Agent of Byzantium

by Harry Turtledove

  “Perhaps further than the Persians, too, or they would not waste their time at the frontier,” Lakhanodrakon said. “But they will not stay blind long, I fear. Beware of them, Basil. They are no rude barbarians to be befooled like the Franco-Saxons; they are as old in deceit as we.”

  “I shall remember,” the magistrianos promised. He picked up the parchments Lakhanodrakon had given him and tucked them away. “The rest of this pile of trash I shall cheerfully consign to Anthimos. I’ll leave for Daras in a day or two. As you know, I’m a widower; I have no great arrangements to make. But I would like to light a candle at a church dedicated to St. Nicholas before I go.”

  “A good choice,” the Master of Offices said.

  “Yes—who better than the patron saint of thieves?”

  “I’ve tried everything I can think of,” the garrison commandant of Daras said, slamming a fist down on his desk in frustration. “Every incoming traveler has his baggage searched, and I keep patrols on the streets day and night. Yet the damned handbills keep showing up.”

  “I can’t fault what you’ve done, Leontios,” Argyros said, and the soldier leaned back in his chair with a sigh of relief. He was a big, burly man, almost as tall as Argyros and thicker through the shoulders, but there was no question who dominated the conversation. Magistrianoi could make or break even the leader of an outpost as important as Daras.

  “More wine?” Leontios extended a pitcher.

  “Er—no thanks,” Argyros said, he hoped politely. The wine, like much of what was drunk in Mesopotamia, was made from dates. He found it sickeningly sweet. But he would have to work with Leontios and did not want to hurt his feelings, so he held out his hand, remarking, “That’s a handsome jug you have there. May I see it?”

  “Oh, d’you like it? Seems ordinary enough to me.”

  “Hardly that. I’m not used to seeing relief work on pottery, and the depiction of our Lord driving the moneychangers from the Temple is well done, I think.”

  “If it pleases you so, take it and welcome,” Leontios said at once, afraid to antagonize the magistrianos in even a small way. “I’m sure you’ve seen much better, though, coming from the city.”

  “There’s nothing to match it in Constantinople. The potters there decorate with glazes and drawings, not reliefs.”

  “Fancy that, us ahead of the capital!” Leontios said. He saw that Argyros did not want the winejug, and put it down. “The style’s been all the rage in these parts—both sides of the border, come to that—the last five or ten years. I got this piece from old Abraham last summer. He’s a damned Nestorian, but he does good work. His shop is only a block or so away, if you think you might find something you’d fancy.”

  “Perhaps I’ll look him up.” Argyros stood, fanned himself with his broad-brimmed hat of woven straw. It did not help much. “Is the heat always so bad?”

  The garrison commandant rolled his eyes. “My dear sir, this is only June—not even summer yet. If you’re still in Daras in six weeks, you’ll find out what heat is.”

  “Do you know that in the Franco-Saxon mountain country it sometimes snows in September? Last year that seemed the most hideous thing I could imagine. Now it strikes me as delightful.”

  Leontios ran a hairy, sweaty forearm across his face. “It strikes me as impossible. I wish you luck on this madness, more than I’ve had myself. If I can help in any way, you have only to ask.”

  “My thanks,” Argyros said and left. The commandant’s office had been very warm, shielded though it was by thick walls from the worst Daras could do. The noonday heat outside was unbelievable, stupefying. The sun blazed down mercilessly from the blue enamel bowl of the sky.

  The magistrianos squinted against the glare. He wished he could strip off his boots, trousers, and tunic (even if that was gauzy linen) and go naked under his hat. Some of the locals did, walking about in a loincloth and sandals. More, though, covered their heads with white cotton cloths and swaddled themselves in great flowing robes, as if they were so many ambulatory tents.

  The strange clothes only accented Argyros’s feeling of being in an alien land. The houses and other buildings, save for the most splendid, were of whitewashed mud brick, not stone or timber. And the signs that advertised dyeshops or jewelers, taverns and baths, were apt to be in three languages: angular Greek, the tight curlicues of Syriac, and the wild, snakelike script Arabic used. If any was missing, it was usually the Greek.

