Tom Harper - The mosaic of shadows

‘Someone, perhaps, who was wearing a steel hauberk?’ Lukas watched me shrewdly.

‘Perhaps.’

Lukas handed back the arrow. ‘No. If you fired that from a bow, you would be lucky to see it stick in a tree. There’s no weapon I know that could make it so lethal.’

I put the arrow back in my cloak, glad at least that the Varangian captain was not there to scorn this latest failure.

Lukas asked me to stay, but the day was drawing on and I did not want the first day of Krysaphios’ gold to have yielded nothing. For three hours I tramped the streets of the Platea, hunting out every mercenary and informer I could remember in all the holes they frequented. None could conceive of such a weapon as I sought, though all expressed interest in owning one should I find it. Some tried to guess my true purpose; others blustered, and swore they could cut down a man, hauberk or no, for a fair price. One was mad, and tried — without conviction, thankfully — to stab me. At length, sitting on my own in a grim little tavern chewing some pork, I decided that if the collective memory of the brigands and hired swordsmen I’d seen could not solve this riddle, the answer must lie further afield, beyond the realm of our Byzantine knowledge.

I was right: it did. But not so very far beyond our realm. It resided, I discovered, in a small tavern behind the quay of the Hebrews, in the person of a very short, very round man, with oily skin and a miserable vocabulary.

It was pure chance that I found him. I had gone to the tavern to find a soldier named Xerxes, a Saracen I had half-known in worse times. If the weapon came from the east, I hoped he might know it. He did not, but before I could make excuses he had brought me to his table and forced me to join him in the rough wine he was drinking. It tasted like stewed pine-bark, and I held the cup well in front of my mouth to hide my grimace as he introduced the companion he drank with, a fat Genoese named Cabo who shook my hand vigorously and blew spittle in my face.

‘Demetrios used to sell his sword-arm,’ explained Xerxes, resurrecting a past I preferred to forget. ‘Now he sells his brain. I don’t know which earns him less.’

‘Never as much as it’s worth,’ I assured him, though three gold pieces were already coming to seem overgenerous.

‘Cabo’s much cleverer,’ Xerxes told me. ‘He was in the business too. Now he’s a respectable merchant.’

‘What do you trade?’ I asked. I hardly cared, but talking kept me from having to drink.

Cabo gave a knowing leer from under thick eyebrows. ‘Silks. Gems. Gold. Weapons. Whatever men will buy.’

‘Cabo doesn’t like the imperial monopolies,’ added Xerxes with a wink. ‘He thinks they’re an abomination before your God. He’s like an evangelist.’

‘Weapons,’ I murmured, ignoring Xerxes. ‘I’m seeking a weapon.’

Cabo’s head lifted a fraction; his eyelids drew closer.

‘Are you?’ said Xerxes. ‘Returning to your old ways?’

‘A sword for ten gold pieces.’ Cabo spoke slowly, and I guessed he would have just enough Greek to haggle for the goods and officials he needed. Drink and women too, perhaps.

‘That’s more than a legal profit,’ I observed. ‘And I already have a sword. I need a bow.’

‘A bow for five gold pieces. Scythian. Very strong.’

‘The bow I need must be very strong. Stronger than any bow yet made, yet short enough to fire an arrow no longer than man’s arm. Strong enough to fire through steel.’

‘And to sink a trireme with one stroke, and to fly as far as the moon,’ said Xerxes. ‘Cabo is a businessman, Demetrios, not a conjurer. You’ve sold your brain once too often — there’s nothing left.’

‘I can sell you such a weapon.’ Cabo wiped the perspiration from his bald skull, and rested his fingers on the table, perhaps noticing that the cup had started to tremble in my hand. ‘For seven pounds of gold.’

‘Seven pounds of gold? You could buy an army with that?’ Xerxes thought it a jest and waved for more wine, but I was deaf to his interruption.

‘Do you have the weapon now?’ I asked.

Cabo shook his head. ‘Maybe in six months. Maybe in eight.’

