Chapter 3

The morning potof tea and basket of buns became a daily thing. Hylas learned the name of the cook—Elpis—and some of her assistants—Gio, Tuma, and Dria—and their opinion of the landlord (very low) and the mistress of the Red Balconies (not much higher).

"She's a harpy," was Gio's judgement.

"She likes things to look just so," in Dria's more nuanced view, "and she takes it to extremes. That's why she quarrelled with young Zo last winter."

They always gave Hylas two bowls with his tea and more buns than he could eat in one sitting, and he never protested or explained that he had no one to share them with.

He took his breakfast in the back garden now, under the looming cliff face in the shade of the olive tree. He had realized that all the inhabitants of the Red Balconies slept late, so there was no likelihood of encountering his neighbour at this hour. He would drink as much of the tea as he comfortably could, eat half of the buns—they were delicious, stuffed with different fillings, some sweet and some savoury—and wrap the rest up in a cloth to take with him to work.

Not that he was doing much work. He was trying: he had hired the mule and gone out, a couple of days in a row, to survey the site on the little island as best he could by himself, but much of it was impassable scrubland, and you needed a team to do it properly. The site on the big island was apparently even worse. He'd asked around at the government office and learned the name of the navy's chief surveyor, but everyone seemed to agree that they'd need to wait until the quartermaster's mistress returned from Gylphos before actually requesting his help. He hadn't gone down to the fort.

The three hundred nummoi had duly materialized on the second morning, and the staff of the government office had been helpful in suggesting how much of it he might want to keep at home and explaining how to deposit the greater portion with the treasurers at the Temple of Amphiaraos in the town's small agora. He'd got through that procedure with a minimum amount of embarrassment, and to celebrate had gone out to the market and treated himself to a few luxuries.

Eventually, to keep himself busy and avoid spending another afternoon trying to appreciate Governor Loukianos's gardens, he had set himself a project of checking the map of water sources in the town and its environs. The people in the governor's office clearly thought he was wasting his time doing this, as the existing map, which was painted on the wall of the government office, was wonderfully detailed, with artistic renderings of the various fountains and wells in their locations. Hylas mumbled something apologetic about needing to see things with his own eyes and agreed that the map was indeed a thing of beauty. On his first day comparing the map to the streets of the town, he found that the map was inaccurate, had been inaccurate when it was first painted, and was now out of date, showing fountains that were no longer in use and omitting at least one major well. So he was discreetly drafting a new one, much less distinguished artistically, but much more accurate.

His evenings were spent with Governor Loukianos and his friends at the tea houses. His afternoons could have been spent there too, and sometimes were, if he made the mistake of being somewhere where the governor could find him at around the time the tea houses opened, and not appearing adequately busy.

Afternoons were the times when the tea houses actually served tea, and the atmosphere was relaxed and, in some ways, more intimate, because there were fewer guests. It might have suited Hylas better, but in fact it put him intolerably on edge; there were no crowds or shadows to hide in, no one was lit up with drink or distracted by dancers, and everyone looked you in the eye. People really did expect you to recite poetry in the afternoons. Evenings, when you could pretend to be a sleepy drunk, or enraptured by a performance, or just very busy eating, were easier.

So far, Loukianos and his friends, with Hylas in their wake, had visited only three of the Jewels of Tykanos: the Sunset Palace, the largest of all the houses; the Bower of Suos, Loukianos's favourite, where about half of the companions were boys and very young men, and the wine tasted like something that should be poured over cake; and the Amber Lily, Hylas's least favourite, where the food was scanty and the poetry almost non-stop, which they had visited more than either of the others because one of Loukianos's friends was in love with a woman there.

You didn't pay for your drinks or your food at the tea houses; you just bought a stick of incense and settled in until it burned down and someone came to ask discreetly if you'd like to pay for another one. And, in fact, Hylas never paid for his own; Loukianos always paid for him, or rather added him to his tab, since the governor seemed to have an account running at all the houses they had visited. Hylas might have protested at this if he had been enjoying these evenings more. He felt guilty when he thought about all that money at the Temple of Amphiaraos, but a lifelong habit of frugality reminded him to be grateful he wasn't having to spend whatever an evening at the tea houses cost—because the governor didn't actually pay, he had no idea—every night of the week. And he wasn't going to be paid three hundred nummoi every week, either; he'd realized that after the first week ended and no new bag of coins appeared. It must be a monthly salary, which was something of a relief.

