Page 73 of Sword Dance

“Dropped a big vase out the window,” Varazda reported breathlessly. “Diversion. You take these two downstairs and out. I’ll finish setting the signal and meet you in the kitchen garden.”

“Understood.”

Varazda took off for the tower stairs again while Damiskos herded his charges toward the stairs to the ground floor. Tyra was eager and quick enough to scurry ahead of him, but Eurydemos had got tangled up in his mantle again, and was staring confusedly after Varazda.

“Move,” Damiskos ordered him. “Now.”

Somehow he got the philosopher downstairs and out the door before the fishermen came back into the house. The three of them hurried across the dark yard to the kitchen building. They unlatched the back door and went out into the garden.

“Poor Nione,” said Tyra. “What they’ve done to her house!”

“At least she got out safely,” Damiskos said. “That’s thanks to you.”

“I wish I had been able to do more,” Tyra said. “I thought I would stay and talk to Kleitos, and between us we would be able to persuade the students not to do anything foolish. They’re quite intelligent, really—I thought surely they would listen to reason. But when they found out that I’d warned Nione, they made Kleitos lock me in the bedroom. They said if he didn’t, they’d—they’d think of something worse to … ”

“Brutes,” Damiskos growled, to keep her from trying to finish the sentence. “But no one did hurt you, did they? Aside from scaring you, I mean.”

She shook her head. “I think Kleitos was as scared as I was—he’s a good man, really.”

“They were planning to kill me,” Eurydemos announced, sounding a little bit like a small boy who felt he had been ignored by the grown-ups for too long. “They were waiting for the right moment, to make it appear that I killed myself. I heard them discussing it.”

Damiskos spent a moment trying to dredge up some sympathy. “Must hurt,” he said finally. “Coming from your own students.”

“Of course it hurts,” said Eurydemos condescendingly. “You can have no idea.”

“No,” Damiskos agreed. “Never had any of my men mutiny on me.”

* * *

They waited in the kitchen garden until Damiskos could no longer ignore his unease. Eurydemos fidgeted and kept trying to talk and needing to be shushed. There was no sign of Varazda.

“I’m going back in to look for him,” Damiskos said abruptly, cutting short something Eurydemos was starting to say.

“What? Look for who?”

“Varazda.” Damiskos gave Eurydemos a sour look. Wasn’t the man supposed to be in love with Varazda, to the point of poetry?

“And leave us here? Surely you don’t expect us to come with you?”

“If you think it’s best,” said Tyra quickly, looking embarrassed for Eurydemos.

“He’s been gone a long time. I don’t know what might be happening in there. But I don’t think you should stay here. I’ll show you the route down to the beach.”

He took them to the bottom of the kitchen garden, explained how to get down through the vineyard to the path to the beach, and helped them over the wall. Tyra thanked him; Eurydemos gave him a baleful look as if Damiskos were abandoning a sacred trust. Damiskos walked briskly back up the garden.

He slipped back in through the now-unlocked kitchen and out into the yard. The house looked dark and still, but he knew that meant nothing. He pushed the front door open cautiously.

Loud, angry voices met his ear immediately.

“Yes, of course!” That was Helenos’s voice. “What did you think we were going to do, mount an attack on the kingdom of Sasia ourselves? Of course we’re going to sell the documents.”

“But if we do that, how are we any better than common thieves?” That was Phaia.

“She’s right,” someone else cried. “I say, and have always said, that we must keep them for ourselves.”

Clearly they had not yet discovered that the documents were gone.

“—the fuck you’re doing, and anyway—”