‘She could have lied.’
‘She’s a young girl,’ said Azemar. ‘She thinks it a sin to lie.’
‘We have enough problems here without worrying about that,’ said Loys. ‘Anyway the palace is well defended. He’ll send one of his clottish northerners.’
‘What makes you so sure?’
‘The duke looks to the future in many things, but when it comes to war, he likes the men of the old country, isn’t that so?’
‘Yes,’ said Beatrice. She squeezed his hand. ‘Do you know how many come for us?’
Azemar took another sip of water. The sensation of it made him remember its lack in the Numera. Memories spumed — the thing that had tried to kill him, the pale figure who had stood beside him, comforting and caressing him, the meat, the meat he had eaten in a place even God didn’t see. He shuddered and said, ‘No.’ He didn’t want to have to explain how he had come to Constantinople to Loys. A flush came over him, like he’d drunk too much the night before. The lie seemed to dry Azemar’s mouth and he drank some more.
‘So you came alone?’
‘I sailed as soon as I heard your father was looking for you.’
Azemar put down the bowl and leaned back on the bed. Why had he lied? This was the opportunity he had waited for, to alert his friend. He could have given Mauger’s name, described him, put the palace guards on alert, but he had not. Why?
Because the man had very likely been captured and put in the Numera or even killed. Such a warrior would not be taken without a fight, and perhaps the only way to subdue him was to kill him. He didn’t want to alarm his friend or raise pointless questions.
Beatrice came to the side of the bed.
‘Were you ever at the duke’s court?’ she said.
‘Never, lady. I have spent most of my life in the monastery and its fields.’
Azemar spoke the truth, though his thoughts terrified him. He knew her. Yes, he knew her, but not from the world — from his dreams and from the nightmares of the Numera.
‘I’m sure I know you,’ she said.
‘I have seen you riding by,’ he said, ‘but from a distance. You would not recognise my face.’ He couldn’t meet her eyes.
‘Do you recognise me?’
‘I know you only from afar.’
Loys put his hand on Beatrice’s arm. ‘Let’s not trouble Azemar too much. He’s come a long way and suffered a lot for us.’
Azemar closed his eyes. He didn’t want to see the girl any more. He knew who she was — the one from his dreams who had told him she loved him, had always loved him. She was the girl in the fields, the one who had haunted his sleep in his monk’s cell, the one he remembered, though not like any other memory. It was a memory he had been born with, something he had carried with him all his life.
He needed to wait until his thoughts cleared, until he worked out what had happened to him in the Numera. He had killed, he had eaten things no Christian man should eat and now he had a wildfire in his head.
There was a knock at the door.
‘The quaestor is engaged in the service of the chamberlain,’ said the servant, giving the official reply to indicate visitors were not welcome.
The door opened anyway. It was a captain of the messenger service, with three men.
Loys’ fingers closed on the little knife on the plate of cold meats.
‘Quaestor,’ said the officer, ‘you need to come now.’
‘For what?’
‘Sorcery in the most holy place. A demon has come to the Church of Holy Wisdom.’
‘What sort of demon?’
‘The sort that leaves five hundred dead,’ said the officer. ‘It seems your mission to protect the people of this city has had the opposite of its intended effect. You have some explaining to do, Quaestor, so I’d get yourself down to the church now if I was you.’
‘Look after Azemar,’ said Loys to Beatrice. ‘You have the eunuch as your chaperone.’ He picked up the little knife with his back turned to the messengers and put it into his belt. Then he took up his cloak and strode from the room.
33
Snake in the Eye opened his eyes and wondered where he was. He was in a room with five other beds in it — two of them occupied. One contained a fat man who lay motionless with a cloth across his forehead, the other a youth of around sixteen with a splinted leg propped up by cushions. The youth wrote on some parchment which rested on a small table he’d positioned over his thighs. On it was a candle, the only light in the room.
The young man smiled at him. ‘You’re awake at last. Thank goodness, I could do with the company.’
Snake in the Eye felt for the pebble at his neck. Only the cross. The strange sensations he’d experienced in the church were quieter now but their resonance was still in his mind.
Memories came back to him. He’d been in a garden with a girl. There had been lights and then the lights had gone out. What had happened? He was alive. Was he a hero? He had killed many people — yes now he recalled it — and that meant he really was a hero.
‘Where am I?’
‘In the hospital of the Church of Holy Wisdom. You are the only survivor of the evil that happened tonight. Well, the only well-dressed survivor, anyway. They wouldn’t want to risk picking up someone who couldn’t pay.’
A story ran through Snake in the Eye’s mind. It was the one the traveller who had visited him in his camp had asked for — and given a fine pelt for. He couldn’t remember all of it now, only the end.
He was giggling as if drunk. ‘The old gods, those ancient savages will die.’ The story began again inside his head: There are three women — the Norns…
He tried to stop the pitter-patter of the words, to concentrate on finding out where he was and what he was doing there, but the words blustered through his mind loud as rain tearing against a tent. And — whoa! — there were the runes, forming of candlelight, symbols that rattled like carts, that blew like the wind and shone like the sun, bellowed like bulls and sprouted like seeds.
‘Where is my sword?’
‘I don’t know. I should have thought you’d have had enough of-’
‘I want my sword!’
‘Well, really. I don’t know. I suggest you ask the nurses. Please speak to me no more as you’re obviously well below my rank.’
‘Please be quiet,’ said the man with the cloth over his forehead. ‘I am dying of a nervous fever brought on by these strange skies and I must not be frightened or alarmed.’
Snake in the Eye smirked and grinned as the runes shimmered and chimed. They led him to the wall in the dark crevices of his mind. The men’s lives seemed like little flickering candles. He almost saw them, so strongly did he picture them. He let them take his attention, their cosy little flames filling up his thoughts. And then he no longer wished them to burn. He wanted them to go out. They did and the men spoke no more.
The gods in their schemes… There was more of the story to tell, scraping away in his head like a trapped rat.
He got up, light-headed, though he wasn’t hungry. He looked at his clothes. He was in a long tunic in plain brown cloth, in the Byzantine style. His boots were at the side of the bed. He put them on and walked out of the room, leaving the corpses behind him.
