Like Fire Through Bone (15 page)

He didn’t, of course, and instead turned into the gates of Panagiotis’s house and crossed the courtyard into the house itself. He delivered the honey to the kitchen and then headed back toward the office. He was almost to the door of Panagiotis’s office when he heard the raised voices.

“I do not agree with you.” It was Eudoxia’s voice, and she sounded calm but not at all happy.

“It is not your choice to make, Mother.” Damianos did not seem happy either, and he was also quickly losing his calm.

“Obviously, because if it was, I would not be making it.”

Vasilios turned to go and tend to something else, not wanting to get between them if they were fighting.

“Vasilios is too valuable,” she said.

In the hall Vasilios froze, cold dread slowly creeping over him. He knew he should walk away; it was not his place to hear this. After all, he would have no control over what happened either way. He could not move, though.

“I am telling you plainly, this is a mistake. This is a misuse of your assets. A court would have good reason to rule in your favor on this matter,” Eudoxia continued, and Vasilios heard Damianos sigh.

“Father was clear. Vasilios would go to Anthimos as his inheritance. I am not taking my own brother to court over this. Anthimos gets nothing else aside from Vasilios. Besides, Vasilios may be what Anthimos needs to finally get his affairs in order.”

“You could sell him,” Eudoxia suggested. “General Markos has made inquiries. He would give you a handsome price.”

Damianos made a derisive noise. “I would never sell Vasilios. Father never would and I am no fool either. He is a valuable asset to our line. I will give him to Anthimos as Father wanted, and he will help put Anthimos’s household back in order. Who knows? Perhaps a miracle will happen and Anthimos might learn something. If he does not, I will take Vasilios back once Anthimos has had his fill. Either way, I would never sell something so valuable.”

Out in the hall, frozen in place, Vasilios’s thoughts went to white noise before he began to panic. He squeezed his eyes shut.
No,
the thought ran through his head over and over again,
No
. Damianos wouldn’t—couldn’t. Panagiotis would not have. Vasilios had striven to be good, to be perfect even. He had not been foolish enough to expect his freedom at Panagiotis’s death, but he hadn’t expected this either. For surely Panagiotis had known of Anthimos’s proclivities toward cruelty, coupled with the fact that he hated Vasilios. Damianos must know, so why was he allowing this? Anthimos had hated him since Anthimos had been a boy, hated the fact that Vasilios, a mere eunuch, could grasp and excel in the world of business and trade, while Anthimos struggled.

“If you send him to Anthimos, you do so without my blessing,” Eudoxia said.

“Luckily,” Damianos said, his voice cold, “I do not need your blessing, Mother, to carry out my father’s affairs.”

Vasilios finally moved and headed back up the hall. He hardly noticed anything as he made his way up the stairs to his own room and sank down onto the couch there. All this time since Panagiotis had died, he’d thought, stupidly now it seemed, that he would be safe. He was valuable and he would go to Damianos, probably move into his household, and things would be much the same. Now this. Vasilios tried to grasp the fact that he might be sent to Anthimos, and failed. Numbness settled over him like ice with swirling panic underneath, and he sat staring at the table without really seeing it until someone knocked on the door.

Immediately the numbness broke, and his legs began to shake even as he stood, his hands sweating so badly he had to wipe them on his tunic before answering the door. It was a serving boy on the other side.

“Master Damianos wishes for you to attend him in the office,” the boy told him, and Vasilios nodded jerkily and headed down the stairs again. Every step felt leaden, and Vasilios forced himself the last few feet and pulled open the door.

It was a relief to go to his knees once inside the room, since his legs were shaking so hard he doubted he would be able to stand. He bowed his head and stared at the floor, hearing Eudoxia shift restlessly on the couch.

“My father made a decision regarding your future before his passing,” Damianos told him. “Even as with my father’s passing, you would fall to me as the eldest son. However, in his will he chose to give you over to Anthimos.”

Vasilios stared at the floor fisting his hands under the folds of his tunic so hard the knuckles went white.

“I have already sent word to my brother, and his household will expect you by the evening,” Damianos said. “You may choose two sets of clothes to bring with you and your writing and bathing things so my brother will not be inconvenienced buying new ones for you at such short notice.”

