The Demons of Constantinople

by Eric Flint

  “Pucorl,” Wilber said, “we probably need to have a meeting with the Crassus family, unless we want a squashed senatorial debutante.”

  Location: Home of Gaius Augustus Crassus, Constantinople

  Time: 3:45 PM, May 22, 1373

  Wilber, Roger, and Mrs. Grady were invited in by an old gentleman in formal Byzantine dress of the upper class. The clothing, both worn and lovingly repaired, told Wilber that this was a senior servant in the homeowner’s hand-me-downs.

  They were led into a large room with several couches, each with a small table in front of it. This was old-fashioned even for the fourteenth century. It belonged in the fifth century or maybe the first century BCE. They were here for a proper Roman dinner. And, Wilber guessed, that if they could get away with it, his hosts would be wearing togas with the senatorial purple trim.

  After everyone was seated, Wilber asked if they were related to Marcus Licinius Crassus of the first triumvirate.

  “No, regretfully not. Marcus Licinius Crassus was the patron of my family before The Republic fell to the empire.”

  Wilber could hear the capitalization of “The Republic” in Gaius’ voice. What he couldn’t tell was if these were merely a quirky family, or if even at this late date there was longing for a return to a republican form of government. But that wasn’t the reason they were here.

  “Joe Kraken told us of your daughter’s visit, which is why we asked to talk to you.”

  Gaius looked over at his daughter with a clearly rehearsed frown. “Aurelia? Did you disturb our noble guests from France?”

  “No, Father. I was in the port to see about furs from Rus, and happened on the ship, Joe Kraken. Who seemed a perfectly respectable craft, if of a unique sort.”

  “Joe wasn’t bothered and neither are we,” Amelia Grady said. “It was out of concern for the safety of your daughter, or other agents, that we asked to talk. The idea she suggested to Joe is interesting, in many ways appealing, but there are some things you should know before attempting an undersea craft, even if the demon is willing.”

  “What?” Aurelia asked, suddenly much more interested than she had been up to now.

  Wilber couldn’t help but notice how her eyes lit up and her face animated as they talked about the science of undersea ships. She really was beautiful, and Wilber, in spite of the change in his hearing since they arrived in this century, was still a nerd with no idea at all what he should do about his attraction.

  For the next little while, it was the family who got increasingly bored. Amelia discussed atmospheric pressure and the bends with Aurelia.

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  Roger, seeing the boredom of the parents and brothers also at the dinner, engaged them in a discussion of forms of government. Republics and representative democracies, mostly. Gaius was in favor of republics, but the notion of having the poor, the lower classes, select the senators struck him as ridiculous. What, after all, does a street sweeper know of government?

  As it happened, Roger’s parents weren’t all that thrilled with the notion of one man, one vote, either, though they gave it public lip service. There was a lot of talk around Roger’s dinner table back in the world about the effort the Founding Fathers had put in place to keep the mob from running wild. But Roger was feeling a bit contrary, especially now that he realized that his invitation to this house was as a prospective suitor to their willful daughter. Petruchio in a fourteenth-century reenactment of The Taming of the Shrew wasn’t a role he found appealing. So he waxed eloquent in favor of the wisdom of the lower classes.

  All in all, it wasn’t a bad evening. Wilber and Amelia were able to acquaint Aurelia with the difficulties in submarine construction, and Roger got to tease a hoity toit. Oddly enough, one of the sons seemed to take what Roger said seriously.

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  After they left the family fell into discussion. Gaius and his son Leonitus fell into a fairly serious argument over the merits of including the lower classes in the push to restore The Republic.

  Aurelia retreated with her mother to consider the possibility of a self-controlling kraken versus one whose owner resided aboard. Aurelia didn’t like the idea and neither did her mother, though they had different reasons. Sidonia was deeply involved in the family finances, which Gaius, as his father before him, left almost entirely to his wife, being much too busy with the manly pursuits of politics and the military. In Gaius’ case, politics.

  “I don’t trust demons, whatever Joe Kraken said to you. And, for that matter, whatever the French say,” Sidonia said.

  Aurelia knew that her mother didn’t make any distinction between the twenty-firsters and the rest of the French delegation. They were all papist barbarians, if possibly useful papist barbarians. Aurelia, with her curiosity about demons, had made a study of the French delegation. She knew that the twenty-firsters weren’t all papist. Some were heretic, and one wasn’t even Christian. She really wanted to talk to Lakshmi Rawal. “I know, Mother, and I have been thinking about what they said. Apparently you can go fairly deep, as long as you let the pressure equalize and give yourself time to adjust as you come back up.”

  Aurelia got up and went to her desk. It was a lectern-style desk. It had taken her forever to get this one. She put a sheet of papyrus on the lectern and began to sketch. What she was drawing was a bladder arrangement that would let the kraken ship sink and return to the surface, and, at the same time, let the pressure inside the shell of the kraken ship balance the water pressure outside it, while still leaving the passenger dry. She didn’t think that the kraken would need more than one person on board and, perhaps, not even that, if there were some way to talk to it while it was under water. But she wanted to be on it when it went deep into the sea. She wanted to see the world Joe described as living under the sea. The throne of Poseidon, the Sirens, the kraken with their great bodies dancing in light.

  She wanted to go.

  Location: Crassus House, Constantinople

  Time: Mid-afternoon, May 25, 1373

  Aurelia looked at the sketches on the desk and shook her head. “I’m sorry, but it doesn’t make sense.”