  A couple of men talking in the street moved on when they saw the magistrianos approaching. They might not know him for an agent, but even without his speaking, his outfit and his face—tanned but not very swarthy—branded him as one loyal to Constantinople and not to be trusted. He scowled. Such recognition was only going to make his job harder.

  The shop across the street had to be the one Leontios had mentioned. There were dishes and jugs and cups in the window, and the Greek line of the signboard above them read FINE POTTERY BY ABRAAM: Greek, of course, could not show the sound of rough breathing in the middle of a word.

  Abraam or Abraham stood in the doorway, crying his wares in guttural Syriac. Argyros watched as a smith came over from the foundry next door to bring him a flat, square iron plate. The two men eyed the magistrianos with the same distrust the street idlers had shown. He was getting used to that suspicious stare in Daras. He returned it imperturbably.

  The smith, an enormous fellow baked brown as his leather apron by the sun, spat in the dirt roadway and ambled toward his own place of business, still glowering Argyros’s way. Abraham the potter turned his back on the magistrianos with deliberate rudeness and went back into the darkness of his shop. Argyros saw him put the iron plate under a counter and talk briefly with a woman back there; whether wife, customer, or what he did not know.

  Operating out of Leontios’s barracks would have made him altogether too conspicuous, so he went looking for an inn. He did not notice when the woman emerged from the pottery and hurried after him.

  The first taverner he tried spoke only Arabic and catered to nomads out of the desert. As Argyros had but a few phrases of Arabic himself, he decided to try somewhere else.

  Two men were waiting for him when he came outside to retrieve his horse. Something in their stance told him their breed at once: street toughs. He walked past them without a sideways glance, hoping his size would make them choose another victim.

  But one grabbed at his arm. “Where you go to, you damned swaggering Melkite?” he grinned, showing bad teeth. He used the eastern heretics’ insulting name for one loyal to the dogmas of Constantinople: it meant “king’s man.”

  “None of your concern,” Argyros snapped, shaking off the man’s hand and springing back. With a curse, the ruffian leaped at him, followed by his companion. The magistrianos kicked the first one where it did the most good. Two against one left no time for chivalry. The fellow went down with a wail, clutching at himself and spewing his guts out in the dust.

  The other tough had a short bludgeon. Argyros threw up his left arm just in time to keep his head from being broken. He bared his teeth as pain shot through him from elbow to fingertips. His right hand darted to the knife at his belt. “Come on,” he panted. “Even odds now.”

  The local was no coward. He waded in, swung again. Argyros ducked and slashed, coming up from below. The point of his dagger ripped through his enemy’s sleeve. He felt the blade slice into flesh. The tough hissed. He was not through, though; he was ready for more fight.

  Then a woman behind Argyros screamed something in Arabic. The magistrianos did not understand, but his opponent did. He whirled and fled. Argyros chased him, but he knew Daras’s twisting alleyways as an outsider could not, and escaped.

  Breathing hard and rubbing his arm, the magistrianos walked back to his horse. He saw what the woman’s shout must have meant, for a squad of Leontios’s soldiers had gathered round the good-for-naught he had leveled. They were prodding the wretch up, none too gently, with the butts of their spears.

&nb
sp; Someone who had watched the brawl pointed at Argyros, which drew the squad-leader’s attention. “You ruin this fellow here?” he demanded.

  “Frankly, yes. I was set on for no reason and without warning. He had it coming.” Anger made him careless with his words.

  The squad-leader set his hands on his hips. “Talk like you’re the emperor, don’t you? Anyone else see this little scramble?” He glanced at the swelling crowd.

  Argyros’s heart sank. He did not want to go back to Leontios and waste time on explanations, but he was sure the witnesses would side with a man of Daras rather than an obvious stranger. Unexpectedly, though, a woman spoke up for him: “It’s as the tall man says. They attacked him first.”

  The squad-leader was as taken aback as the magistrianos. Seizing the initiative, Argyros took him aside and pressed a gold nomisma into his palm, along with some silver to keep his men happy. The trooper pocketed the bribe in a businesslike fashion. “Haul that scum out of here,” he commanded, and his squad dragged the captive off; two men still had to support him. Onlookers began to drift away.