Vasilios continued to stare at the floor. There was a long-drawn-out silence, during which Damianos obviously expected Vasilios to say something, but Vasilios said nothing because he could think of nothing to say. “That is all. You may go and pack.” Damianos waved his hand in dismissal.

Vasilios didn’t say anything. He bowed and then left the room. He didn’t know what he was going to do. Sinking down onto the couch again, he stared at his hands clenched in his tunic, as wild ideas of possible escapes flitted through his head. Maybe he was overreacting; maybe it would be all right. Even if Anthimos disliked him, Vasilios was valuable, and Anthimos must respect that and would not possibly do anything to lessen Vasilios’s value.

Still feeling numb and overwhelmed, he stood and started collecting his writing and bathing things. He chose the blue-and-gray outfit he’d worn when Markos had visited many weeks ago. Then he hesitated, wondering if he would be allowed to bring another outfit or whether the one he was wearing constituted his second. After a moment’s thought, he picked another set of clothes anyway, plain cotton this time, undecorated and practical.

His things packed, he sat on the couch, staring blankly around the room he’d lived in for almost a decade, before a servant came for him. It felt almost like he was floating, like he was watching someone else, as he followed the serving boy out of his room and down the stairs, through the halls, and toward the front courtyard.

“Vasilios?” Bröndulfr asked, eyeing Vasilios’s bag as they passed one another in the hall.

Vasilios didn’t say anything because once more he could not think of anything to say.

There were two guards Vasilios didn’t know in the front courtyard. He stepped toward them anyway.

“Vasilios Eleni?” one asked, and Vasilios nodded. “We’re here to escort you to Master Anthimos’s house.”

Vasilios nodded again, and the guard turned away from him and toward the gates. Once they were out on the street, the first guard led while the second walked behind with Vasilios in the middle. Vasilios wondered if they did so because they expected him to run. Instead he walked quietly between them.

It was not a far walk. Anthimos’s house was further down the hill, closer to the docks and the west side of the city. The house itself was smaller than Panagiotis’s of course, more the size of Markos’s house, whitewashed with a red tiled roof. The tile work in the front courtyard was a striking red and black, with a fountain that filled the space with the soft sound of falling water.

The front door of the house opened as the front gates shut behind them, and Vasilios forced himself to look up enough to see who was coming toward him. He blinked at Nereida, small and round in a dark-green tunic, with her dark curls piled artfully on top of her head.

“Vasilios Eleni?” Her tone made it sound like a question, so he nodded a little hesitantly.

“Yes, Mistress.”

“I was told you were coming.” She smiled a pretty smile that made dimples appear in both cheeks. “Come in. Let me show you around and let you put your things in your new room.”

She led the way inside the house and down the hall. “Our receiving room is to the left, and the dining room to the right here.” She pointed to the doorways as she went, and Vasilios did his best to memorize them. “My husband’s office is here, and down here is the kitchen.”

She stepped down a set of three stone steps and pushed open a door into a little kitchen with an open doorway leading out into a small garden. Three servants were bustling about, an older woman and a boy and a girl who could have been her children. They turned to stare at Vasilios and Nereida for a moment.

“Here, I’ll show you your room.” Nereida walked into the kitchen and then opened another door that led up a narrow wooden set of stairs.

The room at the top of the set of stairs was small, with a bed and a wooden chest obviously made for clothes, and a small window with a wooden grate over it. The ceiling was low enough that Vasilios had to bend a little as he stepped into the room.

“My husband said you should sleep in the kitchen with the other servants,” Nereida said. “But I thought it would be nice for you to have a room. I know it can’t be as big as your old one, but at least it will be a little private.” Vasilios put his bag down and then turned and knelt in front of Nereida. “Thank you,” he said, and found he meant it.

“I know this must have been sudden for you,” Nereida said. “Damianos just sent word to Anthimos yesterday, and the household isn’t as big as you’re used to, but I am glad that you are here.”

“Anything I can do to serve,” Vasilios told her, and Nereida laughed.

