Chapter 6

The next morningwhen Hylas came out of his room with his tray, Zo was already up and sitting on his chair in the garden. He had combed his hair and left it loose, and he was wrapped in a shawl against the cool morning air.

Hylas smiled when he saw him, an unmistakable expression of relief in his eyes. Zo had thought Hylas meant to knock on his door again and might be glad to be spared from actually having to do it.

"I hoped I was in time to join you for tea again," Zo said.

"Absolutely."

Hylas put down his tray and sat on the cushion by Zo's chair as he had done the day before. He'd thrown a shawl of his own over his arm, and took a moment to unfold it and sling it around his shoulders before pouring the tea. It was a surprisingly bright green, striking with his reddish hair.

"I got this in town on Market Day," he said, touching the fabric, perhaps having noticed Zo looking at it. "I thought I might like to have a few nice things." He spoke as if it was a novel idea.

He passed a bowl of tea up to Zo, the steam curling in the crisp, early light.

"It's beautiful," Zo said, cradling the warm bowl. "The colour suits you."

Hylas looked as if that completely flummoxed, even alarmed him.

"It's very satisfying to have nice things," Zo went on quickly. "You can get a lot of good quality in the market here. Even though Tykanos is such a small place. And there's food from all over, too. Have you tried any of the Glifian specialties yet?"

Hylas finished one of the buns in a couple of bites. He shook his head. "Not really. We keep going to the Amber Lily, where they hardly serve any food at all, and the Bower of Suos has very Pseuchaian dishes. A lot of fish."

"Ah, so those are the houses the governor favours? He's never come here, since I've been here. Although I've heard that he used to, years ago."

"Well, he will be back, I guess, because he has promised to take me to all the tea houses on the island."

"Are you eager to go?" Zo asked doubtfully.

Hylas looked up at him with a wry smile. "No, I'd be happy to stay home. Even if my home weren't also a tea house—and a better one."

Zo let out an uncalculated laugh. "We're better than the Amber Lily?"

"Immortal gods, I think so. It's the dullest place." He stopped, pressing his lips together, as if he feared he had said too much. "I—I mean …"

"Are you worried I might have friends there?" Zo guessed.

"Yes. That is exactly what I …"

"I don't. I don't know anyone at the other tea houses. I've never even been in any of them, except once to a party at Myrrha's, a long time ago. I came to the Red Balconies when I arrived on Tykanos, and I've stayed here ever since—and you already know I don't go out much."

"Ah. Then you don't know how boring the Amber Lily is."

Zo snickered. "It's generally ranked first among the Jewels of Tykanos. Agathe and Zenais are supposed to be the most beautiful women between Glif and Pheme."

"Oh. Well, that's not my … I mean, I don't really …" A blush spread over Hylas's cheekbones.

"No, me neither," Zo said quickly, surprised to find the topic so awkward. "So—I didn't realize you were famous."

"What? I'm not."

"Apparently you are, though. You saved a village outside Pheme from flooding due to a faulty dam?"

Hylas gulped his tea. "Oh, that. I may have done. I mean, it might have flooded, if I hadn't done anything—or it might not. It was the type of cement we were using. I didn't think—don't think—it would have held up under the proposed design." He refilled his bowl. "I just happened to have experience using the same formulation on a couple of bridges, and I'd seen what it could and could not withstand. The chief engineer was concerned to save face, which unfortunately caused the situation to escalate, and the whole thing was … talked about."

"You stood up to him," Zo translated, "and he tried to brazen it out, even though he knew you were right—and you ended up with a commendation from the archons, so someone must have agreed with you."

Hylas nodded. "I went over his head, consulted an architect in Pheme—the thing ended up in court. It was insubordinate, but … well, we weren't in the army."

"You risked your career. It was courageous of you."

Hylas laughed awkwardly. "No, I … don't think it was anything like that."

"Was it a long time ago? When you were young?"

"It was three years ago. I was … not young. Thirty-seven. But I was still a junior engineer on the project. I'm good at my job, but I haven't been doing it very long."

That was intriguing. "What did you do before?"

"Well. I was born and raised in Ariata." He looked at Zo, maybe expecting a reaction. "Do you know much about Ariata?"

"Er … no." He settled for that. All he really knew about Ariata was that certain people from his childhood had always been concerned about going to war with it. It had, at the time, seemed like an unimaginably faraway place.

Hylas said, "In Ariata, families of my parents' class give their sons to the state to be raised in the barracks. So I was brought up to be a soldier."

"How cruel! Do you mean to say that the nobles make them give up their children?"

"Ah. No, we were the nobles. It's what the aristocratic families do. The peasants aren't allowed that honour."

"The honour of sacrificing their sons to the state? Holy God."

"Well … yes."

"So you were a soldier then, before you became an engineer." It didn't fit at all, and Zo wasn't sure he believed it.

