The Golden Horn (32 page)

“Please, my lady,” the Doge said, “spare
your courtesy and lie down again for your body’s sake.”

She made no objection. By that, Jehan knew truly how ill she
was. But she insisted on sitting up and speaking as clearly as ever. “My
thanks for my lords’ indulgence. To what do we owe the honor of your
presence?”

Jehan eyed her suspiciously. She did not seem to be mocking
them. But with Thea, one never knew. “It’s just a little thing,”
he said. “A mere rescue. I don’t suppose you either wanted or needed
to be rescued?”

“Surely they wanted it,” said Michael Doukas,
moving out of the shadow by the stair. He met Alf’s eyes with a smile and
a slight bow. “Indeed, master seer, we meet again at Armageddon.”

Alf smiled in response. “And now I owe you my life
twice.”

“Oh, no,” said the eunuch, “you owe
nothing. You permit us to flatter ourselves that we can aid you. But I owe you
all that I am. Had you not foretold this war’s ending, I might not have
had the good fortune to serve my new and most noble lord.” He bowed low
to Henry. “Surely that was worth my telling a friend of yours where to
find you.”

“Just in time, too,” Jehan said. “I was
going mad. When I found out that, with your usual talent for putting yourself
in your enemies’ power, you were in Count Baudouin’s hands, I was
somewhat less than delighted. I went straight to my lord Henry; he took me to
the one man who could set you free. And that, Messer Enrico did.”

“Easily,” the Doge said. “Ridiculously so.
My lord would not even see me; informed of my errand, he granted what I asked
without a word of protest.”

“Not quite, my lord,” Jehan said. “We all
heard him shouting. “Take him and be damned! Take them all! Only let me never
see or hear of them again!”

Thea smiled. Jehan scowled. “If I’d known you
were alive and conscious, I never would have bothered.”

“You would have,” she said calmly, “and we
owe you thanks for it.”

Anna snorted, a small defiant sound. “Thank him? What
for? He just did the work. Saint Helena did all the rest of it.”

“Then,” said Alf, “when we’ve rendered
all proper thanks to her earthly instruments, we’ll sing a Mass of
Thanksgiving in her honor. Meanwhile, demoiselle, shall we leave this place?”

“The sooner, the better,” she said.

The altar stood in the garden of Saint Basil’s, hung
all with white and gold for the great festival of Easter. The Latin wounded had
been brought out to hear the Mass; some few of the Greeks, Alf knew, listened but
would not show their faces.

Save for Thea, seated beside him, and the Akestas children. They
had insisted on being there, for it was Jehan who served upon the altar, moving
smoothly and surely through the rite.

And Master Dionysios. The Master had made the best of a
great evil, and he had prospered. Many of his people had crept out of hiding
after the orgy of plundering and returned to their work; with the Latin
surgeons, Saint Basil’s boasted a full complement of healers. They would
do well, whatever became of the City.

We’ll always need
doctors,
Thea said, laying her hand lightly in his.

He laced his fingers with hers. A week’s rest and
tending, with her own witch-born strength, had done much to restore her to
herself. Only a slight thinning of her cheeks, a hint of transparency under her
skin, remained to tell the eye of her wounding; and to the mind a slight but
persistent pain and a weakness that would not fade.

You’d be weak too if
you’d been tied to your bed for a week. Without,
she added with a
sidelong glance,
any of the usual compensations.

Such thoughts
, he said,
priestly stern,
are not fitting in this place
.
But she had caught the flicker of guilty laughter beneath.

Jehan left his acolytes to clear away the vessels of the Mass
and sought the four who sat on one stone bench, basking in the sun. Doctors and
servants had taken most of the others away; they were all but alone.

Anna gave him her place on the end of the bench and climbed
into his lap. “You sang beautifully, Father Jehan,” she said.

“I tried my best.” He frowned a very little. “Do
you think your mother and Irene would have minded that I sang a Latin Mass for
them?”

“Oh, no,” she answered. “We had a proper
priest sing their Requiem. They’re buried with Father now. I’m sure
they’re happy to know that you remember them.”

“How could I ever forget?” Jehan’s blue
eyes looked gravely into her black ones. “What are you going to do now?”

