Page 21 of The House of the Red Balconies

Zo relaxed in his seat. “Forgive me, Hylas. It’s a wonderful idea, so thoughtful of you.”

“I’ll ask him for a couple of treatises for myself, too. I don’t own a copy of Manolios’s Principles, and I really should, if I’m to continue to be a famous engineer.”

“That’s the spirit!” Zo flashed him one of his most dazzling smiles, lips a little parted, head thrown back.

Hylas returned the smile. He felt privileged to see the moments when Zo turned on his charm, like the opening of a tap to let water flow. It didn’t diminish the effect, somehow. How had he become so skilled at such a young age?

“How long since you were seventeen?” Hylas asked without stopping to think whether the question was polite or not.

“Let me see … five years? I haven’t observed my birthday since then.”

“Five years ago was when I left Ariata. I—I was a little more than seventeen.”

“What made you leave?”

“My mother died. My sister was married already, so I had no one depending on me. I was free to leave. Finally.”

“From what you told me of Ariata, I can understand why you wanted to leave.”

Hylas nodded. He recalled that he hadn’t really told Zo much.

“I wasn’t fit for the army—I never understood why. I was strong and healthy, my wits were sound—I should have been able to turn myself to the task, but somehow I never could. There was always something in me that rebelled against it. I always seemed to want the opposite of what I was supposed to. I wanted … to be gentle. I wanted to touch not to wound but to caress.” Without intending it, his voice had dropped to a whisper. This was so difficult to talk about, even now.

“I was a failure as a man. There were others like me, a few that I knew, who didn’t survive—they died in training or ran away. I survived, but I gave up a lot to do it. I was eventually proscribed—stripped of my aristocratic status—for being unable to inflict a killing blow on a slave in a training exercise. Well. Refusing to do it, that might be another way of putting it. My father was dead by this time, which made me the head of the family, so my mother and sister also lost their status. I was able to work to support them—as a commoner, certain trades were open to me that had not been before. I trained as an engineer.

“Ariata doesn’t do big engineering projects—mostly what I did was build bridges in the countryside, now and then some work on siege machinery for the army. I was able to find enough work to provide for my mother until she died. But she always felt her loss of status. In Ariata, you cannot help it. There are places you aren’t allowed to go, clothes you can’t wear, people who won’t see you—in the street, they literally will not look at you, they certainly won’t have you in their homes. We had a comfortable house, we had servants—you can’t own slaves as a commoner, but we had money to pay free servants—and we always had plenty to eat. We had—we could have had friends of our own class, but my mother would never allow it. She held herself above all our neighbours, which made us unpopular. My sister had to elope in order to marry a blacksmith in the country, and my mother never saw her again.

“I left after my mother died. The day I buried her ashes, my sea chest was packed, and I left. That was five years ago. Sometimes I feel as if I’m five years old, as if I was born the day I left Ariata.”

“I had no idea,” said Zo, his voice subdued. “All those lost years.”

“Lost is the right word. Sometimes I think about what I might have been able to do with my life if I’d left sooner—sometimes I blame myself for not having the strength to do it. Just telling my mother that we were leaving Ariata and then going. But she didn’t want to leave—she’d never been anywhere else, any more than I had, and I didn’t know, when I was young, how different the rest of Pseuchaia was. I spent so long living in the knowledge that I was defective, a failed man, and it wasn’t until I was in my thirties that I began to realize it was my homeland that was abnormal—there’s nothing very unusual about me.” He looked up and shook himself. “I daresay that was a lot more than you expected to hear me talk.”

“Yes,” said Zo frankly. “And it’s hard to hear. My heart breaks for you. But I am glad you felt able to tell me.”

“You’re actually quite easy to talk to, once one gets over the … being intimidated by you. Not that—I know you don’t mean to be intimidating.”

“Oh, sometimes I do.” Zo laughed.

“I’ve never known a man remotely like you,” Hylas said, and it was still less than what he meant.

“I’m not exactly typical of anything. I did also grow up in a place where men tend to be warriors and statesmen and things and not courtesans.”

“I never said I thought you were typical.”

Zo laughed. “No, you didn’t, did you? Well. Thank you.” He was looking at Hylas from under his dark lashes, and he had managed to unearth the compliment Hylas had been trying ineptly to offer him.

“I had a thought,” Hylas said suddenly. “The crutch that you use—I had an idea of how it could be redesigned to help you walk better.”

Zo’s eyebrows went up. “Oh, this is your famous engineer aspect coming to the fore again, I see.”

“No, it’s just—well. Maybe. But if there were a strut lower down for you to hold with your right hand, that could take more of your weight as you step, you see, and then … ”

They spent the morning working in the garden together. The sun was warm on Zo’s back as he sat and pulled weeds from the low beds. Hylas, in a one-shouldered work tunic, hefted and stacked stones for the terrace, quietly redoing the work that Milo had done. Even Zo could tell he was doing a better job. Every so often, under the pretext of taking a break, Zo looked up at Hylas. He had freckles on his shoulders and hair on his chest, not faded like the hair of his head but curls of bright orange.

I’ve never kissed a red-haired man, Zo thought irrelevantly.

Hylas didn’t think of him that way. Zo had gotten pretty good, after five years at the Red Balconies, at telling when a man was interested, and Hylas showed none of the signs. The other companions had commented on his awkwardness; perhaps he was uncomfortable with the whole concept of companions. Some men were.