  Argyros looked around to see if he could spot the woman who had come to his aid. She had been well back in the crowd, and he had not got a glimpse of her face. But he had no doubts, for she waited in the shadow of a building across the street instead of leaving with the rest of the spectators. Above a short veil filmy enough to be no more than token concealment, she looked saucily toward him.

  “My thanks,” the magistrianos said, walking over to her. Something beside mere gratitude put warmth in his voice. From tightly curled black hair to gilded sandals beneath henna-soled feet, she was a strikingly attractive woman. Her dark eyes were bright and lively, her mouth, half seen, full-lipped and inviting. The fitted ankle-length robe she wore displayed her figure to the best advantage; even in the shadow in which she stood, the red, gold, and green sequins at her bodice sparkled with each breath she took.

  She said, “It would be wrong for so brave—and so mighty—a man to find himself in trouble he does not deserve.” Her Greek had a slight throaty accent. That and her costume told Argyros she was of Persian origin. The border between the two empires went back and forth so often that such things were common on both sides.

  “Thanks again,” Argyros said, and then, not wanting the conversation to end as abruptly as that, he asked, “Would you happen to know of a decent inn?”

  She burst out laughing. “It just so happens that I dance at the hostel of Shahin Bahram’s son. It’s clean enough, and the food is good, if you don’t mind eating Persian fare.” When Argyros shook his head, she said, “Come on, then; I’ll take you there. Bringing you in will make me money, too. I’m Mirrane, by the way.”

  The magistrianos gave his own name, but said that he had come from Constantinople as inspector of Daras’s waterworks. The famous system of cisterns and drains and the dam across the nearby Cordes River added greatly to the strength of the town’s fortifications.

  “An important man,” she murmured, moving closer to him. “Do you think your horse can carry two?”

  “For a little way, certainly.” He helped her mount in front of him; her waist was supple under his hands. When the horse started forward, she leaned back against him and did not try to pull away. It made for an enjoyable ride.

  Shahin’s tavern was in the western part of Daras, not far from the church of the Apostle Bartholomew that Justinian had built when he renovated the town’s works. Shahin folded Argyros into a bearhug and called him his lord, his master, his owner—none of which prevented a sharp haggle when it came to the price of a room.

  At last Mirrane spoke in Persian: “Don’t drive him away.” Argyros had a hard time holding his face straight: no use letting the girl know he was fluent in her language, though he did not think there was anything more to this than her not wanting to lose her finder’s fee. Shahin became more reasonable.

  As was his custom when starting an investigation, the magistrianos wandered into the taproom to drink a little wine and soak up the local gossip. Shahin’s place was good for that; it featured a mixed clientele, and talk came fast and furious in the three tongues of the imperial east and Persian as well. There was more chatter about doings in Ctesiphon, the Persian capital, than over what was happening in Constantinople.

  Naturally enough, the handbills were also a prominent subject, but not in a way that helped Argyros. The townsfolk seemed much less upset about them than George Lakhanodrakon or Leontios had been. One man, well in his cups, said with a shrug, “They’re looking to break our nerve. I’ll fret when I see a Persian army outside the walls, and not until.”

  The magistrianos tried to prompt him: “Don’t you think the Nestorians might invite—” Several people shushed him, and he had to subside, for four musicians emerged from a back room to take their seats on low stools by the fireplace. One carried two vase-shaped drums and had a tambourine strapped to his calf, another brought a pair of flutes, the third a long trumpet, and the last a short-necked lute played with a bow, something Argyros had not seen at Constantinople.

  At a nod from the lutanist, they began to play. The drummer’s beat was more intricate than Argyros was used to, the tune lively but at the same time somehow languorous. Again he was conscious of traditions older than the Roman Empire that lived on in the east.

  Then Mirrane glided into the taproom, and the magistrianos worried about traditions no more. She wore only her veil and a few jeweled ornaments that sparkled in the torchlight; her smooth skin gleamed with oil. When she moved among the tables, it was as if she sought out a particular man to slay with lust. Sinuous as a serpent, she slid away from every arm that reached out to take hold of her.

