The Mosaic of Shadows

by Tom Harper

‘You found the Eparch’s daughter, when her family had already arranged her funeral,’ prompted the eunuch. ‘That was well done. I have need of such talents.’

  He had been holding his hands clasped behind his back; now he extended a fat palm towards me. The skin was fleshy and soft, but there was no softness in what it held, in what he offered me. At last I began to see why he might have brought me here, why my unorthodox skills might be necessary to him. There was much of which I remained wholly ignorant, I knew, but if the matter involved the palace, and commanded so urgent a secrecy, then it must touch on the highest possible authorities. And possibly, I thought absently, the richest possible fees.

  The item which Krysaphios held was about as long as the span of a man’s hand, as thick as his finger, and formed from a wooden shaft with an iron tip, which had first been hammered into a crude block and then filed into a fearsomely sharp triangular point. This point, and a good half of the protruding shaft, were encrusted with a wine-coloured stain that should, sadly, have been far less familiar to me than in fact it was. The frayed remnants of what might have been feathers were set around the blunt end.

  ‘An arrow?’ I guessed, holding it cautiously between my fingers. Despite its size it was unexpectedly heavy. ‘But it seems too short for such a purpose – it would have fallen off the bow well before it was tensed.’ I thought furiously, aware of the eunuch watching me. ‘From a siege engine, a ballista, you could fire it, perhaps, but that would be like harnessing a plough to a dog.’ I became aware that I was speculating too much aloud, and too much from ignorance, neither good professional practice. ‘However – it is a weapon, I deduce, or at least a tool which has been used as such.’ The dried blood told me that much – and more. ‘Recently, I should say.’

  Krysaphios sighed, and for the first time I saw lines of tension beneath his marble skin.

  ‘It was shot,’ he said, ‘like an arrow but with immense power – how we do not know – at a guardsman today. Such was its force that it passed through his armour and deep into his ribs. He died almost immediately.’

  ‘Extraordinary.’ For a moment I grappled dumbly with his words – they seemed nonsensical. Or perhaps it was my exposition of the weapon which had been nonsense. In the interim, while I struggled, I reached for the well-worn safety of aphorism.

  ‘What a tragedy for the soldier,’ I mumbled. ‘And for his desolated family. My prayers . . .’

  ‘Your prayers can wait for the church,’ snapped the eunuch. ‘The soldier is an irrelevance. What is significant,’ he added, pressing his plump fingers together, ‘is that when he died he was standing, in a public street, as close as I am now to you, beside his master. The Emperor.’

  I had been wrong again, I chided myself. The fees for this commission would not be rich – they would be truly beyond all imagining. If, of course, I could earn them.

  I began tentatively. ‘You want me to find out who attempted the assassination of the Emperor?’ The words sounded no less ridiculous in my mouth than they had in my head, but I saw the eunuch nodding nonetheless. ‘Someone has tried to kill him, and I am to catch that man?’

  ‘Do you think yourself equal to the task?’ asked Krysaphios dryly. ‘Or have I called the wrong man from his drinking? The Eparch assured me I had not – though I naturally did not tell him the entire truth of your commission.’

  ‘I can meet the challenge,’ I said, with a confidence that I would regret the next morning. ‘But at what cost?’

  ‘Your fee, Askiates? I believe we can meet it.’ The eunuch wore the graceless smirk of one who can be deliberately careless of money. ‘Double, even. Two gold pieces a day should afford your time.’

  ‘It was not the cost to you that concerned me,’ I snapped, irritated by his easy confidence that I could be bought so easily. ‘Though I could hardly do this for less than five gold pieces a day. What of the danger to me? I doubt this was the work of a tradesman with a grievance, a candlemaker who thought his taxes too onerous or a grocer whose balance was found crooked.’

  ‘Are those your natural quarry?’ jeered Krysaphios. The flickering gold panels behind him seemed to burn colder. ‘Tradesmen who steal a coin or two when their customers are too dull to notice? If you wish to keep their company, Askiates, I can have the Varangians return you there now. Rather than winning glory and the gratitude of an Emperor.’

