Page 6 of Sword Dance

Tyra asked if Damiskos would like to join them, and he restrained himself from replying that he hadn’t sunk quite that low yet. Playing a game of Reds and Whites with a trio of women, according to country villa rules and probably without betting, was no doubt exactly what Themistos had imagined Damiskos doing when he sent him on this trip. He politely declined, and the women left together.

He had not been left alone for more than a minute when the philosopher’s two male students came out into the garden from the house. They had hard-boiled eggs and were peeling them and scattering shells as they walked.

“Damiskos from the Quartermaster’s Office!” Gelon hailed him as they approached. “Good morning!”

Damiskos returned the greeting politely.

“We’re going out to admire the view,” Gelon said. “Will you join us?”

Since he had clearly not been doing anything else, Damiskos could not see an excuse to refuse. Nor did he particularly want one. Gelon seemed like a tiresome fellow, but Damiskos rather like Helenos. He followed them to a gate in the garden wall that led out onto the promontory beyond the villa.

The land here was wild, rock-strewn, and overgrown with shrubs, but there was a path leading out to the windy edge, and the students picked their way along it, eating their eggs and continuing some obscure conversation which Damiskos could not follow. They scrambled up and found seats on a large rock at the cliff’s edge.

Damiskos sat lower down and looked out over the water, shading his eyes with his hand. The wide bay into which the promontory of Laothalia jutted was calm and turquoise in the sunlight, scattered with a number of tiny islets. Further out, in the open sea, he could easily make out the beginning of the island chain of the Tentines, arcing away toward Boukos.

Helenos came slithering down the rock to close the gap between himself and Damiskos. He had finished eating his egg.

“Not exactly luxurious, this place, is it?” the student said conversationally, when he had settled himself on the rock and rearranged his mantle. “A bit ‘Ariatan,’ as they say.”

“I like it well enough,” said Damiskos. “But then, I was a soldier.”

Helenos smiled, and reached out to touch the wide bronze bracelet on Damiskos’s right wrist. It was an oddly intimate gesture. “You were First Spear in the Second Koryphos,” he said. “You were quite a soldier.”

To Damiskos’s relief, he didn’t follow that up with any expression of sympathy, just a thoughtful, sidelong look. He withdrew his hand.

“It must have been difficult for you,” Helenos said, “serving in Sasia, the land of our ancient enemies, and having nothing more to do than to keep the peace between warlords.”

“It was rather like bailing out a leaky boat without plugging the holes, sometimes.”

Helenos laughed. “I saw you looking at the eunuch last night.”

“Looking at him?” Damiskos repeated, unsure where this was going. He remembered Gelon railing against unmanly love the night before, and didn’t want to get into any of that. “I—I noticed him, I suppose. It’s hard not to.”

Helenos nodded. “Disgusting, isn’t it?”

“Yes! That’s just what I was thinking.”

He was relieved to find someone agreed with him about the poor fellow’s situation. He had been under the impression that none of the other guests cared.

“Mm,” said Helenos. “I guessed that.”

“I hope it wasn’t obvious.”

“No—but I shouldn’t worry about that if I were you. The creature might as well know what we think of him, might he not? In my view, he epitomizes the evils of his race.” Helenos’s tone had not changed at all; he spoke amiably, as though proposing something obvious that Damiskos would be sure to agree with.

Damiskos realized that it sounded as if he already had agreed with it.

“That’s—not what I meant by disgusting,” he said stiffly.

“Oh?”

“I find the practice of making eunuchs repellant, and I cannot approve of a Pseuchaian owning one, but … ”

But what? A moment ago he had felt sure Helenos meant something specific by “epitomizes the evils of his race,” something that Damiskos didn’t agree with at all, but now he wasn’t so sure. It would be rude to jump to conclusions.

“Well, it’s not his fault,” he finished lamely. “The slave’s, I mean.”

Helenos smiled. “The sentiment does you credit, First Spear.”