asked with sullen irony.
“Er… I could, though I hate it, turn my shield with other side as we go ashore. I can even put it into my bag! We are searched by my arms: a sword and a lyre on starry field, aren’t we? There’s no point changing it: The Secret Ones should be experts in heraldry, as it is studied everywhere, first of reading and writing, as the most important of sciences. So they will know any move by the starry field of the shield, get the meaning of it…”
“A good disguise,” Oleg approved, “but let’s forget it. The Emperor has tens of thousands spies in his service. They meet merchants, pilgrims, beggars, settlers, and sailors on the city gates to ransack their belongings and levy a duty, but their most important job — the one for which they get second salary from a secret pocket — is to watch for the second face of they who look plain merchants or beggars. For their
The ship dropped anchor in half a mile from the shore. There were hundreds of other ships, large and small, rocking on waves while new ships were coming and light fast boats with strong-shouldered rowers bustled about.
Gelong waited patiently for a port official to come by one of those boats. A stout man, but not a fat one, he walked to the bridge, accompanied by the shipmaster. His mates slipped into the holds, like nimble rats, to leave the two of them in private. The official and the master studied the list of goods thoroughly. The official marked some of them as forbidden. The master started to argue, pointing out those things had been allowed the last time, but the official remarked reasonably that even mountains and seas change over time. His assistants came out to collate the lists, and there was arguing again. Gelong was going dark. When the assistants, all together, turned their backs, he sighed and poured a handful of golden coins into the official’s pocket. Thomas winced.
The ship approached the close mooring cautiously, choosing her way among other ships. Thomas stood in his full armor, feeling his sword. “A rotten place,” he said with disapproval. “That’s a pity… It’s so beautiful! The Holy Bible says of many kingdoms: Babylon, Nineveh, Assyria. Where are they now? Once while crossing a desert, I saw some ruins of towers and buildings in the sand. Sometime palaces had been rising there and gardens growing and splendid birds singing… And I walked knee-deep in hot sand, only deserts around, and almost squealed as a pig with sorrow for the lost beauty. Though I knew the city must have been inhabited by wicked Pagans, as it died thousands of years before Christ!”
Oleg peered intently at the approaching moorings crowded with people, carts, bright litters, horses in sumptuous attires, guards with gleaming blades. “To save everything means to leave no space for the new. You’d better watch no beautiful towers but ugly people. Your arrival is already known to all the spies of Seven.”
“Do you think they’ll try to take it straight on the moorings?”
“Be ready,” Oleg advised. “I think this city will make your greatest challenge.”
Thomas’s cheeks went white, his eyes lost reverie and started running over the motley crowd. The ship edged her way between high-sided galleys, a bridge was thrown to the land. Thomas and Oleg were almost the first to come ashore: straight after the merchants and strange young boy who, all the three, were twisting with unfathomable fear.
Chapter 22
The taverns and brothels in the port are swarmed with low-class spies who are paid an extra salary by prefects, questers, komeses, praetors, or inquisitors — everyone wants to know secrets. The secret messages are valued very much as a foundation of any policy. Should a spy conceal, soften, or distort even a bit of it, his poor lot is to be eaten by crabs at the bottom of the Golden Bay. They would leave only a bare skeleton with the stone tied to legs.
The higher class of spies would report to the Emperor himself, allowed to him as they show a secret sign. There were spies of double or triple subordination. But the most sophisticated ones, as Thomas felt now, were servants to Secret Seven first, and only then — to the Emperor and other rulers of limited power.
Own spies were kept even by eunuchs, whom the Emperor’s palace was stuffed with. Eunuchs were considered to be as free of sin as angels: they had no sex, while Satan was thought of as a man in his full strength, eager to visit women at hot southern nights and doing it at every occasion. Oleg glanced askance at gloomy Thomas, thinking with a jeer that was a weak point of Christianity, a defect in it.
There were flagstones underfoot and houses of grey stone, five or six floors tall, on both sides. They could not see the end of the street. In places, it was crossed by other broad roads. Every step ahead made Thomas shrink, so enormous was the city, so rich in people so different that no one looked twice neither at him nor at the wonderer in his open wolfskin jack, his bare breast wide and bronzed.
People seemed to be loafing their time away, though many were purposeful in their hurry, elbowing and cursing passers-by. The noise and clamor made ears ringing. At the foot of the thick stone walls, warmed up by morning sun, children were crawling and playing. They chinked copper coins against the walls, measured the way to them with their fingers stretched, quarreled and scuffled in adult way: spitting in each other’s eyes and shouting out who of them, noble Romays, was in truth a filthy Greek, a dump Slav, or a mean Jew.
They often met beggars, cripples, sick men. Once they bumped into a whole procession of ragged paupers who moaned in different voices. Thomas felt sick at the sight of their huge sores, dripping with pus and swarmed with flies. They turned into another street. The wonderer seemed no stranger to the city: as they went, he told Thomas the names of taverns, their prices, ways, and food quality.
Thrice they crossed market squares, each big enough to house the whole tribe of Herulians or Gepids. Merchants reached for Thomas from their tents, adorned with gold and silk, or from behind their counters heaped up with goods. He was invited, persuaded, begged to buy, seized by armor, tucked things in hands.
Stunned and tired, as though after a good fight or a stormy night, they got to the coaching inns. For some reason, Oleg passed by the first three, despite exhausted Thomas tugging him by sleeve. Near the fourth inn, the wonderer stopped, looked around closely, counted horses at the tethering pole but dragged Thomas farther on. They only entered the gate of the sixth inn on their way.
They had dinner in the tavern on the ground floor, then went upstairs: their room was on the fifth. Oleg lay down and lapsed into reflection, but Thomas stood by the window for a long while, with enviable stamina, still in armor. “Even streets here paved with flagstones! And so smoothly, one by one! And people! As many as ants in a sunny day… after the rain.”
“The capital of the world,” Oleg grunted.
“Not to everybody,” Thomas told back at once, with a faint note of jealousy. “For us, the capital of the world is Rome.”
“And the mouth of Don… London, I mean? Does it submit?”
“It’s a different thing.” Thomas was insulted. “Rome is the capital of all the world save Britain.”
“Take care not to say this in Kiev,” Oleg warned.
“Why?”
“Kievins bow to no one but their gods.”
Thomas said nothing. The wonderer was a true friend and a reliable companion in everything save faith.
The knight came to another window and lingered, watching the huge tall towers that flanked the strait of
