Mary Reed - Six for Gold

John fled up steep tiers of marble benches.

Dusk had fallen over Constantinople. It was not dark enough to hide the hunted man. The setting sun filled the Hippodrome with light the color of blood in water.

The long shadows of the pursuers grasped at his heels. The distorted shape of a helmet sprang up in front of him, then bobbed away.

The excubitors were closing ground.

John glanced back. One line of guards snaked directly behind. Others climbed along the seating on either side, intent on cutting off his escape.

Above his head loomed the ornately sculpted facade of the imperial box. As Lord Chamberlain, John knew those seats were inaccessible to the easily inflamed crowds. He was just as familiar with the area directly below, used by the emperor’s servants, musicians, and guards. As he reached the chest-high wall of the enclosure and pulled himself over, a spear hissed by his ear and rattled down onto the marble floor.

He thanked Mithra the door leading from the enclosure was for once unlocked. He leapt through the doorway into darkness and plunged headlong down a sloping corridor.

The sound of the pursuit echoed along the passageway as he emerged into the Hippodrome’s concourse.

A beautiful, monstrous face below upraised wings smiled down at him. Dying sunlight flickered in the blank eyes.

John ran past the statue and outside. He was at the lower end of the Hippodrome. The shops lining its curved wall were closed, their gratings chained to rings in the pavement. He sprinted past them, keeping in the shadows as much as possible.

A hoarse shout told him he’d been spotted.

He dodged into a colonnaded street.

And fell.

The sprawled figure whose outstretched leg had tripped him winked.

No. Not a wink. Just a bloated fly skittering across the corpse’s wide open eye.

John pushed himself upright. A ragged line of bodies in the middle of the street meandered to an overturned cart.

Plague victims.

Whatever the cause of the accident, the authorities had not picked up the remains.

John drew in a painful breath and ran.

Then, abruptly, the street dropped away. Below, John recognized the flickering lights of ships.

The docks.

There was nowhere else to run.

The guards at the imperial granary were intent on a game of knucklebones when the tall, lean man in a dark cloak burst into their midst. Before they could react, John was past them.

He reached the interior courtyard, veered through the nearest door, and raced along a dim hallway lined with narrow, rectangular alcoves-waist-high grain bins. The hallway intersected others with similar receptacles.

John zigzagged through the corridors. Skylights admitted only faint illumination. Rats scuttled out of his path.

Many of the bins were empty, others barely half full. The plague had disrupted everything, including the food supply.

His way was barred by a heaped grain bin that closed off the end of the corridor.

This then was the one Mithra had chosen.

John climbed in and burrowed under the grain. He pressed himself against the front wall and pulled his cloak up over his head to allow him to breathe.

The scrape and susurration of his effort gave way to a smothering silence. He fought off panic. The suffocating darkness was too much like being under water.

Loud footsteps approached.

“What do you mean where? Use your eyes!” someone said nearby.

John knew that voice.

“Here. Give me your spear,” the man said.

John took shallow breaths. He strained to hear through the cloak and the stifling weight of the grain.

There was a dull thud, followed by silence and another thud. The pattern of sounds was repeated.

“Do the same with the others,” came the order.

John understood.

His pursuers were thrusting spears into the grain piled in the bins.

There came the occasional scrape as a spear was deflected by a bin wall. Several curses. Footsteps. Someone emitted a coarse laugh.

Soon they would reach the bin in which John hid.

Each inhalation drew the fabric of the cloak toward his mouth, cutting off his breath.

“We’ll be here all night,” complained an excubitor.

“What’s your hurry? Is Theodora waiting for you in the barracks?”

Now they were in front of John’s bin.

He felt the grain move against his hip as the spear passed over and clashed against the back wall.

A grunt. Then flames seared John’s shoulder.

He’d been grazed.

He had uttered no sound. Would they notice blood on the spear? Not in the near darkness.

“No one’s in there either.”

The men began to move away.

“Wait! Three times. Those were the orders.”

The man addressed grumbled obscenely.

Again the spear sliced into the grain.

There was a piercing shriek. Rough hands grabbed John’s arms and yanked him upwards. The screams rose into a gurgling screech.

A rat writhed and bled on the end of the spear.

Then the voice John recognized ordered the captive be bound.

“In the name of the emperor, I arrest you for murder.”

It was Felix, captain of the excubitors and one of John’s oldest friends.

He stared at John in astonishment. “John…Lord Chamberlain. I’m certain there is an explanation?”

John said nothing, but his gaze flickered briefly towards the floor. No one at a distance would have noticed. When Felix looked down, John quickly traced four lines in the dust with the toe of his boot. His expression remained stony.

“Captain, you see the situation. I know you will do your duty. I expect to be escorted to an imperial dungeon immediately.”

“He shall be merciful and allow you to keep one eye. We would not wish you to be unable to see what is in store after the torturers begin their work.” Theodora’s mouth curved into a scarlet scimitar.

A smile of anticipation.

John gazed over her head at the opposite wall of the torch-lit cell. He was chained naked to damp stones.

Although he avoided looking at his visitor, he could not escape her musk, a mixture of stale perfume, exotic spices, and sweat. He imagined she had been roused from sleep and instructed her ladies-in-waiting to dress her in the first robes that came to hand.

Theodora selected a pair of bloodstained pincers from a wooden table upon which were ranged a variety of instruments, many resembling physicians’ tools. Her sharp, experimental click of the pincers drew John’s unwilling attention.

Theodora set the tool down and picked up a wooden-handled razor. “Think of the damage this keen edge will do.”

She looked John up and down. He could feel her gaze crawling over his body with a thousand insect-like legs.

“You are in fine physical condition. You will endure longer than most, once the work begins. Unfortunately for you, Lord Chamberlain.”

She sighed. “That sounds like such an inappropriate title for one in your circumstances. Perhaps I should call you what the people in the streets do-John the Eunuch. Such a pity the Persians began our work for us. I am not without mercy. I like to give our special male guests a choice. Would you prefer to lose your eyes or…but that is an opportunity I cannot offer you. I give them a week to ponder the decision, just to be fair. What would you have chosen? Your eyes?”

John made no reply.

“Such a shame,” Theodora continued. “I should have enjoyed seeing…but there are other possibilities. The skin can be removed piece by piece for some time before oblivion. Did you know that? Then again, we might do better not to pollute the flagstones with your blood, but rather break your bones one by one instead.”