Jason Goodwin

by The Janissary Tree

  The reek of the tanneries had blotted him out.

  61

  ****************

  THE first thing Yashim noticed, after the stench he was forced to suck down into his heaving chest, was the light.

  It rose in eerie columns from the vats into which the animal skins were lowered for boiling and dyeing. Against a forest of flickering torches, each vat threw out a spume of colored vapor, red, yellow, and indigo blending and slowly dissolving into the darkness of the night air. The air stank of fat and burned hair and worst of all the overreaching odor of dog shit used to tan the leather. A vision of hell.

  A hell into which Yashim's quarry had disappeared.

  Yashim dropped to one knee and took a careful look around.

  He'd heard about the tanning yard, and smelled it, too, but this was the first time he had seen it with his own eyes. A high wall enclosed about an acre of ground in which, crammed together, almost touching at the rim, the vats lay embedded in a raised floor of clay and cement, which glinted greasily in the torchlight and allowed the tanners to walk between them and stir their bubbling contents with a long pole. Molded of clay, lined with tiles, each vat was about six feet across. Here and there crude derricks had been set up for hauling the heavy bundles of wet skins in and out of the dyes, and at the junction of each four vats, in a space that resembled a four-pointed star, circular iron grilles had been fixed, Yashim imagined, to feed air to the flues that ran underneath. Several of these grilles were visible from where he stood.

  Of the assassin there was no sign, but Yashim knew that he was there, somewhere, hidden behind the lip of one of the vats, perhaps, or standing motionless against the shadowed walls. Yashim knew almost nothing about the killer, except that he could operate in the dark: it was in the dark that he had launched himself against him, in darkness he had killed Preen, in the night he had stolen in to garrote the hunchback. The dark, Yashim thought, is this man's friend.

  He scanned the tannery again. It was surrounded by high walls: only at the farther end across the dancing glow of color could he see other darkened doorways. He did not think the killer had found time to reach them.

  Yashim shifted focus to look at the vats closest to him. The colors in the steam were less vivid, perhaps because of the way the light caught them; it was only farther out, as the pillars of steam overlapped, that they showed a rainbow iridescence. Some of the nearer vats appeared to be empty.

  Yashim edged closer on bended legs, holding up the skirt of his cloak. He stepped out onto the clay. It was surprisingly slippery, beaded with droplets of steam and fat, and he moved cautiously, planting his feet with elaborate care. He could feel the heat from the vats but, yes, there were empty vats among them. They were drained, he now saw, by means of a wooden bung attached to a chain that ran up the inside of each vat and was secured by a metal loop at the rim. He had a vision of the killer dropping down into one of them: like the soldier lying dead in the cauldron at the stables, days before.

  He reached into his cloak and unsheathed the little dagger at his belt. For a moment its blade glinted fiercely in the weird light, and then dulled as the vapor that filled the air condensed on the cold metal. He held it out, the handle beneath his thumb and nestling into his curled fingers, using it like a pointer.

  He put one foot on top of the grating, feeling a rush of hot air up his leg; he tried it with his weight and felt the grating rock, with an almost imperceptible metallic sound. He pushed again, a little harder. Again the same slight yielding to pressure, but this time the metal grille gave a distinct knock against the frame.

  Yashim stepped back and crouched down to inspect the grating. It was about twenty inches in diameter, set with rounded iron bars two inches apart. He raised his head, considering. There had been so little time to hide. Crouched in one of the empty vats, the killer would be caught like a bear in a pit: it would be only a matter of time before Yashim found him, and then...

  He put out his hand and pushed the far side of the grating, watching it rock very slightly away from him. It was not properly bedded at one side, and by rocking it to and fro he worked out the pivotal point. Yashim ran his fingers along the edge and gave a grunt as he felt a small twist of cloth no bigger than a fingernail that protruded from the joint.