  “With a dance like that,” Argyros whispered to the man at the table next to his, “why does she bother with the veil?”

  The fellow was shocked enough to tear his burning gaze away from Mirrane. “It were a gross indecency for a woman to show her face in public!”

  “Oh.”

  Mirrane’s eyes flashed as she recognized the magistrianos, and he knew she had chosen him for her victim. Laughing, she waved to the musicians; the tune grew faster and more urgent. It would have taken a man of stone, which Argyros assuredly was not, to remain unstirred as she whirled in front of him. The oil on her skin was scented with musk; under it he caught the perfume of herself.

  The music rose to a fiery crescendo. With a shout, Mirrane flung herself down on the seat by Argyros, cast her arms around his neck. With her warm length pressed against him, he hardly heard the storm of applause that filled the inn.

  And later, when she went upstairs with him, he ignored with equal aplomb the jealous catcalls that followed them. Knowing what was important at any given moment, he told himself, was a virtue.

  He woke the next morning feeling considerably rumpled but otherwise as well as he ever had in his life. The soft straw pallet was narrow for two; Mirrane’s leg sprawled over his calf. He moved slowly and carefully, but woke her anyway as he got out of bed. “Sorry.”

  She smiled lazily up at him. “You have nothing to be sorry for.”

  “I’m glad of that.” He politely turned his back to use the chamberpot, then splashed water on his face and rinsed his mouth from a ewer that stood next to the bed. He ran his fingers through his hair and beard, shook his head in mock dismay at the snarls he found. “You’d think the dogs dragged me in, the way I must look.”

  “Do you always worry so much?” she asked, rising and stretching luxuriously.

  “As a matter of fact, yes.” He went over to his saddlebags, which he had not yet unpacked, in search of a comb. Several jingling trinkets and her veil were draped over the leather sacks. She took them back from him while he rummaged.

  He lifted out three or four small, tightly stoppered pots with bits of rag protruding from holes drilled through their corks. “What on earth are those?” Mirrane asked; they were not the sort of thing travelers usually carried.

  Argyros thought fast
. “They’re filled with clay,” he said. “I filter water from the cisterns through them; from the amount and type of sediment left behind, I can judge how pure the water is.”

  “Ah,” she nodded, not revealing much interest in anything so mundane as the tools of his alleged trade.

  All the same, he was relieved when he finally found his bone comb and stowed the pots away. They were filled, not with clay, but with the Franco-Saxon compound of charcoal, sulfur, and saltpeter the armorers of Constantinople had dubbed hellpowder. Argyros had no intention of advertising its existence without dire need.

  He combed out his tangled whiskers. “That’s—ouch—better.” When he was done dressing, he said, “I know what I do seems dull, but Daras may need all the water it can find to hold out against a Persian attack if these parchments I’ve heard about stir up the rebellion they’re after.”

  Mirrane’s costume made a simple shrug worth looking at. “I’ve heard of them too, but there haven’t been many here about Shahin’s place.” She hesitated. “Are you thinking we may be disloyal because we’re of Persian blood? Shahin’s grandfather converted to Christianity—orthodox, not Nestorian—and he worships every week at Bartholomew’s church.”

  He believed her. There was no point in lying about something of that sort; it was too easy to check. “I wasn’t thinking any such thing,” he said. “I’d rather not get stuck in a siege, though, especially in a city that may run dry. And,” he added a moment later, “it would be sinful to risk you.”

  Since he had used the story he did, he thought it wise actually to examine some of Daras’s waterworks. One major cistern stood close to the church of the Apostle Bartholomew. He poked at the brickwork as if to check its soundness, then climbed the stairs to the top of the great tank and peered into it to see what the water level was.

  One of the faces he noticed while he was puttering about seemed familiar. After a while he realized that the hawk-faced fellow lounging against a wall and munching a pomegranate was the flute player at Shahin’s tavern. The man was gone by the time he got down from the cistern, which left Argyros uncertain whether his presence was coincidental or the magistrianos’s cover had satisfied him.