Chapter 1

"By the gods, Hylas,"said Governor Loukianos, leaning back on his couch and raising his wine cup, "you are going to love it here. This island makes Boukos look like a jurist's funeral."

Hylas, on the other side of the governor's dining room, tried to smile as if that idea did not alarm him. Boukos, he had always been told, was a place of extreme decadence. And the island of Tykanos was worse? He clenched his fingers over the wet collection of olive pits in his palm and watched Loukianos drink. The man did not look decadent himself: his raised right arm was tanned and muscular, his greying blond hair further whitened by the sun. His high spirits seemed exaggerated, as bright as the colours in the frescos of his summer dining room.

"I–I will do my best to appreciate all that Tykanos has to offer," Hylas said seriously.

"Splendid!" Loukianos grinned at him. "I'll show you around all the tea houses myself."

"That is very kind of you, sir."

Hylas had heard of tea; it was a kind of eastern drink that kept you awake. That did not sound very decadent either. He felt relief.

"Let me think," Loukianos went on. "Where should we start? There are six of them: the Jewels of Tykanos, that's what we call them. The Bower of Suos, that's my usual haunt, though some of my friends prefer the Amber Lily, and it does have its charms. We go to the Sunset Palace and the Peacock from time to time, because one has to, and Myrrha's is good for a laugh."

Hylas wasn't paying much attention to this. He was debating whether to put the olive pits in his hand on the table or drop them on the floor. He had accumulated so many of them now that he was concerned either action would call attention to itself. There were no empty dishes on the table, so he had been waiting to see what Loukianos would do, but Loukianos had not eaten any olives.

At home—in the place he tried not to think of as home anymore—Hylas would have spat the olive pits on the floor without a second thought. In Pheme, where he had lived for most of the last five years, the rules were more complicated, and you would get dirty looks when you discarded bones or pits or rinds in the wrong way.

"I'll take you to the Red Balconies," Loukianos was saying, "for the sake of completeness, and because it's the oldest house on Tykanos, though these days it's known mostly for its food and music."

Hylas nodded as if any of this made sense to him. So the tea houses also served food and hosted musical performances; he supposed that made sense.

"I am … I am sure it will be a pleasure to visit them all, sir," he said, "after working hard every day on your aqueduct."

"Excellent, excellent." Loukianos reached for the dish of olives. "Don't worry, you'll have plenty of spare time. Perhaps more than you'd like. There are always delays on this island. Sourcing the stone, finding the labour." He spat an olive pit over his shoulder, making the gesture somehow elegant, like everything about him. "Negotiating with the Gylphians."

"Oh. Yes," said Hylas. He should have spat the pits after all. Damn. Now it was too late and he had to do something else with them. "There are always delays everywhere."

"Mm. Here especially. It's its own world, Tykanos." Loukianos gazed into the middle distance for a moment, then recovered his cheer and went on: "One of the things you'll realize quickly is that everyone on the island is from somewhere else. Gylphians, Sasians, Kossians, people from places you've never heard of. Myself, I'm Phemian enough to be appointed governor, but I've never lived more than a few years in the city of Pheme in my whole life."

"Is that so?" Hylas hoped this was not going to turn into an exchange of biographies where he would have to talk about his own upbringing.

But Loukianos was one of those people who was content to talk about himself. "I was born in the colonies," he said, "and grew up in my father's household moving around Sasia—he was an engineer like you, worked for the army. In my twenties I even spent some time in a royal household, one of the King of Sasia's palaces in the north-east. That was something! The gossip, the court intrigue, the forbidden women's quarters—it's all real, all much like the stories you hear. Went back to Pheme to further my career, as one does, and now—here I am. Come have a look around my gardens," he finished abruptly, swinging his legs down off the couch. "I've had them largely redone since moving into the governor's mansion."

Loukianos beckoned for a slave to bring his sandals, and Hylas tried to seize the moment to reach out and open his hand over the table. Several of the olive pits stuck to his palm, and he had to brush them off with his other hand. Loukianos saw what he was doing and gave him a quizzical look, but he said nothing. Hylas felt his cheeks heating and stood up stiffly, clenching his jaw.

As the six bells marking the middle of the day rang at the fort down by the harbour, Hylas stood in the street outside the governor's mansion. He had followed Loukianos on a long tour of the gardens, looking at fishponds and shrubs and statues, wishing that he had any context at all for appreciating such things. He wondered if forty was too old to learn.

He drew in a deep breath of the brisk sea air and let it out, looking around him. The governor's mansion was at the summit of Tykanos, in the enclave of rich men's houses that capped the rocky peak rising above the beaches below. The streets that he had climbed to get here from the harbour rose steeply, broken in some places by steps, and he'd seen the wealthy being carried by their slaves in chairs with long handles.

