Page 78 of Sword Dance

Varazda was silent for another moment, looking up at the sky, then he pushed up onto one elbow, looking down at Damiskos. His hair fell down to caress Damiskos’s shoulder.

“I’m sorry—” he began gently.

“That you’re not being more romantic?” Damiskos finished for him. Keep it light, he reminded himself. “I had noticed that.”

Varazda’s face stilled briefly, then he smiled. “It was utterly lovely, Dami. It almost … ” He ran a hand down over his own thigh. “Almost made me feel like a woman.”

“Is that good?” From Varazda’s expression, it looked like it was.

“Sometimes. Yes.”

“Interesting.”

Damiskos reached up and brushed his fingertips over the gold flower stud, the woman’s decoration that Varazda always wore. Varazda kissed softly into his palm.

“Is it odd?” Varazda asked.

“What? That you wear that? No! It suits you. That and the henna, and the way you braid your hair sometimes—it’s subtle, I don’t know how to describe it.”

Varazda had settled beside him, head propped on one hand, the other one spread on Damiskos’s chest. “It’s a way of making myself feel whole. Balanced. In a way it fills up the space of the manhood I’ll never have.”

“Oh, I see,” said Damiskos, enlightened. “You don’t want to be neither, so you’re both.”

Varazda smiled. “Something like that. I can pass myself off as an actual woman, too, when I want to—but that’s different. That’s dressing up. It’s fun, but I don’t do it often.”

“I’d like to see that. I can’t quite picture it.”

Varazda looked amused.

“I’ll tell you a secret,” he said. “I think this masculine-feminine thing isn’t just because I’m a eunuch. I think I would have been like this—sort of wanting to be both—even if I’d grown up as a whole man. But I might not have known what to do with it.”

Damiskos touched the soft curtain of Varazda’s hair, trying to think of something light and easy to say in response to that. Because it suddenly made all his longing for an impossible future return in full force. This beautiful person, who dwelt so gracefully in the space between man and woman, who had never been made love to properly and yet was everything Damiskos desired—he wanted to have him, to keep him, to belong to him.

“I see,” he said. “Or wait, no—this is where you say, ‘Do you really?’ and I swear at you.”

“We can skip that, if you want.” Varazda looked down at Damiskos for a moment. “Dami, you’re a serious man. I know that. You don’t have to joke when you don’t feel like it.”

That undid Damiskos completely. He put a hand over his eyes, trying to swallow all the things he wanted to say. But he couldn’t. He drew the hand away again.

“What am I going to do when you go back to Boukos and leave me?” The words could have been light, almost joking, but they were not; his voice shook as he spoke, and he knew he sounded anguished.

Varazda went very still, but this time it was not, Damiskos could tell, because he was offended.

“I’ve never had a love affair,” Varazda said finally. “Not even close. I’d never had sex for pleasure before the other night, with you. I … I’m completely at sea here.”

Damiskos didn’t know what he’d expected. Maybe some part of him had harboured a hope that if he told Varazda how he felt, Varazda would respond that he felt exactly the same, that Damiskos had unlocked some secret place in his heart and they would somehow be together forever. Or at least, failing that, Varazda would laugh and tell him not to dream, because Varazda had the courage to face reality, the courage Damiskos lacked.

Instead Varazda had just responded honestly. He wasn’t in love with Damiskos; he didn’t know how to be, didn’t know what to do with the fact that Damiskos was in love with him.

“I’m not asking anything of you,” Damiskos said. “Don’t think that, please.”

“No, I understand. There isn’t really anything you could ask that I’d say ‘yes’ to, is there? Ah, God, that sounds harsh, but you know what I mean.”

“Yes.”

“I like you a lot. If I’m honest, I’ve liked you since you got here. You’re my type, in any number of ways. That’s probably why my clever schemes to get myself out of trouble all involved kissing you, much as I told myself that was the last thing I wanted. But … I do have to go back to Boukos.”

“I know. I know. You have a life and a family there. It’s your home, your republic. I’m glad you have all that.” Tears stung behind his eyes and in his throat.