The town itself was small, and all the permanent residents knew each other and were well informed on each other's business. The fort, when fully garrisoned, housed a population larger than the town, of marines stationed on Tykanos and legionaries waiting to be sent on to other posts. The sailors themselves were another, ever-shifting population, and there were merchants who came and went regularly. And then there were people who came simply to visit, from Pheme and Boukos and Gylphos, because the tea houses of Tykanos, long a well-kept secret of the sailors and traders and marines, were beginning to be talked about in the cities. It was changing the island; everyone seemed to agree on that. Most people thought it was changing for the better.

"We used to get pirates," Elpis said in the kitchen one morning. "I remember when we used to get pirates."

"It wasn't that long ago," Dria pointed out. "It's only two years since the Dodeki were put down."

"Yes, but they weren't coming as much even before that. I remember the days when somebody would spot a sail in the harbour and run through the streets yelling ‘Lock your doors!'"

A few of the people Hylas met seemed to think the change was for the worse.

"The threat of piracy was always greatly overstated," the governor's neighbour Timon said dismissively when someone brought it up one evening at the Amber Lily. "All kinds of ships dock in the harbour, and some of them may have been pirates in the past, but they weren't doing any harm—they could hardly get up to much, with the naval presence on this island."

"You liked the pirates because they were good for business," another of the governor's friends scoffed.

Timon didn't try to deny it. He was a merchant whose shop specialized in selling expensive swords and armour to the marines and the soldiers at the fort. He had a contract to supply the navy with the bronze used to make the rams on warships.

"If you were to dredge up the wrecks of those Dodeki ships they sank in the harbour at Pheme, you'd find more than a few weapons from my shop—all paid for, I might add. But that's not why I miss the pirates. The fact is, this town was livelier when it had a bit of an edge to it. Rawer. More real. Like a woman when she wants you but is also just a little afraid of you."

"As if he has any idea what that's like," Loukianos whispered to Hylas.

He might not have, Hylas thought, but he liked the sound of it, and that was bad enough.

The part of the night Hylas enjoyed most was coming home. The Red Balconies would be lit up, appearing at its best, strange and off-limits and yet welcoming. He would slink in the doors, ignored by the mistress now, exchanging a courteous nod or a greeting with Ahmos, the bouncer, if he was on duty. There would be other familiar faces in the courtyard and the arcade as he passed through; he had met most of the companions during the day, in passing, and was known to them as "the aqueduct man," so he would smile discreetly and return a wave or two.

There was Menthe, a young woman with wavy auburn hair and beautiful blue eyes; Pani, with black hair in ringlets and a Gylphian accent; and Theano, older than the others, pale-complexioned and black-haired and seemingly second in command to Mistress Aula. The kitchen day staff, who were the only ones Hylas had much conversation with, would be gone to bed long ago, in order to rise early and begin the next day's baking.

He never exchanged smiles or greetings with Zo, although he saw him most nights. Zo seemed to have a devoted circle of admirers; Hylas spotted the same men with him more than once. Sometimes he would be with only one of them, or part of a larger group with many different companions and guests. He was always smiling when Hylas saw him at night, smiling or laughing or listening with rapt and pleasant attention to something one of his guests was saying. Hylas continued to find the whole idea of him frightening.

Zo played the flute, or some foreign instrument that resembled a flute and whose sound moved Hylas almost to tears the one time that he heard Zo playing in the courtyard. He dressed in long, enfolding robes and wore earrings and kohl around his eyes, much like the other companions. When he walked, he always leaned on someone; other times, Hylas would see him being carried by Ahmos or by one of his guests.

One night, Hylas returned home especially late from the Amber Lily, where he had listened uncomfortably to Loukianos's friend trying to win a battle of wits against his beloved. The courtyard was mostly empty, and he had the idea of going to the kitchen to see if there were any leftovers that they might be willing to give him, as he was hungry. He returned to his room juggling a pitcher of wine and pieces of bread and cheese that had been pressed upon him by the night cook.

The door of Zo's room opened as Hylas was trying to get his own door unlatched without setting down his burdens. A tall, dark-skinned man slipped out; Hylas recognized him as one of Zo's regular guests. He turned in the doorway, and Hylas caught snatches of murmured speech against his will: " … cruel that we must …" " … again as soon as …" " … exquisite …" Gods, what was wrong with this damned door? He saw nothing of Zo except his delicate hands, which his departing lover was clasping. The latch of his door gave way finally and he all but fell inside.

