Chapter 7

"It wasnice to see you at our gathering last night," Zo said, as he and Hylas sat at breakfast in the garden the following morning.

"I'm glad I stayed home again," said Hylas. Gathering courage, he added, "I loved listening to you sing."

Zo looked slightly surprised, one of the fleeting expressions that never crossed his face when he was entertaining. "Thank you. I'd sing more often, but … I've been told my voice doesn't suit the tea house repertoire."

"Oh," said Hylas hopelessly. That was a level of analysis that was beyond him. He'd thought he was doing quite well to identify that Zo's voice reminded him of red wine: dark and rich.

"They're mostly songs written by women, about loving men." Zo had obviously been able to tell that he was confused. "And I have too deep a voice. I've been told it sounds ‘lewd.'"

"That sounds …" Hylas cast about for a polite word. "Hypocritical?"

Zo laughed. "Probably. But Mistress Aula seems to agree, and she is in charge."

"She wasn't there last night," Hylas recalled.

"She's in mourning. The landlord died."

"Oh no. I'm sorry."

"He was old, and ill for a long time. It was expected. And no one liked him very much. Not even Mistress. If she had, perhaps she'd have put the whole house in mourning and closed for the day—I think that would be traditional." Zo shrugged. "But we can't exactly afford that."

"Still, she's mourning personally …"

"The landlord was her patron, ten years ago or more, when she was a companion at the Peacock."

"Oh, I didn't know."

"He bought the Red Balconies when it was in danger of being shut down—a couple of years before I came—and set her up as mistress. He's left it to her in his will. She's the landlady now."

"That's … That must be …" Hylas couldn't think what to say. It didn't sound good.

Zo spared him the trouble. "Nobody's happy about it. Especially not her. Apparently she was expecting a gift of money, or a property where she could retire and live in luxury, and the Red Balconies is very much not that."

"Oh dear. She couldn't sell it?"

"Not for the kind of money she wants, evidently. I'm getting this all second-hand from Theano, who's the only one of the women she really talks to."

Hylas wondered fleetingly what an establishment like the Red Balconies would sell for. He'd been considering his own finances the night before, and it had left him feeling rather rich. But that was only when he thought in terms of how many nights of incense he could afford to burn; he didn't have buying-the-whole-house money. Which reminded him that he still needed to speak to Governor Loukianos about his salary. The month's end had come and gone without any sign of a second payment.

"Anyway," said Zo, waving a hand dismissively, "it's too early to say what it will mean for all of us companions. There's no sense worrying about it yet."

Hylas nodded. "That's wise."

"So how is the aqueduct coming?"

Hylas groaned. "Don't mention the aqueduct. No, I mean, of course you may mention it—naturally you want to know about it, as it's my whole reason for being here. It's just that I'm beginning to worry it's never going to be built. We're currently waiting on someone's mistress convincing the Gylphians, or maybe the Sasians, to let us take water from the big island."

Zo smiled wryly. "Sounds very Tykanos."

"So I'm learning. Anyway, it does mean I have time to work in your garden today, if you'd like me to press on with the wall."

"I'd love that. It's the perfect weather for it. Warm sun, cool breeze."

"Yes."

They drank tea in silence for a few minutes. Hylas found himself looking up at Zo, at the sharp line of his jaw, the way his long hair fell over his shoulder.

"You sing and you play the flute," Hylas said thoughtfully. "What other talents do you have that I don't know about yet?"

Zo shrugged. "Just making conversation, I suppose. Gardening. Making myself look pretty." He rearranged the folds of his robe and smiled sidelong down at Hylas. "Up until I was seventeen, I had the same kind of education as most of the tea-house women. You know, poetry and music and how to look good in clothes. Mind you, most of the girls know how to weave and spin and sew too—I wish I'd learned anything so useful. I wish I'd spent time learning something like that instead of horse-riding, which I was never good at. You're trying to picture me on a horse now."

"I'm—I'm succeeding. You would look very well on a horse. But I don't think you would be comfortable. It must be hard on the joints, even for a good rider."

"Well, I was never that. What we all feel the lack of here is new books. They're expensive and hard to get on the island. And then our guests talk about things we haven't read, and it makes us feel unsophisticated. There's some new thing in Pheme that everyone is reading now, apparently—TheBronze Dolphin—and none of us had heard of it, but it's supposed to be really good. Apparently they have a copy at the Amber Lily, but it's no good asking them to lend it to us because—I'm sorry, this is extremely boring."

"No! I was just thinking that the governor is always asking if I want anything from Pheme, and that I could ask for some books."

"You don't have to do that!" Zo looked almost alarmed.

"Oh, I—I know, I didn't think you were hinting that I should, or … I just thought it might be an idea."