  He stood up and stepped back, carefully, to take a flaming torch from a bracket in the wall. Once more he scanned the tannery, but nothing moved. By the grating he knelt down and thrust the torch against the grille.

  Tunnels. These grilles had to be more than air vents: they must also act as access points to a network of tunnels for the tanners to feed the fires that boiled the water in the vats. The killer could have dropped down here into the tunnels: in his haste, though, a corner of his sleeve must have caught in the joint as he replaced the grille overhead.

  It has already been said that Yashim was reasonably brave: but that was only when he stopped to think.

  Without a moment's reflection, he heaved up the grille and swung his legs into the pipe. The next moment he was crouched at its base, about five feet below, peering in astonishment at what was revealed by the flickering light of his torch.

  62

  ****************

  The assassin hung for a moment on all fours, to catch his breath. Strong: yes, he was very strong. But the running was for a younger man, perhaps, a man in training. He had not trained that way for ten years.

  Move, he told himself. Crawl away from under the grating. For the first time in forty-eight hours he felt tired. Jinxed.

  The mission had failed. He had waited for hours in that room, focusing on the door. Once or twice he had tried the latch, to see how long it took for the door to swing open. Darkness had come: his element.

  He had heard her coming. He saw the light approach, watched with satisfaction as a finger snaked in to flick the latch. His hand coiled around the weight at the end of the twine.

  And then, in the darkness, it had all gone wrong. The dancer stepped back, not forward. The weight sliced through the empty air, and then the crashing. It would have been possible to go on--but someone had come.

  If there's any risk of being discovered, abort.

  The assassin began to move again, silently, creeping away from the grating down the sluice. Forget the failure, he thought. Hide. Go to earth.

  The movement consoled him. His breathing softened. Rest now. No one would follow him down here, and later he could rectify his mistake. Sleep now.

  Sleep among the altars.

  Each altar topped by a glowing brazier.

  The air fetid and warm.

  The air full of sleep.

  The assassin squirmed through a low arch and found a clear space on the warm brick. He also found a day-old loaf of bread on the ledge of a brazier and stuffed a piece of it into his mouth. He took the stopper from an earthenware bottle and drank a long draft of warm water.

  At last he stretched out on the warm bricks, clasping his hands behind his head.

  And then, looking up at the curving belly of the vats, the assassin screamed.

  63

  ****************

  YASHIM saw that he had been wrong about the spaces that lay below the vats. From what he could make out, a succession of air wells all dropped to a huge and very low chamber, raised on shallow brick vaults. Between the vaults, at regular intervals, wide braziers were set on stacks of bricks to heat the tiled cauldrons overhead: in the dim and smoky light, the cauldrons were suspended like the teats of a monstrous she-devil.

  His eyes ran from the wooden bungs that hung like nipples to the brickwork that composed the floor on which he now crouched. In a way he had been right. He had expected a maze of tunnels, but what he found was the impress of a maze, as if the floor of the tannery had been scored by a huge wheel; as if the tunnels he had imagined had been abandoned when they were only a few inches high. They were thick with colored grease.

  He shuffled forward, the torch in one hand, the knife in the other. He felt th
e grease pile up beneath his toes: looking down, he saw it gathered in a slick ridge at his feet. Looking ahead, he saw that the grease was actually moving sluggishly toward him. Someone had already sloshed it aside, in a faint but unmistakable track, and it was quietly oozing back, revealing its direction as it rolled.

  Struck by an idea, he inched back to the air vent and stood up. He put the torch on the ground above his head and gripped the edge of the grating, hauling himself back into the not so fresh air.

  For the next five minutes, Yashim crept this way and that around the vats. He went to the far end of the tannery and removed the grating, thrusting his torch down the pipe. He watched the oozing grease for a few moments.

  He went toward the center of the tannery and fiddled with a rope attached to one of the derricks used for raising and lowering bundles of skins into the vats.

  When he was ready, he put a hand on one of the chains that stretched out of the vats and yanked on it.

  Then he dived for another, and another, pulling with all his might.