“Oh no, don’t be so formal. We used to have lots of eunuchs when I was growing up and my father was still alive. The thing I always liked best about them was how I always had someone I could talk to.” She gave him another smile, this time a little shy. “I hope we can be like that. I miss having someone to talk to, sometimes.”

Even though she was his mistress and he should have kept his eyes on the floor, he looked up at her anyway and smiled. “I would like that as well.”

“Good.” She smiled back. “It’s time to start dinner now, I think. Would you like a little time to unpack, or would you like to go down and I can introduce you to the kitchen staff? There are only the three servants.”

“I can go down and help start making dinner,” he told her, and she nodded and led the way back down the stairs.

“This is Irene and her daughter Eva and her son Joachim.” Nereida introduced them, when they were back in the small kitchen. “Everyone, this is Vasilios. He is a eunuch who Lord Damianos sent to us from Lord Panagiotis’s estate.”

Vasilios bowed to all three of them, painfully aware that he was dressed from head to toe in finely spun and woven lamb’s wool while they seemed to be wearing some form of homespun. “Since I am a newcomer to this household, I hope I can count on your wisdom and guidance.”

Irene gave him a skeptical look but nodded. “You better come and help chop the vegetables for dinner,” she told him. “The master doesn’t take it well if dinner’s not ready when he gets home.”

He nodded, walked over to stand beside Eva, and picked up one of the kitchen knives. It had been a long time since he’d cut vegetables, but it wasn’t a skill one really forgot. After a moment or two, Nereida turned and left. Everyone worked quietly around the kitchen, tending to their own pieces of preparation for the evening meal. Vasilios concentrated on cutting vegetables. He listened to the sound of the wind moving the leaves of the trees in the garden right outside and birds making small noises to each other. The evening meal was mutton, boiled with herbs and mushrooms, vegetables simmered in broth, and bread. Simple and plain, but it didn’t take Vasilios more than a few minutes of watching Irene move around the kitchen to realize she was a skilled cook.

When the preparations for the evening meal were complete and everything was simmering over the fire, Vasilios ducked up the stairs and changed into his plainer clothes. He was going to do more manual work than he had realized, since the household staff was so limited. Dressing practically was going to be important. He made a mental note to ask Nereida if he could purchase more homespun outfits, since the clothing he had was not at all suited for this sort of work.

He heard the sound of a horse out in front of the house when he came back down from his room, and Nereida appeared in the hallway and beckoned to him. “My husband has arrived home. Come and greet him.”

All of Vasilios’s uneasiness returned, but he followed Nereida down the hall and out into the front courtyard. Anthimos was dismounting his horse as they entered the space, and Vasilios glanced up at Anthimos’s handsome features, framed by dark curls. Then he went to his knees on the tile.

“So you came,” Anthimos said, and Vasilios kept his eyes down, but he could feel Anthimos’s gaze on him. “Damianos said he was sending you to me.”

“Yes, Master.”

Anthimos walked in a slow circle around him, and Vasilios kept his eyes pinned to the ground. “You are supposed to teach me to attend to my business. Or so Damianos tells me,” Anthimos said, and Vasilios clenched his hands, but didn’t say anything.

Anthimos snorted, and then Vasilios heard him walk back to his horse and lead the animal around him toward the stables to the side of the house. After a long moment, Vasilios rose and looked over at Nereida who gave him a small smile.

“That went well,” she said, and Vasilios didn’t say anything at all.

H
E
DREAMED
that night for the first time since he’d dreamed of the voice in the desert. They were not prophetic dreams this time, not the strange vivid ones, but plain, ordinary, fitful dreams like the ones he’d had when he’d been younger. They kept him awake, feeling uneasy and afraid for most of the night.

The next day, Joachim showed him the pump out in the garden where the servants bathed with a bowl and a rag. Vasilios spent most of the day chopping wood, something he hadn’t done since he’d been a boy.

He stripped off his tunic so he was bare from the waist up, and worked through a small pile of wood for the kitchen until he’d gotten used to using the axe. The swing and “thunk” when it bit into the wood caused a vibration he could feel all the way up his arms. He liked the exercise at least.