Page 69 of Sword Dance

“Yes, good thought. The one I showed you normally means ‘enemy combatant.’ We’ll say for our purposes that’s just the students.” He made a different gesture, twirling one finger instead of his whole hand. “That’s for ‘civilians.’ Should we consider the fishermen civilians? We don’t really know where they stand.”

“How about this for them?” Varazda made a delicately undulating, fishy motion with his fingers. He grinned.

Damiskos snorted. “I’m not sure I can make my hand do that, but sure.”

He demonstrated a few more—danger, listen, switch places, look—and then he began to get the impression that Varazda was humouring him, and said, “We'll, that’s probably enough for our purposes.”

“Probably,” said Varazda with a smile. “It was well thought of. Where did you use these, in the army?”

“Reconnaissance work. Scouting near enemy lines and that sort of thing. Sometimes silence is crucial.”

“Indeed it is. Listen, First Spear, I wanted to say something. I wouldn’t have asked you to come with me, but I’m very glad to have you along. I wouldn’t want you to think otherwise. I have done roughly this sort of thing before—sneaking about someone else’s house looking for something—but the stakes have never been quite so high for me. I’ve never been in a situation where if I were caught—and I hasten to add I never have been caught—but if I had been, I could always have passed off what I was doing as being lost, looking for the privy, admiring the view from the upstairs bedroom, or what have you. That’s very much not the case here. I’d be much more nervous about this if you weren’t coming with me.”

“You’ve no need to be nervous. You will do fine. I’ve seen clearly that you can defend yourself.”

It was the sort of thing he would have said to a new recruit on the eve of battle, and it came out of his mouth, in exactly the tone he would have used then, before he stopped to think whether it was appropriate now.

Varazda smiled with a little shrug, the most unsoldierly thing imaginable. “Nevertheless.”

Chapter 17

The wall of the kitchen garden was higher than the vineyard gate, but Damiskos was still able to boost himself up and vault over without too much difficulty. Varazda, of course, went over with a sinuous slither as if he vaulted higher walls every day.

The garden was deserted, the barred windows of the kitchen dark. They picked their way down between rows of onions and rosemary bushes to the back door of the kitchen. It was latched from the inside, as they had rather expected. They went around the building to the side, ducking behind another, lower wall that fronted the garden. On the other side Damiskos could see the roof of the well in the yard. He heard nothing, and it was dark.

Varazda turned to signal that he would look over the wall, using the gestures Damiskos had taught him. He crept along a little and peered over the top of the wall. He held out a hand, ready to signal for Damiskos to follow or stay put, but instead he curled his hand in a dancerly, flowerlike gesture. Damiskos gave an inaudible snort. Varazda glanced back, grinning, and then beckoned for Damiskos to follow, and flowed over the wall.

Their first stop was the kitchen, which they entered by the unlocked door off the yard. It was a mess, with broken vessels on the floor and the tables, food spilling out of containers, unraked ashes on the stove. Most of the knives had been taken, leaving only a couple of rather blunt cleavers and three small fruit knives. Damiskos bundled these up in a towel and tucked them into his belt, and they left the kitchen.

They crossed the dark yard without incident and reached the gate leading into the yard shared by the stables and the slave quarters. Here there were signs of life. Light glowed in a couple of downstairs windows of the slaves’ building, and when they slipped cautiously over the wall into the yard they could hear a murmur of voices coming from the lit room.

Varazda had explained the layout of the slave quarters to Damiskos earlier. The men were all housed downstairs, in double rooms, the women upstairs along the gallery. Downstairs was also a common room, a dining hall, and the slave baths. The light and voices were clearly coming from one of those.

Varazda leaned close to Damiskos to whisper in his ear. “Do you want to go listen under one of those windows while I go upstairs? See what you can find out?”

Damiskos nodded crisply and gave the signal for Varazda to move out toward the staircase. Varazda made a comical face at him, and Damiskos allowed himself another soft huff of laughter. All very unprofessional. He should be ashamed of himself.

He watched Varazda move off toward the stairs, visible only because Damiskos was straining his eyes to follow him. He really was very good at this, catlike and cautious, pressing himself into the shadows and moving smoothly and swiftly. He would have been fine alone, just as Damiskos had said. But it still pleased Damiskos absurdly that Varazda was glad to have him along.

He waited until Varazda was halfway up the stairs before moving toward the lit windows, hugging the wall, crossing quickly past the main door. When he reached the far side, he dropped to sit the ground and scooted himself along with his hands, a totally undignified performance that was the best he could do since he couldn’t crouch properly anymore. He positioned himself under one of the windows, back to the wall, where he could hear the voices from inside reasonably clearly.

The windows must have belonged to the dining room, because he could hear sounds of eating, spoons chinking against bowls, voices muffled by mouthfuls of food, cups clunking on the table. It sounded like half a dozen men, no more than that. He recognized the voice of the boy Niko among the rest.

“Going to make a raid on the kitchen tomorrow morning, I don’t care,” Niko was saying. “What are they going to do to me if they catch me, anyway? Philosophize at me?”

“They could kill you the way they killed Tio and Demi. You are not leaving the yard.”

“It’s not the philosophers I’m worried about,” rumbled another man’s voice. “It’s Sesna and his boys.”

There were grunts and murmurs of agreement.

“Well, I’m not afraid of them,” Niko blustered, “and I’m going. First thing tomorrow. You’ll thank me when I bring back some decent food.”

Conversation died down into the sounds of eating and drinking. Damiskos crept back around the building to the gate leading out of the slaves’ yard. Sure enough, it was barricaded on this side, a couple of stout beams affixed as makeshift bars.

Varazda appeared at his shoulder, swords under one arm. He had changed into a clean shirt with flowers embroidered around the neck; the buttons were not done up, the shirt fastened only by his sash. He gave Damiskos a questioning look. Damiskos pointed to the bars on the gate.

“They’ve barricaded themselves in,” Damiskos whispered. “I think only some of the men are in here. They’re worried about someone named Sesna?”