Chapter 16

They lay in the sunlight,which slanted in the open door at just the right angle to warm the bed. Zo gathered his robe loosely around himself and looked at Hylas lying naked beside him. Hylas's pale eyes were on him, questioning.

"Was it … satisfying?" Hylas asked anxiously. "Your Grace?"

Zo laughed. "Very satisfying. You must have been able to tell."

"Well … yes."

He'd only exaggerated his pleasure a very little, out of a combination of habit and affection. It really had been lovely.

"You know what you're doing. I thought you said you didn't."

"Ah, well, I …"

Zo patted Hylas's bare stomach casually and felt Hylas stiffen with surprise. "I know how you learned to do that," he said, not wanting to make Hylas explain that the only cock he'd ever handled was his own. There was probably some taboo in the stupid place he was from. "I'm teasing you."

Hylas relaxed, turning to nestle closer against Zo's side.

"Zoharaza," he said slowly.

"Yes?"

"Oh. I was just trying to say it. Did I get it right, then?"

"Almost. The second 'z' should have more of a ‘zzz' to it."

"Ah. I'll remember."

"You don't have to. ‘Zo' is fine."

"Mm. I do think I should be able to pronounce your full name properly. It's basic, you know?"

"Prince Zoharaza, Son of Chahaz Son of Temar, Kings of Satasparsa and the Eastern Peaks. That's the Zashian style, but we're from the Parkan really, and there was a different style at home, which … I don't remember, actually. It's been so long since I was there."

"Loukianos said you were a hostage at the King of Sasia's court. But that didn't mean a prisoner in a cell, did it?"

"No … I lived as a member of the king's household, with his wives and children. But I was ten years old when I arrived. I was never going to forget that I didn't really belong there—and no one else was going to forget, either. And of course none of us had freedom to come and go completely at will—or to leave the palace, obviously."

"So a little bit like here."

Zo laughed. "A little bit. The palace I lived in was bigger than the town of Tykanos—including the fort—with more people in it. And it's not even the biggest of the king of Zash's palaces. And we could go into the gardens, which were probably the size of this island, and the hunting park … not alone, you couldn't really do anything alone, no one could, but … it wasn't like being a prisoner in a cell."

"But you still ran away."

Zo looked at him. "I never said that."

"No, you never said it. I'm sure everyone else thinks you were supposed to be on the ship that was wrecked off the coast of Tykanos. You were the only survivor, or something—perhaps you had amnesia for a while …"

"Amnesia! Why didn't I think of that?"

"I don't know. You should have talked to me first. No—I don't mean that. You kept your own counsel, and I don't begrudge you that in the least. I daresay … you were used to needing to."

"Holy God, you've no idea. You couldn't trust anyone. Even the people … even the people who were trustworthy could be turned against you by your enemies. And I had enemies. I was a boy, not a courtier, and I tried not to offend anyone—I made a study of it, how to be charming to everyone—but I still had enemies, because of who I was, who my father was.

"I wouldn't have run away. The thought never entered my head. I was well provided for. I missed my family, but I had—thought I had—friends at the king's court. I'd started to have love affairs. I'm courtier material—I thought I was. And I was being useful to my father, in the best way I could be, as a hostage for his good behaviour. You might think it sounds unfeeling of him to give me up, as if he must not have cared for me, but it wasn't like that. I was a favourite, his youngest—he'd have loved to keep me with him, but he had to send me. My eldest brothers were men already, and he needed them at home. My middle brother was a troublemaker, and I'm sure my father would have liked to send him away, but you can't give your problem child as a hostage to your sovereign, how would that look? I was the obvious choice, so I offered to go."

"You were a good son." Hylas squeezed his shoulder, a chaste gesture although they were lying there half-clothed and sticky with semen. Zo wondered if he was being an idiot, spoiling the mood like this. It was the poor man's very first time having sex.

"I tried to be." There was no help for it now, and he doubted Hylas minded, really. He was so serious himself. "Anyway, I told you I fell ill when I was fifteen and never got better—I didn't tell you what made me sick in the first place."

"No …" said Hylas on an indrawn breath.

"Yeah. I was poisoned. It was like that there—that was the kind of thing that happened. I think it was meant to kill me, but they miscalculated, maybe, got the dose wrong because I was small and slight and they thought I would succumb easily." He shrugged, and Hylas's hand tightened on his shoulder again. "I survived and got better, sort of, but my health was never the same, and I knew that left me vulnerable to other attacks. I was pretty sure I knew who did it, and why—it was a problem that I knew wasn't going to go away. As I saw it, I had three choices. I could do nothing and probably be killed, and my family wouldn't benefit from that. I could fight back, become a poisoner and an intriguer myself—and if I got caught, it would be ruin for my family, and if I didn't, I'd probably end by having to betray a friend or a lover. I'd already seen that happen to other people. Or I could run away.

