light was weak and he was cold. They had been there a long time when he noticed men gathering around them. The weather had kept people indoors but now there was a crowd outside the Magnaura — twenty men at least behind them, in front of them the same number. This was very odd because the streets were otherwise almost deserted.
‘Hello, lads. A word, please.’
A short bald man in pale blue robes spoke. He took Azemar by the arm. Another man tried to grab Mauger but the warrior threw him down, and was running almost as he struck the ground.
Azemar tried to shake free, but a third man had his other arm. Men went streaming after Mauger, but the knight had a good start on them and ducked into an alleyway.
‘What is this?’ said Azemar.
‘We just need to talk.’
‘And you are?’
‘Forty strong,’ said the man, ‘and you are one, so I will ask the questions if you don’t mind.’
Snake in the Eye had not been approached. ‘Is he a spy?’ said Azemar.
The man drove a solid punch into Azemar’s guts. The scholar retched, his knees wobbled and he had to sit down on the ground.
‘I am the emperor’s man,’ said Snake in the Eye, ‘and no spy. These men are not my equals so would not dare touch me.’
One of the mob, a heavy man who wore a smith’s apron, pointed at Snake in the Eye. ‘You’re his favourite for now. But when that changes, you’ll get a visit from us, don’t you worry.’
Snake in the Eye was silent, just stood looking up towards Hagia Sophia as if nothing was happening.
‘With us,’ said the bald man. The mob swept Azemar through the backstreets leading him on at the trot up the hill away from the cathedral.
‘Where are we going?’
Another meaty blow struck him in the belly, staggering him sideways as he ran.
‘Save your energy for answering questions, sorcerer,’ said the man who had hit him, ‘because you are going to need it.’
16
Loys had been honoured to be given his own chamber with access to a bath and a slave to tend him. In the salon of the Lady Styliane, however, he felt as though he had been shortchanged.
The room was immense and decorated like a vine grove — creepers in mosaics rising to the ceiling, great pendulous bunches rendered vivid in purple and red. Slaves were everywhere, bringing food on silver plates, decanters of wine, parchments and books to courtiers on couches and chairs. One slave carried a little brush with which he swept the seat of anyone who rose and bowed their way into the lady’s presence.
The lady herself was striking. She was in her early twenties, quite small and dark, impeccably dressed in light yellow silk with a permanent marionette’s smile on her face. Beatrice had described her as beautiful, and she was certainly that with her clear complexion and vivid green eyes.
Loys sat next to Beatrice on a couch, where they were kept waiting interminably while the lady received her guests, who seemed mainly to comprise rich merchants, ladies of the court and various bureaucrats — all in couples. He sat self-consciously still, not quite knowing how to hold himself but glad he had bathed and dressed in fine robes. Here it was safer to be seen as an official than as a distinct person, particularly a foreigner. The court seemed to understand officials. It understood foreigners too — once it had incorporated them, given them their shoes of blue, red or gold and marked them as its own.
They had watched eight separate audiences when the doors opened and a new person was announced: ‘Logothetes Isais, master of the public post, and his wife the Lady Eudocia.’ Loys fought to control his surprise. It was the man who had accosted him in the corridor, the one who had offered him a way out of the city. Master of the public post? The postal service doubled as the emperor’s intelligence-gathering agency. So this was the head of the Office of Barbarians, the chief spy of the empire, standing so close he could touch him.
Isais bowed deeply, though he couldn’t help a glance towards Loys. Loys wondered if Isais was here for his benefit or if he was here for Isais’. His feet shifted on the carpet. He wanted to get out of there.
The lady spoke to Isais and his wife briefly and waved them away. Then she took a little water poured from a golden jug into a fine glass beaker as Isais backed out of the room. If Loys had had any illusions about the power of the woman he was about to meet, he had none now.
They had waited so long that the call, when it came, took Loys by surprise. ‘The scholar Loys of the Lord Chamberlain’s Office and his wife the Lady Beatrice of Normandy.’ Loys noted a slight hesitancy over ‘Lady’, as if nowhere in the servant’s experience had that ever been linked to ‘scholar’ before. He got to his feet and bowed deeply, all flustered. Beatrice rose effortlessly behind him.
‘You bow in front of her,’ whispered Beatrice.
Loys’ legs seemed made of stone and he approached the lady like a country clot before a king, which was not far from the truth. When he came level with her couch he bowed again, bending his knees and tipping forward at the waist. Beatrice, he noted, did not bow but merely inclined her head.
‘Welcome,’ said Styliane. ‘Please, lady, allow your husband to sit beside me. I have heard so very much about him that I’m fascinated to meet him.’
Beatrice sat down, leaving space for Loys on the couch, but her husband still stood.
‘Come, don’t look as if I’ve asked you to sit on an ants’ nest. The rules of plebeian society do not apply to the elite. A man can sit next to a lady without being consumed by lust and a lady can sit next to a man without being a whore. Sit.’ She patted the couch next to her.
Loys sat down by degrees, lowering himself slowly as if he expected a servant to run him through for his presumption at any moment.
‘There you are,’ said Styliane. ‘Still alive and no devils leaping out to punish you.’
‘No, lady.’
She raised a finger, and a slave brought them glasses of wine on a silver plate. Beatrice took hers elegantly, but when Loys picked up his glass, his hand shook and he rested it on his lap to steady it.
‘Devils are your speciality, are they not?’
‘Lady?’
‘The chamberlain has set you to investigate them.’ Around the room people withdrew, the servants melting away, the remaining people on the couches following them.
‘I…’ The chamberlain had given him no indication his mission was secret but Loys had no idea how much he was allowed to reveal.
‘It concerns the emperor’s affliction, does it not?’
‘Those matters are above my station, lady.’
She waved her hand. ‘I give you permission to speak freely. No one can hear us here.’ It was true: the room was now empty, though a servant stood directly behind him.
‘The servants-’
‘Are mutes and illiterate. And they are stupid. I am always served by stupid men; I find them more reliable than the intelligent variety.’
There was a long silence and Loys noticed a slight fading of the lady’s smile.
‘Do not make me ask you again, scholar. Perhaps I should ask your pretty wife. She seems amenable to frank conversation. You have said much, haven’t you, lady, but I think your Norman court is more open than is wise or safe here.’
Beatrice said nothing, just sipped at her wine and smiled. If she was intimidated, she didn’t show it. The threat to Beatrice brought a sharp pain to Loys’ stomach.
He kept his voice pleasant enough. ‘If you have spoken to my wife then you have no need of me.’