  And somewhere in the distance, as if from underground, he heard a scream.

  64

  ****************

  The assassin saw the first bung disappear.

  Ten years before, he had watched a wall collapse on top of him and counted that moment an eternity.

  Now, for an eternity, he made no sound.

  For an eternity he scrambled for an explanation.

  And he rolled aside only when the bung was replaced by a black tube of scalding fat and water, which exploded onto the brick.

  It ricocheted onto his back, the hot fat clinging like needles.

  And he screamed.

  Spouts of heavy boiling dye erupted all around him. The culvert he lay in was suddenly filled with swirling liquid. In terror, he plowed his hands into the steaming torrent and fought his way to an opening. He reached up, placed his scalded hands on the grating, and heaved.

  And as he dragged himself up out of the vent, he scarcely noticed the coiled rope that cinched very tight against his burning ankles.

  65

  ****************

  YASHIM lunged on the counterweight and had the satisfaction of seeing the assassin swept from his feet. But as the slipknot ran up against the pulley, the arm of the derrick swung heavily toward him and the rope went slack. Yashim lunged farther backward to regain his hold, but at that moment the rope bearing the assassin's weight kicked between his hands, almost knocking him off his feet: the rope sped through his palms and he found himself suddenly scrabbling against the sweaty slope. He kicked with both feet: his left leg slithered off the edge and his foot touched boiling water. He jerked it back with a gasp and went down on his side.

  Flailing to regain a foothold on the slimy surface, Yashim saw the rope slowly oozing through his fingers, slick with grease. He made a lunge with his left hand and caught the rope, tight as a bar, a few inches higher up, hauling hand over hand until he was able to get into a crouch. For a moment he felt his sandals skating on the greasy floor, so he leaned back to balance the weight. Everything had happened so fast that when he finally looked up he could make no sense of what he saw.

  A few yards ahead of him, something like a giant crab was working its pincers in a jet of pinkish steam.

  Bound at the ankles, upside down, the assassin's legs were opening and closing at the knee. His tunic had fallen over his head, but his arms were flailing upward from the cloud of cloth, struggling to take a grip of his own legs. The hem of the tunic floated in a bath of dye. He was suspended directly over a boiling vat, where the derrick had carried him the moment it felt the weight of his body against its arm.

  Yashim dragged at the rope and hauled himself upright, but the moment he slacked his hold on the rope, the assassin dropped. Yashim hauled back, wrapping a length of rope around his waist and leaning back over the vat behind him.

  I can't let go, he thought.

  The flailing man's legs opened again. What was he doing? Yashim cast a glance over his shoulder: he was hanging out over a roiling tub of evil-smelling liquid. He could see the skins rolling over and over. He needed to keep his weight balanced there, keep his feet set against the rim of the vat, move them along the greasy ledge, and gradually bring the rope up hard against the derrick.

  Then he saw what the man was trying to do: with a knife in his hands he was lunging upward, scissoring his legs to close the distance, lunging at the knot with the blade.

  He didn't know where he was.

  If the rope severed, the assassin would dive into the dye.

  Yashim, meanwhile, was also hanging out over a vat of poisonous, boiling liquid. Only the assassin's weight was keeping his feet on the rim of the vat.

  And at any moment the rope would whip through the block and Yashim would plunge backward into the boiling broth.

  They were balanced.

  The rope gave a thud and sagged a quarter of an inch.

  Yashim tightened his grip. He glanced across the pillars of purple and yellow and saw that the dark doorways at the far end of the tanneries were growing wider.

  A knot of men detached themselves from the darkness of the door and began loping across the glistening surface of the tanneries toward him.

  And from the direction they came, and the way they moved, Yashim did not think that they looked very friendly.

  66

  ****************

  The rope gave another jerk and Yashim scrabbled to keep his balance on the edge of the vat. His right foot lost its hold, and for a moment he swung out over the scum. To regain his footing he had to pay out more rope until he was almost horizontal. He could feel the heat on the back of his neck and the weight of the liquid seeping into his cloak.

