by Tom Harper
Gradually, though, my surroundings became less imposing, the buildings first unassuming, then modest, and finally humble. Shops appeared, crowding the alley with wares and smoke and the shouts of their owners, boasts of quality and promises of bargains unimaginable. Now I had to push my way through, resisting every manner of blandishment and enticement, while the upper storeys of the buildings reached closer and closer together, until I could imagine myself in the high basilica of an enormous church. So, at last, I came to the house of the fletcher.
‘Demetrios!’ As I stooped under his lintel, he put down the fistful of feathers he held and rose, limping out from behind his table to embrace me like a brother.
‘Lukas.’ I clapped my arms around his back, then retreated a step to let him take the weight off his twisted leg. ‘How does the trade go?’
Lukas laughed, pulling a bottle and two cracked mugs from under his table and splashing out generous measures of wine. ‘Well enough to give you a drink. As long as Turks and Normans keep their women mothering sons, there’ll be targets enough for my arrows.’ He leaned forward. ‘And there are rumours, Demetrios — rumours of a new war, of a great barbarian army coming to drive the Turks back to Persia.’
‘I’ve heard those rumours too,’ I acknowledged. ‘But I’ve heard them every month since you and I fought by the Lake of Forty Martyrs, and all I’ve ever seen come were adventurers who turned on us as soon as they had our gold, or visionary peasants.’
Lukas shrugged, and poured more wine. ‘Barbarians or no, I’ll still have a living. My masters at the palace have never reduced their order in a dozen years.’
We talked on for some minutes, swapping memories old and new, some shared but mostly separate, until — in a silence — I pulled Krysaphios’ mysterious missile from the folds of my cloak.
‘What do you make of this?’ I passed it to Lukas. ‘Could you make me a bow that could fire it, and with enough venom to pierce a steel hauberk?’
Lukas took the arrow in his hands and examined it closely, squinting in the dull light. ‘A bowyer could build you a bow that would fire it,’ he said, carefully. ‘If you wanted a toy, a plaything for your daughter. Perhaps she needs to fend off importunate suitors?’ He raised his eyebrows. ‘But this arrow would make a dangerous toy — someone could injure themselves on it.’ He stroked a finger over the encrusted blood. ‘Indeed, it seems someone has.’
‘Someone has,’ I agreed.
‘Someone, perhaps, who was wearing a steel hauberk?’ Lukas watched me shrewdly.
‘Perhaps.’
Lukas handed back the arrow. ‘No. If you fired that from a bow, you would be lucky to see it stick in a tree. There’s no weapon I know that could make it so lethal.’
I put the arrow back in my cloak, glad at least that the Varangian captain was not there to scorn this latest failure.
Lukas asked me to stay, but the day was drawing on and I did not want the first day of Krysaphios’ gold to have yielded nothing. For three hours I tramped the streets of the Platea, hunting out every mercenary and informer I could remember in all the holes they frequented. None could conceive of such a weapon as I sought, though all expressed interest in owning one should I find it. Some tried to guess my true purpose; others blustered, and swore they could cut down a man, hauberk or no, for a fair price. One was mad, and tried — without conviction, thankfully — to stab me. At length, sitting on my own in a grim little tavern chewing some pork, I decided that if the collective memory of the brigands and hired swordsmen I’d seen could not solve this riddle, the answer must lie further afield, beyond the realm of our Byzantine knowledge.
I was right: it did. But not so very far beyond our realm. It resided, I discovered, in a small tavern behind the quay of the Hebrews, in the person of a very short, very round man, with oily skin and a miserable vocabulary.
It was pure chance that I found him. I had gone to the tavern to find a soldier named Xerxes, a Saracen I had half-known in worse times. If the weapon came from the east, I hoped he might know it. He did not, but before I could make excuses he had brought me to his table and forced me to join him in the rough wine he was drinking. It tasted like stewed pine-bark, and I held the cup well in front of my mouth to hide my grimace as he introduced the companion he drank with, a fat Genoese named Cabo who shook my hand vigorously and blew spittle in my face.
