become in just two years? He will not trouble us much longer.’
‘That’s what you said about him at the beginning of the month,’ Nicephorus sobbed. ‘But he’s here.’ He went down on his knees again. ‘And you haven’t seen the blond boy. He’s read all the public wisdom of the ancients. He’s big and strong enough to crush a man’s windpipe in one hand-’
‘Silence!’ Balthazar cried with a dramatic upward sweep of both arms. ‘Can you not feel it? Are you not aware of the Presence in this room? I tell you, Nicephorus of Tarsus,
Beside me, Martin froze. For a very short moment, I thought of getting myself right down again on the floor. But it was just more fraud to silence the Count. Balthazar was uttering another stream of gibberish in what I knew must be a made-up language.
‘I watched the boy’s arrival in Athens,’ he said with a dismissive wave. ‘Using powers that are allowed only to me, I have looked into his mind. He is a dirty savage, fit only to smear butter into his yellow hair. Before you waste time on killing him, let us call on the Goddess to take him and his vicious debauchee of a friend together out of this world.’
A dirty savage, I can tell you, would have been straight out from where I was hiding, to crush a windpipe in each of his hands. I, of course, merely noted that the deal Priscus had offered wasn’t to be taken up.
Now Balthazar was walking away, towards the far door that led into the upper depths of the residency. He stopped and looked back at the Count. ‘I have told you that so many bishops in Athens are displeasing to the Goddess,’ he said. ‘Their endless praying to the Jewish Sun God has caused a disruption in the Force. Let us, then, pray as arranged for Priscus and the blond youth to be destroyed, and for the council never to meet. It will please the Goddess. Surely then, she will crown all our long efforts with success.’
I could see Nicephorus looking up at him with a face that glistened with tears in the lamplight. He didn’t seem terribly convinced.
But Balthazar was now setting to work with the tones and gestures common to the ministers of every religion when confronted by less than total conviction. ‘Come with me, Nicephorus, Count of Athens,’ he declared thrillingly. ‘Let us consult the Goddess while the heavens are still washed clean.’ He reached out for the door handle. There was a loud scrape as he pulled it back open, and he vanished into the darkness.
I pulled my head down as I heard a soft moan and what may have been a prayer from Nicephorus. I could see the moving reflection on the glass bricks overhead as, lamp in hand, he hurried after Balthazar.
Chapter 20
Martin and I huddled together a while longer in the silence that resulted. At last, when it seemed clear that the door wouldn’t open again, I got up carefully. ‘Well, come on,’ I whispered, taking him by the arm. ‘Don’t you want to know what they’re about?’
It was a worthless question. Martin sagged forward over one of the bookracks and farted again. His face was in shadow, but I could hear his terrified whisper about the need to get out of here. He pulled his face out of the shadow and reminded me that Sveta was still waiting with Maximin.
‘Very well,’ I said impatiently — if she couldn’t get a frightened child back to sleep, she wasn’t the woman who could sometimes frighten even me — ‘you stay here and wait.’ I hurried over towards the door. I kept to the side of the room, ready to jump under cover if the door opened again.
As I stepped into the renewed darkness of the corridor, I heard a padding of feet behind me.
‘You’re mad, Aelric,’ Martin groaned. ‘What do you think you’ll say if we’re caught?’
I stopped and spread my arms. I slapped my now dry chest. ‘I
Trying to control his heavy breathing, Martin tagged along behind me. We had no lamp with us, and it was a matter of relying on the moonlight and on my own recollection of what was about us.
I didn’t suppose they were heading for Euphemia’s room. Hadn’t Balthazar said something about an appeal to the sky? Sure enough, opposite the niche where Demosthenes continued his burst of silent eloquence, a door was now open. I looked up about a dozen steps to another open door that led on to the roof. I crept up and looked quickly out. This part of the building was covered by a double roof. The door opened on to a path of nailed lead sheeting that went, in deep shadow, between the two roofs. To my left, the path terminated in a wall of crumbling brick. I stood and listened. I could hear a gentle sigh of wind on roof tiles, but nothing more. Leaving Martin to follow at his own pace, I darted to the right, making sure not to step in any of the puddles or disturb any of the heaps of shattered tile that covered the path.
