Page 79 of Sword Dance

Varazda smiled rather sadly. “You must have … What do you have to go back to in Pheme?”

The pressure of the tears eased after a moment. “Uh. Well. My job. It’s not a bad job. It’s interesting. But I’ve been doing it almost five years, and I haven’t been promoted. There’s nowhere to be promoted to, until my commanding officer retires. And I was fucking First Spear of the Second Koryphos. I don’t care about the status, but I’m capable of doing more than bargaining for olive oil and fish sauce contracts. I just—I like to feel useful, and at one time I really was.” He drew a deep breath and let it out shakily.

He went on: “And there’s my family. My little brother’s serving in the colonies now, and my parents and I don’t see eye-to-eye anymore. I try to keep my distance—to be filial, you know, but not … not be in their lives too much, because it just makes everyone upset.

“I spent my savings outfitting Timiskos—that’s my brother—when he went into the legions. Our parents couldn’t afford to do it. They could when I enlisted myself, but that was before they lost all their money. Not in any kind of tragedy—they just began living beyond their means. They still do, even though they lost the house and live in a rented place now. I try to help out, but I don’t live with them—I couldn’t stand it any longer, watching them dig themselves deeper into debt. I had to move out and rent a place by myself. It’s one room, all I can afford. I’d like to m-marry—or I thought I did, before I met you—but I haven’t got the money.” His voice gave out, and he stopped speaking.

“Shit, Dami. What a shambles.”

“Oh, no. Other people endure much worse.”

“Yes, that’s always such a comforting line to take.”

“I shouldn’t complain of these things to you, Varazda.”

“You’re not complaining of them, you’re just dispassionately listing them. It actually makes it worse.”

“I’m sorry. That wasn’t what I intended. I meant … you’ve—you lost so much yourself, and … the strength it must have taken to build the life you have now … ”

“That doesn’t mean I can’t be sympathetic. I think … you’ve seen a side of me that’s not usually much in evidence these days.”

“Um … yes.”

Varazda laughed. “I don’t mean the, um, the sex. I mean the anger. I’m not usually so angry any more. It was having to pretend to be a slave again—which, let me hasten to add, was my own idea—that was harder than I would have expected. That’s why I was so prickly when we first met. In truth, I’m generally much happier these days.”

“I do admire the angry Varazda,” Damiskos said, feeling a little shy about it, “but I think … it’s mostly the happy one I’ve fallen in love with.”

Varazda gave no response in words, but he leaned over and kissed Damiskos softly.

Chapter 20

They lay quietly under the stars on the grassy gravel of their little corner of the vineyard. Soon they would need to get up and return to the women’s camp. It was plain no one was coming after them from the villa; the students were probably still too busy fighting among themselves.

Varazda seemed in no hurry to get up and dress, which Damiskos had expected he might be, embarrassed after Damiskos’s confession.

“Do you ever think about going back to Zash?” Varazda asked presently. “It sounds as if you were happy there.”

“Yes, I was. But no, I don’t. Zash was done with me. I miss it, though. Do you?”

“Miss Zash? Of course.” He smiled faintly. “I miss the palace at Gudul. I miss my friends there, and riding in the mountains, and trivial things, food that you can’t get in Boukos, that kind of thing. And I miss my childhood home, which was burned to the ground, and my mother and brothers, who are long dead. Even if there were a way for me to go back to Zash without losing my freedom—and there isn’t—I wouldn’t want to. Boukos is home now.” After a moment he said, “I guess you could say Zash was done with me too, though in a different way.”

Damiskos felt he ought to explain. “What I meant by that … ”

“Oh, I know what you meant by it. That is—if you want to tell me about it, I will be happy to listen, but if you don’t … I was the son of a Deshan warlord. I know how you get a limp like that. I’ve seen it done.”

Damiskos absorbed that piece of information. Varazda knew, or at least had suspected. Whatever regard he had for Damiskos had included that truth already—for good or ill.

“And that first night, when you arrived here,” Varazda added gently, “one of the idiots was talking about Zashian punishments, and I thought I saw something in your face for a moment.”

Damiskos linked his fingers behind his head and looked up at the dark sky. “You probably did. But I don’t find it all that difficult to talk about. Sometimes I want to tell people, because they all assume it’s a battlefield injury and that it was all very heroic, and … it wasn’t.”

“Were you actually enslaved?”

“No. I can’t claim to understand what that’s like. What happened to me was … It was in the year ’93—you’d already have been in Boukos by then.”

“Yes.”

“That was when I made First Spear. I replaced a man who deserted. This was just after I broke off my engagement—it felt like a consolation prize from the gods, to be honest. But I inherited a mess. We were in the middle of the worst clan fighting the Deshan Coast had seen in decades.