It was no Imam, after all.
The figure in the shadows high above was the assassin.
A thrill ran through Skiouros as he saw the figure disappear, descending the stairwell into the minaret tower and down to the Aya Sofya.
There was a reason for it all, then.
The danger to the Sultan and therefore the whole of the city and empire was not over. It would never be over as long as the assassin remained at large. Bayezid had escaped today with his skin intact, but the Mamluk killer - the last of the three in the city - would try again and again until the lord of the Ottoman world lay dead.
Skiouros had been given a gift. He alone of the entire throng knew not only that a murderer was intent on the Sultan's life, but that he was here; now. Thwarted, yes, but free and ever-able to make further attempts.
The assassin had to be stopped. That was why God had sent the storm. Even the flashes of lightning might have been to draw his attention to the Mamluk's presence.
What could he do?
The question was far from new but the inflection was different now. All morning he had asked that question but in a rhetorical, fated way, knowing that the answer was 'nothing'. Now it had become a genuine enquiry. Now there was an answer, if only he could find it.
He could hardly face the assassin down - he knew that.
The first of the three Mamluk killers he'd faced had been prevented from dispatching him only by Lykaion's timely intervention. The second had been part luck and part knowing the ground better than his enemy. This third time, there was nothing to help him. Skiouros knew this area - the heart of the Ottoman world - little better than the Mamluk would. He knew only the streets, not the buildings themselves. And the killer would be faster and stronger than him.
Skiouros smiled.
But now the Greek thief was no longer a Greek thief, at risk if noticed. To any casual observer, he was now an impoverished Ottoman youth, whereas the Mamluk, for all his cloak and anonymity, would be plainly discernible as one of the empire's enemies if he could only be exposed.
Skiouros did not need to face the assassin in combat. All he had to do was draw him to the attention of the authorities this time, and they would do the rest.
His mind began to race. What next then? The assassin was already down the minaret and even as Skiouros peered at the upper floor of the Aya Sofya he could see the scurrying figure. The unmistakable shape of a bow protruded from the assassin's shoulder as the wind caught the cloak while he darted from the wooden minaret across the narrow walkway and through the door into the mosque.
There was only one feasible exit from the Aya Sofya. Oh there were many doors, but today they would be under guard. With the Sultan expected in the great mosque, each exit would be guarded by Janissaries.
So the Mamluk would have to leave by the main public entrance, trusting to his cloak to keep him hidden from discovery.
Even as his reasoning reached this conclusion, Skiouros was pulling and heaving his way through the crowd. Angry, irritable citizens shouted at him and even caught him a few warning blows as he pushed them aside.
He had to be there first.
He would be.
The rain was coming down so hard now that it was almost as difficult to push through as the crowd that it battered, the regular cracks and crashes of thunder and flashes in the sky only increasing in intensity with every passing moment. Skiouros skittered and slid on the paving as he rounded the now unused baptistery of the ancient church, barging his way through the mass of bodies, unheeding of the annoyance he was causing.
He would beat the killer to the exit.
He had been given an opportunity to stop all this; to uphold the vow he'd made in the ruined church of Saint Polyeuktos to see this through to the end. No simple crowd was going to stop him now.
The north-western façade of the great mosque rose from the sea of heads, impressive and ancient. The triple-arched porch that stood proud of the exonarthex was packed with people, unmoving, trapped in an unmoving mass of humanity. Here and there a figure pushed and struggled in or out of the mosque, but most were content to stand in place and wait for the Imam to issue the call.
In fact, as Skiouros closed on the central arch with its open doors, he could faintly hear the call to prayer now, in broken, distant fragments amid the pounding rain and the hum of the crowd.
Almost as though the enigmatic warbling had been a trigger, the assembled masses began to pound their chests with their hands - the traditional mourning for Ashura - at least as far as the press of people allowed.
Not wishing to stand out as anything other than a devoted native, Skiouros began to hammer his fist to his sternum even as he pushed and weaved through the crowd.
By the time he reached the entrance arch itself and leaned back against the ancient brickwork, beating the rhythm on his chest even as he heaved in weary, gasping breaths, the crowd had begun to push into the building. The guards within, informed that the Sultan was not coming after all, had stepped aside and allowed the wide space kept clear for their master to be filled instead by members of the public. The sudden opening up of the inside relieved some of the press near the doors and Skiouros closed his eyes for a moment, feeling the change in the atmosphere around him as a small quantity of air circulated despite the blanket of rain, ripping away the smells of stale sweat and spices that had marked the citizens pressed to him.
A cleansing breath.
His eyes snapped open and focused seemingly automatically on the cloaked figure that moved improbably against the flow of people. As the Ottoman population surged in through the door to the place they would remove their footwear for their devotions, one single figure was moving against the tide.
Almost like a gift from God, the assassin was moving towards Skiouros as he navigated the surge of bodies. The thief could quite clearly make out the slight lump at the cloak's shoulder that betrayed the bow carried beneath it and the hump at the hip where the quiver of arrows jutted. No one else had noticed, but then such tell-tale shapes were hardly clear and obvious signs to those who were not already looking for them.