  ‘The gratitude of an Emperor counts for little when he’s dead. And the hatred of his enemies a great deal.’

  ‘If you do your job properly the Emperor will not be dead. And if he does die, the hatred of his enemies will be the very least of your concerns. Have fifteen years dulled your memory so much? The fires? The looted churches? The screaming women debauched in the streets?’

  I was nineteen years old when the last Emperor fell, with a young wife and a newborn daughter in my house; I had not forgotten it. Nor that the usurper of those days, whose entry to the city had supplied the pretext for the rapine frenzy that followed, was now my prospective employer, his holy majesty the Emperor Alexios. My eyes hardened at the thought, but the caution I met in Krysaphios’ gaze kept me silent.

  ‘Some things have been done which should not have been done,’ he said, as if reciting his confession. ‘And others which ought to have been done differently. But we have had fifteen years of peace since those dark days, and for that we should be thankful. We can build towers and walls beyond number in this city, put ten thousand men on her ramparts, but there will only ever be a single life which stands between peace and ruin. Surely that, for a man with two maiden daughters especially, is worth preserving.’

  I could have struck him for drawing my daughters so casually into his web of persuasion, this half-man so haughty one moment and so devious the next, but with Varangians about me and nothing to gain by violence, I kept my fists at my side. Besides, he spoke the truth. I inclined my head in surrender, though hating myself for doing so.

  Krysaphios gave a wolfish smile; evidently he relished even this trivial victory. ‘In that case, Master Askiates,’ he said conclusively, ‘you had better make sure the Emperor stays alive. For three gold pieces a day.’

  If I was to lay myself hostage to the fortunes of a doomed Emperor and an unscrupulous eunuch, I consoled myself that at least I had secured favourable terms.

  β

  Krysaphios had been keen for me to begin by questioning the imperial household, the men most likely to profit from the Emperor’s death, but I insisted on first visiting the site of the act. Thus, next morning, a chill dawn found me outside the house of Simeon the carver, overlooking the arcades of the Mesi near the forum of Saint Constantine. Many of the ivory carvers had their shops here, with the emblem of the crossed horn and knife hanging from their arches; the house of Simeon, I guessed, was the one with the shuttered windows, the locked gate, and the two Varangians standing at the door, helmed and armed. The neighbours setting out their wares, I noticed, were careful to ignore them.

  I crossed to the far side of the road and crouched low over the marble paving, scanning its grey-veined surface for signs of the murder. I had heard rain in the night as I lay sleepless in my bed, but I held out hope that blood would not wash away so easily. The stone was cold against my bare knee, and there were plenty of feet to tread heedlessly on my fingers as the morning crowds flowed around me, but I kept my eyes close to the ground until I found what I was looking for, a faded patch of pink stained into the white marble. Was this where a loyal guard had unwittingly given his life for his Emperor, I wondered, or merely the residue a hasty dyer had dripped onto the street?

  ‘This is where he fell. I was standing behind him when he was hit.’

  I looked up, to see the creased, blue eyes of a Varangian peering down on me. The axe on his shoulder gleamed like a halo beside his face, though the skin was too coarse and lined to be that of a saint. His straw-coloured hair was streaked with grey, and although he stood as tall as any of his race, he seemed old for a guardsman.

 
; I scrambled to my feet. ‘Demetrios Askiates,’ I introduced myself.

  ‘Aelric,’ he answered, holding out his spear-hand in greeting. I took it gingerly, and felt thick fingers clasp tightly around my wrist. ‘The captain’s waiting for you in the house.’

  ‘But this is where the soldier fell?’ A nod. ‘Was it sudden?’

  ‘Like lightning. All I saw was him on the ground, stuck in the side like a boar and bleeding his life out. In no more time than you’d need to blink. And straight through his armour, too,’ he added in wonder. ‘Like it was made of silk.’

  ‘His right side or his left?’

  The guard turned to face up the street, clearly mimicking the last steps of his dead companion, and thoughtfully lifted a hand to his right breast. ‘This one,’ he said slowly. ‘The side where the Emperor rode.’