  It was not so much a decision as an instinct that made him haul savagely on the rope to regain his footing. The response of his human counterweight brought him momentarily upright: the assassin dropped, and as the bundle hit the boiling water, his legs convulsively scissored for the last time as the rope finally parted. Yashim floundered, his arms sawing the air while the assassin continued his descent into the vat. Regaining his balance, Yashim was in time to see one hand fling itself out of the pot before it sank into the churning water.

  He had no time to consider what had happened. Avoiding the slippery surface between the vats, the men from the doorway were now fanning out into two lines around the edge close to the walls, to cries of "Block him!" and "Close the entrance!" Yashim began to scramble back in a zigzagging diagonal line toward the gate at the corner by which he had come in. But he had to move cautiously, while the others, farther from the edge of the vats and with the wall to help them, were closing in.

  Several tanners were already at the gate when Yashim came past the grating he had first descended. He reached down and scooped up the grille in his left hand, like a shield; in the other he fingered the short-bladed knife. But he knew already that the gesture was futile. The men at the gate were hunched over their own knees, bowlegged, waiting for a fight. And the others, sensing their chance, had left the wall to approach him across the vats.

  He whirled around. A man at his back lunged, and Yashim whipped him across the face with the knife. Another man closed, and Yashim plunged the grille against him like an iron glove, knocking him back. Turning, he saw that the gate was infested with men: there was no escape in that direction.

  He sensed a movement and turned, a little too late. He had only time to see a face blackened with rage before he felt a stunning blow over his right eye and he fell to the ground. He stuck out the knife blindly and waited for the man either to run upon it or dodge in and grapple with him, but when nothing happened he rolled around to raise the grating as a shield.

  Just in time to see the black-faced man wheeled to the right by a tug on his arm. The man who was tugging ducked, rose like a fish, and crashed his skull deftly against the black-faced assailant's nose. The assailant dropped, and the man who had delivered the blow turned to Yashim and gr
inned.

  "Let's get you the fuck out," he said.

  67

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  It was said that the battle--they called it only a brawl--continued long after Murad Eslek had helped Yashim punch, kick, and slash his way out of the tanneries and into the silent darkness beyond.

  As they groped their way down the alleys, small lights glowed behind shutters overhead. Now and then a door banged. Away in the distance a dog began to bark. Their footsteps echoed softly on the cobbles, thrown back by buildings asleep and at peace. A cold wind carried the smell of damp plaster and the lingering scent of the evening's spices.

  "Phew! You stink, my friend," said Murad Eslek, grinning.

  Yashim shook his head.

  "If it hadn't been for you," he said, "there'd have been nothing left to smell. I owe you my life."

  "Forget it, efendi. It was a good scrap, and all."

  "But tell me, how--" Yashim winced. Now that the excitement was over, his scalded foot was beginning to smart.

  "Easy enough," Eslek replied. "I sees you running like a demon--maybe you got robbed, or something. But when you started in for the tanneries it didn't look so good--I mean, they're rough, them guys. That's when I started to think you were going to need some heavy artillery. So I whipped back and raised the boys. I went around a couple of cafes. Put the word out. Dingdong up the tannery? No problem. Why, when we came and saw what trouble you were in, the lads moved in like donkeys on a carrot. Lovely job."

  Yashim smiled. They were back in the city now. The streets were empty and it was too late, he thought, to get a bath. Eslek seemed to guess his thoughts.

  "Me, I'm in transport. We work nights, efendi. Cover the markets--veg, mainly, and small livestock. I was going in there when we ran into each other again. There's a hammam we use, open all night, which you as a gentleman might not know about. It's small, yes, but I reckon it's clean. Leastways save you going back and stinking up your own gaff. No disrespect," he added hurriedly, "but them tanneries don't half get into your skin. It's the fat."