Page 17 of The House of the Red Balconies

“You risked your career. It was courageous of you.”

Hylas laughed awkwardly. “No, I … don’t think it was anything like that.”

“Was it a long time ago? When you were young?”

“It was three years ago. I was … not young. Thirty-seven. But I was still a junior engineer on the project. I’m good at my job, but I haven’t been doing it very long.”

That was intriguing. “What did you do before?”

“Well. I was born and raised in Ariata.” He looked at Zo, maybe expecting a reaction. “Do you know much about Ariata?”

“Er … no.” He settled for that. All he really knew about Ariata was that certain people from his childhood had always been concerned about going to war with it. It had, at the time, seemed like an unimaginably faraway place.

Hylas said, “In Ariata, families of my parents’ class give their sons to the state to be raised in the barracks. So I was brought up to be a soldier.”

“How cruel! Do you mean to say that the nobles make them give up their children?”

“Ah. No, we were the nobles. It’s what the aristocratic families do. The peasants aren’t allowed that honour.”

“The honour of sacrificing their sons to the state? Holy God.”

“Well … yes.”

“So you were a soldier then, before you became an engineer.” It didn’t fit at all, and Zo wasn’t sure he believed it.

“No. No, I was never a soldier. I didn’t complete my training.” He took another swallow of tea. “It is a long story.”

And it didn’t seem to be one he wanted to tell—or perhaps it was that he didn’t think Zo would want to hear it.

“Do you ever go down to the Eastern Beach?” Hylas asked abruptly. “No—you told me that you don’t go out much, so that is probably a foolish question. It’s just that I was there yesterday, and I thought you might like it.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever been,” said Zo truthfully.

“I think you might like it. I already said that. You could float in the water, I thought, which you might find relaxing, and nobody much seems to go there, so you wouldn’t have to worry about being too much in public.”

“It sounds lovely,” said Zo.

He waited for the invitation that this had surely been leading up to, wondering what he should say. Probably just that he didn’t feel up to it—that would be simple enough.

There was a long silence. Finally Zo realized that no invitation was coming. Perhaps Hylas imagined him going to the beach with someone else, a patron or one of the other companions. Perhaps he didn’t know how to ask.

Perhaps he thought he’d have to pay for incense to take Zo to the beach, and he didn’t want to.

Hylas walked up the steep streets to the governor’s mansion, feeling an odd sense of dissatisfaction. He’d wanted to invite Zo to the beach. It should have been so simple. Hylas was the one who had been to the beach and knew where it was; he could arrange everything, hire a chair and bearers for Zo and bring blankets and everything that he would need to be comfortable.

But it wasn’t simple. He’d learned already, in the time he’d spent at the tea houses with the governor and his friends, that the companions enjoyed varying degrees of freedom. Some could come and go more or less as they liked, others were bound by contracts that restricted who they could see and what they could do outside their houses, and some were essentially slaves, indentured to the landlords who owned the houses. He didn’t know which Zo was, and he could not begin to think how to ask.

He arrived at the governor’s mansion and was shown through to Loukianos’s garden. Another place he would have liked to bring Zo, if such a thing were possible. But perhaps Loukianos himself would know how to make the invitation. That was a thought.

Loukianos was leaning on the stone railing of one of his garden’s terraces, next to a tall, copper-skinned woman dressed in the type of pleated white gown that Hylas had learned was fashionable in Gylphos—Glif, as the locals called it.

“Hylas, here you are!” the governor exclaimed. “This is Mutari from the House of the Peacock. Hylas here is the engineer I’ve been telling you about.”

The tall woman gave Hylas a gracious smile. He thought he could have guessed from that smile that she was a companion, even if Loukianos hadn’t mentioned her house. He smiled back.

“I hear you need some surveying done, Hylas,” she said.

“That’s right.”