Skiouros took a deep breath.
The next few moments would likely be among the most dangerous in his life, and yet he felt somehow calm, and even eager. The assassin closed on him, eyes glinting in the deep shadow of the hood as he scanned the crowd, apparently not even noticing the young man leaning against the wall. The Mamluk was beating his hand against his chest in a half-hearted manner, enough to be in keeping with everyone, while not concentrating on the task or rhythm.
Skiouros allowed his gaze to drop to his own chest as his hand slammed into his sternum again and again.
The cloak moved past, within touching range.
With a sudden flourish, Skiouros' hand stopped beating, reaching out instead to grasp the murderer's cloak by the shoulder.
Skiouros' eyes came up, focusing for one moment on the three Janissaries standing in a huddle nearby before drawing back to the man and the knot of grey cloak in his grip. With every ounce of strength he could muster, Skiouros hauled back on the cloak.
The assassin - caught completely off-guard - staggered, almost falling backwards with the tug. Then, in a God-given moment, the brooch holding the cloak closed bent and came apart. Skiouros almost fell as the garment in his hand came free.
"Assassin!" he bellowed as he lurched against the wall, raising his free hand to point at the man suddenly exposed in the midst of the crowd.
"Mamluk!" he added at the top of his voice, in order to draw extra attention to the man's clearly Arabic, southern features.
There was a strange, almost deafening silence as if the world held its breath, and then an almost instantaneous crack of thunder and flash of lightning, lighting up the man as the crowd pulled back around him, opening up as much panicked space as they could.
"Mamluk assassin!" Skiouros cried again, throwing the cloak at the man.
Maddeningly, somehow the Janissaries had been lost t
o sight as the crowd moved, a roar of angry disbelief rising from the massed throats. Skiouros found that he was standing in a rapidly widening circle with the killer as the crowd pulled back.
If the authorities ever needed a clear indication of the man's guilt, the recurve bow over his shoulder and the quiver at his waist would do the trick.
But the authorities had been obscured by the desperate crowd.
For a desperate moment, Skiouros wondered if the assassin might afford himself the time to deliver a blow to his accuser. It would be easy enough.
But then the man was gone from the widening circle. Pushing his way into the frightened, angry crowd, the assassin disappeared directly away from the mosque's door.
Skiouros felt the sudden lurch of his hasty plan going awry. He'd assumed that the authorities would leap to his aid, especially when the killer's identity had been clearly revealed. He'd even thought the angry citizens would lend their aid. What he had not banked on was the crowd not only rearing back from the Mamluk in panic, but also accidentally preventing the Janissaries from getting near.
Before he even realised the danger he was putting himself in, he was pushing through the press after the fleeing Mamluk, still yelling his accusations so that the guards could tell where the killer was, despite their vision being obscured by the crowd.
Gradually, as he pushed across the wide square outside the Aya Sofya with its press of worshippers, the mob began to thin out. Here and there as he heaved and scrambled, ducked and weaved, he caught a glimpse of his quarry, moving with equal difficulty.
And then suddenly, Skiouros burst from the last press of people into open space, only to discover that the killer had vanished.
The pursuing thief came to a halt, panting, far enough from the crowd that he had a reasonable view of his surroundings. Behind him the people were still pushing into the Aya Sofya and half a dozen Janissaries were visible, ploughing through the mass towards him, their high, flowing white cap decorations marking them out above the massed heads.
Desperately, aware that if he lost the assassin now he would likely never find him again, Skiouros scanned the area, his eyes narrowed, squinting into the gloom and the deluge, trying to spot something of use.
A faint bumping noise drew his attention directly ahead,
A battered, rickety wooden door bounced twice against the frame before coming to rest, betraying recent passage.
Where did the door go? The simple whitewashed wall in which it was set was unadorned and windowless. It was clearly no house or business. With a nervous swallow and a quick upcast prayer that he was right, Skiouros bellowed "This way!" and ran to the door, flinging it open.
He barely had time to register the darkness and the musty damp algae smell before the arrow grazed his cheek, sinking into the wooden door frame.
The first thought that struck him as he ducked back was that the stairway he'd almost fell down within must lead to one of the innumerable ancient cisterns of the city.
The second was that the assassin's arrows were almost certainly poisoned.
Panic gripped Skiouros as he wondered what to do. To rush on down the stairs into the darkness with an assassin somewhere inside, lurking, would be a potentially suicidal act. His head spun round and his gaze played across the retreating backs of the crowd. In their push to get into the great mosque and out of the horrendous weather, the mass of people had swamped the pursuing Janissaries who, while they were probably still in pursuit, were currently nowhere to be seen, buried in the heaving throng. If he simply waited for the soldiers to catch him up and sent them in, the Mamluk killer could be anywhere. It all depended on whether he wanted to catch him badly enough to risk his life further.