‘Demetrios used to sell his sword-arm,’ explained Xerxes, resurrecting a past I preferred to forget. ‘Now he sells his brain. I don’t know which earns him less.’
‘Never as much as it’s worth,’ I assured him, though three gold pieces were already coming to seem overgenerous.
‘Cabo’s much cleverer,’ Xerxes told me. ‘He was in the business too. Now he’s a respectable merchant.’
‘What do you trade?’ I asked. I hardly cared, but talking kept me from having to drink.
Cabo gave a knowing leer from under thick eyebrows. ‘Silks. Gems. Gold. Weapons. Whatever men will buy.’
‘Cabo doesn’t like the imperial monopolies,’ added Xerxes with a wink. ‘He thinks they’re an abomination before your God. He’s like an evangelist.’
‘Weapons,’ I murmured, ignoring Xerxes. ‘I’m seeking a weapon.’
Cabo’s head lifted a fraction; his eyelids drew closer.
‘Are you?’ said Xerxes. ‘Returning to your old ways?’
‘A sword for ten gold pieces.’ Cabo spoke slowly, and I guessed he would have just enough Greek to haggle for the goods and officials he needed. Drink and women too, perhaps.
‘That’s more than a legal profit,’ I observed. ‘And I already have a sword. I need a bow.’
‘A bow for five gold pieces. Scythian. Very strong.’
‘The bow I need must be very strong. Stronger than any bow yet made, yet short enough to fire an arrow no longer than man’s arm. Strong enough to fire through steel.’
‘And to sink a trireme with one stroke, and to fly as far as the moon,’ said Xerxes. ‘Cabo is a businessman, Demetrios, not a conjurer. You’ve sold your brain once too often — there’s nothing left.’
‘I can sell you such a weapon.’ Cabo wiped the perspiration from his bald skull, and rested his fingers on the table, perhaps noticing that the cup had started to tremble in my hand. ‘For seven pounds of gold.’
‘Seven pounds of gold? You could buy an army with that?’ Xerxes thought it a jest and waved for more wine, but I was deaf to his interruption.
‘Do you have the weapon now?’ I asked.
Cabo shook his head. ‘Maybe in six months. Maybe in eight.’
‘And what would such a weapon be like?’ I did not try to hide my overweening interest; I hoped it would convince him my intentions were serious.
Cabo, for his part, did not hide his suspicion, but he had a merchant’s instincts and could not resist. ‘It is called tzangra, a crossed bow. Like a ballista, but a man can hold it himself. It will break open armour for you, if that is what you need.’
‘And by what miracle of invention does it do that?’ My blood and my breath both beat faster.
Cabo creased his forehead as he deciphered my question, then grinned and tapped the side of his head. ‘By magic.’
‘Genoese magic?’ I had never heard of such a weapon among our people.
Cabo nodded.
‘And do all men have them in Genoa?’
A shake of the head. ‘Very expensive. Difficult to make. But possible to get, if you want. If you pay. Five pounds of gold now. Two more when I have it.’
I left his offer unanswered for a moment, feigning consideration while the sweat began to bead again on Cabo’s scalp. At last: ‘I shall think on it.’
‘Why? Did you leave your five pounds of gold at home?’ Xerxes was petulant; perhaps he worried that I truly might have such riches at my command.
‘I gambled it on a horse at the hippodrome,’ I told him. ‘I need to collect my winnings.’
As I rose to leave, a final thought struck me.<
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‘Tell me, Xerxes,’ I said, dropping a copper coin onto the table for my part of the wine. ‘It’s been too many years since I retired. Where do the foreign mercenaries ply their trade now?’
‘In Paradise,’ said Xerxes sullenly. ‘On the road to the Selymbrian gate.’
‘Who’s the best?’
Xerxes shrugged. ‘None of them. You know what they do. Every week there’s a new cock on the dunghill. Go there and ask: someone will find you. Or cut your throat.’
At that Cabo laughed, spraying wine all across the table.
