The Golden Horn (16 page)

“Could I forget?” Alf smiled suddenly, startling
that polished courtier into a brief, wide-eyed stare. “You are an utter
villain. But for all that, a strangely likable man. Look for me at
Armageddon.”

The City was like a beast crouched to spring.

Across the Horn the Latins held to their camp, although the bitter
wind clove through their tents and the sleet hissed in their watch-fires and
their bellies knotted with hunger. Within the walls, the Greeks nursed their
hatred.

Alf could taste it, a vileness upon his tongue; could sense it
as a throbbing in his skull. House Akestas offered no refuge, his shields no
defense; even barricaded with all the power he could muster, his head ached
with dull persistence.

“I said,” Bardas’ voice was slightly
raised, “Master Dionysios has been inquiring after you.”

With an effort Alf focused on his surroundings. They were
all staring at him: Anna and Irene with a book between them, Nikki playing on
the floor with a kitten, Sophia in the midst of a letter; and Bardas on a
couch, sitting upright in defiance of all his nurses but leaning more heavily
on the cushions than he wished anyone to see.

His eyes on Alf were sharp in a face thinned and greyed with
sickness. He raised a brow. “Well, sir? The Master wants to know, will
you be coming back from the dead before winter ends?”

“Yes,” Alf said. He willed his voice to be
steady, even light. “Soon, in fact. A month in the tomb is quite long
enough for any man.”

“Is it safe?” Irene asked barely audibly. “After
all, Master Dionysios knows the truth about you, but no one else does. Except
us. And the Emperor—”

“His Majesty is mad beyond recall.” Alf closed
his eyes. It did nothing for the ache, but it kept him from seeing the others’
concern. “I did that, you know. I told him what would be; and it thrust
him over the edge. He’s convinced now that he’s God’s deputy
on earth; that when the sun comes round into the Lion he will slough off his
skin like a snake in spring and emerge with his eyes and his youth restored,
and proceed to rule the world.”

“Could he do that?” Anna asked seriously.

“Of course not.” Her father snorted and stifled
a cough. “The young fool isn’t thriving either, from what I’ve
heard. He’s tried to get back into favor by turning on the Latins, but it’s
too late for that. People are beginning to look round for a new emperor.”

“Beginning?” Sophia shook her head. “It’s
gone past that. Isn’t the Senate meeting in Hagia Sophia?”

“It is,” Bardas answered. “Without a word
from the palace.”

“And not a man in all that assembly will accept the
crown.”

Alf rose slowly. “Your pardon, but I think…I
need to lie down.”

They all would have sprung to his aid, but he waved them away.
“Please, no. I’ll be well enough. It’s only a headache.”

In the end he had to submit to Corinna’s brusque and competent
ministrations. She saw him undressed and laid in bed with a pungent herbal brew
mixed with wine inside him and a cold compress on his brow. When she left him
alone in the darkened room, he sighed with relief.

A small hand slipped into his; another touched his cheek. He
opened his eyes to meet Nikki’s wide worried stare. Through the shields that
guarded his power, he loosed a dart of reassurance.

It had little effect.
Sick
,
Nikki responded.
Father’s sick. You’re
sick. The air feels bad. I’m afraid.

Alf sat up, casting aside the compress, wincing as the movement
set his temples throbbing.

Nikki’s face twisted.
You
hurt
! He held his own head in his hands.
You
shut it in. That makes it worse. It hurts me.

Carefully Alf knelt and smoothed Nikki’s hair. His
hands healed where they touched.
Better?
he
asked.

After a moment Nikki nodded.

Alf smiled.
I have to go out. I’ll
came back as soon as I can. Will you wait for me?

Nikki’s brows knit. But he stepped back and watched
Alf dress. Before the other was well done, he had fled.

Alf paused. He had seen no tears on Nikki’s face, nor
sensed aught but anxiety and a mind—picture of consolation in the form of
a kitten. He shrugged slightly and reached for his cloak.

o0o

The Emperor Alexios prowled his privy chamber, gnawing his
nails. His chamberlains watched him in white-faced silence.

He was not an imposing man, this youngest of the Angeloi. Tall
enough, handsome enough, with his father’s strong features, but both his
face and his movements lacked something. Resolution perhaps, or strength of
will.