It was hard to match the roof to the corridors and rooms that it covered. There should have been a turn right at the end of the path. This would have taken us on to the roof covering the back block of the residency. Instead, after the beginnings of a path, progress in that direction was closed by another wall. I could only go further if I went back and climbed a ladder that went all the way to the top of the left-hand roof. As I set a foot on the lowest rung and tested its strength, Martin clutched at me.
‘Let’s go back,’ he pleaded. ‘Can’t you feel the evil all about us?’
‘Oh, shut up!’ I answered. ‘Stay here and be ready to make a dash if I hurry down.’ I tested the next rung, and then the next. The ladder had been here a long time, and the wood was rotted through in places. Though reinforced with iron bars, these too had rusted, and one of the rungs sagged under my weight. Even as I was ready to pull myself to the top and look over, Martin clamped both arms about my middle and pressed a hot, sweaty face into the small of my back.
But I also had heard the noise. It was a low obscenity, followed by another man’s laugh, and had come from back where we’d come out on to the roof.
‘O Jesus!’ Martin groaned. ‘Sweet and merciful Jesus!’ He’d probably have dithered there till he was caught. But I was straight off the ladder and dragging him into the dead end that may once have led to the far block of the residency.
It was just in time. Even as I got him down to the ground, from where he’d have trouble bolting, the voices grew louder. ‘The Leader said it would stop raining,’ someone insisted in a poor but comprehensible Greek. ‘And it rains no more. The Force burns strong within him tonight!’
The response had a tone of piety about it, but was too peculiar in its intonation for me to make out the actual words. I hadn’t been in Athens a day, and I still couldn’t make much sense at all of the local dialect. But something told me these weren’t Athenians. There was a muffled but anticipatory laugh as the ladder creaked under someone’s weight. Though I’d have been in deep shadow, I didn’t dare look out from where we were hiding. My hair alone would have shone like a beacon in the darkness. I kept my breathing under control and counted perhaps a dozen men up the ladder and on to the roof. It was only when I heard no more sounds from the passage between the roofs that I allowed myself a single quick glance. We were now quite alone again.
‘Let’s get out of here,’ Martin whispered pleadingly.
I reached down to push him into silence, but got him on the stump of his missing ear. By the time I’d finished apologising and hugging him, there could have been no one at all dawdling near the top of the ladder. I took hold of it and prepared to step as noiselessly as I could back on to the lowest rung.
‘You aren’t serious. .?’ Martin gasped. I laughed softly and stepped on to the ladder. Trying not to make any noise, I climbed to the top and looked cautiously over.
The moon was behind me. Its pale light shone over a large expanse of lead that rose in its centre to a low dome that I guessed was the roof of the courtroom. I couldn’t see Nicephorus or the other men. But I could see Balthazar; rather, I saw his head just beyond the leaded dome. From its angle and the waving arms that shone silver in the moonlight, I could imagine that everyone else was down on his belly for a superstitious grovel.
‘Have you no faith in the Goddess?’ Balthazar cried. Though he must have been twenty yards away, his voice had the unnatural closeness of sounds at night. He bent forward out of sight, and I heard a general groan of terror. Balthazar came back in sight, his arms still raised. ‘O men of little faith,’ he said, ‘behold now the power she gives to her servant!’ He rubbed his hands together. As he pulled them apart, they both caught fire. He clapped them together again, and they went out.
My weight, pressing forward on the ladder, was already causing one of the roof tiles to crumble. Add to that an almost irresistible urge to burst out laughing, and I thought I’d crash sideways. But I shifted position and the