He walked along the top of the wall that surrounded this enclave, looking out over the island. To the north, he saw vistas far out into the sparkling sea, all the places he'd lived so far in his life hidden by distance. Coming around to the east, there were forested hills. He'd seen Tykanos on a map, and recalled that it was really a pair of islands, very close together and joined by a causeway. That forest would be on the larger of the two, if he had got his bearings right. Some of the trees had turned colour, their leaves flame-orange against the backdrop of the bright blue sea.

He kept walking and came around to the south side of the summit. Here the coast of Gylphos was a dark line on the horizon, the land in this area very flat. Hylas remembered seeing that on the map, too. He leaned on the parapet of the wall, his circuit of the summit completed, and looked down at the harbour.

The fortifications that surrounded the harbour dominated the view. Hylas's gaze skittered away from their dark bulk. Beyond their walls, a long stone jetty ran out into the water, with several ships at anchor along it. Between the harbour and the residences of the upper slopes lay the small fortress town, with its pastel-coloured houses and shops, its water gardens and little avenues of painted statuary gleaming in the sun. It was beautiful; Hylas could understand why Loukianos loved it here.

He set off down the mountain in search of his lodgings. He'd been given directions and sent his sea chest on ahead while he went up to greet the governor immediately after arriving. Now he made his way to a shabby street nestled under the edge of the mountain road on the outskirts of the town, looking for a house with—he consulted the note in the letter he had brought with him—red balconies.

Hadn't Loukianos mentioned some place with red balconies? One of the tea houses—Hylas hoped he wouldn't really have to visit them all, though if he was to remain on good terms with the governor, he might. But surely the work on the aqueduct, a large and ambitious project, would keep him busy, even reckoning with the inefficiencies that might characterize island life.

The town was eclectic, as if it had been assembled from leftover bits of various cities. They must log the forest on the larger island, Hylas thought, because they seemed to build a lot in wood, more than he had seen in Pheme. Many of the houses had wooden balconies projecting from their upper storeys, shading the streets below.

He found the house he was looking for at the end of the street, right under the looming rock face of the mountain, which here was bare and sheer. The balconies, two of them on the house's upper storey, had beautifully constructed wooden railings, but their red paint was faded and peeling. The narrow entry hall was empty, the sun hot in the courtyard beyond, unrelieved by vegetation or the splashing of a fountain. There was a fountain, but it was as old as the rest of the house and quite dry.

It was a Sasian-style house, centred on the courtyard, with an arcade below and a gallery on the second-storey level, wooden like the balconies on the front. The proportions were pleasing, the space harmonious in spite of its age and air of neglect. You could see the mountain, its sheer cliffside stooping over the house, capped with a fringe of gnarled trees.

The haunting voice of a bowed instrument emanated from the shadows under the arcade on the opposite side of the courtyard, where a group of people lounged on cushions with small bowls in their hands. The musician was a young woman in an orange dress. She swayed with the motion of her bow, eyes closed.

Hylas looked around the courtyard uncertainly. Was this a lodging house? It didn't look particularly like any of the apartment buildings he had seen in Pheme, but then, he was far from Pheme here, in a town where the population was as mixed as the architecture. He stepped in under the arcade to get out of the sun, scanning the seated group to see if there was anyone who looked like a landlady.

There was a thin, olive-skinned woman of about his age, wearing a lot of gold bracelets, but she was asleep, leaning inelegantly on a cushion propped against the wall. Someone else, seeing Hylas and misunderstanding his intentions, kicked a spare cushion in his direction and waved indicatively at a spouted vessel and a stack of bowls on a small table. Hylas nodded with a spasmodic smile but did not move. He started to feel a ridiculous, rising panic. Was he in the wrong place? How was he going to find his lodgings?

A young woman noticed him after a moment and got to her feet, gathering up her heavy skirts.

"Welcome to the House of the Red Balconies, good sir," she murmured, stepping away from the musical group and making a startlingly graceful curtsey.

"Th-this is the Red Balconies?"

Was that not the name of the tea shop Loukianos had mentioned? The one that you visited only for the sake of completeness? The small bowls and the spouted vessel could certainly contain tea. But the place did not otherwise resemble a restaurant.

And he wasn't looking for a restaurant. He had been careful to arrange everything beforehand, writing to the agent whom Loukianos had recommended to secure lodgings in the town. He had followed the directions given in the agent's letter, but this was clearly the wrong place.

"Are you here to see anyone in particular?" the young woman asked with a smile. She had a pretty, heart-shaped face, and her hair was entirely concealed under an elaborately wrapped red scarf, balanced on top of her head like a big red flower.

Hylas cleared his throat. There was no need for panic. "Actually, I believe I may have mistaken the directions. I am new to the island. I'm looking for my lodgings."

