Page 68 of Sword Dance

“I, uh … ” He looked momentarily stricken. Then he melted into laughter. “Bastard,” he hissed.

The gate was stuck, the latch pinned in place with tendrils of vine. Varazda grasped the top rung of the gate, drew his legs up, and was over in one neat motion. He turned and was probably about to reach out to help Damiskos, but vaulting a gate was something Damiskos could still do. He braced one hand on the top rung and swung himself easily over, landing on his good leg.

“I’ve practiced that,” he admitted.

Then he found himself backed against the gate, Varazda’s slim arms trapping him on either side, Varazda’s dark eyes soft in the moonlight. Varazda paused.

“May I?”

“Please.”

Varazda leaned in and kissed him, very gently, his body swaying forward against Damiskos in a seductive motion that was just the way he always moved. Damiskos leaned back against the gate, boneless and melting, catching Varazda’s upper arms as Varazda’s hands came up to cradle his face, and Varazda’s tongue stroked over his. As gentle as the kiss was, it was also full of command. Damiskos surrendered to it wholeheartedly, resisting the urge to take control, relishing the fact that Varazda wanted this enough to venture to take it. When Varazda stepped back, Damiskos let him go—regretfully but without fuss.

“The situation seemed to call for that,” said Varazda lightly. He shrugged, touching the back of his fingers to his lips. “A moonlit vineyard, and you so … so you. Besides, I have been wanting to do that all day.”

Damiskos drew in a deep breath and let it out. “You could go on doing it all night, as far as I’m concerned.”

“If we did not have a mission in hand. Come. I’ve distracted you—distracted myself. I should know better.”

He held out a hand, and after a moment’s stunned hesitation, Damiskos took it, and they walked along the corridor of grapevines together, hand in hand, as if it were a normal thing.

Damiskos wished he could achieve the same kind of coolness about all this that Varazda evidently had. Just enjoy the time they had together rather than yearning preemptively for more before they had even parted. He resolved to try harder.

They traversed the length of the first terrace and reached the stairs in the stone retaining wall leading up to the second level. The flights of stairs after that were all slightly offset, zigzagging up the hillside. They were short flights with shallow stone steps, easy enough for Damiskos to climb, especially since Varazda casually gestured for him to go first so that he could set the pace.

Divine Terza. Had he ever, in the last five years, met anyone so effortlessly considerate? Or was it just that he appreciated Varazda’s consideration more because it came in such a beautiful package?

No, he reminded himself sternly. That was exactly the sort of thought he had to expel from his mind. Varazda was a very decent fellow, certainly. No need to make too much of it.

As they climbed to the topmost terrace, they went over the details of their plan. The general idea was that they would get into the house and raise the signal for the postal ship from Boukos, due tomorrow, so that it would stop at Laothalia on its way down the coast. The signal was a nondescript flag flown from a pole on the villa’s squat tower; it was unlikely the students would notice that it had been raised.

That much was straightforward; Nione had described the location of the flag, and Aradne had even drawn them a map of the house. After that, they would have to improvise a little. They would take up the search for the stolen documents where Varazda had left off, but they wouldn’t know until they got into the house how they might best go about that. It all depended on where the students were when they went in.

There had been some negotiation about who should go back into the house. Varazda had been very prepared to do it by himself, but both Damiskos and Aradne had been adamant that he should take one of them along. Damiskos had been on the point of suggesting they draw straws, because he could see that in some ways Aradne, who knew the house and the servants, might be more useful than he, when she had folded her arms across her chest and said, “You’d better go, Damiskos. Neither of us can move fast, but you know how to use a sword—that might come in handy. I’ll stay here and guard the camp.” So it was decided.

“So,” said Varazda as they climbed one of the flights of stairs in the moonlit vineyard. “Plan of attack. I say we go in over the kitchen garden wall—it’s low and out of the way. We can check the kitchen for any knives the students may have overlooked. Then across the yard to my room, in case my swords are still there.”

Which they might well be, if the students, like Damiskos, assumed that the weapons were purely decorative.

“Take the picture of your daughter, too,” Damiskos suggested. “You don’t want to leave that behind if you have to sail for Boukos in a hurry.”

Varazda smiled. “No, I won’t forget that.”

They had not spoken about what would happen once Varazda had finished his business at the villa, successfully or not. But obviously it would involve him returning to Boukos, perhaps on the very postal ship they were now going to signal. There was really nothing to talk about.

“Then we’ll go to my room,” Damiskos went on, “get my sword and my bow. Maybe a clean tunic, too, while we’re there.”

“I wouldn’t discourage that.”

“Then upstairs to the tower to set the signal. You can go up while I stand guard. Then on to the students’ rooms, same procedure. If it turns out they’re not drinking or arguing about virtue in the garden, contrary to expectations, we’ll play it by ear.”

They had reached the topmost terrace. Damiskos stopped here, and Varazda looked at him questioningly.

“I was just thinking. We should probably have gone over this earlier, but there are a few hand signals we might want to have sorted out before we go in. So we can communicate if we can’t risk speaking aloud. Here, I’ll show you the ones I think we’re most likely to need. This is for ‘stop,’ obviously.” He held up a hand, palm-out. “And for ‘come.’” He beckoned with his whole hand. “This is for ‘message received.’” He held up his hand with fingers and thumb pinched together. Varazda imitated, beautiful hennaed fingertips held together.

“Uh. If you’re ahead of me and you see someone coming and want to alert me, you do this.” Damiskos made a rolling motion with his hand. Varazda copied it elegantly. “Then hold out the appropriate number of fingers to tell me how many enemies—well, how many philosophy students or fishermen or whatever—there are.” He demonstrated. “You’d probably be doing this while facing away from me, so you’d just hold your hand out to the side.”

“Had we better have signals to distinguish philosophy students from fishermen, or indeed from household slaves?”