He was barely aware of Aden retreating. Kallias’s cheeks were brushed with paint, his lashes heavy with it. There was a single beauty mark high on his cheekbone that drew the gaze to his wide blue eyes. Painted like that, he had come from entertainments in the palace, or from his place in Kastor’s household, at Kastor’s side.
He had never looked so beautiful, the moon above him, the gleaming stars falling slowly into the sea.
‘I’m so glad to see you, so glad you’ve come,’ said Erasmus, feeling happy but suddenly shy. ‘I am forever asking my attendants for stories of you, and saving stories of my own, thinking this or that I must tell Kallias.’
‘Are you?’ said Kallias. ‘Glad to see me?’
There was something strange about his voice.
‘I missed you,’ said Erasmus. ‘We haven’t talked to each other since—that night.’ He could hear the sounds of the water. ‘When you—’
‘Tried to dine from a prince’s table?’
‘Kallias?’ said Erasmus.
Kallias laughed, the sound uneven. ‘Tell me again that we’ll be together. That you’ll serve the Prince and I’ll serve his brother. Tell me how it will be.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘Then I will teach you,’ said Kallias, and kissed him.
Shock, Kallias’s painted lips against his, the hard press of teeth, Kallias’s tongue in his mouth. His body was yielding, but his mind was clamouring, his heart felt that it was going to burst.
He was dazed, reeling, clutching his tunic to himself, to keep it from falling. Standing two paces away, Kallias was holding Erasmus’s golden pin in his hand where he’d torn it from the silk.
And then the first real understanding of what they had done, the bruised throb of his lips, the stunned feeling of the ground opening up beneath his feet. He was staring at Kallias.
‘You can’t serve the Prince now, you’re tainted.’ The words were sharp, jagged. ‘You’re tainted. You could scrub at it for hours and you’d never wash it off.’
‘What is the meaning of this?’ Tarchon’s voice. Aden was suddenly there with Tarchon in tow, and Kallias was saying, ‘He kissed me.’
‘Is this true?’ Tarchon took hold of his arm roughly, the grip painful.
I don’t understand, he had said, and still he didn’t understand it, even when he heard Aden saying, ‘It’s true, Kallias even tried to push him away.’
‘Kallias,’ he gasped, but Tarchon was tipping his face up into the moonlight, and the evidence was smeared all over his lips, Kallias’s red paint.
Kallias said, ‘He told me he couldn’t stop thinking about me. That he wanted to be with me, not with the Prince. I told him it was wrong. He said he didn’t care.’
‘Kallias,’ he said.
Tarchon was shaking him. ‘How could you do this? Were you trying to lose him his position? It is you who have wrecked yourself. You have thrown away everything that you have been given, the work of dozens, the time and attention that has been lavished on you. You will never serve inside these walls.’
His eyes, desperately searching found Kallias’s gaze, cool and untouchable.
‘You said you wanted to cross the ocean,’ said Kallias.
Three days of confinement, while trainers came in and out, and spoke about his fate. And then the unthinkable.
There weren’t witnesses. There wasn’t a ceremony. They put a gold collar around his neck and dressed him in slave silks that he hadn’t earned, that he didn’t yet deserve.
He was a full slave, two years early, and they were sending him away.
He didn’t start shaking until he was brought into a white marble room in an unknown part of the palace. The sounds were strange echoes, as though it was a vast cavern containing water. He tried to look around himself but the figures wavered like the flame of a candle behind warped glass.
He could still feel the kiss, the violence of it, his lips felt swollen.
But slowly he was becoming aware that the activity in this room was to some larger purpose. There were other slaves-in-training in the room with him. He recognised Narsis, and Astacos. Narsis was about nineteen years of age, with a simple but sweet temperament. He would never wear a pin, but he would make an excellent table attendant, and perhaps a trainer himself one day, patient with the younger boys.