‘And what would such a weapon be like?’ I did not try to hide my overweening interest; I hoped it would convince him my intentions were serious.

Cabo, for his part, did not hide his suspicion, but he had a merchant’s instincts and could not resist. ‘It is called tzangra , a crossed bow. Like a ballista, but a man can hold it himself. It will break open armour for you, if that is what you need.’

‘And by what miracle of invention does it do that?’ My blood and my breath both beat faster.

Cabo creased his forehead as he deciphered my question, then grinned and tapped the side of his head. ‘By magic.’

‘Genoese magic?’ I had never heard of such a weapon among our people.

Cabo nodded.

‘And do all men have them in Genoa?’

A shake of the head. ‘Very expensive. Difficult to make. But possible to get, if you want. If you pay. Five pounds of gold now. Two more when I have it.’

I left his offer unanswered for a moment, feigning consideration while the sweat began to bead again on Cabo’s scalp. At last: ‘I shall think on it.’

‘Why? Did you leave your five pounds of gold at home?’ Xerxes was petulant; perhaps he worried that I truly might have such riches at my command.

‘I gambled it on a horse at the hippodrome,’ I told him. ‘I need to collect my winnings.’

As I rose to leave, a final thought struck me.

‘Tell me, Xerxes,’ I said, dropping a copper coin onto the table for my part of the wine. ‘It’s been too many years since I retired. Where do the foreign mercenaries ply their trade now?’

‘In Paradise,’ said Xerxes sullenly. ‘On the road to the Selymbrian gate.’

‘Who’s the best?’

Xerxes shrugged. ‘None of them. You know what they do. Every week there’s a new cock on the dunghill. Go there and ask: someone will find you. Or cut your throat.’

At that Cabo laughed, spraying wine all across the table.

Dusk was falling without a sunset as I entered the street. I was weary — it had been an age indeed since I had covered so much ground in a day, and unearthed so many long forgotten acquaintances, but the relief of having found even a single link in the chain helped my tired legs mount the hill, past the walls of Ayia Sophia and into the broad arcades of the Augusteion. A dozen ancient rulers gazed down on me from their perches: some benevolent, some wise, some forbidding, each as he would have history know him, but I ignored them all. I passed the great gate on my right, and made for a small doorway in the far corner of the square where two Varangians stood, crested plumes on their helms and axes. One of them, I saw, was Aelric, the guard who had stood on the patch of blood for me that morning.

He raised his axe in greeting. ‘Come for the eunuch? They said you might.’ He looked up at the fading sky. ‘And never too soon.’

‘I’m here to see Krysaphios. He will want to know my progress.’

‘More than ours, I hope.’ Aelric gave a mock frown. ‘I never climbed so many steps as I did today. Sigurd had us up every house on the street asking if they’d allowed an assassin past.’

‘Sigurd?’

‘The captain. He said you ordered it.’

‘Did he? Did you find anything of interest?’

Aelric shook his grizzled head. ‘Only a girl suckling her child, who didn’t pull her dress up in time when we came in. Nothing to interest the eunuch.’

‘Speaking of whom. .’

Leaving his companion on guard, Aelric led me through the door into a narrow arcade lining an orchard. The fruit trees were barren now, their branches spiny and white, but birds still called from them. We passed an enormous hall on our left, its vast doors fastened shut, and came through into a second atrium, where we skirted along another, broader corridor. We turned again, and soon I was lost in a labyrinth of halls and passages, columns and porticoes; of fountains, gardens, statues and courtyards. The very air itself was bewildering, sweet as honey and scented with incense and roses; warm as a summer’s day, though outside we were in the depth of winter. The trickling of streams, the murmur of conversation and the chime of hushed instruments filled my ears; golden light spilled from the doorways we passed, framing the images of this separate world like icons. Every room was thronged with people: senators dressed in the robes of the first order; generals in their armour; scribes and secretaries under mountains of parchment. I saw noblewomen laughing in discrete circles, and petitioners with the drawn look of those who have waited long hours in vain. It was like a vision of Paradise, and through all of it I moved silently, unseen and unheeded.