  ‘So the arrow must have been fired from high up, or it would never have passed over the Emperor on his horse, and from across the street – from the carver’s house.’

  ‘Where the captain’s waiting for you,’ prodded the guard, the merest hint of impatience edging his voice.

  ‘Stand here, then. I want to see what the assassin saw.’ I walked slowly back across the road and up the steps between the columns, to the barred gate on the carver’s door. Little light fell within, but I could see the scaly gleam of ringed armour not far back.

  ‘Demetrios Askiates,’ I called, putting my face up to the bars. The carver would have mounted them to protect his home and his goods; now, I suspected, they were become his prison.

  ‘I know who you are, Demetrios Askiates,’ said a gruff voice from inside. He stepped into the slatted light by the door, the red-headed Varangian captain of the previous night, and I saw his vast fist turning a key in the lock. The door swung inwards, opening onto a dim room filled with every manner of trinkets, reliquaries, mirrors, and caskets. Rich men and women would pay handsomely to own one of them, but in the present circumstances they put me more in mind of a tomb, a crypt, than of conspicuous luxury.

  ‘The bone scratcher’s upstairs,’ said the captain. ‘Lives over his workshop.’ He jerked a thumb up at the ceiling. ‘We’ve got two apprentices up there too. And his family.’

  Had they been kept captive all night, I wondered, as I climbed the steep steps in the corner. I came onto the first floor, another large room covered in white shavings as fine and deep as snow. Long tables stood in the centre, still strewn with abandoned tools and half-finished artefacts, while tall windows looked out over the sloping tiles of the arcade’s roof. Beyond it, I could just see the top of a helmet: Aelric the Varangian, standing where I had left him.

  ‘The arrow wasn’t fired from here,’ I said, to myself as much as to the captain who had thudded up behind me.

  We mounted to the next level. Here woollen curtains hung from the ceiling, dividing the room into private spaces; I brushed through them, to the front of the building where more windows – shorter, now – again looked down onto the street. We were at some height, but still there was only a narrow gap between the edge of the arcade and the dome of Aelric’s helmet. I beckoned the captain to come and stand beside me.

  ‘Were you there when he was killed?’ I asked, naturally slowing my speech for the benefit of his foreign ears.

  ‘I was.’

  ‘And could you see – was he standing directly beside the Emperor’s horse?’

  ‘He was.’

  ‘And do you think,’ I persisted, ‘that an arrow could be fired from here and pass over something the height of a horse – and maybe its rider too – yet still strike a man standing in the horse’s shadow?’

  The captain frowned as he stared out of the window. ‘Maybe not,’ he grunted. ‘But then I don’t know any arrow that would go through a coat of mail, whether a horse was in its path or otherwise. Ask the carver.’

  ‘I will,’ I said, more abruptly than was wise to this axe-bearing giant. ‘But first I want to examine the roof.’

  ‘The carver and his apprentices were on the steps outside when we found them,’ countered the captain. ‘None of them would have had time to get down from the roof so soon.’

  ‘Then maybe they weren’t responsible.’ I pushed through another curtain, into a back room where there stood a table and some stools, with a ladder leading to a trap door in the ceiling. Climbing swiftly, I shot back the bolt which held it fast and emerged, shivering, onto the roof. Broken only by low balustrades, it stretched to my left and right, joining together all the houses on this side of the Mesi in one elegant line. It would have been easy, I thought, for the assassin to escape down any of their stairs. Before me I could see Constantine the Great atop his column in the forum, only a little higher than I, and behind him the domes of Ayia Sophia, the church of holy wisdom. Wisdom, I thought, that I could well use.

  Turning my eyes downwards, onto the street, I could see Aelric again, still standing impassive amid the thronging traffic. Though he seemed even smaller from this height, I could yet see much more of him than from below, even when others passed beside him. And likewise he me – he waved a salute as he noticed me peering down on him.

  ‘Yes,’ I murmured to myself. This was where you could have shot an arrow at the Emperor, and hit the ribs of a guardsman beyond by mistake. I knelt by the parapet which lined the edge of the roof. There were scratches in the stone, I saw with rising excitement – and there, just at the base of the wall where moss grew in the shaded cracks . . .

