Read Online Like Fire Through Bone by E. E. Ottoman - Free Book Online

father would do if you weren’t in top form.” Damianos smiled.
    Vasilios simply concentrated on keeping his eyes open and remaining upright.
    “Here, let me read this clause to you.”
    Vasilios looked straight ahead and counted backward from fifty as Damianos’s voice droned through the clause he’d already rewritten twice.
    “Oh no, I’m going to want to word that differently.” He began scratching out the line, and Vasilios tried to think of anything besides the fact that the muscles in his legs were on the verge of cramping and all he wanted to do was go to sleep. It would be a long time before he got to sleep. Damianos would most certainly make him stay until the contract was complete, and then there was the evening meal to attend to, and Panagiotis might want him for something afterward.
    His mind skittered back to thoughts of that morning, and Vasilios wondered what Markos was doing and what the running of his household was like. He’d met the two soldiers and the one servant, Phyllis. From the street, the house looked quite small, as if it would be easily managed with one or two people tending to it.
    “All right,” Damianos said. “I’m going to read it again.”
    Vasilios clenched his hands in front of him hard enough that his nails cut into his palms. “As you wish,” he said, keeping his eyes down and his voice soft and completely devoid of emotion.
    By the time he dragged himself back to Panagiotis’s house, the kitchens bustled with preparations for the evening meal, overseen by Felicity, one of Eudoxia’s serving women.
    “You should go rest,” she said as soon as she saw him. “You look exhausted, and I can handle things here. I’ll have some food sent up for you.”
    He nodded, not even trying to argue, and turned to leave. “If our master wants me, send someone.”
    Once inside his own room, he collapsed on the couch. He massaged the muscles in his legs and the joints of his knees, both of which had gone stiff. “You’re getting old,” he told himself with a sigh. It was true. If he’d wed and had a son instead of going to war, that child would have reached manhood several years ago and would probably be married with his own son by now.
    Vasilios shook his head, not liking to dwell on what hadn’t happened. He stood and stretched until his back cracked and popped.
    A knock came at the door, and Vasilios turned to see a servant standing in the doorway.
    “I’m sorry, but the master wants to see you,” the servant said. “He wants you to go over the work you and Damianos did on the silk buyer’s contract.”
    Vasilios nodded and took a deep breath, then dropped into that place where how tired and ill he was feeling didn’t matter.
    “Thank you. I’ll go attend to our master, then.”
    Over the last few weeks, Panagiotis’s health had worsened further. Vasilios needed to stop several times in his report while Panagiotis coughed into his linen handkerchief until he spat blood. He started nodding off halfway through Vasilios’s recitation of the terms of their final draft of the contract.
    Eudoxia, with her embroidery in her lap, had been sitting on the second couch in the room that was set at a right angle to the one on which Panagiotis reclined.
    “Thank you, Vasilios,” she said when Panagiotis began to snore. “I think you can retire now, and I’ll have some of my own eunuchs see my husband to his room.” Vasilios stood from where he’d been kneeling and bowed to her. “Thank you, Mistress.”
    “And get some sleep,” she told him. “You look like Damianos worked you to the bone today. Did he have you kneeling the whole time on that tile floor in his office?”
    Vasilios was torn between not wanting to imply Damianos had done something wrong and not wanting to ignore a direct question from Eudoxia. He finally bit his lip and nodded a little.
    Eudoxia shook her head. “I’ve told him to get a rug. It just doesn’t occur to him that his eunuchs, not to mention