"No. No, I was never a soldier. I didn't complete my training." He took another swallow of tea. "It is a long story."

And it didn't seem to be one he wanted to tell—or perhaps it was that he didn't think Zo would want to hear it.

"Do you ever go down to the Eastern Beach?" Hylas asked abruptly. "No—you told me that you don't go out much, so that is probably a foolish question. It's just that I was there yesterday, and I thought you might like it."

"I don't think I've ever been," said Zo truthfully.

"I think you might like it. I already said that. You could float in the water, I thought, which you might find relaxing, and nobody much seems to go there, so you wouldn't have to worry about being too much in public."

"It sounds lovely," said Zo.

He waited for the invitation that this had surely been leading up to, wondering what he should say. Probably just that he didn't feel up to it—that would be simple enough.

There was a long silence. Finally Zo realized that no invitation was coming. Perhaps Hylas imagined him going to the beach with someone else, a patron or one of the other companions. Perhaps he didn't know how to ask.

Perhaps he thought he'd have to pay for incense to take Zo to the beach, and he didn't want to.

Hylas walked up the steep streets to the governor's mansion, feeling an odd sense of dissatisfaction. He'd wanted to invite Zo to the beach. It should have been so simple. Hylas was the one who had been to the beach and knew where it was; he could arrange everything, hire a chair and bearers for Zo and bring blankets and everything that he would need to be comfortable.

But it wasn't simple. He'd learned already, in the time he'd spent at the tea houses with the governor and his friends, that the companions enjoyed varying degrees of freedom. Some could come and go more or less as they liked, others were bound by contracts that restricted who they could see and what they could do outside their houses, and some were essentially slaves, indentured to the landlords who owned the houses. He didn't know which Zo was, and he could not begin to think how to ask.

He arrived at the governor's mansion and was shown through to Loukianos's garden. Another place he would have liked to bring Zo, if such a thing were possible. But perhaps Loukianos himself would know how to make the invitation. That was a thought.

Loukianos was leaning on the stone railing of one of his garden's terraces, next to a tall, copper-skinned woman dressed in the type of pleated white gown that Hylas had learned was fashionable in Gylphos—Glif, as the locals called it.

"Hylas, here you are!" the governor exclaimed. "This is Mutari from the House of the Peacock. Hylas here is the engineer I've been telling you about."

The tall woman gave Hylas a gracious smile. He thought he could have guessed from that smile that she was a companion, even if Loukianos hadn't mentioned her house. He smiled back.

"I hear you need some surveying done, Hylas," she said.

"That's right."

"Which island are we talking about? The big or the little?"

"The big island," said Hylas.

"The little island," said Loukianos at the same time. "Oh. Er. I think you mean the little island, don't you?"

Hylas shook his head. As he'd assumed, Loukianos had not read his report. "I've been to the spring on the little island. The water quality isn't good—probably something to do with the soil that it travels through—and I'm afraid the spring is too sluggish to provide enough volume even for a bath house or anything of that kind. I haven't been able to get to the big island myself yet, but I've been told by several people that the water there is of a much better quality."

"Hm," said Loukianos, frowning.

"You know what the problems are with building on the big island, don't you?" said Mutari.

"I … am afraid I …"

"No, no, he doesn't," Loukianos interrupted. "By the gods, I was hoping it wouldn't come to this. You're sure that water is bad, Hylas?"

"I'm afraid everyone I took with me to the site agreed, sir—it has a bitter taste. It might not be unwholesome, but people wouldn't want to drink it."

"Or make tea with it," Mutari supplied.

"Exactly."

"All right, all right. Let's sit down, all of us, and have a talk."

He pushed off the railing and led the way toward a grotto with benches at the opposite end of the terrace. Hylas and Mutari followed him.

"We do need a new aqueduct badly," Mutari remarked.

"I know," said Hylas. "I've just finished an assessment of the water supply in town, and it's not adequate. I think repairs need to be undertaken, and I suspect some householders may have tapped into the pipes to divert water to their own property."

"Oh, they all do that up here," said Loukianos gloomily. "All the merchants who live up here on the mountain. There's some old law that they claim means I can't stop them or tax them for it or anything. Drives me wild, honestly."

Mutari reached across and touched Hylas's shoulder lightly. "We'll figure something out."

"Right," said Loukianos, when they were seated in the grotto. "You know the history, I daresay. The small island of Tykanos used to belong to Boukos, and the Boukossians still govern the villages on the North coast—which is an administrative goat-fuck, but that's another story. In any case, when Boukos agreed to let Pheme build the naval base here, they ceded control of the town, which is when Pheme first installed a governor."

"If I may, Loukianos," Mutari interrupted gracefully. "The salient point is that the big island never belonged to Boukos or Pheme."

