Chapter 77

  Familiar Faces

  “Isn’t that whatshisname? Lord Renier’s friend. The one who fancied himself a knight?” Cyn asked. He, Pons, and the Margrave, were walking through the forecourt of the palace.

  “Who are you talking about?”

  “Him. What I first met at the same church we was just at payin’ our respects. Our erstwhile employer, Theodore Katchamouthful, or whatever his name was. Went down hard outside the gates of Nicea. You had an eye for his armor.”

  Earlier Cyn had hired a boat in the Neorian harbor to row the mourning party some five hundred meters across the Golden Horn to the church on the Galatan shore. Waiting for the others to catch up, he lingered on the dock for some time, daydreaming. Were he on one of the towers of the sea wall, with his arbalest wound tight, a light quarrel with fine feathers knocked, good wind out of the south, if he arced it just right… si, he could shoot across this body of water.

  Eventually they got everyone aboard and crossed. The Margrave gave yet more coin to the church. Pons had paid them a small fortune less than a year ago. How did they get away with it, these priests? Business to be in if you didn’t mind givin’ it up.

  In St. Mary’s crypt, the little girls’ hymn brought a tear to even Cyn’s jaded eye. The Margrave wept openly. Back across the waters, coins were given to the urchins (“This one for you this one, this for your momma, this one for you, this one for your poppa.”) Pons gave instructions to bear more flowers next morning to an estate near yet another St. Mary’s, this one near the monastery of the Mother of God Allseeing, south of the Great Messe between the great wall and the crumbling wall.

  “Am I paying for more flowers now?” the Margave asked.

  “An informant for a patch of posies is cheaper than a bribe, no?”

  Pons and the Margrave followed, lost in conversation, as Cyn led them, using the bulk of the Hagia Sophia as a lode star, on a meandering journey through the alleys and byways of the Great City to where the Church of Holy Wisdom, the Chalke Gate of the Imperial Palace, the baths of Zexepus, the carceres of the Hippodrome, and the Golden Milestone all melded into an immense court.

  They were crossing the Augusteon plaza when Cyn asked his question. “That’s him isn’t it?”

  “Where?”

  “Up there above the gates of the carceres. His head. On a spike. Next to the bearded one.”

  Pons paused to look where Cyn pointed. “Si. I did not think that he would desecrate a corpse, but his depravity is more than I had encompassed.”

  “I wonder who ended up with his armor?”

  From inside the Hippodrome rose a scream of mortal agony followed by a dull roar from the crowd.

  “I am weary. What are we about?” the Margrave asked.

  “Sounds like an execution. We could still catch the final race.” Cyn ventured.

  This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

  “No. Were I to set eyes upon the man who had my son killed… I do not know if I can control myself.”

  “Best you don’t lay eyes on him,” Pons said. “Dinner and a cup of wine, Lord?”

  “Agreed. Lead on.”

  “I’ll pop into the race and see what is happening. I’ll meet you at the Eel later.” Cyn was off.

  The two men watched him until he disappeared in the crowds near the entrance.

  “And your spy thinks he is a lord? She has met him? Spoken to him?”

  “They may even be in love.”

  * * *

  Hours later the Latins were conspiring at a table in the Golden Eel. True to form, Nestor and Zinth eventually arrived and helped themselves to bread and fish shortly before John Ducas accompanied by a page walked in and wagged his finger at them.

  “There you are, you rascal, and there you are, your Grace.” The Sebastakrator doffed his blue miter in salute as the Margrave rose to greet the latest arrival. The coronet of office was passed off to the page as the men greeted and embraced. Moustached lips kissed bearded cheeks.

  “The day I have had. In the kasthima one of the Emperor’s sons let it slip that mercenary captains were to be impaled before the final race, and I fully expected to see you two killed before my eyes.” John Ducas nodded to Pons and Cyn as he sat. “However, I see you are accompanied by your very own hunchback, so that must account for your luck.” The men raised wine cups. “Then after the wretched races. Peter here found me and said I was to meet the Margrave at ‘the grilled eel place.’ I said, ‘You mean the Margrave’s man?’, and he said no, ‘the Margrave.’ Right you were, Peter and here you are. I do not believe I know the tall blonde fellow.”

  “This is our Marius, my herald. He is accompanying me to Jerusalem where my grandson is crown prince.”

  “Ah yes, quite right, your eldest boy had a posthumous son, heir to the lep - tragically afflicted King of the Holy City, I clearly recall now. So your visit is brief?”

  “The ships tarry two days to take on supplies while I sniff the wind.”

  “All you will smell is corruption and sin.”

  “What is the mood among the noble houses?”

  “Anger. Fear. He has elevated turds and toads. At every hand he is surrounded by sycophants, boot lickers, yes men, eunuchs, sorcerers, and thugs. I am so full of wroth I could spit. This scoundrel, to whom I am forced to bow, compelled me, against my will, to wager half of my estates against a single aspron on a biriga race. I thought my heart would give out. Thank all the saints, the venetoi won and I kept my lands. You sail to Jerusalem? I have half a mind to join you.”

  “When you won the wager, did the Emperor pay you the electrum coin?” Pons asked the question.

  “Why… no he did not.”

  “Ha.” Margrave Guilhelm nodded. “You do have a sense of him.”

  “Si. He is simply worse than I thought.” Pons replied before asking, “May I inquire as to some local gossip?”

  “My good man, I am above such things.”

  “Si, as are we all. Emperor Manuel, he had a bastard son named Alexios did he not?”

  “He has two. One, in his thirties, was acknowledged by the Emperor. He held the title of sebastokrator, the office I now hold. He was replaced by a favorite of Maria of Antioch and Alexios the Protosebastos. When Andronikos took power the intermediary sebastokrator was found with his throat slit in a public latrine. I was granted the office for some reason and Andronikos mollified Alexios number one by marrying him to an illegitimate daughter of his own loins. The other, Alexios number two, is his cupbearer. This fellow is in his twenties and has never married. Why do you ask?”