Suddenly he spun and smote his hands together. “Where
is
the man?” he cried.

The servants glanced at one another. After a moment one ventured
forward, bowing to the ground. “Most sacred lord, His Excellency the
Protovestiarios has gone as you requested to—”

“I know where I sent him!” Alexios resumed his
pacing. “I sent him across the Horn. The Marquis must help me. The cursed
mob will elect an emperor and kill me after, I know it. Marquis Boniface was my
friend. He will stop them. He’ll do anything if he’s paid well
enough, and I’ve offered him the richest bribe I can think of. For his
priests, our Church—what’s a word or two in the Mass if I survive
this?—and for him the palace we’re standing in. It’s no loss.
We can move to the Sacred Palace next to Hagia Sophia. It was good enough for Justinian
and Basil and half a dozen Constantines. It’s good enough for the
Angeloi. Oh, sweet saints in heaven, let my lord win safe to the Marquis and bring
him back with his knights!”

In the rear rank of chamberlains, eye met eye. One of the
eunuchs, young and darkly elegant, nodded infinitesimally and slipped away.

o0o

Alf drank deep of the open air. He had not left House Akestas
since he came back from the palace; his body, long inured to confinement as any
monk’s must be, nonetheless rejoiced in freedom. No matter that the sun
was shrouded, the clouds heavy with rain. Even his pain had lessened, as if the
walls of the house had gathered it all into too small a space.

While his feet bore him through a dim alleyway, his mind opened
slowly, lowering each shield with care. The mood of the City washed over him, hate
and fear and slowly hardening determination.

And something else. A very small thing, a pricking on the edge
of consciousness. He probed, met nothing. A random thought, then, nothing to
fear. He dismissed it and bound mind again to body, making his way through the
narrow crowded streets.

o0o

“Sire! By all that’s holy, man, let me through
to His Majesty!”

Alexios whipped about. The grating voice sawed through the sudden
tumult at the door, harsh always, harsher now with emotion. Close upon it came
its owner, a thickset man in rich garb now rumpled and soiled, with black eyes
glittering under a single heavy bar of brow. He stopped short just within the door,
breathing hard as if with exertion yet ghastly pale. As his eyes found the
young Emperor, he plunged forward to fall at Alexios’ feet. “Disaster,
Your Majesty,” he gasped. “Utter disaster!”

The Emperor stood with his mouth open, speechless.

The black-browed lord raised himself with visible effort. “Sire,
it’s worse than we ever dreamed. My embassy is discovered; the people are
up in arms, howling for your blood. That an heir of Constantine should sell his
Church and his empire to barbarians with his palace for surety—”

At last Alexios found his voice, an octave higher than its wont,
almost a shriek. “Blood? My blood? The Marquis—”

“He consented. But there’s no time for him to
move. Even now the mob converges on the palace. Sire, by your leave, all your
guards and soldiers have fled. Only the Varangians remain loyal to you. Let me
set them to defend the walls and to delay the attack.”

Alexios clutched at his minister, half blind with terror. “It’s
all lost, I know it, I know it. They’ll catch me, rend me. I’ll
die!”

The Protovestiarios seemed to have regained much of his composure
if none of his color. “No, sacred lord. Not yet, if your loyal men have
any power left. The mob will come—it must. But you need not be here. I
know a place, a safe place where you may rest and restore yourself and work to
regain all you have lost.”

The young Emperor was close to collapse. But some remnant of
strength stiffened his back and sharpened his voice. “There is no safe
place for me, my lord Mourtzouphlos. I shall be recognized and cut down.”

Something glittered in the other’s eyes, anger
perhaps, or contempt. “My lord knows how well I have always served him. Will
he not trust me now? I have the Marquis’ promise of sanctuary, and loyal
men waiting to bring us both to him. Come, Sire, I beg you. Come.”

Alexios wavered. Mourtzouphlos knelt. “Sire, I beseech
you, before it’s too late.”

The Emperor stared at him. “Too late?” he
repeated. All at once he crumpled. “Oh, anything, anything! Only get me
out of here!”

Mourtzouphlos gestured sharply. Men came forward with a
heavy cloth. “My lord will pardon this indignity. Only for his life’s
sake do we subject him to it.”

He was limp in their hands, all strength gone out of him with
his brief resistance. They wrapped him in the rug and lifted him as if he had
been no more than that, bearing him away.

