Chapter 11

Hylas drewup a strict budget for himself. He allowed himself two sticks of incense at the Red Balconies each week, provided he had no other extraordinary expenses. Over the weeks that followed he began taking all his meals at home, when he wasn't dining out with the governor, to avoid expenditure on food. In this way he should be able to pay his rent for two more months with the money he had on hand, before having to beg more from Loukianos.

With Tenth Month came Dendreia, which Tykanos celebrated in the Phemian style, with gift-giving and feasts, not with the austere sacrifices and ritual combat that Hylas remembered from home. Loukianos felt the need to apologize for the small scale of the island's festivities.

"There's a very token procession, I'm afraid—it's not a big town, and only about half of the residents actually observe the rites. Everyone being from somewhere else. Though if your feast is good enough, they'll all come out to that, no matter what they observe. I've given some decent feasts in my time, but this year … well, ‘economy' is my new watchword, you know."

This was another worrying development; it was the second or third time Loukianos had said something like this. Hylas didn't know what the problem was, and didn't want to ask, but it had confirmed the necessity for him to husband his own cash. He hadn't been fanciful in imagining that Loukianos would invite him to live at the palace to save on rent; the governor had made some passing remark to that effect already.

For Hylas, as long as he'd been able to choose for himself, Dendreia had been a time for staying at home. Attendance at the arena in Ariata was mandatory, but there was no fine; the only thing you risked was having the mark of impiety chalked on your door if the ritual patrol noticed. Usually they didn't, and if they did, he'd try to wash it off before his mother saw. There was supposed to have been a fine for doing that, but in the neighbourhood where they lived, no one had cared.

Walking through the town on the Market Day before the beginning of Dendreia, he stopped to look at the array of gifts for sale in the special festival stalls: small statuettes of gods and animals, decorated lamps, candles, pieces of inexpensive jewellery and poems written on little scrolls. They were items specially made for the festival, and each had some symbolic resonance; someone in Pheme had explained it to him once, and he remembered the details vaguely.

He would buy a gift for Zo, he decided. He'd never bought a Dendreia gift for anyone—it hadn't been a custom in Ariata, and in Pheme he hadn't known anyone to give a gift to—so the thought was exciting. He pored over the gifts symbolic of Orante, goddess of beauty and patron of companions. He had it narrowed down to a choice between a painted pottery bird and a bronze bell meant to be hung as a wind chime, when it finally dawned on him that Zo was one of the people Loukianos had been referring to who didn't observe the festival.

Zo was from … wherever people who looked like him were from, or maybe somewhere else—Hylas actually had no idea because he had never asked—but he was not Pseuchaian. He never swore by any of the Pseuchaian gods. Hylas didn't know whether he even made libations at the household altar on Hesperion's Day. He would have accepted a gift graciously, Hylas was sure, but it wouldn't have been a thoughtful gesture to give him one. It wouldn't have said, "I think about you all the time," so much as "I don't pay enough attention when you talk."

So he didn't buy anything, and then, on the first morning of Dendreia, the day for gift-giving, Zo came out into the garden with a smile on his face and a parcel wrapped in a twist of paper in his hands.

"Dendreia greetings," he said, presenting it on both hands with a winsome little bow. "Oh, is something wrong?"

"I didn't get you anything."

"That's all right." He had withdrawn the parcel when Hylas hadn't taken it and stood holding it uncertainly. "Do they do this where you're from?"

"No, they don't."

"Oh. I see, I thought they did." He held up his gift with a rueful expression. "They don't do it where I'm from, either, but you may have worked that out. But I do think you'll like this. I hope you will. I had Chrestos go to the market to buy it for me."

"Thank you," said Hylas, taking the parcel. He untwisted the paper carefully.

It was a painted pottery figurine of a donkey, symbol of the smith-god Telleros, whom Phemians considered the patron of engineers. It was the kind of gift anyone could have given him; but it hadn't been given to him by anyone. It had been given by Zo. Hylas looked at it and felt an incredible happiness.

"I made Chrestos buy half a dozen of them so I could pick the one with the best expression," Zo explained. "He took the others back."

The donkey's expression, rendered in a couple of brushstrokes, was serene and dignified. It wore a green blanket across its back, and its tail and the tips of its ears had been painted black.

"Thank you," said Hylas. "I will treasure it."

