Thief's Tale

by Turney, S. J. A.

  With a sigh, Lykaion wiped away the tear from his swollen, discoloured cheek. Skiouros had never even had the chance to look back and see his brother's final wave. It felt as though half his heart had been torn out and cast away.

  "Go with God, little brother, and be well."

  * Bourganeuf, France: Year of Our Lord Fourteen Hundred and Eighty Nine *

  The two men-at-arms shared a look of relief as their sergeant left the room and closed the heavy oak door behind him.

  "Well I for one will be pleased to get rid of the slimy bastard" Pierre shivered. "Every time he looks at me it gives me a cold spine."

  "I know what you mean."

  Abellard reached for the tower room's other door and swung it open, revealing the short passage that led to the suite of rooms which had belonged to the lady d'Aubusson only a few short years ago. The corridor itself was decorated in a style that disgusted the older soldier. A vivid-coloured carpet from heathen lands warmed the floor and the two guards took every opportunity to soil it with muddy boots. The wall hangings were silk from Egypt, and a gauzy curtain hung over the window like a woman's veil. It was all so damned unseemly for a good Christian castle.

  And it was all because of the bloody Turk.

  Pierre had only served here for five years, but Abellard remembered that winter seven years ago when Cem Sultan, apparently an exiled Ottoman prince, had arrived at the door under the escort of two dozen soldiers from the Order of the Hospitallers. The dark skinned runt had apparently started a war between the Ottoman Empire and the Mamluks of Egypt but had ended up defeated and trapped and forced to seek the help of the Grand Master in Rhodes.

  Master d'Aubusson had agreed to grant the heathen sanctuary for some reason known only to himself and to God, and within the year the exile had been sent back to France to keep him out of the reach of his Ottoman enemies.

  "Why we aren't just sending the oily little runt back to his Turkish friends I don't know. It'd serve the heathen little bastard right. What do good Christian lords care if he gets offed by his brother?"

  Pierre, always one with an opinion, and who claimed to have an understanding of higher matters despite the fact that he'd been brought up with pigs, shook his head.

  "Too useful, that one. Started a war that's kept all them turbans kicking each other for a decade now."

  Abellard had to grudgingly concede the point. With all the trouble the exiled prince had kicked up between the eastern nations, the great crusader islands had had their first real breather in more than a century, and the Knights Hospitaller of Rhodes had been given time and space to reinforce and fortify a dozen or more fortresses along the Anatolian and Levantine coast. Moreover, it was said that some were calling for a new crusade and there would be no better time to attack the east than when it was already divided.

  Saying that, Abellard had mixed feelings about a crusade. It would be a good thing to give those Turks and Arabs a sound thrashing, of course, but Abellard was no longer a young man and the thought of that long trek and a year or more labouring and fighting in the desert really didn't appeal the way it once had.

  "Come on. Let's break the news to the little Turkish prick."

  The pair trudged heavily, and none too carefully, across the priceless Persian carpet, worn threadbare in places with their constant efforts, and approached the door to the suite. As Pierre knocked three times, respectfully stepping back, Abellard found a small tear in the wall hanging next to him and started to lengthen it quietly.

  After a minute, the door opened and Cem Sultan peered suspiciously down at them. The look on his face made it abundantly clear that he thought as little of them as they of him, and he peered down the length of his nose, nostrils flaring.

  "What do you want?" he snapped in heavily accented French. It had taken him almost two years to learn enough to communicate with his hosts, but the men-at-arms had played dumb and dragged it out as long as possible just for the fun of it.

  "Your unholy majesty is to gather his heathen shit together and get ready to travel."

  The Turk's nostrils flared wider and his eyes took on a hard, flinty look.

  "Your master will hear of your insult."

  Abellard snorted up some mucus and paused long enough to make the Turk think he might spit, and then swallowed it back down. "My master was the one who said it, Turk. Get ready."