Mourtzouphlos followed. On his face was the beginning of a smile.

o0o

The palace loomed in the dusk like a rock out of a
tide-race. Beyond its walls a triple line of Guardsmen held off a mob alit with
torches. The axes of the Guard glittered, raised to defend but not yet to
strike.

Alf paused for breath on the edge of the tumult. All the
wide space between himself and the palace gate was a tossing sea of humanity,
and over it the flicker of fire.

He had all but forgotten the small prickle in his mind until
it came again, slightly stronger. This time his swift probe caught something
and gripped, drawing it to him.

A figure stumbled out of the throng to fall against him. He stared
down at it in astonishment and growing horror. “Nikephoros!”

Nikki drew himself erect, hand to head.
You hurt me
, he accused.

Alf’s fear for him turned to wrath, swiftly throttled.
Nikki felt it and paled, though he did not flinch.

You hurt me
, he
repeated.

You followed me
. Alf’s
mind-voice was cold.
You hid your mind from me.

Nikki paled even further. He was close to tears.
I wanted to see where you went,
he said.
People always go out, but I never do. I’m tired of
being locked up. I want to go out like everybody else.

“Sweet Jesu,” Alf said aloud. Nikki watched him
with eyes gone huge, bracing himself for dire punishment. When Alf raised a
hand, he fell back a step.

Alf caught his shoulder in a light strong grip.
Of all times for you to turn rebel…
He held
Nikki’s eyes with a white-hot stare and spoke to him even beyond mind-words,
a wave of pure will. As Nikki responded with acquiescence, he took the child in
his arms under his cloak and plunged forward swiftly into the mob.

It was quiet in the palace, an eerie quiet like the deeps of
the sea while a storm rages overhead. Alf passed as a shadow among shadows,
unseen even by those few servants who, out of ignorance or courage, went about
their accustomed duties.

In a hall all of gold with pillars of golden marble, Alf met
one who had eyes to see him.

“Too late,” said the Varangian with Thea’s
eyes burning in his Saxon face. “The young Emperor is taken. The old one—”

“Is safe enough. I know.” Alf spoke coolly, as
to a stranger. “I was looking for you. I would prefer that you not risk yourself
in this madness.”

“You would prefer?” The unfamiliar deep voice
was rich with scorn. “You can have a preference? And stand here to tell me
of it with the heir to House Akestas in your arms?”

“He followed me,” Alf said shortly. “Come
home, Thea. This is no place for any sane being.”

Thea’s jaw set. “Here, my name is Aelfric.”

“Appropriate,” he observed, unyielding. “Come.
Or are you going to wait until the battle comes this far?”

“It won’t,” she said flatly. “But
you had better go back where you came from. It’s death for you to be seen
here.”

“All the more reason for us to be quick.”

She made no move to obey him. In this form she was as tall as
he, broader and probably stronger, and in power, for all his native strength,
she had the greater skill. He met the eyes that remained hers for him whatever
shape she took, and held them.

For a long moment they did not waver or fall. Then they slid
away.

“Come,” he said.

When he turned, she followed him.

o0o

Mourtzouphlos inspected himself in the glass a servant held up
for him. He looked well in imperial purple; the purple shoes of an emperor were
an excellent fit. Better, he thought with the hint of a smile, than the green
ones of the office he was forsaking. He adjusted his girdle slightly and
smoothed his beard. “That will do,” he said.

His men ranged themselves about him, the vanguard of those who
held the palace. Soon the Varangians would learn that they had a new emperor to
defend. But the head did not matter to the Guard, nor the feet, nor the body
between; only the crown and the buskins that marked the Emperor.

Torchbearers waited on the balcony, the mob below, in spreading
silence. He stepped forth.

A roar went up, as sudden and as mindless as the cry of a beast.
But the closest and the keenest-eyed marked the face of the man above them. His
name ran through the crowd, a manifold mutter: Alexios Doukas, Mourtzouphlos. “Mourtzouphlos.
Mourtzouphlos!
”

He let them shout their fill. It was like wine, sweet and heady.
He allowed himself a smile. The mob here, the young idiot safe in irons, the
Senate bickering uselessly in Hagia Sophia; he had them all precisely where he
wanted them.