"It took me nearly a year to find a way to get a message safely to my father to ask his permission, or warn him that I was going to do it—I'm not quite sure which I was doing. But he sent back immediately an embroidered coat, a specific kind of coat that you give your sons in the Parkan as a token of your blessing, when they leave home. He'd given me one when I left the first time, but he sent me another one. I knew that meant that whatever I did, he'd handle the result, that he wanted me to go and live. But I think it also meant I couldn't go home—which I knew, of course.

"The actual leaving of the king's palace wasn't hard. I just had to bribe some people and know the right place to sneak out—a complex that big can't be guarded as well as all that. I staged a bit of a fake suicide, as if I'd drowned myself in the artificial lake—I left some clothes on the shore and wrote a note. I don't know that it would have held up for long, but it didn't need to, and in that place, it was much more likely they'd suspect someone had killed or kidnapped me than that I had run away.

"I made my way to the coast and got on a ship headed for Glif, not for any particular reason—by then I was exhausted and sick, and I got on the first ship I could that was going far enough away. I could have continued on to Glif after that ship was wrecked here, if I'd wanted to, but I just didn't bother. It wasn't a dramatic wreck. We ran aground on some rocks, but the ship didn't sink, and everyone was ferried to shore with all our luggage. A couple of my fellow passengers brought me here—I'd been unwell the whole voyage and couldn't really fend for myself—and Theano had me put in this room, which they were renting out just like your room at the time. I stayed until my health improved, but by then I'd begun to feel at home here. I was already more or less working for the house. I'd go out in the evenings and sit in the courtyard and chat with the guests, sometimes play my flute. I flirted with people, I drank tea. It was like the good parts of life at the Zashian court without anyone trying to poison or backstab or intrigue with you. Very much. I mean, they do intrigue here, or they think they do, but angels of the Almighty, it's amateur stuff, Hylas. It's quaint."

Hylas chuckled. "I don't think we Pseuchaians are very good at intrigue."

"You're really not. I like that about you."

"So you found a home here, and you decided to stay."

"I guess I did. I guess … the only thing that was missing was …"

He felt tears suddenly, out of nowhere, stinging in his eyes. What was that about? He reached for Hylas's arm, pulled it by the wrist to draw it over his body. Hylas obediently gathered him in.

"What was missing?" Hylas asked innocently.

"Someone I could open my heart to. Trusting …" He was crying in earnest now. "Trusting them not to betray me. I never—I never had that. I never told anyone all this. And I just did, just now. It's you, Hylas. You are the only thing that was missing. Please don't betray me."

He shouldn't have said it. It showed weakness and wouldn't make a difference. But it also didn't need saying. This was the man who hadn't allowed himself to leave Ariata and live fully as himself until all his duties to his family were discharged and half his own life was over. He didn't need to be taught anything about loyalty. He deserved someone who could trust him unquestioningly.

He hugged Zo to his chest and kissed the top of Zo's head.

"Never, Zo. Never. I can't promise not to disappoint you or that I can give you everything you deserve. But betray you? No. You can trust me. I'll tell you so as often as you need to hear it."

Zo snuffled against Hylas's chest and let himself be held tightly for a little while before he wiped his face and rolled over to sit up. Hylas released him, pushing himself up on one elbow. Zo drew a deep breath and let it out slowly.

"I was going to apologize, but I guess it's rather special, being the first person to be trusted with someone's secrets."

"Incredibly special. Frightening, even. Though—I promise I can handle it."

Zo smiled down at him. "Let us get up and eat our breakfast. There is still a world out there, and I suppose we should face it."

In fact, there was plenty for Hylas to do in the world outside the Red Balconies. He had plans to tackle another of the broken water pipes on the edge of town, which meant scrounging up a work crew from somewhere. Then he had an appointment with Mutari in the afternoon, mostly to return the copy of The Bronze Dolphin that he had borrowed from her.

He had never imagined how it would feel to do any of that after having made love to Zo first thing in the morning.

He felt changed by the experience, but somehow less so than he would have imagined. No one asked him, "What are you smiling about?" or "What's gotten into you?" and that didn't seem strange; he didn't think he showed any outward signs of the transformation inside him.

But he thought about Zo so much that day that it was distracting. When he was waiting to speak to a clerk at the government office, he was remembering the feeling of running his hand over Zo's thigh. When he was supposed to be assessing the state of the pipe that had been dug up under the road, he was thinking about the way Zo's tongue had felt in his mouth.

