Page 5 of The House of the Red Balconies

The Sunset Palace had been much as he expected, a beautiful building full of beautiful women who tried to make him feel welcome and special. It wasn’t their fault that they failed so badly. It wasn’t Loukianos’s fault either. He had been attentive enough, introducing Hylas to all the companions and the other guests, making sure Hylas’s cup was always full and giving him no opportunity to slip away unnoticed. If it had been in Hylas’s power to enjoy such an evening, he would presumably have had a good time.

He hadn’t. It had been like the olive pits in the governor’s dining room all over again, magnified into a whole evening of not knowing what to do, what to say when anyone spoke to him, where to look or how to position his body so that he looked like someone who felt at ease. Whenever anyone looked at him, he thought he could feel their scepticism. “What’s he doing here?” he could imagine them asking. He wanted to tell them he didn’t know either.

The House of the Red Balconies was almost unrecognizable after dark. Light glowed from the courtyard out into the entry hall, and music and voices enlivened the interior. The sleepy air of the daytime was gone, the shabbiness of the courtyard hidden by shadows.

Hylas spotted Taris, the companion he had met first, sitting in the courtyard with a group of men around her. This evening her headscarf was gold, still wrapped like an elaborate flower. The woman he assumed was the mistress of the house, the one with all the bracelets, was greeting guests as they arrived. He started to hasten across the courtyard toward his rooms, when it occurred to him that he might still be mistaken for a guest, being unknown to most of the companions, and he should introduce himself to the woman in charge.

He lingered while the mistress spoke with the men who had just entered. His gaze wandered to the gallery above the arcade around the courtyard, and he saw a door open and a group of guests and companions come out, talking boisterously. Among them was the young man Hylas had seen sleeping, Zo. He was laughing elegantly and leaning on the arm of a tall man with a bald head, as if he needed assistance to walk. The group disappeared through another doorway, and the mistress of the house was greeting Hylas and asking him something.

“Did I see you noticing our Zo?” she repeated, giving him an indulgent smile. “Let me take you up to join his party.”

“Oh. No. Er, I’m not—I’m the new tenant.”

The mistress’s manner immediately changed. “What do you want, then?”

“Nothing. Just to tell you that. I’m on my way to bed.”

She rolled her eyes. “Nice to be like you,” she muttered as she turned away.

“Did your man Djosi end up going home?” Chrestos asked with a yawn as he and Zo were closing up the upstairs sitting room for the night.

“Yes,” said Zo. “He was here all afternoon, though.”

“Ooh. How did that go?”

Zo shrugged. “Honestly, not very well. I think I made a misstep, telling him the garden wouldn’t be private anymore now that there’s a new tenant.”

“Well, that’s true. What was wrong with that?”

“He thought it meant I wanted to do something private in the garden.”

Chestos snickered.

“I mean, I did. I guess that’s not his thing.”

“Well, now you know.”

They were out in the gallery by this time, closing the door behind them.

“Do you want me to get Ahmos to carry you downstairs?” Chrestos asked cheerfully.

“I’ll be fine,” said Zo, smiling, instead of growling or snapping at Chrestos, because he’d conserved enough energy not only to get down the stairs by himself but to be gracious about it. He felt proud of himself.

The following morning, Hylas dragged himself out of bed and went in search of tea. It helped you wake up, he’d heard. And this was nominally a tea house, so they must keep the stuff on hand somewhere. Two days before, in searching for the privy, he had found the kitchen at the back of the house, so he headed there now.

“You’re the aqueduct man, aren’t you?” the cook said when he presented himself. She called to one of her subordinates: “Tea for the aqueduct man, Dria!”

“Hello, aqueduct man!” called the cook’s assistant.

Hylas leaned against the worktable while he waited. In his wandering the other day he had also found the cistern that supplied bath water for the house, and learned that drinking water had to be brought from the public fountain down the street.

“Has the fountain in the courtyard been dry a long time?” he asked.

“Five or six years,” the cook said. “We tried to get the landlord to fix it, but then the water on this whole street failed, so it wouldn’t matter, even if he could be bothered.”

“You mean other buildings on the street used to have piped water, and now it doesn’t work?”

“As far as I know. That fountain at the end of the street’s fed by a different source altogether, that’s why it’s still flowing.”