She shrugged. “We’re still rich, you know.
Mother put all our best things in a box and buried it; we dug it up yesterday.
It’s in our room now, with a witchery on it to keep anybody from touching
it. Alf wants to take it and us to Grandmother and Uncle Philotas in Nicaea. A
lot of our people went there; there’s even a man who calls himself our
new Emperor. Though everyone says it’s Count Baudouin who’s got the
crown.”

“The lords elected him, that’s true enough.”

“He didn’t hang Alf. That proved his
clem—clemency. And his troops like him. So they crowned him and gave the
other man a palace and a kingdom and one of the old empresses. The most
beautiful one, of course. I think the other man came out a lot better than he
did.”

Jehan laughed. “So do I! But His new Majesty doesn’t
think so. He’s succeeded in hearing Mass today in Hagia Sophia, and from
the throne besides, with everyone bowing and calling him Emperor. There’s
not much more he could wish for.”

“Except,” Alf murmured, “an empire worthy
of the name.”

“Prophecies again, little Brother?” asked Thea.

“No. Plain observation.”

Anna ignored them. “So with the Count and the Marquis
taken care of and the Count on the throne, Alf wants to take us to Nicaea.”

And leave us.

Jehan blinked. The voice was silent, but it was not either
Alf’s or Thea’s. It was softer, with an odd, blurred, toneless
quality.

He looked down at Nikki, who sat on the ground playing with
a handful of pebbles. The child returned his stare.

He wants to take us and leave
us there and go away with Thea
.

Jehan swallowed. “He—is he—”

“No,” Thea said, “he’s as human as
you are. Or was. That’s a matter Alf is going to have to resolve for
himself. For our monk that was, out of purest Christian charity, opened his
mind to one doubly sealed by deafness and by humanity. The deafness hasn’t
changed. The other, it seems, has. Our Nikephoros, through constant proximity
to power, has found it in his own mind.”

Jehan shivered involuntarily. Alf, he saw, was pale and
still, rebuking himself bitterly for what he had done.

Nikki’s brows knit. With a shock Jehan realized that
the child had read his thoughts.
If you want me to
stop, I will. But you’ll have to stop thinking so hard at me.

“I—” Jehan struggled to speak normally. “I’ll
try.”

Many people are worse than you
,
Nikki said comfortingly. And in a darker tone,
If
Alf tries to go away and leave me, I’ll follow him. I can do it.
He’ll never even know I’m there.

“And I’ll help you.” Thea’s eyes
flashed on Alf. This, it seemed, was an old argument. “You can’t go
away and leave him as he is now. What would the humans do to him? He needs guidance
and teaching from someone who understands him. Not from people who would call him
witch and changeling and cast him out.”

“He needs his kin,” Alf said. “They both
do. Wanderer that I am, without home or family, what kind of life can I give them?”

“You can stop wandering,” Anna said. “You’re
an Akestas. You can take our money and build a house, and we can all live is in
it together.”

“No.” Alf was on his feet. “Not in
Baudouin’s domain. Not anywhere in this sun-haunted East. My pilgrimage
is over. I want—I need—to go to my own people. It will be a long journey
through lands you call barbarian; it will be hard, and it may be dangerous. How
can I take either of you with me? You’re Greek; your faith is different,
and your language, and all your way of living. And when you come to
Rhiyana—if you come to Rhiyana—you’ll find yourself among
people twice alien. Don’t you think you’ll be happier in Nicaea
with your kin, among properly civilized people?”

“Civilized!” Anna snorted. “I’ve had
enough of civilization. I want to see new places. Different places.”

“What would your mother say if she could hear you now?”

“She’d be coming with us,” Anna said.

Besides,
Nikki said,
you promised. You swore you’d always take care of
us.

Alf’s breath hissed through his teeth. “You call
it taking care of you? Dragging you off into the savage West, corrupting your pure
souls with the heresies of Rome, turning you into rank barbarians?”

“You’re clean,” said Anna. “You
speak Greek. I can learn to put up with the rest of it.”

“Wait till you see the inside of a Frankish castle,”
Alf warned her. “And sleep in a Frankish bed. And contend with Frankish
vermin.”

I’ll think them away
,
Nikki said serenely.

Thea laughed. “Acknowledge yourself conquered, little
Brother! You’ve won yourself a family and a fortune; and neither of those,
once gained, is at all easy to lose.”