  "Where am I to go now?" Cem demanded irritably. He was officially a free man and a guest of the Knights of Rhodes in the place, but every passing season made this enforced exile feel more like a prison sentence. Almost eight years and he still could not get used to how often the air chilled enough to ice over the water butts of the castle. It was not like home or Egypt, that was for sure.

  Cem had been forced to seek the help of the Knights at Bodrum after the siege of Konya failed and he'd found his escape route back to his Mamluk allies cut off. The grand master Pierre d'Aubusson had granted him sanctuary, yet refused to return him to Egypt. He had been left with no choice but to agree when the knights suggested he be sent back to France 'for his own protection' and he'd wondered how long he might be confined in this freezing hell. The real question, though, was: where was he being sent now? Had a deal been struck to return him to Egypt, or were the knights about to betray his sanctuary?

  "Well?" he snapped as the two soldiers looked at each other and grinned.

  "There's a new escort waiting for you in the courtyard, Prince Cem. Men from Rome."

  "Rome?" Cem's blood ran cold. What could the Pope want with him?

  "Yes, Rome. You're going into Papal custody."

  The Turk's eyes narrowed. "I am to become a prisoner?"

  Pierre shook his head, smiling. "You're just being transferred up from the Holy Order of Saint John to their highest authority. Pope Innocent is looking forward to meeting you, I hear."

  Abellard frowned at his fellow guard. Had the young big head actually heard something, or was he just talking out of his arse again?

  "Your Pope will not harm me?" There was a genuine note of uncertainty - fear, even?

  "Far from it. It's said that your brother has paid the Holy Father a wagon-load of gold to keep you safe and sound in Rome."

  "Where do you hear this horse shit, boy?" Abellard demanded, ignoring the look of sick horror on the exile's face.

  "If you took your face out of the ale bucket for five minutes and started listening to things, old man, you'd hear it too."

  "Watch yourself, you little sod. I've got to look after this heathen animal, but there's no rule against giving you a good hiding."

  The pair descended into a slanging match, their attention totally removed from Cem, who stood in the doorway with a mixed sense of hope and panic. In a way, the transfer to Papal custody would take him another step away from tangible freedom. And yet it was said that Pope Innocent the Eighth was a reasonable man, for a Godless Christian. He was supposedly an opponent of the crusading ideal, and the very fact that he had struck a deal with Bayezid suggested that he was open to other negotiation. If that was the case, and Cem could get a message to the Mamluks, he may be able to arrange a counter-offer to that of his brother.

  It was faintly possible that this shift into even deeper Christian captivity might conceivably be a step towards his release.

  Strange the way Allah worked.

  "Then if I am to meet your Pope, I had best move. I will come now and you can fetch my things afterwards.

  Stepping past the startled and angry faces of the two guards, he headed for the stairs to the courtyard.

  Things were about to change. He could put his plan into motion as soon as he arrived in Rome, and Bayezid's days on this earth would be numbered.

  Istanbul

  Capital of the Ottoman Empire (formerly Constantinople - the capital of the Byzantine Empire).

  Year of Our Lord Fourteen Hundred and Ninety.

  Autumn.

  Çarsamba (Wednesday)

  Now.

  Chapter 1 – A dange
rous choice of mark

  * Çarsamba (Wednesday) morning *

  Skiouros waved his arms angrily.

  “Why do we end like this every time we talk? It’s infuriating.”

  “Because I am an adult with a position of responsibility and a path to paradise with the one true God, while you are a bottom-feeding, gutter dwelling criminal infidel with no sense of justice or duty. Why you insist on trying to speak to me I truly have no idea and, insha’Allah, you will soon desist and I can stop dragging my weary backside across the city in my few precious free hours to spend them in this land of Christian hovels listening to your drivel.”

