Byzantine Heartbreak (28 page)

“You mean this moment you’ve worked so hard to engineer?” Ryan asked.

Nia smiled.

Cáel shook his head. “Don’t make me laugh. I’ll lose what little control I’ve got left here.”

Nia’s smile turned instantly wicked, as her eyes narrowed. She looked up at Ryan and raised a brow. “I think Cáel has been controlling things far too long,” she said. “It’s about time he lost his mind.”

“Agreed,” Ryan replied

Before Cáel could voice more protest than a single, hoarse “Wait!” Ryan began the sort of deep, hard thrusting that Cáel liked the best, his balls slapping up against him. The motion pushed Cáel deeper inside Nia, making him hiss with overly-sensitive pleasure, for Nia’s pussy was clamping around him in continuous, hard milking waves.

Sweat broke out on his temples as Cáel realized that he was the meat in an erotic sandwich. Trembling wracked him, as the pleasure spiralled. He was helpless to do anything other than obey the demands of the rising lust overwhelming his body and mind. He found himself thrusting into Nia in hard counterstrokes to Ryan’s cock sliding into him.

Then someone—Ryan, he assumed—stroked his balls and squeezed the swollen sacs.

Cáel was tipped over into a thought-destroying, tendon-snapping climax, that made him cry out wordlessly, while everything, including his heartbeat, seemed to suspend in a liquid pool of exquisite pleasure, floating for an eon.

He came to himself, still shaking and was thankful to find he hadn’t collapsed on top of Nia. She was breathing heavily beneath him and as he looked down at her, she touched his lips with her fingertips. Her hand reached past him, then and he knew she was reaching for Ryan, too.

Her eyes were shining with tears.

Contrary to what a woman’s tears would normally do to him, extraordinary peace washed over him. Cáel shifted his weight to one arm, then squeezed Ryan’s arm, which had curled around his chest once more. Then he leaned down and kissed Nia’s temple.

“Thank you,” he told them. “If I ever have to give up control, I’m glad it’s for you two. I don’t think I could do it for anyone else.”

“We know, Cáel,” Nia said softly.

“We know,” Ryan finished.

Chapter Twenty-Six

Constantinople, 1453 A.D. (Fall of the city)

The sounds of a besieged city about to fall are utterly unique and Constantinople, after eight centuries of domination across Europe and western Asia, was about to topple with the mightiest of impacts. The sound was unforgettable.

Ryan stared out the second floor window he stood at, peering out over the balcony at the citizens who were attempting to flee the city by the small number of secret gates and escape routes the Turks hadn’t shut down yet, carrying what wealth they could with them. Then there were the looters who were scavenging through what the citizens had left behind. Rioting and mayhem was rampant. Law and order had long since lost any sway over the city.

Fires had broken out, but Byzantines had long memories and fire stirred a deep chord of fear in all of them, after the three day Nika riots had all but obliterated the city from the map. Fire had burned most of the major buildings to the ground in those riots, including the city’s beloved St. Sophia cathedral. Any alarm sent up concerning fire these days, no matter how lawless the conditions, tended to rally people from near and far to quench the flames. The city had much better systems for fighting fire now, too.

So the few fires that had begun had not spread far.

But the night was filled with smoke, ash, dust and screams.

The city was dying, long before the Turks got to deal the mortal blow.

Ryan looked at his wrist watch, which he had been keeping hidden beneath the long sleeves of his cloak. “I can’t have forgotten all this,” he said. “But it has been a long while since I recalled it.”

“Who would want to voluntarily remember it?” Nayara asked, from behind him.

Ryan turned back to face the room. It was quite dark, but there was enough light falling in through the two big windows that they could see the details without lighting a lamp. The crumbling remains of Salathiel’s maker lay disintegrating on the tiles.

“How long ago, do you judge?” Ryan asked her.

“A day. Not more.”

He looked out the window. “There are two Salathiels out there in the city. What happens if he tries to find himself?”

Nayara wiped the back of her wrist across her forehead. Her fingertips were covered in ash. “I don’t know, Ryan,” she said, her voice tired. “I don’t know how any of this works. I don’t even know how we got here. I just know we have to stop him from killing her and we were too late this day. We have to go back further.”

Ryan nodded. “Another... What do you call it? A jump?”

She shrugged. “Call it what you want. I don’t care.”

He moved around the ashes carefully. “If we go back too far, we stand the chance of overshooting...we’ll miss him.”