"Oh, are you our new tenant?" Her manner changed just slightly, a fractional lowering of formality. "I did hear someone was coming."

"I … really?"

"Oh yes." Her smile was now wide and genuine. "We're a tea house, but we have a spare apartment that we let out. It's quite nice. I can show you to it. What's your name?"

"Hylas Mnemotios." The surname was coming more readily to his lips now, feeling less like a lie. It was only a couple of months since he had started using it again.

"Nice to meet you, Hylas. I'm Taris. Follow me."

She padded away under the arcade, barefoot on the flagstones. Hylas followed doubtfully.

"What are you doing on Tykanos?" she asked, glancing back over her shoulder.

That at least was an easy question to answer. "I am an engineer. I have been hired by Governor Loukianos to direct the building of a new aqueduct."

"Really?" She sounded delighted. "I'll have to introduce you to everyone—you'll be a sensation. The water situation in town is quite bad—I hear the aqueduct will be a tremendous improvement. It's certainly made Governor Loukianos very popular since he announced it."

Taris pulled aside a curtain in an arched doorway tucked in the very corner of the arcade, and Hylas followed her down a couple of steps into a small, dark, oddly shaped anteroom with bare walls and a flagged floor and two doors opening off it. She unlatched one of them and pushed it inward.

"Here you are," she said. "This is the apartment."

Hylas looked into the room, still half-sure this must all be a mistake. But no, it wasn't, because there under the window was the sea chest that he'd had sent ahead to his new lodgings.

"Ah," he said. "There are my things."

"Yes, we had the porter put them in here for you." Taris strode through the front room and opened an inner door. "There's two rooms, and a little courtyard at the back, which you share with Zo—and the bath you share with Zo and Chrestos, though you'll have to fetch and heat your own water, so you may prefer to go to the public baths. Our last tenant did. The one by the Sunset Palace is decent, I hear. The brand new one around the corner is usually closed, for some reason. And you're not allowed to use the girls' bath, so don't even ask." She laughed, but there was an edge to it which made him think that the last tenant had asked. "And you may want to buy some more furniture. Our last tenant took away everything that was in here when he left, although it wasn't really his. We did our best to fix it up for you, but you may want some nicer things. I don't know if you'll find the bed big enough for you—you are tallish."

"It all appears perfectly satisfactory," said Hylas, as he would probably have said if she had shown him to a corner of a dirty stable instead of this airy, pleasant suite of rooms.

"Excellent." She headed back toward the outer door. "You get to take your meals with us, if you like, but if you want to take up any of the girls' time, you have to burn incense like everyone else."

"Of course," he said, since she was looking back at him as if expecting an answer, though he had no idea what she was talking about. "Where is the … where is the tea sold?"

Taris's eyebrows went up. "What?"

It was obviously not the right question. He tried again. "I–I understand that this is a tea house …"

"Oh, but we don't sell tea. That's just what it's called on the island. We're a house of companions. There's four of us girls, and Zo and Chrestos, though he's accepted a garland from Captain Themistokles."

Hylas felt an unpleasant sensation like being splashed with cold water. He had been misunderstanding this basic piece of vocabulary all morning. Of course when Loukianos talked about showing him around the island and said it made Boukos look tame, he hadn't been talking about places to buy tea.

"It's not going to be a problem, is it?" Taris lifted her chin slightly. Without waiting for an answer, she added, "You just pay us your rent every week, and we leave you to yourself. If you want anything else, you buy a stick of incense, and you get our company until it burns down—that's how it works for everyone, and you're not special just because you live here."

No doubt their last tenant, in between trying to use their bath and stealing their furniture, had made a pest of himself in other ways.

"Of course," said Hylas forcefully. "It will certainly not be a problem."

Left alone, Hylas sat on the edge of the bed, looking down at his clasped hands. Life on Tykanos was going to be very different from what he had imagined.

He had seen himself, in his mind's eye, reporting occasionally to a busy and aloof governor, directing a crew of subordinates, and otherwise spending his time alone, returning after long days of work to a solitary room in some lodging house where he would trouble no one, talk to no one, and no one need know how thin a veneer of civilization he had acquired even after five years.

Instead of that, Loukianos was a gregarious person who obviously didn't have enough work to do and looked on his newly hired engineer as a potential friend, and the lodgings were in a pleasure house where he was expected to have communal meals with companions. The work seemed likely to proceed in fits and starts, so he would be spending some of his time touring other pleasure houses and meeting other companions with Loukianos. Companions, who were renowned for their wit and sophistication, who could recite poetry and probably expected you to be able to recite poetry back at them, or at least to know whether or not to spit olive pits on the floor.

There were probably some men—there were certainly plenty of men—who would find this whole situation enviable. Hylas wished he could trade places with one of them.