That particular thought brought back the issue of poison. While Skiouros had nothing to do with such killings himself, and even tended to steer clear of such groups who would perpetrate them, his profession had brought him into contact with paid killers or their masters from time to time. One thing he did know was that any Turk or Mamluk (or even Christian for that matter) who valued their pay would utilise poisons on their blades or missiles. There was always a chance that the shot would not be a killing blow, and so it must be accompanied by a guaranteed backup.
The poison would be deadly. Should he abandon all of this and get to a healer?
He suddenly shook and spasmed as if freezing ice-water had infused his veins from head to toe, and panic wracked him. He was going to die.
It occurred to him in the objective, sensible part of his mind that it was almost certainly a reaction of his body to the mere thought, especially since he was standing in cold, battering rain. If a poison had worked into his blood in this few heartbeats and was having such effect he would be dead before he reached the bottom of the stairs and there would be nothing anyone could do about it.
Trying to focus on the positive, he forced his fear down and was not surprised to find the deadly chill in his veins subside with it.
All in my head. It's all in my head.
That was not a comforting thought either.
By the time he was coming to a conclusion about what he should do, he was already inside the door, ducking to one side in case his silhouette gave the assassin another easy shot. No arrow came. His back against the cold, slimy wall, Skiouros paused for a long moment to let his eyes accustom themselves to the environment and his ears stop pounding enough to hear anything useful.
Despite having felt like several minutes of life-or-death decision making, it had in effect been a matter of seconds between being struck by the missile and now returning to the dark. Certainly less than half a minute.
As his eyes began to take in the cistern in its cavernous gloom, his eyes were already supplying further details.
There were no footsteps of a man moving downstairs - the killer must already be at the bottom. The sound of a vast quantity of water in an enclosed space came up from below, lapping low waves hitting stone, all echoing eerily around the huge cathedral-like space. But there was more to the water sound than that. As his ears scanned the constant echoes of lapping, he recognised rhythmic splashes.
The splashes of oars.
A boat.
The thin beam of light that issued from the door above was gloomy in itself, dulled by the deep grey of the storm, but it picked out the uniform grey trunks of a forest of columns soaring up through the darkness to terminate in arches at the top, holding up a solid roof that would have been the floor of something above, no longer standing. There were fragmentary ruins of some ancient basilica there, as he knew from previous visits to the area, now interspersed with the small mansions or large townhouses of the wealthier Turks.
Across the darkness, towards the far end of the cistern, he could see the light picking out the undulating surface of the stored water, white flecks and shifting shapes on a sea of ebony.
But there was another shaft of light, too.
It was hard to make out until the eyes adjusted, especially with the outside light being so dim, but a square opening in the roof some distance away in the gloom cast down a beam that picked out an ever-shifting rectangle on the water below.
His eyes narrowed as they took in something else - something that their first three passes of this other light source had missed. It was all-but invisible, but it was there.
A rope hung down from the hole in the ceiling towards the water's surface.
Skiouros was skittering lightly down the slippery, ancient steps long before he realised that perhaps this was not the best thing to do. Could he not have simply gone back outside and found a way into the lots behind this entrance, to locate the opening.
Ah well; his course was not truly set as he descended a little too far and too fast and felt his foot slip into cold water. He had already reached the bottom. His mind reeled. There was no walkway. No platform or wooden jetty. What had made him presume there would be in a damn cistern?
A snapping sound alerted him to the danger even before the thrumming sound of
the approaching arrow reached his ears, and he dropped to a crouch, his legs and backside sinking into the icy water in blackness. The arrow clattered off the wall just above his head, roughly where his chest would have been.
His now-accustomed eyes picked out the shape in the gloom. A small coracle-like boat was approaching the descending shaft of light and the dangling means of escape. He could now see the shape of the killer, reaching out with one arm to retrieve his bow from the boat's bottom even as he pushed against the water with the oar in the other.
Skiouros could almost have laughed, had he not been in such mortal danger. Even as the assassin reached to grasp the rope it suddenly disappeared upwards with the 'zizz'-ing sound of rope being drawn hurriedly across an edge. The assassin's fingers closed on empty air.
A curse in Arabic rang out across the water, quickly followed by a tumult of calls in both Arabic and Turkish. The square of light above was suddenly blotted out by the arrival of figures and then the entire cistern resounded with a deafening 'crack'. Even as Skiouros' ears rang and the sound echoed a thousand times in such quick succession it was almost a vibration, the meaning of the sound sank in.
A gun shot.
That meant the Janissaries. No one else in the city would be carrying a gun. Apparently they must have known about the other roof-exit and, having been alerted to the assassin's escape route by Skiouros' shout, had rushed across to seal it off.
His elation at the sudden reprieve was shattered a moment later as he realised that the killer had not been harmed and had, in response, turned his boat and was now rowing with all his might back towards the stairs.
Skiouros' heart leapt. Should he run?
The question became moot a moment later as the door above clattered and more Turkish voices echoed from the top of the stairs, challenging the Mamluk assassin to surrender. That was it. The man was trapped.
The thought of what might happen when a deadly killer found himself trapped only occurred to Skiouros as the first arrow splashed into the water close enough that it pinned his cloak to the mortared wall just below the waterline.
Thief's Tale Page 24