  Lykaion fell silent, his hard, strangely-pale eyes boring into his brother’s face and soul. Skiouros heaved a deep sigh, looking Lykaion up and down for the umpteenth time in the past uncomfortable five minutes. It was the first time the older of the two had come to the meeting dressed in his uniform, and it made Skiouros shudder to see it. Despite the lack of protective steel, Lykaion wore his green coat and Janissary hat as impenetrable as any armour. His always-unruly dark wavy hair poked out from beneath the bronze decoration and long white tail of the hat, and his beard seemed thicker every time they met. At some eight inches taller and considerably broader in the shoulder than his brother, Lykaion was every inch the warrior, and would obviously have been so even without the uniform or the long, gently curved blade at his hip.

  “Mother would drown in her own tears if she thought even for a moment that we could never speak civilly.” He ignored the sudden angry look on Lykaion’s face. “Do you not recall father’s words: ‘remember that the world is iniquity and that, when it comes down to it, the only people you can rely on are kin’?”

  “Father was a font of platitudes” Lykaion snapped. “Life has changed for us; for me, at least. It’s a new world, brother, and I have made my place in it. You would do well to do the same, rather than clinging to old ways and a dead life.”

  “This is not about religion, Lykaion, or even about culture and your precious sultan. This is about family, plain and simple. Ships sail out of the Theodosian harbour every day, bound for a world where we could be free! Crete, brother! The Venetians are a power; we’d be happy there, without the taxes and restrictions.”

  “Pah! When did you ever pay attention to taxes or restrictions, you little thief? And the Venetians are warmongering pirates, anyway. Why would I leave? I don’t live in filth and thieve for a living. Freedom? I am free, brother, insofar as any man is free within the sight of God. Find yourself a trade and a woman, forget about me and live your life.”

  Skiouros sagged. He was running out of strength to argue in the face of Lykaion’s blind acceptance of his own enslavement. He scratched at the armpit of his threadbare grey doublet, appropriated from a washing pile in Galata last week. He may be shorter and narrower, and probably weaker, than Lykaion, but he was faster and, he was fairly sure, brighter. His hair would be the same as his brother’s had he not continually trimmed it to an inch or so long – it would be asking for trouble to grow hair long enough for an enraged merchant to grasp.

  One last try…

  “I know they’ve persuaded you away from the cross to the crescent, and I’m no monk – I won’t blather about turning your face from God, but how can you turn your back on mother?”

  He staggered as the back of his brother’s hand connected sharply with his cheek in a ringing slap that left a painful red mark and a long scratch from the taller brother’s ring.

  “Don’t you dare accuse me of that! I sent money back as soon as I started earning a wage and I kept doing so until mother died in the summer.”

  Skiouros blinked.

  “Yes, I expect you didn’t even know she’d passed on,” Lykaion snarled, “since you never spoke to her. She died of the fever and the stinking flesh. I was given leave to return and see to her burial – which I performed in the Orthodox manner, I’ll add. I even tried to find you to tell you, but how does one go about finding a homeless thief in a city of half a million people?”

  “She’s dead?”

  “And with her every excuse you have left to bother me. Take this as my final word on the matter, little brother: we are kin by blood alone. Go back to your wasted life and sink ever further into depravity and leave me to my world, where I matter and I can make a difference.”

  “Lykaion…”

  “No, Skiouros. Just go, before I surrender to the urge to hit you again.”

  The smaller of the pair took a couple of steps back and leaned against the brick wall of the ‘Bloody Church’, his spirits sinking as he watched the green-coated soldier who had all-but consumed his brother walk away, possibly for the last time. Perhaps twice a year, every year since they had come to the world’s greatest city, Skiouros had arranged to meet with Lykaion. It had never gone well, but there had been a marked downturn in their relationship these past two years, since Lykaion had completed his training and made it to the most prestigious orta of the Janissary corps, charged with the personal safety of the Sultan.

  It was not that Skiouros held a great enmity for the Sultan Bayezid the second, or even his Ottoman world that had gradually suffused itself into even the lowest levels of life since the great city had fallen to them almost forty years ago. He would even say that he was more accepting than most of their Islamic ways, which had pushed the worship of the Greek church into one small corner of Constantinople. He had seen precious little evidence of any God in the past eight years of city life, and so it seemed as reasonable to ‘salam’ one’s shoulders as to genuflect to the cross. Whoever it was watching over the family of Nikos the farmer didn’t seem to be paying much attention.