Well, he had been hired to build an aqueduct, not to be a drinking buddy for the governor, and surely he wouldn't lose the job just because he wasn't very good company. He would finish the work and move on. If he disgraced himself, it would not be for the first time, and if he had to pick himself up and repair the damage and carry on as best he could, it would not be the first time for that either.

He got up from the bed and went to slide open the lattice screen that covered the door to the courtyard at the back of his apartment. His first thought, as he looked out, was that they should have been charging twice as much rent. The "courtyard" was a small formal garden tucked in between the corner of the tea house and the bare limestone of the cliff face. A high wooden fence, its red paint weathered like the balconies on the front, closed off the space on the left-hand side. On the right, the house was built right up to the cliff, as if it had emerged or been carved from it. Another lattice-screened doorway in that wall stood half-open to admit the breeze.

In the middle of the lawn was a gnarled old olive tree. Around the edge was a gravel path, lined with plants of different kinds that Hylas couldn't identify. A row of neatly trimmed ornamental trees in pots stood along the fence. Someone had started building a dry stone wall—rather sloppily—under the cliff, perhaps with an eye to making a terraced section of the garden, a clever idea. There were heaps of stone and earth, overgrown with weeds, as if work had been suspended for a few months. The lawn needed attention, too—Hylas didn't think the ragged plants poking up in places were meant to be part of the effect. Still, it was a beautifully planned space.

Fresh from his tour of Governor Loukianos's garden, Hylas felt newly equipped to appreciate this one. It was a Sasian formal garden in miniature, the layout and proportions reflecting something to do with Sasian cosmology that Loukianos had not explained very clearly. He had wanted to make his own garden over in this style, he'd told Hylas, but had been hampered by its pre-existing features. Whoever designed this garden had been able to commit to the design scheme much more fully. The air carried the scent of rosemary.

Hylas walked around the garden, following the gravel path, taking the long route to arrive at the other door. Thinking to introduce himself to his neighbour, he looked tentatively inside.

There was a couch just inside the door, and a young man was sleeping on it. He lay half curled up in the shadows, his long blue robe covering his feet but open at the throat, his sleeping face soft with repose. The green glass beads of his earrings glittered in the spill of black hair over the cushions.

Hylas took a step backward, startled. This person's beauty, glimpsed in the dimness of the room, seemed of a piece with the hidden garden, surprising and almost magical.

He had better manners than to stare at a sleeping woman, but the opportunity to stare at a beautiful young man in his sleep had somehow never arisen. Of course, there were reasons not to do that, too.

A bird cawed on the mountain above them, a long, raucous sound, and the sleeper woke with a start. Suddenly in motion, sweeping back loose hair with a long-fingered hand, draperies shifting around a supple figure as he sat forward into the sunlight, he looked out at Hylas.

His narrow eyes were as black as his hair, their depths emphasized with smoky kohl. His skin was fawn-coloured under a dusting of paler powder, his cheekbones high and broad, his lips full. His eyebrows, perfect black slashes, rose unsmilingly.

"Were you looking for me?" he said.

"N-n-no." How could he have been, when he hadn't known such a person belonged to the waking world?

"Then …" the young man prompted impatiently. He had a voice as dark as his eye-makeup, inflected by some accent that was a complete mystery to Hylas.

"I … was looking at the garden."

The young man gave this explanation the unimpressed look it deserved. "How did you get in?"

"Through the …" Hylas twisted to point vaguely behind him. Finally it occurred to him what detail was lacking here. "Through my apartment. I'm the new tenant."

"You're the new tenant. I see."

He relaxed slightly, and only then did Hylas realize that his pose as he sat on the bed had been full of tension. He had, of course, been alarmed to wake up and find someone looking at him; he'd just done a good job of hiding it.

"I—I'm sorry, I?—"

"Fortunate meeting," the young man cut him off brusquely, with a little gesture that suggested this was a formulaic greeting. "I'm Zo."

Hylas saw that he wasn't going to be allowed to apologize for scaring his neighbour. Fair enough.

"I see," he said instead. "Are you—I mean, I am Hylas." He cleared his throat. "Hylas. Are you—also—a tenant?"

"No. I am one of the Red Balconies' companions."

"Oh!" That meant, if he had understood Taris's explanation, that he needed to buy a stick of incense or something before starting a conversation? "Then I'd better … I mean …" What was he saying? "I am honoured by your acquaintance." By some miracle he got out a whole, coherent sentence. "I will not take up any more of your time."

"God guard your coming and your going," said Zo, the foreign greeting perfectly polite, the dryness inescapable.

Hylas fled; there was no other word for it. He got back into his own bedroom and slid the lattice shut behind him. He paced around the room. What had Taris said about the bath? He was to share it with Zo and someone else, perhaps another equally daunting person. He would certainly be going to the public bath house.