“Then we’ll just wait for him. He’ll turn up sooner or later, Ryan. We already know he does.” She pointed at the pile of ashes that had been Salathiel’s maker. “We have hard evidence that he does.”

“So when do we jump back to?” he said. “We need to pick a time.”

She shrugged. “Does it matter? Just pick something. A few days ago. We can wait.”

Ryan frowned. “I don’t think we should jump that wide,” he said slowly, thinking it through. “I don’t know how it works, either, but I don’t think it’s good to have two of both of us in the city for days, either. The chances of running into ourselves is way too high. We should time it more precisely.”

 
Nayara wiped at her eyes. She left a small smear of ash across her cheek. Ryan didn’t bother pointing it out to her. He knew she was deeply upset by the maker’s passing. She needed to be distracted. And she needed to replace her mourning with another emotion.

“We need to think like Salathiel,” Ryan told her. “We know him well enough. We should be able to figure out what he would have jumped to. Something that stuck in his memory.”

She put her hands on her hips, frowning, her bottom lip pushed out as she thought about it. She was wearing a simple shift dress that was a twenty-third century substitute for a fourteenth century bliaut, plus a cloak over the top. It brought memories flooding back every time Ryan looked at her, especially with her hair tied in two thick braids as it was.

The answer slid into his mind just like that.

“The cart,” he said. “On the main road. Remember, Nia?”

In the last days of the siege, when it had become clear that the fall of the city was inevitable, Ryan, Salathiel and Nayara had let their household staff go—only if they had solid, workable plans for stealing from the city, which the three of them vetted and approved first and sometimes improved, by providing assistance in the form of money, goods, transport, weapons, or good advice. Ryan and Salathiel handed over every boat they possessed to groups small and large who could find a way over the walls.

In the last week before the walls fell, there were no servants left in the household and they were looking after themselves. Salathiel, as the only human, needed food, so the three of them walked to the main road in search of supplies.

Constantinople’s main street, the Mese, had never been named, but despite the lack of a title, it was still a magnificent colonnaded thoroughfare, rich with marbled buildings behind the columns, a wide paved street that had seen dozens of triumphal processions. On any ordinary day the Mese was filled with a colourful cross section of Constantinople’s citizenry, lingering to exchange news, hurrying on official business, or meeting friends.

The markets had disappeared, but if there was food to be had, for barter or sale, then it would be found on the Mese.

They had walked to the main street in the cool of the early morning, which made it one of the busiest times of the day, normally. It was a sadly empty street they found, the paved road between the marching columns strewn with the left-behind belongings of people who had fled the city and couldn’t carry it all with them. Looters had picked over and taken everything of value. What was left behind lay in the early morning sun, a forlorn reminder of happier days, while on the other side of the wall, which lay only half a league away, was the murmur of the Turkish army, who waited for their explosive guns to arrive to destroy the city walls for them.

A few people were walking the streets and gathered in small knots to talk. Any transport they may have once used had long since been taken to escape the city.

So the sound of cartwheels and horses’ hooves clattering down a side road sounded loud in the unnaturally quiet street and everyone turned to look toward the intersection, then at each other, startled.

The cart was travelling too fast. The driver’s cry to the horses to hurry and the crack of the whip even made some of those listening to the progress of the cart wince.

Much to fast for the cobbles and the turn to come.

Nayara grabbed Salathiel’s sleeve. “Move,” she said shortly, pulling him across the street.

“What?” he asked, stirring himself from staring in fascination toward the intersection where the cart would emerge.

“Ryan,” she snapped. “I can’t be seen moving him by myself.”

Ryan grabbed Salathiel’s arm and between them, they manhandled him across the street, to stand between the pillars on the other side. By then they had his attention. “What are you doing?” he demanded.

Ryan patted Salathiel’s shoulder. “We were right in the path the cart will take.”

Salathiel licked his lips. “Stop the cart,” he said. “You two have the strength. The speed. You could halt it before it hits the pillars.”

Startled, Ryan glanced at Nayara. Her eyes had widened, too. “We can’t, Lathe,” she said quietly. Gently. “Everyone will see us.”

The sound of the cart’s progress leapt. Amplified. It was nearly on them. It had nearly reached the intersection. The driver’s voice had taken on some alarm and now they could hear other voices. There were passengers on the cart. Women. Probably children.

“Save them,” Salathiel demanded. “You can do that, for heaven’s sake.”

Ryan’s gut clenched. “No, we can’t,” he replied.

