Page 11 of The House of the Red Balconies

“It feels … more homey here,” he said. “Though perhaps that is because I live here.”

She smiled a little wryly. “Perhaps.”

“The music exceeds anything I have heard elsewhere,” he offered, and it was quite true.

“Zo’s awfully good, isn’t he? But his health is poor, unfortunately, and he doesn’t always have the strength to play.”

“Oh,” said Hylas, and didn’t know what else to say. It was devastating to think that the performance he’d enjoyed so much might have taken a toll on the performer. But also, for reasons he couldn’t quite untangle, the prospect of talking about Zo made him nervous.

The other male companion, Chrestos, came up then and draped himself across a couple of pillows on Hylas’s opposite side.

“Don’t monopolize the aqueduct man, Taris,” he drawled. “After all, I’m the one who talked him into coming tonight.”

“What, really? Is that true?”

“N-no, well, I guess he did give me the idea.” Hylas felt his cheeks heating.

“You see,” said Chrestos triumphantly.

“Well, whatever it was, I’m glad of it,” said Taris. “Refill his cup, will you, Chrestos, like a good boy?”

Chrestos rolled his eyes and huffed, but he obeyed, which meant getting up from his languid pose to fetch a new pitcher of wine.

“Chrestos is usually busy with his patron, Captain Themistokles,” Taris remarked when he was gone.

“Oh,” said Hylas, again not sure how to respond.

Was he supposed to know the name Themistokles, or … No, he was being tactfully reminded that Chrestos was taken, had an exclusive patron, which was what the companions called their lovers. He hoped that was not because he’d been inappropriately friendly with Chrestos, given anyone the wrong idea …

“Ah, we’re going to hear some more music,” said Taris, pointing to where one of the other companions, a dark-haired woman whose name Hylas thought was Theano, was tuning a lyre. “You’ll like to listen to this.”

Hylas smiled gratefully. Chrestos returned to fill his cup with wine and lounge on the cushions again, and someone passed around a plate of delicate sesame cakes. No one tried to talk to Hylas while Theano played. He drank his wine and ate his cake and listened to the clear notes of the lyre and her rich voice singing songs from Pheme.

He glanced around for Zo, wondering whether he had retired after his own performance, but he was still there, sitting with a couple of newly arrived guests, deep in conversation.

The aqueduct man had arrived early, and he left early, retiring to his room after saying goodnight to Taris and Chrestos, as a new wave of late-night guests arrived in the courtyard. Zo envied him.

It was another hour before he was able to make his own escape, and then only because the guests he was sitting with insisted that he looked tired. He was tired, and his body ached all over. He had to wait for Ahmos to carry him back to his room, but because he was in ill spirits, and tired, and both of those things caused him to make poor decisions, he insisted on being set down at his door rather than carried inside.

Of course this meant that he stumbled making his way through his room in the dark and nearly knocked over the lamp stand. He caught the stand and righted it, but he heard the lamp smash on the floor.

He stood holding onto the cold metal shaft of the lamp stand, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the dark enough to see the pieces of the clay lamp and the puddle of oil on the floor. He could just pick his way around them and get to his bed. Perhaps he should do that. But the idea of waking tomorrow morning to see that mess on the floor made him want to cry.

He thought longingly of the time when he used to be able to summon a servant to deal with a situation like this—when he wouldn’t even have needed to summon anyone, because someone would have been there already, because he would never have been blundering about in a dark room by himself. Now he was actually beginning to cry, tears trickling helplessly out of his eyes.

He drew a deep breath and told himself to be calm. What could he do in this moment? The nearest light was all the way back in the courtyard. He could go back to the door and look out and see if Ahmos was still within hailing distance. Or … there it was, beyond the garden door, the glow of lamplight from his neighbour’s room.

He went to his desk and peered into his hand mirror in the dark to make sure the tears hadn’t tracked his eye makeup down his face in a shocking way. As far as he could tell, they hadn’t. He took a taper from the drawer where he kept them, patted his way along the wall until he found his crutch, and went out into the garden.

The lattice door to Hylas’s room had been slid half open. Zo made a fist and knocked on the lattice, making an unassertive, rattling sound, but loud enough in the quiet at the back of the house. Hylas was sitting on his bed, crossed-legged, and he started at the sound.

“Come in?” he said uncertainly.

He got down from the bed, and when Zo stepped into the open doorway, he was standing, with the look of a man half-prepared for attack, tall and rather daunting in the lamplight.

“Hello,” he said. “Ah, you’ve got a cane! Or more of a … crutch sort of thing. I am so glad. I—I mean, because that means you can get around by yourself.”

“Yes,” said Zo, “barely.”