Winter came the way it often did on Tykanos, in a sudden blast of cold rain, lashing out of a grey sky that hung over the island for weeks. At the Red Balconies they lit braziers and huddled indoors. Theano succeeded in getting one of the good sitting rooms opened up, even in its half-furnished state, and she and the other women began entertaining in there. Their loyal guests made jokes about how they would endure worse for the food and entertainment on offer. Zo divided his time between the public sitting room and his own room, where Timon of Kos had become a fixture.

It was a delicate dance, keeping Timon interested enough that he might be willing to commit to offering a garland, while also making it clear to him that he wouldn't get enough of Zo to really satisfy him until he did. Taris, who was engaged in a similar dance with a First Spear of the resident marine legion, remarked one morning at chores that she sometimes felt envious of prostitutes.

"I wish I could just write him an invoice, you know?"

Once Zo would have argued with her; he'd loved the way nothing was taken for granted, nothing specifically owed in exchange for payment at the Red Balconies. It had felt like home to him, a place where he could deploy all the skills he had learned in his precarious, pampered boyhood. But that was before he'd been obliged to single-mindedly pursue a patron. Now he knew exactly what Taris meant.

None of them had secured a garland yet. Chrestos was still doing fine with Captain Themistokles, and Taris had hopes of her marine First Spear, but the other three were completely without prospects.

Most of the guests who had at first been put off by the switch to entertaining in the companions' rooms had started to come back, but the winter was always a slow time, with no ships arriving in the harbour, and it was an open secret that the house's finances were in a bad way. Hylas told Zo he'd overheard Theano arguing with Mistress Aula about buying cheaper tea and olives—insanity, Theano had said, when the quality of the food and drink were among the Red Balconies' few remaining attractions.

Now that it was too cold to sit in the garden, Zo and Hylas ate breakfast in Hylas's room. They had never talked about it; it just happened naturally on the first rainy morning. Hylas knocked on Zo's door, cloak pulled up over his head, and said, "Tea's in my room. Come over when you're ready," and Zo came. Hylas had a little table he'd built himself out of a couple of old shutters and a barrel, and he brought in Zo's chair from outside and seated himself on top of his sea chest.

"Now we're at the same height," Zo remarked, wanting—and at the same time not wanting—to ask if Hylas had built the table to chair-height instead of cushion-height for his sake.

Hylas's eyes were on the tea he was pouring. "I miss sitting at your feet," he said.

Zo laughed but did not reply, letting the statement hang in the air, as courtly a thing as any of the compliments he ever paid his guests. He felt strangely proud of Hylas when, every so often, he came up with something like that.

Hylas continued to be a hero around the Red Balconies, because while he waited for whatever machinations were necessary to get his aqueduct built, he had managed to restore water to the fountain in the courtyard. Apparently it had only been a matter of digging in the right place and repairing a broken pipe, and water was restored to the whole street. It wasn't good drinking water—they still had to go to the fountain on the corner for that—but apparently that would change when the aqueduct was built, and in the meantime it did make filling the baths easier.

They had finished reading The Bronze Dolphin aloud to each other by the end of Dendreia and begun to discuss what they should try to borrow next. Zo claimed he would be interested in a treatise on bridge-building if Hylas would read it to him, and although Hylas knew he was just being charming, it was still pleasant to hear. He had learned that although Zo had a grumpy side that he would never show around his guests, that didn't mean his sunny, charming manner was entirely an act. It was a real aspect of him, too.

The mood at the Red Balconies continued to be strained as winter deepened. Hylas could discern it in the way the companions spoke to him. Some of them seemed more remote, distracted; others, like Theano, had opened up to him more, accepting him as an ally. Chrestos, with all the naval officers confined to port for the winter, was taking the opportunity to sequester himself in his room with his patron as often as possible. But one morning a few days after the end of the festival, he showed up at Hylas's door.

"Come in," Hylas said, surprised. "We're eating breakfast. You can join us if you like."

"Thanks." Chrestos loosened the cloak he had been clutching around his shoulders, as Hylas had got the room to a comfortable temperature.

"Morning, Chrestos," said Zo, with his mouth full. "What's up?"

"I, uh …" Chrestos perched on the end of Hylas's sea chest. "I heard that you guys do this, and I just wanted company this morning, so I came to barge in. Nobody else is awake."

