him on to drink ever more deeply? His own fingers ran down to the man’s belly, tearing it open and pulling out the bowels, the liver, the slick wet liver, which he chewed and swallowed with delight.
‘Mother. Father. Release me.’
‘You are released.’
The song went on as he ate.
And then it stopped, and Azemar realised that, far from lying in the figure’s arms, he held something in his own. He let go and it fell limp to the floor.
The beautiful burning figure was gone and beside him was the torn corpse of a man who had died of thirst. A weak light filtered in. The door at the top of the stairs had a small space beneath it and a faint lamplight now shone through.
There rises my sun, he thought. How soon before it sinks? The words surprised him. Azemar was a plain man and given to plain speaking. Such thoughts were alien to him.
He moved his feet. The manacles that had restrained him lay empty on the floor. How had that happened? They weren’t bent or buckled but the locks had been smashed.
He lay on the ground weeping for a while, asking God to forgive him for what he had done. But strange thoughts sprouted in him now, thoughts no words could contain.
The cries of the prisoners no longer disturbed him. They were… He searched for a word. Interesting. Intriguing. He had a deep desire to investigate them, to go to the stricken and the dying and… what? He almost laughed as he imagined himself poking the bodies with his nose. He wanted to establish something about them, to discover something. This morbid curiosity was divorced from any moral sense at all and it chilled him.
He crawled forward. He was neither hungry nor thirsty and, after so long with little water and no food, this fact seemed extremely important to him. He remembered the wolfman, the thing that had put its hand around his throat. That fellow had to have some sort of explanation for this — he would know what was what. His mind was not his own. His pompous old abbot had used those phrases — ‘that fellow’, ‘what was what’ — they were echoes of a previous existence. Words jangled in his mind. A beggar is a silent preacher, reproaching us for the corruption of wealth. A lazybones who will not work, a cripple cursed by God. No sense, no reason. Just words.
To his side was a gap where the wall didn’t quite meet the floor, a darkness within the darkness. The wolfman had come from there, he was sure. Could he speak to him? He touched his neck. It was painful where the man had grasped him, but he had no fear of him now. Should he leave this place? He thought he could wait behind the door and slip through when it opened.
He wept. He was himself again. No, no, I cannot escape. Yet in the next instant he felt strong and lithe, fast as the shadow of a bird. Yes, he was a shadow, something defined by what it was not, an expression and a simplification of another, complex thing.
He crawled to the gap at the bottom of the wall. There was something in there, a deepness — he sensed it. He breathed in, drawing a heavy draught of air through his nose. Beneath the prison stink was another smell. Wolf. He was down there, his strange double.
Devils gibbered in his head. What was happening to him? Who was that extraordinary man who had visited him and comforted him? The dark in the crack of the wall held no fear for him. He could smell, he could feel. He rolled into the sightless caves seeking to cool the torment that was raging in his head.
23
Loys strode out, surprised at the cold of the sunless streets. Inside the palace was always warm and pleasant, heated by the hot-air hypocaust system beneath the floors. Outside it was freezing. The sky had disappeared completely and the fine ash lay thick on every surface. He had to carry a lamp at midday — not to see so much as to be seen. Fewer people ventured out under the unnatural fog, but those who did moved no more slowly — horses and carriages looming suddenly out of nowhere, clattering past on the cobbles, unmindful of who or what they rode down.
The one business unaffected by the awful weather was that of the soothsayers on the Middle Way. They crowded in the murk under the grand porches and spilled out into the side-streets — dice throwers, palm readers, entrail burners and head feelers. Loys had never seen so many — but he quickly came to the conclusion these people were frauds. For a start, one man he had seen operating as a shoemaker when he first came to the city now sat throwing handfuls of coins into a box and using them to offer predictions. Still, Loys opted to question them in passing, but they wanted money for everything and the explanations they gave of their skills failed to convince. One woman told him he was born into riches, noting his expensive robe, another said he longed for his homeland. Loys thought he could do better than that himself. He asked for charms to help him in his quest for promotion. He was offered all sorts of things — the feet of animals and birds, potions, salves and medallions. Did these things work? He doubted it — they were just tokens sold by charlatans to fools. Loys quickly realised if magicians capable of producing effective magic did exist, he would not find them on the Middle Way.
Magic, though, was not his immediate interest. Rather, it was the beliefs that informed it. The chamberlain had spoken of old cold tides in the city. Loys needed to dip his toe in them to assess how they might have pulled and pushed at people. He spent longer than he had intended outside the palace — a week in all. His strategy was simple. He needed to gather whatever knowledge he could of the city’s pagan practices before he made a judgement on the cause of the black sky. This was not a subterfuge; he genuinely did want this information to arm himself in his quest for an answer.
He also wanted to hear rumours about Styliane and the chamberlain. His official robes would silence anyone he questioned, so he returned to the waterfront where he had lived with Beatrice, found the landlord and rented a tiny room. He changed his clothes there, entering wrapped in his big cloak and leaving the same way. The only difference was what he wore underneath — scholar’s rags instead of imperial silks.
He used his letter of engagement with its chamberlain’s seal to get him outside the city. The guard on the gate made a record of his leaving.
Down towards the water sprawled the Varangian camp, its black banners limp in the cold wet air. It was enormous but not as enormous as the shanty town that spread out from the walls on that side, seemingly as big as the sea that surrounded it on the other. All manner of materials had been used to construct houses here — some stone, some wood, some no more than tents or planks nailed together and propped up into lean-tos. Native Greeks mingled with men of many nations — Arabs and Bulgars, Turks and Moors, even the small, hard horsemen of the Mongolian steppes with their sallow skin and tear-shaped eyes. The camp was full of squabbles and fights. The people were united only by poverty.
Loys gripped the little knife at his belt and felt faintly ridiculous. If these people wanted to set on him, a sword, shield and breastplate wouldn’t stop them. The dogs were threat enough, roaming in packs and starved to skeletons. He could not risk wandering in that place alone, so he went to the Varangian camp and hired four men to accompany him with their axes and shields. Loys said his name was Michael, in a bid to put at least a small difficulty in the way of anyone who was trying to discover his business and he offered a daily rate, conspicuously emptying his purse when he paid them. If they wanted more money they would need to keep him safe — robbing him would end the arrangement.
A tall man called Galti took up his offer and brought his brothers. Loys was pleased with them — giants with impressive tattoos and scars. They might be overwhelmed by a mob, but it would be a brave man who attacked first. The Norsemen had no idea what he was doing, had no curiosity and did not speak Greek. They were ideal. He would be conspicuous with his guards but not obviously associated with authority. In his Norman clothes he even passed for another Norseman to anyone who wasn’t familiar with the difference between Normans and Vikings.
Loys began by asking for a charm to help him gain promotion. He made it clear he had no money with him but would return should he find such a thing. Loys wore his poverty ostentatiously and visibly, pulling a tear in his trousers, muddying his cloak and — despite the fact it numbed his toes — wearing only his monk’s sandals. Plenty of people offered him things, but some were no more than pebbles scratched quickly from the earth, pieces of twig,
