“Who can that be? Do you have any ideas?”
“A great-grandfather of our master, judging by his beastly bellow. And also a clank of iron, did you hear? He was the curator of Southern moorings and ended his life in chains, beheaded for misappropriation of the duties paid. Or maybe his father who met the same end…”
Thomas slapped on his visor again, trying to hold his nose. The wonderer’s fingers removed the iron plate quickly, squeezed the bridge of his nose painfully. Surprised, Thomas felt that the unbearable itch stopped abruptly.
“They live own life there…” a thoughtful voice said on the other side of the curtain. “I think… no, it seems to me that ghosts are strolling about this empty house at night, just like you and me, and one asks another, ‘Do you think we should believe in those tales of live men?’”
Thomas felt his legs numb, his nose itching desperately again. The bitter sweat gnawed at his eyes, tickled his neck ruthlessly, ran down his back in hot acrid streams, his feet bathed in the hot. Probably a strange puddle was forming around him.
“I think… no, it seems to me it’s definitely not our master’s grandfather,” the voice said thoughtfully. “He was hanged, I now remember that exactly! Hanged in accordance with his noble origin: on a silk rope! And this one, I think… no, it seems to me…”
Thomas was about to collapse: standing on one foot is very difficult, especially when you are choking with dust and gushing with sweat. He heard the wonderer sigh nearby, then felt a light push on shoulder. Thomas took a deep breath and heard, “I think… no, it seems to me…”
The knight tore the curtain off in a jerk, saw two faces recoiling in fright. “
The wonderer stepped ahead. “Your Grace,” he told Thomas loudly, “who knew your great-grandson would degenerate into such an ass? I warned you to have less excesses…”
Thomas’s fist darted forward. The poor man flew silently across the corridor and slipped down the opposite wall. The wonderer waved his hand carelessly, the second philosopher gasped and sprawled, like a frog, in the middle of the corridor.
“Run!” Oleg whispered. They darted downstairs, thundering like a herd of shoed horses. Thomas gasped, gripped the walls in abrupt turns, his iron fingers left deep scratches. Oleg rushed like a huge bear, jumped over stairs, came running into the walls, wheeled round silently and dashed on.
It seemed to Thomas they had reached the cellars when Oleg stopped abruptly. “The last flight of stairs ahead,” he said softly. “But the entrance is closed… and guarded. By two.”
Thomas gasped for air, his mouth wide open. “We crush…” he said hoarsely. “Overrun!.. Only two?”
Oleg shook his head, looking sad and accusing. “Innocent people? In their own house?”
Thomas wiped sweat off his face with his iron palm, turned away, feeling a bit ashamed. He breathed heavily, shot anxious glances around: at any moment, someone could come and see them on that noticeable spot — in the middle of the stairs!
Oleg took a golden dinar out of a small pocket in his belt, swung his arm broadly. Thomas could not see the coin vanished in the dim light, but the far guards alerted, one took his axe and walked briskly along the wall, bending like a predator. He disappeared in the shade. For a long time, nothing happened. Thomas got all fidgety when, finally, there came the guard’s surprised voice. Another guard cried back, they exchanged few words. The second guard checked the door bars quickly, glanced out at the window to see whether some important guest was coming upstairs from the street, and hurried to his comrade, his drawn crossbow with him.
Oleg waited for the guard to disappear in the corridor shade, then made a sign to Thomas. They darted quickly across the hall, Oleg removed the hooks and bars in a flash. When he flung the door open, there was an angry shout behind, a click of steel bowstring. Thomas recoiled instinctively, a short crossbow bolt went into the massive door near his head. He shook his fist, leaped out into the night street after Oleg.
Oleg dragged the knight quickly along the wall, hiding in the shade. They turned round the corner, and that was when Thomas felt the cold air, the closeness of sea, saw the stony space of broad, colossal streets ahead.
They heard a shout behind, a bang of door, a clang of steel. Oleg took an idle pace, swaying slightly, his belly thrust out. Thomas also tried to assume a carefree air of a reveler coming back home, though his heart still beating like a sheep’s tail and some smallest muscle under his knees shaking nastily.
“Now where?” Thomas asked. “Our inn…”
“…said its last cuckoo,” Oleg replied. “Fortunately, we are no Saracen to travel with our harems. I’ve taken all our things. Do you have the cup?”
Thomas grabbed his bag in fright. His fingers felt the familiar prominence: it resembled a woman’s tight breast or her lusty hip curve. The cup replied with a muffled tinkle. Thomas hurried to take his iron fingers off it. “But Constantinople is big!”
“I know plenty of decent inns and hotels,” Oleg said comfortingly. He thought for a while, then shook his head with regret. “Though decent ones do not fit… We’ll be exposed there.”
“Let’s go to the port,” Thomas offered.
“Sir Thomas, isn’t Krizhina waiting for you? And I’m too old for such things. We need something in the middle of decency and comfort. Such places can also be found in the city, strange as it may seem.”
Oleg sat in the tavern of the inn where he’d stopped with Thomas. The knight almost never budged from their room, a small and dirty one on the fifth floor. He would sharpen the swords, both own and the wonderer’s, mend the hollows in his armor. Oleg brought him food and beer up. Thomas was too noticeable in his armor, and he refused to take it off. Meanwhile, Oleg, in his barbarian jack of wolfskin, could easily pass for a longshoreman, a sailor from a barbarian ship, or a smuggler, whom the shores of Golden Bay were teemed with.
In order not to stand out at all, Oleg hunched up, thrust out his belly to hide his mighty stature. He never hid his face, but it was now angry, annoyed, with no hint of reclusion and search of high Truth. He swilled beer slowly from a huge mug, shot sulky glances at visitors. He could see himself in their eyes: a shaggy, embittered man, eager to make a scuffle whenever an opportunity presents itself.
He saw dicers in three tables away, felt which side was made heavier. He could win a lot of money before they knifed him. He spotted men who went into the secret door to see the innkeeper: all bronzed, smelling of sea wind, strong in shoulders, sweeping in moves. Each of them wore a strange wide hat, which was tied under his chin with a broad stripe, and a predatory curved Saracen knife in a leather scabbard on his belt.
It was the third day Oleg spent in the tavern. He would drink much, due to the heat, have a game of dice in times. For dinner, he always ordered some roast meat with greens: a common food of Slavic shepherds, one of whom he pretended to be. As he came upstairs with food for Thomas, he found the knight nervous and angry.
Oleg already knew all the innkeeper’s spies. He could follow their ways in the narrow city nooks in his mind, could earn a fortune by disclosing the secret contraband stores to the basileus or naming the key figures of the secret net that had spread over the left wing of the Emperor’s palace. However, he’d seen not a single spy of the Seven yet: he would have known them once they appeared on the threshold.
Only in the evening of the third day, did he see a man whose resemblance to a smuggler was too close to be true. Oleg’s heart got fluttering. He leaned his head to the jug of wine, watching closely, out of a corner of his eye, the face, gait, moves of that man.
The “smuggler” sat at a table nearby. While Oleg watched him asquint, over the mug of beer, the door flew
