Page 74 of Sword Dance

“Don’t you tell me I don’t fucking know what I’m doing, who was the one who had to haul your ass out of the Sasian embassy when you—”

“Shut up, all of you! Shut up!” That was Phaia again, shouting furiously over the men, who ignored her and went on arguing.

A high level of philosophical discourse there. Damiskos risked edging into the narrow opening of the door to look into the atrium. There was no one visible on the ground floor, and he thought all the voices that he had heard were coming from the gallery. That was why Varazda hadn’t come down, then; he was trapped, his route out of the house cut off by the students.

“—got to do something about those goat-buggering fishermen anyway—”

“Of course we are better than common thieves—0ur cause is just!”

“Exactly! Our cause is just!” Gelon bawled. “Fuck the Ideal Republic!”

“Shut up, you bleating moron!”

“You leave him alone, Helenos. No one has done more for our cause than Gelon.”

“I dispute that!”

Helenos growled, “You two have caused me enough trouble already, killing that Boukossian imbecile when you did. You forced us to move much sooner than I meant to, and this mess is the result.”

“The Boukossian spy had to die, Helenos. Sometimes I think you’re a coward at heart. You were squeamish about killing those Sasian dogs in Boukos, too.”

“You whore! How dare you insult Helenos like that?”

“How dare you call her a whore?”

“You called me a thief!”

“I will make you eat your words!”

By this point all the hells had broken loose in the gallery, with Phaia shrieking and the men shouting. Someone—probably Gelon—evidently had a weapon, and others were trying to confiscate it. It struck Damiskos as a good moment to slip in through the half-open door. Pressing himself to the wall, he crept around the corner into the atrium, ducking back into the shadows on the far side from the action.

No sooner had he done that then the fishermen came back into the house.

“We’ve decided—” one of them began, then broke off as they looked up and saw the chaos on the gallery.

Two of the male students had succeeded in subduing Phaia—to an extent, though she continued to scream—but Gelon was still at large, and several people, including Helenos, were bleeding. The fishermen started toward the base of the stairs, reconsidered, and stopped, looking at one another desperately.

Something small flashed past Damiskos’s peripheral vision to drop to the floor a short distance in front of him. He looked down. A small gold earring winked up at him from the tiles.

He stepped forward and looked up, and Varazda, crouched in the shadows of the gallery above him, gave a little wave. Damiskos couldn’t keep a stupid smile off his face. Entirely unprofessional. Of course one could be happy to see that a comrade had come through unharmed, but a curt nod of acknowledgement should be enough; you didn’t stand smiling fondly up at the fellow.

Varazda pointed to himself and gestured up, over the balcony rail, then pointed at Damiskos and made a catching motion. Now Damiskos nodded, but it still couldn’t have been called curt. The idea of catching Varazda when he dropped from a railing suggested midnight assignations and romantic fiction more than escape from a reconnaissance mission gone wrong.

Varazda swung himself lithely over the railing, glanced over his shoulder, and let go with a nicely-judged little jump so that he fell clear of the floor of the gallery. Damiskos caught him by the waist and set him lightly on his feet.

Damiskos’s senses were full of Varazda for a moment: the scent of his perfume, the soft fabric of his clothes, the muscles of his little waist under Damiskos’s palms. The twin swords still tucked through his sash at his back, their bronze blades whispering over the fabric of Damiskos’s tunic.

It took him a moment—much longer than it should have—to realize that Varazda had been spotted from the other side of the atrium when he jumped.

“Get the Sasian! Block the door! Don’t let him out!” Helenos was leaning over the railing opposite, shouting wildly to the fishermen below.

“To your room?” Varazda suggested, looking across the atrium.

Damiskos nodded.

The fishermen were moving reluctantly toward the entrance; Damiskos was confident he could have ploughed through them, but likely not without injuring or killing one of them.

He strode out into the atrium, drawing his sword, keeping his eye on the fishermen. Behind him, Varazda darted across the room, leaping over the pool in the centre, and drew up short as something fell from the gallery and thudded on the tiles in front of him.