  Lykaion had gone.

  Skiouros allowed his hearing to refocus once more. A man with a cart trundled past the entrance to the alley, selling bread and pastries. The general hubbub of the Greek enclave murmured in the background like a warm, familiar blanket which for once failed entirely to comfort him. After a minute or more of staring at the empty alley, he shook his head to clear it of the morbid and miserable. His grieving for mother would have to wait. In a way, he was well prepared for it. He’d known she was weakening and had done ever since the Devsirme had taken her boys from her. In a way it was a relief, as she’d lived with backbreaking work and borderline starvation for almost a decade without husband or sons. At least their parents would be together again now.

  As for Skiouros the thief?

  If he wanted to pay another week’s board at the hovel he called home, he would need more money. He’d spent his last few akce on a hearty breakfast this morning in preparation for the meeting. Reaching up, he became aware that a tiny trickle of blood was forming from the scratch on his cheek, which was deeper than he’d realised.

  Time to earn some money.

  Turning, he looked up at the small window in the brick and stone wall and past it to the small, circular tower, painted red and almost featureless, its dome invisible from this angle. He wondered for a moment whether to pray, but decided it would be hypocritical given his recent train of thought. With just a respectful nod at the cross that topped the dome and was just visible, he turned and left the small alley, entering the more major street and the bloodstream of the great city, life pulsing up the hill to the heart of Istanbul, as it was now known almost everywhere but the Greek enclave.

  This district – Phanar – was the poorest in the city, lacking even the money of the Jews, and yet life went on here as though the Turks had never come. The maze of tiny streets and alleys, most of them vertiginous and affording a high-angled view of the Golden Horn, were home to almost the entire Christian population of the city, and the Turks were rarely to be found here. It was not unknown for an Ottoman wandering unaware into the Greek enclave to encounter a fast blade and a quick, quiet death, and to be stripped bare all within a minute. All the more reason why it had been surprising to see Lykaion in uniform, but then the Janissaries were powerful enough that a man would have to be both brave and fooli
sh to attack one.

  The stone-flagged and cobbled street led up towards the fruit market, which was one of the busiest areas of the enclave at any given time, and Skiouros made for the crowded square, pushing all thoughts of family and conquerors and Gods from his mind. Time to focus, now. Eight years of living off his wits and natural talents had taught him a few things, and the most important was concentration. Never be distracted, or the game could be over in an instant.

  Strolling into the square, his gaze roved across the myriad of merchants and customers, delivery men with barrows of food brought from the countryside beyond the walls. Noting a stallholder duck behind his trestle to retrieve another basket of wares, Skiouros quickly swiped out an arm, fast as a snake, and pocketed a shiny red apple in his doublet. On he strode, his eyes selecting and discarding potential targets. Most were too poor to be worth the effort, and most of the stallholders were wary enough to make anything more than a swiped fruit too dangerous. Only busy and distracted customers were worth marking, and even then only those who seemed likely to have a bulging purse hidden away within the folds of their clothing.

  His attention was so locked on the seething mass of people that he didn’t notice the puddle of brackish water and escaped fruit juice until he stepped squarely in it. Silently, under his breath, he cursed as the stinking fluid seeped in through the hole in his right heel, making his foot feel cold and unpleasant and adding a sucking squelch to every step.

  New boots.

  If he could make enough to cover the week’s board and a few meals and there was anything left over, he would either have to take these boots to a cobbler or give up on them altogether and fork out for a new pair. The early days of thieving in the city had taught him that he could purloin any amount of clothes and goods, but that boots should be bought and fitted; especially when one might require silence and stealth or be called upon to run at a moment’s notice. These boots had cost more than half a year’s rent, but had lasted for four winters now, and had been worth every akce he’d spent on them.