"Exactly," said Loukianos. "Thank you, my dear. I was wandering from the point. The big island, Hylas, with all the timber but no decent harbour, has always been claimed by Gylphos."

That is, it belonged to the mainland kingdom off whose coast the islands were situated.

"Ah," said Hylas. "I didn't realize."

He also didn't entirely understand why this was a problem. Relations between Gylphos and the Pseuchaian League were good, he'd thought. At least they were at peace and traded in grain and dates and flax and things. Certainly the island of Tykanos itself was full of Gylphians coming and going. Mutari was surely Gylphian herself.

"It's caused tension, of course," Loukianos went on, "the islands being divided like that. Obviously Pheme would like to be able to log the big island, and the Gylphians would like to have control of a good harbour. But the compromise used to work—they sold us timber cheaply, and we let them use the harbour with only token tariffs. Waived altogether in far too many cases if you ask me, but just try getting that changed."

"The problem is," Mutari cut in delicately again, "that Glif—Gylphos—has come under the control of the Sasian throne. It was not a bloody conquest, and our queen is still on her throne, but she answers to the king in Suna now."

"That means …" Hylas started. "What does that mean? That if we want to build on the big island, we'll have to ask permission from … Sasia?"

He'd thought the obstacles to building this aqueduct consisted of some jurisdictional pettiness and maybe some engineering difficulties, but apparently they had to contend with the might of the kingdom of Sasia—Zash, to give it its proper name—ancient and implacable enemy of all Pseuchaia. This was beginning to become nightmarish.

"Not Sasia exactly," Mutari clarified. "Just the Gylphian officials who may or may not be Sasian puppets at this point."

"It's hard to say what's going on over there," said Loukianos. "But it's not impossible. We might be able to do it."

"I must also warn you," said Mutari, "you're not proposing simply to build on the island—you want to take fresh water from it. My people and the Sasians are both very, mm, protective of water sources. There are various religious prohibitions and legal penalties …" She smiled apologetically.

"I understand," said Hylas. "What do you recommend we do?"

"Let me speak to Phileidion," she said. "The quartermaster at the fort, my patron. I'll explain to him what you need. The first thing is to get the survey done. After that … I'll see what I can do."

Hylas hoped that didn't mean she was going to have to seduce someone. He wondered if there was any way to tell her so and concluded there probably wasn't.

Mornings at the Red Balconies were spent doing chores. The house was short on servants, so there was work for everyone. That morning, because it was still cold, they had opened up the winter sitting room, and Menthe and Pani had brought their spinning to the divan under the sunlit windows. Zo had a basket of wool to card, and Leta, Theano's baby, was crawling on the floor, exploring the pattern of the rug and trying to snack on the tassels of the cushions.

A long, drawn-out wail came from somewhere near the front of the house. Menthe, Pani, and Zo exchanged startled glances, frozen with their work in their hands. For a moment, Zo expected the cry to be followed by the ritual wails of a Zashian house in mourning—it had been that kind of sound. But of course they were not in Zash. He could hear someone shouting furiously, and a lower voice replying. The baby giggled obliviously.

"Is that Mistress Aula?" asked Menthe.

"It sounds like her," Zo agreed.

They all exchanged glances again, then looked back down at their work, no one making a move to rise. The mistress's bad tempers were a danger to everyone; she had a tendency to lash out indiscriminately, and they had all learned the hard way to avoid her when she was in a rage about something.

Of course you couldn't avoid any situation for very long in a house the size of the Red Balconies. Only a few minutes had passed by the time Theano opened the door of the winter sitting room and slipped inside.

"I thought you'd all be hiding in here," she said drily. "Even Zo. Hello, Zo. But not Chrestos—where's he?"

"I'm not sure," said Zo. "Out with Captain Themistokles?"

"Mm. When in doubt." Theano scooped up Leta on her way across the room, and sat down under the window, where she bounced the baby absently.

"What's going on out there?" Menthe demanded. "Don't keep us in suspense."

"I thought you might like a few more peaceful moments of not knowing, but …" Theano shrugged. The baby had begun to make grabbing gestures toward her breasts, and she unpinned one shoulder of her gown. "The landlord has died."

"Is that all?" said Pani.

"We've been expecting that for months," said Menthe.

"Poor old man," Pani added.

So it had been a death, after all; Zo hadn't been imagining things when he thought of mourning wails. He didn't think there had been much real affection between Mistress Aula and the landlord. But you never knew.

"Sometimes you don't know how you'll react until it actually happens," he said, unconvincingly even to himself. "Perhaps she is truly sad."

Menthe and Pani gave him pitying, aren't-you-sweet looks.

"She's angry," Theano said, looking down at the baby sucking quietly in her arms. "‘Angry' isn't even the word. She's livid. He's left the Red Balconies to her."

"Holy God," Zo breathed.

"Orante's balls," said Pani.