“You have the power, for pity’s sake,” Salathiel said desperately, as the cart appeared. The horses were lathered, their eyes rolling, froth at their mouths. They had been driven too hard. They were obeying blindly now. They tried to take the turn as they felt the pull of the traces. But their hooves began to slip and skid on the detritus and dust that had settled on the cobbles of the street. They whinnied.

The passengers in the cart screamed and clutched at the cart and each other.

Nayara gave a low moan.

Salathiel reached for the pillar. “No,” he said, his voice hoarse. He looked at Ryan again. “Stop it,” he pleaded.

Nia clutched at Ryan’s arm, her fingers digging in.

“We cannot, Lathe,” Ryan told Salathiel sadly.

The horse on the far side of the turn lost its footing and slipped. It fell beneath the other and the cart wheel slammed into it from behind. The sound was awful and Ryan shut his eyes briefly, wishing he could shut down his hearing the same way. The cart was moving much too fast to halt so quickly. It flipped up, tossing the occupants and their belongings across the street. Some of the contents were brought to a halt by the pillars that lined the Mese opposite the corner of the road.

So did some of the occupants—including the driver. He hit the middle pillar and slid to the base in a tired, crumpled heap and lay very still. Blood began to pool beneath him. He didn’t get up again.

It was a sight that would stay with Ryan forever.

“You could have saved him,” Salathiel told him bitterly, when he saw where Ryan was looking.

Ryan looked Salathiel in the eye. “We’ve spent years trying to explain to you the pain of moving through time as we do, Lathe. This is part of it. We don’t get to participate in life. We just get to observe it.”

Salathiel leaned back against the pillar he had been clutching. He was shaking. “How can you say that? You’re with me. You’re participating. You’re involved.”

“We’re just pretending to be human. We don’t get to have real lives. Not anymore.”

Salathiel straightened himself up. “How can you say that? You’re standing there. I can touch you.” He pointed with a shaking finger at the broken, overturned cart and the wounded, dying people that other Byzantines had hurried to help and were now struggling to ease their suffering.

The two horses had already been dealt with and lay in peaceful silence.

“You can see that, can’t you?” Salathiel demanded. “It makes you angry? It makes you sad?”

“Yes,” Ryan admitted heavily.

“You love me. You love Nia,” Salathiel said, his voice harsh with anger.

Ryan curled his hand into a tight fist, his glance falling to the Tree of Life medallion at Salathiel’s throat. “You know I do,” he answered.

“Then how is that
not being involved
?” Salathiel shouted. He turned and stalked away, his shoulders stiff with fury, his short cloak snapping out behind him like a loose sail caught in a cross breeze.

Nayara pulled Ryan away, then, toward the cart, over to the women and children they could still assist with small human services. A bandage here, a Christian prayer over a dying one there. After Salathiel’s diatribe, it made Ryan feel even worse.

And the memory of that day stayed with him, bothering him, for centuries. He looked at Nayara while they stood over the ashes of Salathiel’s maker, recalling the day that was centuries in the past, but only two days ago from where they stood right now in time.

“The cart,” Nayara murmured, her hands gripping together. “Yes, Salathiel would remember that.”

Ryan caught her around the waist. “Ready?”

“No.” She drew in a deep breath. “But I don’t think I will ever be ready for this. Let’s go, Ryan.” She rested her hands lightly on his shoulders.

“One...two...
three
.”

The horses were still whinnying and screaming in pain. People were crying and screaming. Dust swirled up from the motion of the cart and horses.

People were running to help from all directions.

Ryan peered around the pillar that was right in front of him. Just ahead, he saw himself and Nia...and Salathiel. He felt a little sick at the sight. What would happen if they saw each other? Would it create another wave of sickness like the one that was destroying their current world?

He ducked back out of sight.

Nayara tugged on his arm. “Salathiel,” she said urgently and pointed across the accident, further down the colonnaded main street. Flitting from each long morning shadow to shadow, Salathiel was moving away from the accident while every other Byzantine was running
to
the scene.

“Where’s he going?” Ryan asked wonderingly.

Nayara shut her eyes. “Let’s find out.”

And suddenly, she was not there.

Ryan let out a startled breath. He stared after Salathiel, wondering how he was supposed to worry about both Salathiel
and
Nayara now, when he saw her reappear, right in front of Salathiel.

Ryan smiled. Nayara had jumped locally. Why hadn’t he thought of using the psi talent this way?