Richard Blake - The Curse of Babylon

I sheathed my sword. Behind the ceremonial façade of the Saint Evagrius Monastery, there was a stepped alley leading down to the ruins of an old bathing complex. From here, I’d have to keep the sun as my guide through the courtyards of a poor district I’d never yet entered.

I lost my bet on our relative speeds. Knocking two of my own harbour officials out of the way, I ran along the docks and then to the end of the stone jetty. ‘Stop that ship!’ I shouted at no one in particular. I looked at Shahin. From across ten yards of water, he stared placidly back.

‘Accept, my beautiful Alaric, that you’ve lost on this occasion,’ he called out in Persian. ‘Now, here’s the best deal you’ll get. So long as no one follows us, the girl stays alive. Once I no longer need her, you get her back alive. Can I say fairer than that?’ He clapped his hands. Naked, a rope once more about her neck, Antonia was forced out on deck. She opened her mouth to cry out to me but a rag was stuffed between her teeth. Shahin ordered his men to pull her back inside. He leaned forward over the rail of the departing ship. ‘Do as I say and you will see her alive again.’ Unable to do otherwise, I fell to my knees and stretched out my arms to the departing ship. Shahin laughed and slapped both hands on the rail. ‘And remember,’ he jeered, ‘we Persians always keep our promises — did not the Great King tell you that himself??’ He put up a hand to cover his mouth. ‘Go home, Alaric, and count off the days till your bright reunion by impaling the Greekling conspirators against your Lord and Master Heraclius. I’m sure you have a complete list of them.’

He took out a napkin and waved it in mock farewell. Timothy came out of the deck cabin and, waving, stood beside him. They spoke to each other and rocked back and forth with laughter. The oars splashed more insistently on the silvery waters and I watched the ship move slowly out of the unguarded harbour. Out in the open sea, its sail came down with a gentle crash. Still kneeling, arms still outstretched, I watched until it vanished in to the disc of the still-rising sun.

‘I’ve orders from the Prefect to arrest you, Sir,’ someone said behind me.

Not getting up, I twisted round. Swords at the ready, the two harbour guards were stood well away from me. I closed my eyes in a supreme effort of will not to fall apart. I pointed at the other men streaming through the harbour gate. ‘If you speak with the city guard,’ I said with a composure that startled me, ‘you’ll discover the true state of affairs.’ I closed my eyes again. ‘This being the case, I want the Harbour Master here at his earliest opportunity.’

‘You fucking bastard!’ old Simeon shouted in my face. ‘Was this what you were planning all along?’ He waved at the dense thicket of the dead who covered the Triumphal Way. Sobbing quietly, relatives and friends of the fallen searched and poked among the bodies. They disturbed the usual million flies that had emerged from nowhere and kept back the hungry dogs. But amid the wreckage of so much life, normality was already returning to Constantinople. Not looking about, scented cloths pressed to their faces, men hurried past the dead about their business.

As calm as any man can be who’s bruised all over and covered in dried blood, I stepped away from Simeon. He’d lost a shoe in the panic and was still clutching a placard that said ‘Death to the Pension-Stealing, Yellow-Haired Bastard Alaric!’ Other than that, he’d come rather well through the massacre. Perhaps there were some too old and useless even for the city guard to think it worth killing. Avoiding the main patches of setting blood, I walked over to the catapult. I’d heard it go, but paid no attention to its effects. Tucked away somewhere in my head, there was a formula that would tell me how many thousand pounds of force the torsion springs had given each six-foot arm of the catapult. No need for calculations, however. Swarming with more of those bastard flies, the dead lay about like heaps of smashed and twisted statuary — statuary mixed in with the waste from a butcher’s market.

Simeon tugged at my sleeve. ‘My youngest boy is in there,’ he cried in an old man’s voice that no longer accused anyone of anything. ‘I can’t pull him out.’ He sat down in the mess and wept.

Drained of energy, I sat down beside him and thought what to say. My drug had long since worn off. The weariness now hit me with the force of that dead Treasury clerk. I put a hand on his shoulder. ‘Listen, Simeon,’ I said, ‘go home and wait. I’ll publish an amnesty towards the end of today. Until then, your placard will only get you into trouble. Go home and come out again this evening. The dead will all be laid out in the Prefecture building. You can collect your son from there.’ I noticed we were sitting a couple of feet from one of the ladders the seditionaries had been using. Its pine rungs were splashed with blood. ‘I’m sorry for your loss,’ I said quietly.

‘It’s the Master!’ someone shouted behind me. I got slowly to my feet and turned. It was Rado, leading a half dozen of my armed slaves. I could guess they’d gone off to look for me before Leander could get back with the news of where I was. Covered in blood and dust, they steadied themselves and gave the universal barbarian salute of sorrowful triumph.

It was Samo who got to me first. He’d looked out of the palace at the noise. Now, a body under each arm, he lumbered towards me. Eboric danced beside him, a severed head in his hands. ‘Master!’ Samo cried — ‘Master, we can’t find her anywhere!’ I fell into his outstretched arms. At last, I felt some shred of comfort. It broke through the iron grip I’d taken on myself and I found myself crying and crying as if I’d never stop.

‘Don’t blame me, Alaric,’ Priscus said indignantly. ‘I was out all night — and in your service. I disabled the catapult for you. I covered you all the way to your meeting with Nicetas and watched you come out arm in arm with Cousin Timothy. You didn’t notice but I killed five men last night — five men, mind you, and every one of them out to get you. When am I supposed to have found time for dressing up and scaring silly Theodore completely out of his wits?’

Anyone else would have had a point. Not Priscus, though. I continued staring at him across my office desk. High on something else from his box of potions, I’d sealed every arrest warrant and given every order needed to retake control of the City. Now, as the sun was losing its power, Priscus was out of bed and ready for the argument I’d so far tried to keep out of mind.

I scraped my chair back and gave him the look of a man invested with absolute power. ‘If Theodore tells me he saw a demon in the chapel, or an angel, or Jesus Christ himself, we can agree he was deluded. However, he’s claiming he saw a figure dressed in black, who told him where the secret cupboard was, and how to get it open, and then to take its contents out of the palace. I’ll grant that everything else that happened was beyond even your control and that you knew nothing about my deal with Timothy. But, unless you can tell me who did appear to the boy, you’ll pardon me for blaming you.’

Priscus shook his head sadly. ‘It was meant to be, Alaric,’ he said. ‘Didn’t I tell you about the powers of the cup? It’s no accident it went out of your possession just as the seven days were coming to an end. You really should think yourself lucky. Shame about the girl, though, I’ll freely admit.’

I stood up, disordering a stack of draft proclamations for the next day. ‘You can stop wittering about that fucking cup,’ I snarled. I walked quickly over to another stack of papyrus and reached under it. I never had put the box properly together. The prised off side had remained separate throughout the past few days. Now, I held it up for inspection. ‘I was wondering why a box otherwise so elegant was only painted to look like ebony.’ I pushed it close to Priscus. ‘Look what I found underneath when I scraped the paint off.’