She shivered involuntarily in the silent forest: columns as far as she could see, beautifully made, the pride of pagan temples from all across the Roman world. The Byzantine emperors had plundered them for this, the greatest cistern ever built, lost to the world and buried beneath the ground.
She took another step, and the icy water closed around her ankles. She felt for the next step with her foot; the water reached her knees. There were no more steps. She let out a gasp of relief.
She set the cotton reel on the step behind her. Gritting her teeth, she began to wade through the inky water.
The relics were here, she knew it.
Somewhere, among the frozen columns of antiquity, she would find the sign.
114
ONE hand outstretched, the other coiled loosely around the thread in which he had placed his faith, Yashim scuttled forward in the dark.
Somewhere up ahead, linked to him by the slenderest filament of cotton, a woman was advancing to her death. Whether she was brave or ignorant, Yashim could not judge, but the penalty would be the same.
Grigor had talked about the city’s boundaries. Between faith and faith; between one district and the next; between the present and the past.
But the watermen patrolled another boundary few people in Istanbul were even aware of: the frontier between light and dark. Beneath the streets, hidden from view, the pulsing arteries of Istanbul.
The dead, cold, dark world that gave the city life.
And the watermen were prepared to kill to preserve their unique knowledge of that world.
Yashim’s turban brushed against the low roof, dislodging a shower of mortar. Amelie had a lamp, he was sure of that, any moment he would see it.
He glanced over his shoulder. For a moment he was confused, disoriented. Had he somehow doubled back— moving away from her lamp? For there it was: a dim brightening that came and went behind him.
He shook his head. His eyes, in that darkness, were playing tricks.
He kept going.
115
THE sou naziry blinked. He stooped and touched the ball of wax with his finger.
The wax broke away easily from the stone. The sou naziry picked it up and felt the tug of the thread between his fingers.
He put out his tongue and moistened his lips.
He had thought, until this moment, that the job was done.
The sou naziry picked up his lantern and loosened the dagger in his belt. The dagger had a jeweled hilt and its blade was curved.
The sou naziry picked up the line of thread and entered the tunnel.
116
AMELIE fought the weight of her skirts trailing in the water as she zigzagged to and fro between the great columns, tracing their cold outlines with her fingers, searching for the sign she knew would be there.
Not five hundred yards away Yashim felt a change in the atmosphere of the tunnel, the dampness lifting as he blindly approached the cistern. He looked back: there was no doubt that someone was coming down the tunnel behind him now. He felt the faintest tugging of the thread in his hand, and saw the lamp swaying as it grew closer. Whoever it was could move faster through the cramped tunnel than he could. Someone practiced. Someone prepared.
Yashim hesitated. Sooner or later, the man would track him down—unless he found some side passage where he could hide. But in the dark his chances of finding one were slim. And what if he did? What if he saved his skin— and the waterman went on to discover Amelie?
He let the thread drop from his fingers. Without it he could move faster, trusting to luck that the tunnel would not fork again, or that when it did he would be able to retrieve the thread and find out which branch the Frenchwoman had taken.
His fingers trailed against the walls. For several yards he felt the rough serrated brick beneath his fingertips and then, quite suddenly on the left side, his hand trailed through the thin air. Gingerly he traced the opening with his fingers. He slid one foot, and then another, into the gap. There was a step up.
Yashim wasted no more time. He scrambled into the opening and up several steps, then flattened himself against the wall, and waited.
