Page 9 of The House of the Red Balconies

“Immortal gods, are you the aqueduct man?” he exclaimed.

He was a youth of about twenty, nearly Hylas’s height, with broad, square shoulders and almost exaggeratedly slim hips. His hair was a mass of bright gold curls, piled up and tied with a ribbon in such a way that they spilled over his forehead. He had pearl-white skin and a profile you could have used to cut gemstones.

“Yes,” said Hylas, “that’s me. You must be Chrestos.”

“I am! How did you know?”

“A lucky guess,” said Hylas. But really, who else could this young man have been?

“Everyone’s been talking about you,” Chrestos confided. “It’s been driving me mad that I haven’t met you.”

“H-have they? What have they been saying?”

“That you’re building an aqueduct that’s going to get the water flowing all over Tykanos. Is it true?”

“W-well, I’m an engineer, I’m directing the project, not actually building it by hand.”

Chrestos laughed boisterously as if that had been a very good joke. “I heard you haven’t burned incense in the evening with us yet, and all the girls are longing to get to know you better. Of course I’m usually busy in the evenings myself. I have an exclusive patron? Captain Themistokles. He takes up all of my time.”

“I see,” said Hylas politely. “I’m new to the island, so I’m afraid I don’t know who that is.”

The companion looked surprised and pleased, and Hylas realized he’d inadvertently paid him a compliment in assuming his patron was famous. It seemed a good moment to make his escape.

“If you’ll excuse me,” he said finally, sidling past to reach his own door. “It, uh, was nice to meet you.”

CHAPTER 4

“I finally met the aqueduct man,” Chrestos reported proudly when Zo opened his door.

Zo leaned on the doorframe and adjusted his grip on his crutch. “Congratulations? I hope that isn’t what you’ve been hammering on my door to tell me.”

“No, of course not. I met him just now, while I was waiting forever for you to answer your door. Mistress wants us all dressed in our best in the courtyard by sunset. There’s some sort of dignitary coming.”

“Fine,” said Zo, nodding curtly. “I’ll be there.”

“Obviously you’ll have to leave the stick behind. Why’ve you got it now, anyway? We all thought you were getting better.”

This rankled Zo more than all the rest. Chrestos had known him for a year—the others longer.

“I get better and then I get worse again, Chrestos,” he growled. “That’s the way it works. I hope Mistress knows if she wants me not to use my crutch, she’d better send Ahmos to carry me.”

“I’ll tell him,” said Chrestos.

Zo shrugged. “If you feel like it. See you at sunset.”

And he closed the door.

His bed felt very far away, but it was also the only destination in the room that interested him. He resisted the urge to sink down and sit on the floor; that, he knew from experience, would only create a new and harder task of getting up.

A few months ago, during a period when he’d been feeling better than usual, the tide of pain and fatigue temporarily gone far out, he’d had the idea to put a bunch of pegs on the wall and hang his clothes and jewellery so that he could see everything without having to dig through chests or boxes. He’d bought another chair to add to his collection—he had three others, one by his bed, one at his desk, and one out in his garden—so that he could sit down to dress.

It made the room look odd, which would become a problem if he ever acquired a patron whom he wanted to entertain privately. But for now that possibility seemed pretty remote, and the way he’d arranged his room let him carry on with his life in reasonable comfort.

It was funny how taken everyone was with the aqueduct man. Zo was apparently the last of the companions to have a conversation with him. And yet he must have been one of the first to meet him, the day that he arrived, and his room was next door to the aqueduct man’s, sharing access to the back courtyard.

Zo picked out a robe and sat in his chair to dress, then moved to his desk where he sat to put on his makeup, and finally sat in the chair by his bed to look out at his garden, waiting for sunset. As the light failed, his neighbour lit a lamp, and Zo could see the shadow of the aqueduct man moving about in his bedroom, then coming to stand by the courtyard door, probably looking out like Zo was doing. Zo’s own room was dark; the aqueduct man would not have known he was there. The wind moved in the trees on the clifftop above them, and the scent of rosemary filled the air.

The sun went down, and Ahmos came to get Zo.