Page 85 of Sword Dance

“Yes, I expect so. Though the sun may be in their eyes.”

“Let’s stroll up the shore and go into the factory as if we’re not watching them. It’s probably the best we can do in the way of concealment.”

They walked back up the jetty and across the sand to the factory. Varazda laid his hand on Damiskos’s arm as they walked.

“It’s still a good plan,” he said. “We’ll handle whatever comes.”

“Thank you,” said Damiskos warmly. “We will.”

Varazda gave his arm a squeeze and let his hand fall. They went in the nearer door of the factory and took a position under one of the windows, sitting on the floor with their backs to the wall. Varazda had Damiskos’s bow and his quiver with its two arrows as well as his own swords. Judging by how far away the ship still was, there would be a little while to wait.

They sat in silence for a moment. Damiskos thought about the ship approaching and what awaited them up in the villa, and thought this might be their last opportunity to speak privately before all the hells broke loose. There were things he did not want to leave unsaid.

“Varazda,” he said, “I regret some of what I said to you last night. I don’t want to leave you with the wrong impression.”

“All right.” Varazda clasped his hands around one knee, looking at Damiskos with his head a little tilted, a pose of listening.

“It seems absurd to say I’ve enjoyed myself this last week, but I have. Coming to know you has been the best thing to happen to me in years. I wish I had enough poetry in my soul to tell you what a splendid fellow you are—how brave and kind and beautiful. You probably don’t need to hear all that, so maybe it’s just as well I don’t know how to say it. But when I’m around you I feel … as if you cast your light on me. As if I’m a little bit better—a better man, a better person—because of you.”

He stopped, feeling self-conscious.

“There wasn’t anything wrong with that, as poetry,” said Varazda softly.

“But I regret the way I spoke last night,” Damiskos repeated. “You haven’t broken my heart—you’ve been more than decent to me. Terza’s head—that’s not what I mean. You’ve been generous and patient and magnificent. I will treasure the memory of the time we had together. I wish it could have been longer. But we—we’re on different paths in our lives, and you don’t have room for me in yours, and that’s absolutely fair. You have to go back to your home and your family and spying for your republic, and I have to go back to Pheme and—I suppose—see what I can do to expose the warmongers who would have bought those documents from Helenos.”

A rather sad smile flickered over Varazda’s lips. “You’ll get promoted after all.”

“No. I think I’ll retire. Draw my pension, such as it is, and look for some other kind of work.” He hadn’t realized until he said it that this was true, but it was. “I’ll make enemies if I take this thing on—I couldn’t have much of a career in the army after that. Anyway, I think it’s about time I moved on.”

“Ah,” said Varazda. He looked at Damiskos for a moment with an expression that Damiskos didn’t understand. A kind of uncertainty. “Dami … if you’re going to quit your job, can you afford to take a proper vacation before looking for a new one?”

“Yes, barely—but yes. You’re thinking that I should take some time off to recover from all this.”

“No. I was thinking that you could come to Boukos and stay with me.”

“Oh.” That was all he could manage. He seemed to have lost his power of speech.

“I’d very much like it if you would.”

“Yes. I’d like that too.”

The world seemed to have gone quiet around them.

“I have room in my life for you, Dami. Of course I do. You’d be a part of my life I never expected to have—I wasn’t sitting around waiting for you—but there’s room. Honestly, I’d—I’d promise you more right now, but I do have a family, and you’ll have to meet them and they you before I can say, ‘Come live with me.’ But I’ve wanted to take you home with me since … I suppose the first time I thought about it was that night you fell asleep in my bed. Last night when you said you didn’t know what you’d do without me, I—I panicked, I didn’t know what to say. But I wasn’t trying to say I could never love you.”

“You mean you think you could?”

“That’s just what I mean.”

Varazda smiled and opened his arms, and Damiskos scooted the short distance across the floor to fold him in a tight embrace. He had to fight to allow himself to feel Varazda’s lithe body in his arms, Varazda’s hands pressed against his back, without a pang of anticipatory regret. Could this really be only a temporary parting? He couldn’t quite believe it yet.

He said into Varazda’s hair, “And you don’t … don’t think that I’m just infatuated with you because of some, some idea of how you’re like a thing?”

As an explanation, that was quite incoherent, but Varazda seemed to understand.

“Oh, please. Believe me, I know that when I see it. The way you make love to me—you don’t think of me as a thing.”

Damiskos laughed. “No, I suppose not. Come to think of it.”