He almost couldn't bring himself to remember how it had felt to touch Zo's prick. He had done it, he had touched it extensively, explored its shape, rubbed it against his own … It still felt wrong to dwell on it—as if he might have made it less real by not thinking about it.

He stopped dead in the street outside the House of the Peacock when he had that thought. He wanted it to have been entirely real. He would make a point of thinking about it deliberately, just to spite whatever impulse from his upbringing was telling him he shouldn't—just maybe not right now, because right now he was outside the House of the Peacock and due to be drinking tea with Mutari.

Mutari had news, and surprisingly, it had to do with the aqueduct, which Hylas had almost forgotten about.

"Supposedly the new envoy from Glif is on the island already," she told him, "incognito."

"Really?"

She shrugged. "It doesn't sound credible, but I heard it from a reliable source in Tetum. I don't know what he's doing. Perhaps he doesn't trust Loukianos, or perhaps he just wanted to enjoy the tea houses at his leisure before taking up his post."

"Do you think Loukianos knows?"

"Well. That's a question. Are you going to tell him, if he doesn't?"

"No. He doesn't need to get his gossip from me."

Mutari laughed. "That's true. He has many other sources. I daresay he knows all about it already—it may be that the envoy went straight to him and is only ‘incognito' to the rest of us."

"Well, then, he doesn't know how business should be done on Tykanos," said Hylas loyally. "You've got to introduce yourself at the tea houses first. Don't you?"

"Absolutely. Hylas, you're so much more at home here than you were when I first met you."

"I can't imagine leaving," Hylas said, and it was true.

Yet if they couldn't build the aqueduct, how long could he afford to stay? There was work to do, work that made use of his skills, but nobody was paying him to do it.

And Zo needed a patron. That fact had taken on an entirely different colour since last night.

He realized he'd missed something Mutari had said as he grappled with his thoughts.

"Yes, I think so," he answered more or less at random. "Mutari, this garland that the companions talk about …"

She accepted the change of topic easily. "For patronage, you mean?"

"Yes, that. What is it, exactly?"

"A crown of greenery. Flowers sometimes—there's symbolism to the different plants, but of course it also depends on the time of year you want to offer it. Are you thinking of making it official with someone?"

He looked at her. By now he thought he knew her well enough that he could tell she didn't really believe he was. She would have been more excited about it if she had.

He smiled. "No, of course not. I was just wondering."

"So did you have amnesia?" was the first thing Chrestos asked when he met Zo coming out of the men's bath that morning. "And did it all come flooding back when the governor recognized you? What does that feel like?"

"I have no idea. I didn't have amnesia."

"Oh." Chrestos looked disappointed. "So you mean you've known you were a prince this whole time?"

"All my life."

"Why didn't you tell us? Did you think we wouldn't believe you? I would have. Are you going to go back and inherit the throne or whatever now?"

"No. I'm not that kind of prince. And I'm in exile."

It was a line he had decided on before leaving his room, knowing he'd need it. The best part about it was that it was sort of true. He didn't need to explain that he had exiled himself.

He was looking forward to telling Hylas the clever solution he'd come up with when he saw him again. Would he come and burn incense that evening? Zo would like to think that he would, that he wouldn't be able to wait until tomorrow morning.

"Well, I don't know exactly what that means," Chrestos was saying, spoiling the effect somewhat, "but Mistress is going to want to know why you haven't been telling all the guests about being a prince. She's going to think she can start a bidding war between Timon of Kos and Governor Loukianos over who gets to offer you a garland." He frowned thoughtfully. "Actually I guess I can see why you haven't been telling people."

That was how Zo spent the rest of his morning, telling bits of the truth about his past. The women companions, who were better read in Zashian literature than Chrestos, had little difficulty filling in the gaps that he left vague.

"Of course you don't want to go back!" Taris said. "No one's really free in a royal court, are they?"

"Like birds in a gilded cage," said Menthe wisely. "That's what I've heard."

The best winter sitting room was packed with guests that night. Mistress Aula was still away, staying with her friend who had just given birth. The lamplight flickered over Pani and Menthe's murals, and Zo was playing his flute when Hylas came in, arm in arm with the new Zashian regular, Nahaz. They caused a minor commotion by the door, and Zo almost faltered in the notes of his song. Nahaz was hatless and dishevelled, holding his head as if in pain, and Hylas supported him to a divan, where he collapsed gratefully, and Taris flew to his side. Zo went on playing, more quietly—no one was listening to him now, but they would notice if he stopped—and watched Hylas depart dutifully on some errand at Taris's command. He was curious, of course, but he knew he'd hear all about it in due course. For the moment he was content to enjoy watching Hylas be helpful to other people.

