Page 7 of Sword Dance

“I don’t hold that rank any more,” said Damiskos. “You should not call me that.”

“Ah. No such thing as a First Spear in the Quartermaster’s Office, is that it?”

“That’s it.”

“Our hostess said you were here on business. Is that true?”

“She owns a factory that makes fish sauce. I’ve come to see whether she may be able to supply the legions.”

“You’re joking,” said Gelon from above them.

“Not at all. The legions go through a great deal of fish sauce, and our current suppliers are not adequate to our needs.”

“You must admit it is a little bizarre,” said Helenos equably.

“I suppose so,” said Damiskos, though he didn’t see it.

“A little bizarre?” Gelon protested. “A retired Maiden of the Loom runs a fish-sauce factory, and a retired First Spear of the Second Koryphos is her customer! It’s like something out of one of those modern novels that everyone wants to ban for corrupting the youth.”

“I wouldn’t know anything about that,” said Damiskos stiffly.

Helenos laughed warmly. “Indeed not. Shame on you, Gelon.”

“What? You know what I’m talking about. Petris Akrotis and that. There was one where the hero’s patron had made his fortune buying houses that were on fire, or about to catch fire, or something. Absurd.”

Damiskos gave him an unfriendly look, and Helenos said, “Just leave it, Gelon,” as the younger man opened his mouth again.

* * *

In the afternoon, most of the male guests trooped down to the fishing pier with rods and nets. Damiskos excused himself, pleading sleepiness. The truth was that he didn’t fancy the walk. The fishing pier sounded as if it was a good distance away, and in some fit of vanity he hadn’t brought his cane.

He had seen the villa’s library: an airy and well-lit room on the ground floor near his bedroom. He was looking forward to it as a place of solitude as much as anything. He returned to the house and found of course that the library wasn’t empty.

“I don’t know how you could ask it, after the way I suffered on the voyage over,” Aristokles was saying when Damiskos entered the anteroom.

When he stepped through the inner door, he saw that the other person in the room was Aristokles’s eunuch. He looked as though he had been about to say something before he saw Damiskos, and he dropped his gaze instantly to the floor. The snatch of conversation which Damiskos had overheard struck him as odd for a master talking to his slave.

Aristokles made a huffing noise. “I am going to take a nap,” he announced, and brushed past Damiskos on his way to the door.

Damiskos looked at the eunuch, surprised that he wasn’t following his master. It was the first time Damiskos had looked closely at him in daylight.

He was very striking, something between pretty and handsome, the intermediateness of it entrancing as a complex melody. He had very white skin and very dark eyes above high, sculpted cheekbones and delicately shaped lips, and—well, he was attractive, in a way that Damiskos found rather interesting, that was all.

He was looking at Damiskos now with a flicker of curiosity, and Damiskos realized to his embarrassment that he must have been obviously staring.

“I—er—I hear that you dance,” he said. At least that was what he hoped he said; on some impulse of the moment he tried saying it in Zashian, which he had barely spoken in years. “What kind of dance … uh … do you do?”

The eunuch’s eyebrows went up, but the rest of his face remained neutral, and Damiskos thought at first he was just surprised to hear a Phemian speaking his language. But the pause before he replied was long enough to suggest that actually he was trying to decipher what Damiskos had said. Or at least that he wanted Damiskos to think that he was.

“Vishmi kokoro,” he said finally, a dialect term which was unintelligible to Damiskos. He had a cultured, courtier’s accent, and his voice had a timbre that Damiskos associated with sophisticated older women. He reverted to Pseuchaian: “Sword dance. You know it?”

“Ah,” said Damiskos. “No.”

“Well,” he said after a moment, his expression still neutral, “it’s a dance with swords.”

His Zashian accent was strong, but he seemed to have a surprisingly good grasp of idiomatic Pseuchaian.

“Hm,” said Damiskos.