Alf tried to glare at them all. But none of them was
deceived.

Anna seized Nikki’s hands and whirled him in a mad
dance, singing at the top of her lungs.

He sighed deeply. “God will judge me for this,”
he said. A smile crept into the corner of his mouth. “Or else He already
has.”

Jehan grinned at him. “To be sure, He has! Who knows what
He’ll do with you next?” His grin faded; he ran the ends of his
cincture through his fingers, suddenly tense. “Have you given any thought
to how you’ll travel back to Rhiyana?”

“On foot, I suppose, as I came,” Alf said. “With
a mule for the children.”

“And the wealth of House Akestas in your wallet?”
Jehan leaned toward him. “Tomorrow morning a ship sails for Saint Mark
with news of the victory. I’m to be on it as my lord Cardinal’s
messenger to the Pope. Will you come with me?”

“On a
ship?
”
Anna cried in rapture.

Alf opened his mouth. Jehan broke in quickly. “I’ve
seen the ship. It’s splendid, its accommodations are princely, and the Doge
has offered passage to all of you for a fraction of the usual price. You’d
pay more for a good sumpter mule—provided you could find one, with the
City as it is. And,” he added, having kept the most telling blow until
the last, “Thea won’t be up to long walking for some while yet. Why
linger here under Baudouin’s less than friendly eye, or tax her with too
much traveling too soon? You can take your ease on shipboard, she can mend at
her own pace—”

And we can have adventures!
Nikki tugged peremptorily at Alf’s robe.
Say
you’ll do it.
We
all want to.

“We’re minded to go on our own, whether you will
or no,” said Thea. “Well? Are you coming?”

Alf raised his hands in surrender. “Have I any choice?”

“None at all,” Jehan said laughing, half in
amusement and half in sheer, youthful delight.

o0o

As often before, Alf stood in Master Dionysios’ study
and faced the Master’s grim unwelcoming stare. His own was as fearless as
it had ever been, with even a touch of a smile. “You asked for me?”
he asked.

“Yes.” There was a box on the table beside
Dionysios’ hand, small, plain, of red-brown wood carved on the lid with
an intricate curving design. As he spoke, his finger traced the lines of it. “Sit
down.”

Alf obeyed.

Dionysios’ finger continued along its path. His brows
were knit; his lips were thin and set. After a time he said, “You’re
abandoning us.”

“Tomorrow, sir. It’s much sooner than I’d
thought or hoped. But—”

“But you let that outsize heretic talk you into it. He’s
not thinking of you, boy. He’s thinking entirely of his own pleasure.”

“Doesn’t everyone?”

Dionysios’ eyes flashed up. “Sometimes I’m
moved to curse the fate that made you a barbarian. Then I remember the time
before you inflicted yourself on me. I had peace of mind then.”

“You’ll have it again when I’m gone.”

“No,” said Dionysios. His gaze held Alf’s
and hardened. “If I asked you to tell me the truth, would you?”

Alf nodded slowly, but without hesitation.

“Don’t,” the Master said. “I had you
while I had you. It cost me more than I’ll ever be able to recover.”

“Some of it I’ll give you back. If you wish.”

“I don’t wish!” snapped Dionysios. “I
hired you to work in my hospital. My own well-being wasn’t part of the
bargain. I don’t want to know what you did, or what you are, or what that
needle-tongued witch of yours was or is or did.” Abruptly he thrust the
box forward. “This is yours. Take it.”

Alf drew it toward him. It was heavy for its size. He opened
it and drew a sharp breath. It was full of gold. “Master! I can’t—”

“Stop your nonsense. Every coin is yours. Your due and
legal salary, with additions for work done above the normal
requirements.”

With a fingertip Alf touched a coin. The wealth of the Akestas
he kept in trust for the children. But this was his own. He had earned it.

It was only yellow metal. His payment was the passing of pain.
Slowly he lowered the lid and fastened it. “I... thank you,” he
said.

“Why? You worked for it.” Dionysios opened an
account book and reached for a pen. “Take it and go. Don’t bother
to come back and say good-bye. You’ll get enough of weeping and wailing
from Thomas and the rest of them. I won’t be troubled with it. Now go!”

Alf paused. He glared. Mutely Alf bowed and left him.

For a long while after, he sat unmoving, staring unseeing at
the half-written page.