Page 24 of The House of the Red Balconies

Even if you weren’t drawn to men, as Hylas wasn’t …

He stopped dead in the moonlit street with the force of the realization. He had been telling himself that lie for so long that it had become part of him, and he’d forgotten it was a lie. But he wasn’t in Ariata now. He was on Tykanos, where even the governor could have a male lover and no one seemed to bat an eyelash.

Of course he liked men. He always had. It had been part of the shame that had poisoned his life in Ariata, where you were allowed to have sex with men but not to admit that you liked it, or something—he’d never understood it, though it had seemed so obvious to everyone else. He’d just buried that part of himself, so far down that he had forgotten it was there.

He walked the rest of the way home in a daze, forgetting to return to the question of whether Loukianos would like Zo or not.

The mood at the Red Balconies that night was very bleak. “Dire” was how Chrestos described it in an aside to Pani and Zo. Captain Themistokles was away at sea, so he was thrown upon the mercy of the regular guests like the rest of them. No one felt much sympathy for him.

It was almost too cold to be still entertaining in the courtyard, but the sitting rooms were not yet ready for guests. Everyone put on warm clothes and hoped for the best.

Mistress Aula had been threatening everyone all week. Pani and Menthe were the worst off; Mistress had inherited their contracts with the house, and as good as owned them now. She had told both of them flatly that if they didn’t find patrons before Turning Month, she would sell them to a Gylphian brothel. Theano had tried to tell them that she wouldn’t really do it, as she would lose money, but that wasn’t much comfort. Pani reported having heard Mistress making some threat to Theano herself, or at least talking to her in what Pani interpreted as a threatening tone. There had been a shouting match between Mistress and Taris over Taris’s headscarves, which Mistress had long disliked almost as much as Zo’s crutch—Taris had beautifully thick, creamy-blonde hair which Mistress felt the guests had “a right” to see. For now, the headscarf was still in place, but Taris—normally Mistress’s loyalest supporter—had a hard look in her eyes that showed the argument had taken its toll.

Some of Zo’s regular guests, a group of marines, were there that evening, and they were in poor spirits themselves. He got them talking, in the ways that he knew how, and learned that they were worried about a possible action on the Deshan Coast. He listened and asked sympathetic questions as if he knew of the places and powers they named only by rumour; this allowed them to show off their knowledge, distracting them from their worry. In fact, though he’d never been to the Deshan Coast himself, always confined further inland, he knew all about the situation there. Or what it had been five years ago, though it didn’t sound as though it had changed much.

“You always know how to lift our spirits, Zo,” said one of the marines after they had persuaded him to sing for them.

“It’s an honour,” Zo replied, but he felt a wave of sadness. He wished he had someone to lift his spirits just then.

Hylas came in, having obviously left another tea house early, his usual habit. He looked lost in thought. Chrestos bounced over to talk to him, foolishly, and Zo saw Mistress Aula notice and approach, frowning. He winced, wishing that he could catch Hylas’s eye and warn him.

“You have to pay like everyone else! Don’t think you’re special!” Her voice could be heard all over the courtyard. An embarrassed hush fell.

Hylas made some flustered reply, Chrestos tried to intervene and clearly only made matters worse, and it ended with Hylas hastening over to the incense burner.

“What did he do to warrant that?” one of Zo’s guests wondered aloud.

“He looks harmless,” another one agreed with a laugh.

“Bit of a dragon, your mistress, isn’t she?”

Gossiping about Mistress was a sure path to more trouble, so Zo did his best to pretend he hadn’t heard, offering his guests more wine and producing the first innocuous topic of conversation that came to mind. Hylas, he saw out of the corner of his eye, had lit a stick of incense and gone straight out of the courtyard to his room.

“And she thinks we’re the problem. We’re not the problem—she is. Do you know why the sitting rooms aren’t ready and everyone had to freeze in the courtyard last night? It’s because she decided to start redecorating, yesterday. Everything’s torn up. And we can’t afford that. It’s true the rooms were looking shabby, but I don’t know where that money’s going to come from. And then she goes off at the aqueduct man like that—tch. I don’t know what’s going to become of us.”

Hylas stood paralyzed in the kitchen door, waiting for the cook, who had seen him, to point out to Theano that he was there. She did so finally, with a wry smile, when Theano stopped for breath.

“Immortal gods, Elpis, you shouldn’t have let me go on like that. Hello, Hylas.”

Theano was sitting on a stool at the table where Elpis was kneading dough. Her baby—Hylas hadn’t yet learned its name—was in her lap, playing with a wooden spoon.

“Good morning,” said Hylas. He should probably ignore everything he had overheard; that would be the polite thing. “I don’t usually see you up so early.”

“Leta is getting a tooth and not sleeping well. I’ll go back to bed when she lets me.”

“Do you like babies?” Elpis asked Hylas. “Tuma, start getting the aqueduct man’s tea ready, will you?”

“Oh yes. I have a niece and nephew back … um, where I’m from. I used to like visiting them.”

“Don’t get home much?” Theano said.

“Give him the baby,” Elpis suggested. “Sit and have a cuddle,” she advised Hylas, gesturing with a floury hand at another stool. “Cheers everyone up.”

“I’m not in nearly as much need of cheering up as the rest of you,” said Hylas, then thought that had effectively broken his resolve of not mentioning what he had overheard. “Er, I mean … ”

“We know what you mean,” said Elpis.

Hylas took a seat at the end of the worktable, and Theano passed him the baby. She was so small and soft, looking up bright-eyed at Hylas, her little mouth open, still clutching her wooden spoon in one tiny hand. Hylas nestled her in the crook of his arm, remembering what it had been like to hold his sister Maia’s children at this age.