Zo relaxed in his seat. "Forgive me, Hylas. It's a wonderful idea, so thoughtful of you."

"I'll ask him for a couple of treatises for myself, too. I don't own a copy of Manolios's Principles, and I really should, if I'm to continue to be a famous engineer."

"That's the spirit!" Zo flashed him one of his most dazzling smiles, lips a little parted, head thrown back.

Hylas returned the smile. He felt privileged to see the moments when Zo turned on his charm, like the opening of a tap to let water flow. It didn't diminish the effect, somehow. How had he become so skilled at such a young age?

"How long since you were seventeen?" Hylas asked without stopping to think whether the question was polite or not.

"Let me see … five years? I haven't observed my birthday since then."

"Five years ago was when I left Ariata. I—I was a little more than seventeen."

"What made you leave?"

"My mother died. My sister was married already, so I had no one depending on me. I was free to leave. Finally."

"From what you told me of Ariata, I can understand why you wanted to leave."

Hylas nodded. He recalled that he hadn't really told Zo much.

"I wasn't fit for the army—I never understood why. I was strong and healthy, my wits were sound—I should have been able to turn myself to the task, but somehow I never could. There was always something in me that rebelled against it. I always seemed to want the opposite of what I was supposed to. I wanted … to be gentle. I wanted to touch not to wound but to caress." Without intending it, his voice had dropped to a whisper. This was so difficult to talk about, even now.

"I was a failure as a man. There were others like me, a few that I knew, who didn't survive—they died in training or ran away. I survived, but I gave up a lot to do it. I was eventually proscribed—stripped of my aristocratic status—for being unable to inflict a killing blow on a slave in a training exercise. Well. Refusing to do it, that might be another way of putting it. My father was dead by this time, which made me the head of the family, so my mother and sister also lost their status. I was able to work to support them—as a commoner, certain trades were open to me that had not been before. I trained as an engineer.

"Ariata doesn't do big engineering projects—mostly what I did was build bridges in the countryside, now and then some work on siege machinery for the army. I was able to find enough work to provide for my mother until she died. But she always felt her loss of status. In Ariata, you cannot help it. There are places you aren't allowed to go, clothes you can't wear, people who won't see you—in the street, they literally will not look at you, they certainly won't have you in their homes. We had a comfortable house, we had servants—you can't own slaves as a commoner, but we had money to pay free servants—and we always had plenty to eat. We had—we could have had friends of our own class, but my mother would never allow it. She held herself above all our neighbours, which made us unpopular. My sister had to elope in order to marry a blacksmith in the country, and my mother never saw her again.

"I left after my mother died. The day I buried her ashes, my sea chest was packed, and I left. That was five years ago. Sometimes I feel as if I'm five years old, as if I was born the day I left Ariata."

"I had no idea," said Zo, his voice subdued. "All those lost years."

"Lost is the right word. Sometimes I think about what I might have been able to do with my life if I'd left sooner—sometimes I blame myself for not having the strength to do it. Just telling my mother that we were leaving Ariata and then going. But she didn't want to leave—she'd never been anywhere else, any more than I had, and I didn't know, when I was young, how different the rest of Pseuchaia was. I spent so long living in the knowledge that I was defective, a failed man, and it wasn't until I was in my thirties that I began to realize it was my homeland that was abnormal—there's nothing very unusual about me." He looked up and shook himself. "I daresay that was a lot more than you expected to hear me talk."

"Yes," said Zo frankly. "And it's hard to hear. My heart breaks for you. But I am glad you felt able to tell me."

"You're actually quite easy to talk to, once one gets over the … being intimidated by you. Not that—I know you don't mean to be intimidating."

"Oh, sometimes I do." Zo laughed.

"I've never known a man remotely like you," Hylas said, and it was still less than what he meant.

"I'm not exactly typical of anything. I did also grow up in a place where men tend to be warriors and statesmen and things and not courtesans."

"I never said I thought you were typical."

Zo laughed. "No, you didn't, did you? Well. Thank you." He was looking at Hylas from under his dark lashes, and he had managed to unearth the compliment Hylas had been trying ineptly to offer him.

"I had a thought," Hylas said suddenly. "The crutch that you use—I had an idea of how it could be redesigned to help you walk better."

Zo's eyebrows went up. "Oh, this is your famous engineer aspect coming to the fore again, I see."

"No, it's just—well. Maybe. But if there were a strut lower down for you to hold with your right hand, that could take more of your weight as you step, you see, and then …"

They spent the morning working in the garden together. The sun was warm on Zo's back as he sat and pulled weeds from the low beds. Hylas, in a one-shouldered work tunic, hefted and stacked stones for the terrace, quietly redoing the work that Milo had done. Even Zo could tell he was doing a better job. Every so often, under the pretext of taking a break, Zo looked up at Hylas. He had freckles on his shoulders and hair on his chest, not faded like the hair of his head but curls of bright orange.

