commit you to the Numera for a period.’ Loys had no intention of doing this but was prepared at least to threaten it.
‘Sir.’
‘Yes.’
‘I have a family.’
‘Then endeavour to keep it,’ said Loys.
The man sat for a few seconds looking at his shoes.
‘Have you thought of interviewing the prisoners in the Numera?’ he said.
‘Why should I do that?’
‘It would seem politic to start with known criminals and enemies of the state.’
‘Do you know something, Ostiarios?’
‘No,’ he said, ‘I do not. Just that I think the Numera’s list of prisoners might be a good place to start. There are sorcerers in there for sure. The chamberlain stuck one in there just the other day — one of the Arabs they captured in Abydos — right by the emperor’s tent, I heard.’
‘Which Arab?’
‘I don’t know. I just heard it mentioned over a cup of wine.’
‘By whom?’
‘By…’ The fat doorkeeper was suddenly wary of incriminating anyone. Loys held his silence and let the man fill it with his own fears. ‘Meletios the warder would know.’
Loys didn’t find it too surprising a sorcerer had been imprisoned, as sorcerers and heretics had a habit of finding themselves locked up. But the ostiarios thought it worthy of mention. No one else had mentioned a sorcerer. That in itself was odd. Idiot Loys. Circles existed within the court, codes and secret understandings of which he knew nothing. Perhaps knowledge of the sorcerer’s existence had been limited to a very few. Perhaps it wasn’t common knowledge that the savage who had attacked the emperor was also a sorcerer. Loys wanted to question the ostiarios further. He knew he wrote on delicate parchment, so to speak. It would be all too easy to put a pen through it and ruin the work completely. Better to proceed slowly. And besides, he’d heard enough rumours to build a bridge of them back to Neustria.
‘I thank you for your advice.’
The man bowed and Loys put down his fan to signify he was dismissed. When he had gone, Loys scribbled a note to Meletios saying he had been mentioned as part of investigations into sorcery and must to report to be interviewed within a week. He then lay back in his seat and looked up at the ceiling. Beatrice, who had been behind a screen at the rear of the room, came out. She was bigger now — very pregnant.
‘You did well.’
‘It’s unfair to treat these fellows this way.’
‘Anxiety is a condition of a courtier’s life. You are just speaking to them in a way they respect and can understand. This will yield dividends more quickly than poring over all the books in the world.’
Loys took her hand. ‘I know. I don’t have to be comfortable with it, though.’
‘No. But you have to do it. It’s a matter of survival for us. We’ll get ourselves in a position where we can prosper here or at least survive. How long now until the chamberlain wants his report?’
‘Two months. And how long until the baby?’
‘The physician thinks a month.’
‘Good timing,’ he said.
‘Why?’
‘Because if it looks like I’m not going to get to the bottom of this and God grants us a boy, we can make our escape back to your father before I have to face the chamberlain.’
‘You will get to the bottom of it, Loys. I have faith in you.’
He lowered his voice and drew her close. ‘And what if the bottom of it is at the top?’
She knew to whom he referred — the chamberlain. Styliane had hinted as much.
‘Then know all you can. If our friends are truly our enemies then perhaps some who appear our enemies might be our friends. She has said as much.’
‘That is a dangerous game.’
‘More dangerous to blunder blindly. Has there been nothing from your interviews?’
‘All too wise and too scared to mention his name, if indeed he’s complicit in this. And I am too wise and too scared to ask them to.’
‘But it’s important to have all the information you can get. Might you find an excuse to look into the chamberlain’s past? And Styliane’s too.’
‘You think she could be responsible?’
‘Of course not. But a prince looks at the lie of the land before deploying his troops. You need to do the same.’
Her voice was just a whisper in his ear, scarcely audible.
He was sick of interviewing, that was for sure. It had served his purpose of making him feared. But he wanted to know more about his master, who seemed to have so much to do with sorcery in one way or another — if only his seemingly fervent interest in its eradication. And why hadn’t the chamberlain told him he’d locked a sorcerer up?
Beatrice was right. It might, he thought, be worth a trip outside the walls. He would please Isais by seemingly investigating the Varangians and delve into the chamberlain’s past while he did it.
‘I’ll go first thing tomorrow,’ he said.
22
I have died, thought Azemar. I have died and this is hell. He could not bear the heat of the Numera, nor the darkness, nor the smell. His irons afflicted him terribly and skinned his ankles raw.
They’d taken him down to the lowest level, given him no food and left him in that black hole — to die, he was sure.
The stench was obscene, the floor rough and uneven, offering no comfort, and the moans of the sick and the dying really did make him think of the cries of the souls of the damned in their torment.
The darkness was terrible to bear, that and the hatred of the other inmates. Occasionally, perhaps once a day, the guards came to give him water — no food — and those around him who still had the sanity to realise what was happening would scream and beg for a drink or curse him for his luck.
He tried to save some for his fellow prisoners, gulping down as much as he could and taking a big last mouthful. A man lay next to him, and he found his mouth and dribbled the water in. It gave the man strength enough to weep. Azemar sat with him, holding him, trying to bring comfort where there was none.
Rats scuttled about them, tormenting them as they slept. He would feel a movement on his foot and he learned to kick quickly and hard before the animal bit him.
The rats weren’t the only ones on the lookout for food. Hunger and thirst did bad things to men. The darkness of the Numera was a darkness of the soul and they fell on the dead and fed upon them. When the guards with the water came with their lights Azemar saw terrible things, sights like something from a church painting designed to terrify people into belief. Yes, it was like hell, and men had become devils there.
When the woman had said she needed him but that he could rot a while, he had thought he would be left in that horror for a day, a week. How long had he been imprisoned? He lost all track of time. Only the coming of the water and the death of the man in his arms told him he was moving from moment to moment at all.
The hunger became acute and Azemar hallucinated. He was in a pit of wolves who sat watching him with unblinking eyes, some of yellow, some of blue and some of a terrible red. One wolf above all others seemed to watch him. At first Azemar thought it was a pagan idol, a thing like ignorant people set in their fields in autumn to frighten dark spirits away — a construction of straw and wood with turnips for eyes and pine cones for teeth. It