Eventually Hylas came and sat with the group near Zo, and Zo heard the story of what had happened to Nahaz. Hylas had met him outside of one of the other tea houses, where Nahaz had been trying to break up a fight between two other guests and got himself knocked down in the street. Hylas had come to his aid and, he admitted after some prompting, succeeded in both breaking up the fight and rescuing Nahaz.

"I thought to bring him here, because, erm …"

"Naturally you would bring him here," said one of Zo's regulars. "Where better?"

"Well, I live here, you see," Hylas elaborated. "I'm the tenant. I just thought to bring him back to the kitchen to get cleaned up. It was his idea to come up here—he said he wanted to see Taris."

Zo smiled, wondering if that was quite true. It was natural for Hylas to bring the injured man home with him, and no doubt if Nahaz had wanted to go straight to the kitchen, Hylas would have taken him there. But Zo could easily imagine that the idea of going up to see Taris had been offered as an alternative by Hylas himself. He was learning that kind of subtlety. Zo was so proud of him.

For a moment in the crowded, lamplit sitting room, Zo was captured by a vivid memory from that morning: Hylas naked in his bed, so intent as he moved over Zo, the look in his eyes saying that he cared as much for Zo's pleasure as for his own, if not more. Zo shivered, and two of his regulars asked simultaneously if he was cold.

Hylas lingered after the guests cleared out, helping Pani and Chrestos stack cushions and extinguish lamps. It seemed very natural. Taris had disappeared with Nahaz, whether still reminding him of his mother or not, Zo didn"t know or care to know.

"Who's Mistress going to have entertaining in the public sitting rooms," Chrestos mused aloud, "if all the rest of you get patrons? I mean, they'll want you to themselves all the time."

"Not necessarily," said Zo. "That's how you and Captain Themistokles are, but …"

"It's not that he's jealous! He's not, you know. He doesn't mind my entertaining other men when he's not here. So long as it's not in private, of course."

"I know," said Zo soothingly. It was just that Themistokles wasn't very sociable. He didn't want to offend Chrestos by pointing that out. "That's his preference. Some men like to meet in company as well as in private. But—you do have a point. Mistress is so desperate for us to pair off, but she's not thinking about what it will do to the entertainment." He shrugged. "I guess she'll find out."

"But what if she takes us down that path, and it ruins the house?" Chrestos pursued. "We can't let her do that. It's our house, too."

"We won't let it happen," said Hylas simply.

"That"s right," said Pani, around a yawn. "Listen to the aqueduct man, Chrestos. Let"s all get to bed."

Hylas walked down the gallery with Zo. It still seemed natural. They were going to the same part of the house, after all. Hylas had the lamp. At the top of the stairs, he offered his hand to Zo, as he might have done any time in the last four months, and Zo took it, as he might have done, and their bodies settled together in a way that they would not have done any time before that morning.

They'd taken two steps down the stairs when Chrestos appeared on the top step behind them.

"Do you—" he started, and froze.

"What?" Zo asked, looking up.

They were just holding hands; Hylas was helping him down the stairs. Of course they were going to brazen it out.

"Nothing. I can keep a secret," Chrestos blurted, and wheeled away like a soldier on parade.

"Can he, do you think?" Hylas asked after they had stood there on the stairs for a long moment, listening to Chrestos's retreating footsteps.

"I doubt it. But we can always claim he misinterpreted what he saw." He looked up into Hylas's eyes, pale in the lamplight. "Though it would be nice not to have to."

"Would it?" Hylas looked half embarrassed, half amused.

"To say, ‘The aqueduct man is my lover'? Yes, I would like that."

Hylas was silent a moment. "Zo from the Red Balconies is my lover," he said softly. "No one would believe it—but I would like to say it."

Chrestos had believed it—Chrestos had guessed it, Zo wanted to point out, and frankly, Chrestos wasn't usually the first to guess things. But he didn't say that. He didn't say how much it meant to him that Hylas had said "Zo from the Red Balconies" and not "Prince Zoharaza," either. He couldn't speak, because his throat seemed suddenly to be closing up at the thought that they couldn't say any of this. Whether Chrestos could keep their secret or not, it was a secret, it had to be, and to realize that both of them were wishing it need not be felt, for a moment, like the worst thing in the world.

It was Hylas who broke the silence to say gently, "We should go down to bed. To our beds, I mean. And then—I'll see you tomorrow morning?"