at the floor, so it was impossible to tell.

Chapter 2

The intimidating steward, or overseer, or whatever she was, appeared at Damiskos’s door the following morning while he was dressing. She was unapologetic—and apparently unembarrassed.

“The mistress would like you to join her in the garden for breakfast. I’m sure you won’t want to keep her waiting.”

He finished pulling his tunic over his head. “Of course not.”

She gave him an approving nod and graciously waited for him to buckle his belt and fasten his sandals before marching him out into the garden to report to her mistress. He barely restrained the urge to salute when he arrived.

“Here he is,” she said, presenting him as if he were a dish that the kitchen had worked hard on but that she privately thought unappetizing.

“Thank you, Aradne,” said Nione, smiling at her. “Damiskos, will you join me?”

She was seated for breakfast at a table in a little secluded nook on the far side of the garden, with a beautiful view out over the bay. She was alone, and there was only one other chair pulled up to the table. Damiskos sat, a little stiffly, stretching out his right leg. His knee was sore this morning, though not as bad as it had been last night.

“Your garden is beautiful,” he said.

“Thank you. It is the one part of the house I have completely redone to my satisfaction so far.”

“One thing more, ma’am,” said Aradne. “You asked me to tell you how Gion was doing—she’s much better this morning.”

“Oh, I’m so glad. Tell her to take it easy the rest of the day, and I’ll visit her in her room later this morning. What about Niko? How is he coming with his lessons?”

There was a short conversation about Niko’s lessons, the progress of someone else’s pregnancy, and an account of how a dispute among the vineyard workers had been settled. Then the servant departed, and as she left Damiskos suddenly had a memory of a sturdy little girl with topaz-brown skin.

“There was a slave named Aradne in the Maidens’ House when you were a girl.”

Nione smiled. “The very same. She belonged to the House, but she purchased her freedom three years ago—at around the same time that I retired. I offered her the job as my steward. She’s splendid.” She passed Damiskos a dish of fruit from the table. “How long has it been since you and I met?”

“Since we first met? Fifteen … sixteen years. Immortal gods. Yes, it must be. I was sixteen when I started in the Honour Guard.”

“Were you really? Only sixteen?”

He nodded. He had been young for a recruit, a rising star, beginning his glittering ascent.

“I miss the Maidens’ House,” Nione said.

“Yes.” He should have asked about that rather than waiting for her to mention it. That was surely what a good friend would have done. “You always loved it there.”

“So many of the other girls didn’t. Some of them were almost … in mourning, for the women they could have become if they lived in the world. Wives and mothers, normal things. Well, they can still have some of that, if they want—men line up to marry ex-Maidens—but I suppose it is a long time to wait for the life you want.” She spoke as if making an earnest effort to understand something that made no sense to her.

“But you never wanted that life.”

He had known this about her for—well, sixteen years, more or less. She had been so happy in the Maidens’ House, wearing her regalia as if born to it, performing all her duties with zeal. It was why she had risen to be Speaker of the Maidens, almost inevitably. It was one of the things that had made Damiskos like her.

“I never did,” she said. She glanced at him with an unreadable expression. “And so I’m doing my best to spend my retirement allowance as quickly as I can, repairing this old place and setting myself up in business.”

Damiskos wasn’t quite sure how that followed, but he didn’t ask.

Someone had come out of the house into the colonnade at the edge of the garden. It was Aristokles’s eunuch slave, already painted and decorated for the day, in spite of the early hour. His hair was in one thick braid today, and the long jacket he wore over his tunic was sleeveless, perhaps a concession to the heat, but everything else was much as the night before. He moved with a precise grace, and his figure under the close-fitting layers of his clothes was wasp-waisted and effeminate. He squinted slightly in the sunlight as he came out from under the colonnade.