I've never kissed a red-haired man, Zo thought irrelevantly.

Hylas didn't think of him that way. Zo had gotten pretty good, after five years at the Red Balconies, at telling when a man was interested, and Hylas showed none of the signs. The other companions had commented on his awkwardness; perhaps he was uncomfortable with the whole concept of companions. Some men were.

Mistress Aula came out into the garden from Zo's room, startling him and Hylas with her sudden appearance.

"Oh, hello, madam," said Hylas, straightening up and brushing a lock of hair off his forehead with his wrist.

"I did knock," Aula began tartly, "but there was no answer."

She was dressed in undyed wool for mourning, although she had still put up her hair and wore jewellery, which Zo didn't think Pseuchaians in mourning were supposed to do. At least he knew their men weren't supposed to shave.

"I'm sorry," he said, struggling up from his seat on the grass. "We didn't hear you."

"I am sorry for your loss," said Hylas, and to Zo it sounded genuine. Of course—he wouldn't have said it if it hadn't been.

Mistress Aula sniffed. "I suppose you've heard that I am your landlady now."

"I had, yes," said Hylas.

"Well, your rent will be going up. I daresay you know you've been paying less than your lodgings are worth. And you"—she turned on Zo—"are going to begin pulling your weight around here, or you'll have to leave. Straton wanted me to get rid of you, you know, but I argued with him. ‘He's sick,' I said—as if I ever believed that. But you need to make up your mind—either you're an invalid or you're not, you can't be fine one day and then too ill to get up the next, people will notice and think we're all a bunch of frauds."

"I barely leave my room as it is!" Zo snapped back at her. "I let Ahmos carry me everywhere. What else do you want me to do?"

She drew a breath and then closed her mouth as if realizing whatever she'd been about to say wouldn't answer him properly. Maybe she'd been expecting him to protest—again—that he wasn't pretending to be ill, but he'd given up on that.

"I want you to start entertaining in your room," she said. "Make the place respectable so you can have guests in there—and out here, too. It's absurd that the two of you have this courtyard all to yourselves. Get a garland from a respectable patron. Talk to Chrestos if you need instructions. Some men may think you're prettier than he is, but I don't see it myself."

She cast one more unfriendly look on Hylas, then swept out of the garden, back through Zo's room, and he could hear his door slamming behind her. He stood rooted, feeling tears gathering shamefully in his eyes and not daring to look at Hylas. Why had Hylas had to witness that scene? Couldn't Zo have been spared that?

He heard the rustling of leaves as Hylas came down from the slope where he had been digging. Maybe he would go in, discreetly leaving Zo alone. Zo couldn't tell whether he wanted that or not.

"Is there anything I can do to help?" Hylas asked. He wasn't leaving.

"What could you do?" The words came out snappishly, to Zo's shame.

"I don't know," said Hylas. "That's why I asked. I—I don't know whether I should pretend not to have heard what she said to you, but I don't think you're malingering the way she suggested."

"No?"

"I don't know what's hard to understand about it. Some days you're steady on your feet and some days you're not. Illnesses can be like that."

Zo drew a long breath and let it out. It was so simple, but it helped more than he could have imagined to hear Hylas say this.

"I'm sure she'd have no trouble understanding if she didn't dislike me to begin with." He ran a hand over his eyes, which had remained dry, and turned to smile at Hylas.

"I—I would help, if there was anything …"

Zo laughed wryly. "Go looking through town for men who might like me and bring them to the house, I suppose. After checking to see whether they're rich, of course."

"Of course. Did she, er, say something about tidying your room? Perhaps I could help with that."

"What? No, it's not tidying it needs, it's … I don't know, redecorating? I'll show you."

Hylas followed him inside and stood looking around the room.

"This is clever, what you've done here," he said, pointing at the hooks along the wall. He walked up and inspected one. "How did you anchor them in the wall? I see, that looks solid. Nice work."

"Thanks."

"Something else you might think of doing—I did something similar for my mother, when she had arthritis in her knees. If you can raise the bed up a little, it makes it easier to get in and out. I don't know if it's your knees that give you trouble, or … And you can put a rail on the wall, to hold onto. Well, you have that chair there. Smart." He frowned, looking around again. "So what's the problem?"

"I think all the things you've just pointed out are the problem. It looks too much like an invalid's room and not enough like a companion's."

Hylas rolled his eyes. "I'll add that to my list of things I'm looking for in a patron for you. I'll find you somebody who won't care."