  ‘Date stones?’ The Varangian captain had followed my eyes and caught what I had seen, a small scattering of date-palm seeds; now he tipped back his head and gave a great, bellowing laugh. It was not a comfortable sound.

  ‘Congratulations, Demetrios Askiates,’ he said, picking up one of the pips and tossing it in his free hand. ‘You’ve found a murderer who shoots like Ullr the huntsman, and has a taste for dried fruits. Miraculous!’

  The captain stayed with me while I interviewed the carver and his family; I doubt it put them at their ease. The carver, a thin man with fine hands, trembled and stammered his way through a simple enough story: that he had been in his shop all morning, while the apprentices worked upstairs; that they had all three of them gone out to the arcade to watch the Emperor pass; and that they had been dumbfounded to be seized by the Varangians moments later – they had not even seen the soldier die, though they had noticed a commotion on the far side of the street. The carver chewed on his nails, twisting and tearing at them as he swore that he had locked the gate behind him, that nobody could have crept in while he was outside. His wife had been upstairs, he explained, and he had had thieves before, even on holy saints’ days curse them. Now, he said mournfully, he was forced to be ever vigilant. At that the Varangian captain snorted, which did nothing to soothe the carver.

  The apprentices had little to add, though it took me the better half of an hour to establish so. They sat back sullenly on their stools and said nothing that was not prompted, regarding me for the most part with the inscrutable gaze of adolescence. Yes, they had been hard at work in the workshop before their master called them down to watch the procession – he was a fair man, they said, though demanding in his craft. He might have locked the door – they did not know, but he often did: he had a terror of thieves.

  ‘Was the door locked when you came in?’ I asked the captain, after I had dismissed the boys.

  ‘I wasn’t the first in. Aelric was.’

  ‘Can you ask him?’

  The captain’s face, never reserved at the best of times, said plainly that he thought this a worthless task for an officer of the Emperor’s bodyguard, and I fancied he made even more noise than usual stamping down the stairs. I let it pass as the carver’s wife came into the room. She was younger than her husband, with a darker complexion and a fuller figure, though she dressed modestly and wore a scarf low over her face, casting her eyes in shadow. Her children were with her – two girls, very young, and a boy of about ten, none of whom would look at me. Behind them
, I saw the dividing curtain twitch, and the carver’s two dusty feet protruding below the hem. Was he simply a jealous husband, I wondered, or were there secrets he did not want told?

  I opened with an innocent enough question. ‘Are these all your children?’

  ‘Three of them,’ she said, so quietly that I strained to hear. ‘I have a son, apprenticed to another carver, a friend of my husband’s, and two married daughters.’

  ‘And you and your children were watching the parade from the window yesterday?’

  She nodded silently.

  ‘Did you hear anyone else in the house at the time – someone mounting the stairs perhaps?’

  She shook her head, then saw fit to add almost in a whisper, ‘No-one is allowed up here but the family. My husband is very strict on it.’

  Between the ever-vigilant carver, the locked gate, and the family on the uppermost floor, Odysseus himself would have struggled to creep through this house.

  ‘And did you see – or hear – something that could have been an arrow loosed from near here?’ I pressed.

  ‘The procession caused much noise, much cheering and shouting.’ She frowned. ‘But perhaps there was a crack from above, just before the soldier fell across the road. As the Emperor was passing our window.’

  ‘A crack from above,’ I repeated. ‘Were you up on the roof at all yesterday morning? Hanging laundry or taking some air or . . .’ I paused, hearing the distant sound of boots on the stairs. ‘Eating fruit?’

  Another shake of the head. ‘We do not go onto the roof.’ It was as though Moses had commanded it thus on the stone tablets. ‘Urchins and vagabonds play there. Some of the other shopkeepers and craftsmen allow them up when they should not. We keep the roof-door bolted.’

  The noise on the stairs reached a crescendo, and the Varangian captain came striding into the room, almost tearing the curtain from its hooks as he did so.

  ‘The gate was locked,’ he said abruptly; then, turning to face the cowering children and their mother: ‘Do you like dates?’