Hylas took the other end of the chest, while Zo refilled his bowl of tea and offered it to Chrestos.

"Captain Themistokles didn't stay over?" Zo asked.

"No, he's got a sore shoulder, and he's been finding my bed uncomfortable. He'll get me a new one, it's not a big problem." He cradled his bowl of tea and sipped moodily.

Hylas exchanged a glance with Zo, who returned a reassuring smile. So he too thought there was something up with Chrestos, and he would take care of trying to draw him out. That was good.

In fact, Chrestos had come prepared to talk, and didn't need any prompting.

"Can I tell you guys a secret?" he said suddenly, putting down his tea bowl.

"Of course." Hylas and Zo both said it at once.

Chrestos drew in a deep breath through his nose. "I don't really like sex. That's not the secret," he added hastily. "He already knew that." He pointed at Zo. "The secret is—and really, don't tell anybody this—neither does Captain Themistokles. We don't really … do much. It's mostly kissing and cuddling. Is that bad?"

Zo made a strangled noise. "Why—why—would that be bad, Chrestos? It sounds perfect."

"Really?"

"Because you've both got what you want, and that's rare. It wouldn't suit everyone."

"You?" Chrestos's eyebrows went up.

"No. Not … no. We're not talking about me."

"But don't you think … don't you need sex in order to, like, hold onto someone?"

"Um … no? People stay together even when they stop being able to have sex, and things like that."

Although Hylas had planned to leave the talking entirely up to Zo, he had thought of something potentially useful to say.

"Do you … do you think he's lying to you when he says he doesn't really like it?" he ventured.

"No. I believe him. I do. I just don't know, sometimes, what he's getting from me, if it's enough. You know, because I've got to keep him. I was always proud to have a patron, but now Mistress is going on about how we all have to have one, and I've got worried. If this house loses any more reputation, is he going to decide it isn't worth coming to see me? If I was a girl, I'd try to get pregnant. Shit. I wish I could do that. Then even if he left me or died, I'd have a kid, like Theano does."

"Chrestos," Zo cut him off, "try to come back down to earth. You're worried. Of course. This thing with Mistress has got us all worried."

"I … love him."

Zo nodded. "Yeah. You've known that for a long time."

"Yeah. And I want him to be happy. If he wants to leave because of whatever—I'm gonna let him go. I'd hate it, but …" He swiped at his nose; he had started to cry. "And if he wanted to take me away because this place has … because he thinks this place has gone to shit—I think … I'm pretty sure … I'd go."

"You definitely should, Chrestos," said Zo.

Hylas nodded encouragingly.

"You don't owe the Red Balconies anything," Zo went on. "We're your friends, and that won't change, but the place is just a place."

"Yeah, but I love it here. I don't want to leave. What would I do? Just sit in Themi's house waiting for him while he's away at sea? I'm sure as shit not going to sea with him. Themi wouldn't want me to, but even if he did …" He shook himself slightly. "Speaking of patrons—how's it going with Timon, Zo?"

"Fine," Zo said crisply.

It was something he and Hylas never talked about, though Hylas had assumed Zo discussed the progress of the affair—did you call it an affair?—with the other companions. He had a fleeting thought of getting up and finding an excuse to leave so that Zo and Chrestos could talk now. But actually it had been pretty clear that Zo had nothing more to say.

It was clear to Chrestos, too, and he was offended.

"Is that it? I just told you a big secret about my patron—seriously, if that ever got out, he'd be really embarrassed. Are you not going to reciprocate even a little bit?"

Zo shrugged, in a way that Hylas thought he would have found maddening if he had been Chrestos. "Timon's not my patron yet. That's … all there is to say."

"He shouldn't have to be embarrassed," Hylas blurted, to change the subject. "Themistokles. He … it's sad, that he would be embarrassed. Just because he doesn't want sex? That's not a bad way to be. It doesn't hurt anyone."

"Yeah?" Chrestos looked at him. "Everybody thinks you're probably that way yourself. All the girls think that."

"Chrestos, that's not …" Zo protested.

"I don't know," Hylas heard himself saying before he could think better of it. "I don't know if I am or not."

Chrestos gave him a sceptical look. "You don't know if you like sex or not."

Hylas nodded.

"Well … you're on Tykanos, man. You should find out."

After a moment, all three of them laughed.