Zo went upstairs himself in the morning to knock on Chrestos's door. He was feeling good after his night with Djosi—not a given, by any means. Sometimes sex left him aching and unable to move the next day, even if it had been good in the moment. Sometimes it helped him relax, and this seemed to have been one of those times. He was debating whether Djosi would want to hear that or not—he didn't know the man very well yet—as he climbed the stairs.

Chrestos had one of the rooms on the front of the house with a balcony, one of the famous formerly red balconies that the house was named after. The other balconies belonged to public sitting rooms and Mistress Aula's own apartment, so it was a particular privilege for Chrestos to have one. It was on account of his loyal patron, of course.

Captain Themistokles himself answered the door when Zo knocked, looking pristine and military and not at all as if he had just rolled out of his boyfriend's bed.

"Good morning," he said. "Chrestos is not up yet. Would you like me to wake him?"

"No need. I just came to see if I could borrow back a razor I loaned him a while ago. It's got a lily carved on the handle—I don't suppose you've seen it?"

"Seen it—I used it this morning." Themistokles rubbed his clean-shaven chin reflexively. "I'd no idea it was yours. Chrestos has had that for donkey's ages."

"Well, I don't need it often." Zo smiled wryly. None of the men from his homeland could grow much of a beard—and trying to follow Zashian fashions, they all tried.

"Must be nice," Themistokles remarked. "Let me get you the razor and sharpen it for you."

Zo lounged in the doorway while Chrestos's patron fetched the razor and gave it a few strokes on a whetstone which he for some reason had with him. All the while Chrestos slept, or pretended to sleep; Zo could see his shape under the blankets beyond a half-drawn curtain over the sleeping alcove at the side of the room. As he was leaving, he heard Themistokles's loud voice from the alcove: "Come on, stir yourself! We're going shopping, I'm going to buy you a razor."

There was no denying that Zo envied Chrestos. What would it be like to have a patron like that, so straightforwardly a part of your life that he answered your door while you were asleep and treated your things like his own? Though perhaps Themistokles thought of Chrestos's things as his own because he paid for them. He might think of Chrestos as his property too, and that would be less pleasant. He was a good man—Zo had never heard anything to the contrary—but one still didn't want to feel owned.

On his way down the stairs back to his room, he heard voices below. Taris was gossiping with someone in the anteroom outside Zo's door, and Zo had a pretty good idea who it must be. Why would she have been in that corner of the house except to see him or his neighbour? He stopped on the stairs, silent out of old habit, to hear what she was saying.

"I guess you could say the house has fallen on hard times. We're certainly not as happy here as we used to be."

"Oh," said the person she was talking to, lamely. Yes, it was certainly Zo's neighbour.

"I'd say it's been about a year," Taris went on unprompted. "Since around the time Theano had her baby, or maybe before that, when Hippolytos died. And the roof had to be redone. Not that those things had anything to do with each other, but they were both blows, coming almost one on top of the other, and it left us struggling. The winter's always a harder time anyway, with fewer guests. And Theano had a difficult pregnancy and a worse birth."

"Oh dear. That … that must have frightened everyone."

Zo eased himself carefully down to sit on the steps. He wasn't particularly surprised to hear Taris talking to the new tenant like this; she was a chatty person who liked talking to men more than she liked actively flirting with them. But he wanted to hear how she would tell this story. Likely he wanted to hear it more than the aqueduct man himself did; he'd sounded uncomfortable, to Zo's mind.

"It did. And honestly, Mistress has been in a funk for a long time. Pani and Menthe say it's because she didn't want Theano to keep the baby, but I don't think that's true. She did quarrel with Zo, though—that's true, we all heard that."

Ah, there it was. Eavesdrop long and well enough and you'd always hear someone talking about you; that had been true in Rataxa, and apparently it was true here too.

"Oh," said Hylas again, and could Taris not tell that he wanted none of this information?

She couldn't, or she didn't care; she went on: "I think it was a misunderstanding—she wasn't trying to be mean, but she has a harsh way of saying things sometimes. And between you and me, I don't think she knows how to deal with male companions. They're kind of betwixt and between, you know?"

"I—I—Are they?"

He doesn't know, Zo thought; he doesn't pay any attention to us. He barely paid attention to the women, from what Zo could see.