Dusk was falling without a sunset as I entered the street. I was weary — it had been an age indeed since I had covered so much ground in a day, and unearthed so many long forgotten acquaintances, but the relief of having found even a single link in the chain helped my tired legs mount the hill, past the walls of Ayia Sophia and into the broad arcades of the Augusteion. A dozen ancient rulers gazed down on me from their perches: some benevolent, some wise, some forbidding, each as he would have history know him, but I ignored them all. I passed the great gate on my right, and made for a small doorway in the far corner of the square where two Varangians stood, crested plumes on their helms and axes. One of them, I saw, was Aelric, the guard who had stood on the patch of blood for me that morning.
He raised his axe in greeting. ‘Come for the eunuch? They said you might.’ He looked up at the fading sky. ‘And never too soon.’
‘I’m here to see Krysaphios. He will want to know my progress.’
‘More than ours, I hope.’ Aelric gave a mock frown. ‘I never climbed so many steps as I did today. Sigurd had us up every house on the street asking if they’d allowed an assassin past.’
‘Sigurd?’
‘The captain. He said you ordered it.’
‘Did he? Did you find anything of interest?’
Aelric shook his grizzled head. ‘Only a girl suckling her child, who didn’t pull her dress up in time when we came in. Nothing to interest the eunuch.’
‘Speaking of whom. .’
Leaving his companion on guard, Aelric led me through the door into a narrow arcade lining an orchard. The fruit trees were barren now, their branches spiny and white, but birds still called from them. We passed an enormous hall on our left, its vast doors fastened shut, and came through into a second atrium, where we skirted along another, broader corridor. We turned again, and soon I was lost in a labyrinth of halls and passages, columns and porticoes; of fountains, gardens, statues and courtyards. The very air itself was bewildering, sweet as honey and scented with incense and roses; warm as a summer’s day, though outside we were in the depth of winter. The trickling of streams, the murmur of conversation and the chime of hushed instruments filled my ears; golden light spilled from the doorways we passed, framing the images of this separate world like icons. Every room was thronged with people: senators dressed in the robes of the first order; generals in their armour; scribes and secretaries under mountains of parchment. I saw noblewomen laughing in discrete circles, and petitioners with the drawn look of those who have waited long hours in vain. It was like a vision of Paradise, and through all of it I moved silently, unseen and unheeded.
At length Aelric brought me to a stone courtyard. It seemed older than the parts we had been through: here the mosaics were cracked and the walls were bare, save for the carved heads of imperial ancestors in their shallow niches. The sounds of the palace were dulled, and the perfumes in the air now had to contend with the stink of the city. The arcades were empty, excepting a lonely figure sitting on a marble bench, who rose gracefully to his feet as I approached. Aelric, I suddenly realised, had vanished.
‘The Varangian captain thinks you are a fool, who dissipates his time in conversation with tradesmen.’ Krysaphios stepped languidly towards me. A lamp burned from its bracket in a pillar beside him. ‘And then provokes his employer by abandoning the escort I ordered.’
‘If the Varangian captain knew the least thing about finding a murderer,’ I said slowly, ‘then I might have cause to care what he thought.’
‘He says you had his men banging on doors asking futile questions all afternoon,’ Krysaphios pressed. ‘The imperial bodyguard. I wonder, Askiates, if you have sufficient imagination for your task.’
‘Imagination enough to find a weapon that no-one else knew.’ Briefly I described the tzangra of which the Genoese Cabo had spoken. ‘And I imagine that this foreign weapon had foreign hands on the string.’
‘A mercenary?’ Krysaphios thought on this. ‘Possibly. You yourself would know of such things, would you not?’ He watched the guarded anger sweep my face. ‘I know your story, Demetrios Askiates. I may not know the least thing about finding a murderer, but I am accomplished in the art of pinning a man to his past. Even a past he would rather forget — or hide.’
I said nothing.
‘However it may be.’ Krysaphios opened his palms to show me he did not care. ‘The hands on the bowstring may have been foreign, but the spirit that willed them there, I am certain, is of far closer origins.’ He reached into an alcove, where a roll of parchment lay scrolled up next to a statue. ‘I have had my clerks prepare a list of all who might profit from an empty throne.’
I took it.
