Page 30 of Sword Dance

Nione sat with Tyra and got up frequently to play host to the larger gathering. All the women and the few men from Nione’s household were there, along with the factory slaves and people from the nearby villages.

Varazda appeared from somewhere, wearing a long, thickly embroidered black coat over his green silk from the morning. He served Damiskos his wine and then went to talk to the musicians.

Since they were there to witness a ritual in honour of Opos, the students took up the subject of foreign cults in Pheme. Of course they were opposed to them. They wouldn’t go so far as to criticize their host, whom they held in the same sort of overdone reverence as Damiskos because she was a retired Maiden. But they clearly thought she shouldn’t be encouraging her slaves in their worship.

Damiskos, himself a follower of the “foreign cult” of Terza, like most cavalry men, kept quiet. He watched Varazda standing on the other side of the unlit fire, taking down his hair while he chatted easily with the musicians, smiling and laughing. How did he do it? He wasn’t unconcerned or careless of the danger of his position at the villa; when he’d spoken to Damiskos in the garden, it had been clear that he took the situation very seriously. Damiskos had even thought he sounded a little afraid. But he was able to carry on playing his role as naturally as if he weren’t in a house full of fanatics who had murdered his countrymen and in all probability his … whatever Aristokles had been. His colleague?

The conversation had moved on from foreigners to women. One of the students, Phaidon, began to expound an unpopular opinion. The others shouted him down with appeals to reason and virtue.

“No, no, no!” Gelon cried. “In the Ideal Republic, since all cosmetics would be forbidden, women would lose their power to deceive men, and so what you say is absurd! Don’t you agree, Phaia?”

“What? Oh, yes, quite absurd. In the Ideal Republic.”

“Fuck the Ideal Republic,” Eurydemos growled, flinging himself to his feet. He strode off into the crowd of revellers.

There was a shocked hush among the students, as if someone had just cursed a departed kinsman.

“What did he mean by that?” one of the newcomers asked finally.

“Perhaps, in a sense, our master is still wise,” said Helenos. He had everyone’s attention. “The Ideal Republic is a fairytale for children. This is the real world, and in the real world Pheme is beset on all sides by barbarians, degenerates, half-men—there is too much at stake for us to indulge in idle talk. We must become men of action and do things we have never thought possible. ‘Fuck the Ideal Republic’ indeed. It will become our new watchword.”

This was met with the kind of approving laughter that acknowledges that what was said was only partly a joke. Helenos looked directly at Damiskos for a moment and raised his eyebrows slightly. Damiskos looked stonily back at him.

The bonfire was lit as the light died from the sky. Grilled fish and fruit and spicy-sweet Hapikon cakes were passed around, along with more excellent wine. There was music: several musicians, some from Nione’s household and some hired from the villages, alternated reels and popular songs for the crowd to join in with accomplished solos and ensemble pieces. Nione’s steward sang, in a big, rich voice of amazing range and sensitivity, a song from a popular new tragedy. It should all have been quite enjoyable; in other company, it would have been.

Some of the students were mixing with the villagers now, and one had brought back some of the free fishermen to join their party. The fishermen did not themselves worship Opos, and were complaining that they were expected to take on extra work for the next week while the Oposite slaves and their foreman went to a shrine in the Tentines. The students sympathized as heartily as if any of them had ever done a day’s labour. Surely, Damiskos thought, these men couldn’t be dangerous. They were too ridiculous.

Since people seemed to be moving about now, Damiskos got up and left the blankets where the villa’s guests were reclining to go sit closer to the fire and watch the entertainment. That was just before Varazda got up to dance.

It was fully dark by this time, but the beach was warmly lit by the bonfire. A space had been cleared in the sand for dancing, and the amateurs retired from it to sit around the edges in expectation. Damiskos had a good view.

There were no Zashian musicians, but there was a Gylphian drummer with a big, hide-covered drum, and she now took up a slow, familiar beat. The sound seemed to catch and twist at something in Damiskos’s gut. He had never seen Varazda’s style of dancing in Zash, but he knew its rhythm well.

Varazda stepped out of his shoes at the edge of the cleared area and walked out barefoot into the centre of it, his long coat swinging around his ankles. He had unpinned his hair and wore it loose as he had that morning.

He laid one sword down in the sand and began dancing slowly, almost lazily with the other, spinning it lightly as if exploring its properties, like a graceful visitor from another world who had encountered a sword for the first time. Then the drummer sped up, varying the rhythm in a way that stabbed Damiskos through again with familiarity, and the dance quickened, Varazda’s bare feet flying over the sand as he twirled and swung the sword.

He was a constellation of beautiful details in the firelight: bronze and henna and embroidery and long hair flying. He slowed his steps just a fraction, swooped down with his free hand, and added the second sword to the dance. His audience erupted in an awed cheer.

He ended with the showpiece that Damiskos had seen in the yard, spinning the two swords as one, then dropping to his knees, his coat fanned out like a peacock’s tail, while the onlookers shouted and clapped.

“That was marvellous, Pharastes!” Nione cried, emerging from the fire-lit circle of watchers with hands clasped raptly. “Oh, will you dance another for us?”

Varazda had stripped off his coat already and twisted his hair around his hand. The night air was cool on the beach, but dancing in the bonfire’s warmth in all those clothes must have been sweaty work.

He bowed assent. Nione looked delighted, and there were murmurs of approval from the audience. Whatever the philosopher’s students thought of it, the workers and the slaves were enjoying it.

“What a shame we don't have more music for you,” Nione said. She appealed to the crowd of factory-workers. “I don't suppose anyone knows any Sasian dance tunes?”

Damiskos cleared his throat. “I do.”

Heads turned in his direction as he got awkwardly to his feet in the sand. He had noticed that the Gylphian musician had a stringed instrument that was more or less the same as the Zashian long-necked lute; he didn’t remember what they called it in Gylphos. He approached and asked the musician’s permission, and the woman handed her instrument over.

“Do you mind if I retune it to the Zashian mode?”

“Please.”

It was a light, well-made instrument, more like the one Shahaz had played than those that the men had brought out around the watch-fires on campaign. It was easily retuned to the scale of the Zashian lute. Finding a comfortable position in which to sit to play took longer. Sitting cross-legged in the approved style was no longer feasible, so at home when he played he generally sat on a stool. He arranged himself as best he could in the sand, with the instrument cradled in his lap.