"Anyway," Taris was saying, "Zo used to be much more sociable before that—I mean, he's sociable with the guests still, he comes out of his room and is quite dazzling all night, then he goes back and shuts himself up in his corner of the house and hardly comes out during the day. It's a shame. He used to help us with our wool-work during the day, you know? He got Pani and Menthe to teach him to spin, and he was getting quite decent at it. I thought it was sweet of him. You'd never catch Chrestos doing that!"

All right, that was enough. Zo got to his feet and was about to begin noisily descending the stairs.

"He … he must really want to be one of you," the aqueduct man said, and Zo froze again. He hadn't said that in the way Zo would have expected; it hadn't been a scoff or even a cringing "Oh, how … nice." It had sounded earnest.

"Well, perhaps he did, at the time," Taris allowed.

"What was the quarrel about?"

"Oh, it was …" She'd succeeded in getting him interested in the subject, and now she didn't want to talk about it anymore, clearly. "I probably shouldn't be gossiping like this. Let's get these into your room, and then I should go finish my chores."

"I—I can take that, you needn't?—"

Taris laughed brightly. "Of course you can, it's not as if you need me carrying things for you, is it? Sorry for talking your ear off. It's just nice to have a new face around here who's not a guest, you know?"

The aqueduct man mumbled something polite, and Taris handed over whatever it was they had been bringing to his room—linens or something, maybe, to replace the things Pantaleon had taken with him when he left—and after a moment Zo heard a door shutting and silence. He went quietly down the stairs himself and into his own room.

He often woke with the sun and lay in bed trying pointlessly to get back to sleep, so he'd heard the new tenant out in the garden, and knew he'd developed a habit of taking his breakfast under the olive tree. That was certainly better than what Pantaleon had used the garden for. One more point in the aqueduct man's favour.

"I think I'll stay in tonight," Hylas told Governor Loukianos, two weeks after beginning his job. "I'm afraid I need a rest."

"Of course, of course!" Loukianos agreed indulgently. "I've been running you ragged, keeping you out until all hours of the night. And you're a man of sober habits, I should have known it by looking at you. Timon said as much."

Hylas felt a perverse need to argue that Timon hadn't judged him correctly, even though he clearly had, and probably "sober habits" was much more flattering than what he had actually said. Whatever it was, no doubt it was deserved.

"It is true," Hylas said, instead of arguing. "I have not got the stamina that all of you have."

He returned home feeling rather pleased with himself, as if an evening alone was a prize he had won. He fetched water from the cistern and took a cold, brisk bath, a habit retained from his early life. As it turned out, he had not been bothering with the public bath. Dressed in a clean tunic, he made his way back to his room.

A young man he'd never seen before stood on the dark landing, thumping a fist on the door next to Hylas's.

"Zo, come on!" he groaned. "Why are you taking so long?"

Hylas hesitated, not wanting to call attention to himself by slipping past to his own door, but also not wishing to be caught standing there awkwardly, with damp hair and a bundle of dirty clothes, when Zo opened the door. If Zo was going to open the door.

It was too late, anyway, as the young man at the door had noticed him and turned to stare, then look him up and down, wide-eyed.

"Immortal gods, are you the aqueduct man?" he exclaimed.

He was a youth of about twenty, nearly Hylas's height, with broad, square shoulders and almost exaggeratedly slim hips. His hair was a mass of bright gold curls, piled up and tied with a ribbon in such a way that they spilled over his forehead. He had pearl-white skin and a profile you could have used to cut gemstones.

"Yes," said Hylas, "that's me. You must be Chrestos."

"I am! How did you know?"

"A lucky guess," said Hylas. But really, who else could this young man have been?

"Everyone's been talking about you," Chrestos confided. "It's been driving me mad that I haven't met you."

"H-have they? What have they been saying?"

"That you're building an aqueduct that's going to get the water flowing all over Tykanos. Is it true?"

"W-well, I'm an engineer, I'm directing the project, not actually building it by hand."

Chrestos laughed boisterously as if that had been a very good joke. "I heard you haven't burned incense in the evening with us yet, and all the girls are longing to get to know you better. Of course I'm usually busy in the evenings myself. I have an exclusive patron? Captain Themistokles. He takes up all of my time."

"I see," said Hylas politely. "I'm new to the island, so I'm afraid I don't know who that is."

The companion looked surprised and pleased, and Hylas realized he'd inadvertently paid him a compliment in assuming his patron was famous. It seemed a good moment to make his escape.

"If you'll excuse me," he said finally, sidling past to reach his own door. "It, uh, was nice to meet you."