Page 56 of Sword Dance

The steward gave him an impatient look. “That is not smoke coming from a fire that has been put out.”

Damiskos and Varazda looked back at the factory. There was indeed still smoke rolling out of the window.

“Let me guess,” said Aradne, “you just threw a couple of jars of water over it and called it done. I suppose you’re sure there’s no one inside?”

“There’s no one inside now,” Damiskos clarified. “Varazda got me out.”

Aradne cast him a look which suggested that getting trapped inside fish-sauce factories without his clothes was about the level of competence she would have expected of him, and pushed a bucket into his hands.

The fire was mostly out. It was smouldering more than it had been when Damiskos and Varazda left it, but Aradne admitted that it probably wouldn’t have rebuilt into a serious blaze. The women, who were well-muscled slaves from the vineyard, made short work of dousing the pile of debris thoroughly and spreading out the charred remains with their shovels.

Their job finished, they came back outside and lounged in the sand. Damiskos lay flat on his back, one hand tucked under his head. Varazda dropped down elegantly beside him and spent a minute taking his hair down, shaking it out, and combing it through with his fingers, then putting it up again. Damiskos watched him with a kind of stupefied fascination. His whole body hurt, and he was beginning to feel hungry.

“Why don’t you put your head in my lap and sleep for a bit?” Varazda rearranged his legs in the sand and patted his thigh indicatively.

It was a lovely thought. He could even have done it without embarrassment; everyone here already thought he was Varazda’s master. It was his own stubbornness that kept him from succumbing to the temptation.

“I’m all right,” he said, sitting up and doing his best to look it.

Varazda tipped his head to one side and gave him a sceptical look, but he did not try to argue.

“How,” said Damiskos suddenly, “how did you know what to say? Earlier. ‘This is not then.’”

Varazda looked surprised. “Did I say that? It just slipped out, I guess. I’m so used to comforting friends whose memories have got the better of them. I grew up in a household of eunuchs. Everyone I knew had things that would sneak up on them like that and set them off. Stick around long enough and you’ll find out what mine are, I suppose.”

Damiskos didn’t know what to say. “I’d like that,” would have sounded ghoulish, though in a way it was true. He didn’t like to think of Varazda feeling the helpless panic that had gripped him when the students had tied his hands behind his back, but if it was a thing that happened, he absolutely wanted to be there to do what he could to help.

* * *

They were all still sitting in the sand when Nione and the rest of the women of the household, some with children in their arms or holding their hands, came down the cliff path to the beach.

Nione gathered up her skirt and ran from the base of the path to where the women were clustered. Her braids had come down and swung wildly about her shoulders as she ran. Her gown was torn at one shoulder, the clasp dangling from the frayed fabric. Damiskos, suddenly alert again, raked his eyes over the rest of the women. Some of them were crying. The ones with children were clutching them protectively, their expressions fiercely focussed. A few were carrying objects—a rolling pin, a broom, the lid of a basket—that they had either brought away in their haste or perhaps grabbed to defend themselves.

“Something’s happened up at the villa,” Damiskos said unnecessarily.

“There you are!” Nione cried, reaching out to Aradne with obvious relief. Damiskos thought she looked as if she wanted to hug the steward but didn’t quite dare.

“We have things under control here, ma’am,” said Aradne. “The fire was small and didn’t really pose a danger to the building.”

Nione looked as though she wasn’t really taking all this in. The other women reached the bottom of the stairs behind her. More than one child was wailing.

“Wait,” said Aradne. “What’s happened?”

It took Nione a moment to collect herself, but she replied calmly enough. “The students have taken over our house.”

“Terza’s—” Damiskos censored himself with an effort.

Varazda said something under his breath in Zashian about goats and ancestral tombs.

“Taken over the house,” Aradne repeated. “What does that mean?”

“They have Eurydemos locked in his room,” Nione said, her voice shaking a little, “and they were going to do the same to me. I didn’t know where you were—you hadn’t told me where you were going.”

“I was in the vineyard, and you always tell me I don’t need to inform you every time I’m leaving the house,” Aradne retorted. “Why are they locking people in their rooms?”

“I don’t know. I gathered up as many of the girls as I could find and got out. It was Tyra who warned me, but I don’t know where she is now. I looked for her, but there was no time. I had to get everyone else out. Everyone who would come—the men insisted on standing their ground, to help us get away.”

“There’s been fighting?” said Damiskos.