‘A long list.’ Headed, I noticed with a shiver, by the Sebastokrator himself, the Emperor’s elder brother and the penultimate power in the empire. Perhaps Krysaphios and Sigurd were right — perhaps I should keep to the company of the merchants and shopkeepers I knew.
‘A long list,’ Krysaphios agreed. ‘A list that could incite riot and rebellion if it were seen by those whose names appear. Look on it closely, and commend it to your memory.’
I held the paper close to the light and studied it with a furious intensity. Many of the names were familiar to me, though others were wholly anonymous. All the while Krysaphios stood silent, watching me, until at last I handed the list back.
‘Repeat it,’ he commanded.
‘I can remember well enough, without reciting it like a schoolboy.’
‘Repeat it,’ he insisted, his eyes flashing. ‘I have paid you for your mind, Askiates, and I will know what is in it.’
‘You have paid me for the results I will bring you. And what am I supposed to ask of these people? “Are you responsible for the attempted murder of the Emperor? Do you own a fantastical Genoese invention called a tzangra?” Besides, what nobleman would even deign to speak with me?’
‘You will be given the necessary introductions. As for what you should say, I would not dream to instruct you. You, after all, know all that can be known about finding murderers. Come and tell me tomorrow. Now if you will not recite my list, go. One of the guards will see you home.’
He balled up the paper in his hands and dropped it into the bowl of the lamp. It burst into flames and blazed in the glass, then quickly crumbled to ash.
4
In the halls of the palace I had thought myself in heaven; the next morning, I was in Paradise. Or at least the place which bore its name: it did not merit the comparison. Once, I’m told, there had been fields here sloping up the long hill, green with wheat and fat with pasture, but those were long gone. The crops had been ground into dust, the grazing beasts slaughtered, and the extremities of the bloated city had spread inexorably over them. It was not a slum, but more a wilderness of shacks and broken shelters, where those who had used all their resources of strength and money to reach the city could collapse within its walls. Many never left, and with the watchtowers of the garrison so close at hand, it was inevitable that certain trades, those which always thrive among the poor and desperate, would flourish.
Such was its reputation, but it seemed unremarkable enough as I picked my way over the ruts and broken stones of the Selymbrian road. Children played in the roadside; wizened women hobbled along with great mounds of cloth on their backs, and every few paces there would be a gaunt, sun-scorched man sitting in front of a tray of nuts or dates or dried figs. One of these I a
pproached, squatting down to look him in the eye.
‘I seek a man for a dangerous task,’ I said, using the age-old formula of the profession.
The man squinted at me, while a beetle crawled over his leg and onto the tray of figs. He seemed to be concentrating, grappling with a silent dilemma; then suddenly a fistful of fruit was thrust before my face.
I shook my head impatiently. ‘No, thank you. I seek a man. .’
I ceased talking as a second handful of figs appeared beside the first. The man was scowling now, shaking his arms in frustration.
A belated thought struck me. ‘Do you speak Greek?’
The continued silence was answer enough. I raised my hands in apology, pushed the fruit away from me, and rose to leave. Ten paces away I felt a sharp stinging as a pebble struck me on the back of my leg, but I let it pass.
I walked slowly on down the road. Three or four times I tried to raise a passing traveller or hawker in conversation, but I was beyond the frontiers of civilisation: none spoke anything but barbarian tongues. I would have to return with a translator, I thought; I knew a few who frequented the harbours and sold their services to merchants. Though that would leave little of the day for visiting Krysaphios’ dignitaries, and he would likely hear of it if I did not.
A tugging on the hem of my cloak returned me to the moment, and instinctively I clapped a hand on my purse to ensure it was safe. It was, and I earned a reproachful gaze from the ragged eyes of the child who had appeared beside me.
‘Do you understand me?’ I asked, more in bemusement than hope.
To my surprise, he nodded.
‘You do?’ Another nod, and the flash of white teeth. ‘Do you know where I can find a man? A dangerous man?’ I mimed a couple of sword strokes through the air.
The boy considered this, then nodded a third time. ‘Elymas,’ he said, his voice chirping like a young chick’s. ‘You see Elymas.’