  Jennifer Fairbanks was looking extremely frustrated. Aurelia really was trying, but it didn’t make sense. If they were going to let water into the shell, why have the shell at all? The notion of a boat that essentially had holes in the bottom was stupid. That was something she didn’t dare say to someone as formidable as Jennifer. Jennifer, with a demon-lock pistol in a holster on her hip. Jennifer, with a computer and a phone, both enchanted. And perhaps most of all, Jennifer, who according to the whole French delegation, not only the twenty-firsters, was the acknowledged master—no, mistress—of natural philosophy.

  Jennifer stopped and held up a hand. She looked around the room and went to the small table where the carafe of wine and a set of four real glass flagons were waiting. She picked up her half full wine glass and said something in her English. Her phone translated it as, “Waste not, want not.”

  Then she downed the half glass of good white wine.

  She didn’t, as Aurelia expected, refill the glass. Instead, she said, “Follow me,” and left the room with Aurelia following.

  She led Aurelia to the atrium where the sunlight was pouring in through the compluvium in the roof. The impluvium was full, because it had rained that morning. And that was where Jennifer went. She knelt down beside the pool and gestured for Aurelia to join her.

  Aurelia did, and Jennifer held up the glass goblet. “Now watch!” She overturned the empty goblet, and pushed it into the pool. “See? The water can’t flow into the cup because the air is in the way.”

  Aurelia did see, at least in part. If you put a tiny boat inside that upturned goblet, if would float even as it sank beneath the water. Then she saw something else. “We don’t need the wall around the cabin area at all. All we need to do is have a platform. The air will keep the water from flooding in and I will stay dry.” She nodded, smugly certain that she had bested Jennifer.
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  “Good thought, but no. For two reasons. First—” Jennifer tipped the glass and air bubbled out so that it became less full of air and the water filled the space. “The kraken we call to the submarine will not always be moving straight and level. It will tip this way and that as it goes up and down in the ocean.

  “Second, air isn’t like water. You can’t really see it here, but air compresses. The deeper you go, the less volume the air will take, and the more water will fill the submarine. Which brings up the bends and nitrogen narcosis. As you go deeper and the air gets denser, nitrogen will get into your blood and it will take it a while for it to come out as you come up. So you need to come up slowly. And if you go deep enough the nitrogen will act like a drug and you will start seeing visions. They used to call it ‘the rapture of the deep,’ back in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.”

  That was one of many talks that Aurelia and Jennifer had about the submarine and how it would work. And how it would be different from a twenty-first century submarine.

  Chapter 16—Enemies of Enemies of . . .

  Location: Bursa, Capital of the Ottoman Turks

  Time: Mid-afternoon, June 22, 1373

  Sultan Savci looked at the large, articulated cart in the form of a yarbogha, a bull centaur, the torso of a man rising from the neck of a bull. It had four wheels, but they were small for a cart of this size and instead of being attached directly to the body, they were attached to the “legs” of the bull-shaped body. Those legs had joints of a sort that could be manipulated, pushed and shoved into different poses. At the moment, the left front leg was bent forward at the body joint and bent at the knee. The wagon also had the body of a man with articulated arms that were attached to a shield on the left arm and held an ax on the right. Finally, its head had bronze horns.

  He turned first to the master craftsmen. There were three. The master wainwright, the sculptor, and the “engineer,” who had designed the articulating joints in the legs of the bull and the arms of the human torso. He had also designed the eyes, bull’s ears, and horns. They had stopped arguing and were clearly waiting for his judgment.

  Savci didn’t have a judgment, though. He didn’t know enough. Savci was aware of his youth and inexperience, but he had no choice. It was rule or die for him. So he turned his head again, and looked at Devlit ben Bakir. “What do you think?”

  “It is impressive, Majesty, but it lacks the engine that I am told is the hidden secret of the enchanted van called Pucorl.” Devlit had spent the last two years in Constantinople, pretending to be an Orthodox Christian and studying at the Magnaura. For the last few months, since the arrival of the French delegation, he had been studying magic under the tutelage of Doctor Delaflote himself. He had seen, but not been allowed to touch, the demon van which had destroyed their armies in Byzantium. At least the commanders in the field claimed that there losses were entirely due to the Christians having enlisted the aid of iblis. As good Muslims, they would not stoop so low, but they were going to enslave an ifrit to do the will of Allah, and counter the demon van.

  “An engine of the sort described is impossible,” insisted the “engineer,” and the sculptor and wainwright agreed.

  “I don’t disagree,” Devlit said, giving the craftsmen a nod that approached a bow. “And I do note that an ifrit lord of djinn may well make up the difference in strength between the van and the cart. But be aware, Sultan, that the summoned ifrit will not be happy in our service.”

  “It need not be happy as long as it is adequately constrained,” Savci said, quoting his mother. Savci’s life had not been a contented one. His father was a strong, but not a kind, man who had already killed two of his brothers. And if it weren’t for the amazing good fortune of his father’s death when both his surviving brothers were out of the capital, Savci would almost certainly have died in the days following his father’s death. Often, Savci wished he could be anything but the sultan of the Ottoman Turks. But it was either be the sultan or reside in a shallow grave. So he followed his mother’s advice, or his advisor’s advice, but almost never acted on his own.

  Location: di Campofregoso Home, Genoa

  Time: Mid-morning, June 3, 1373

  Andronikos sat at the table of the doge with wine and stuffed veal rolls that the Genoese called tomaxelle, before him. He was, for the moment, being treated well, hosted by Domenico di Campofregoso, the doge of Genoa himself. The new doge was a large, beefy man, closer to fifty than forty. He had black hair arranged in ringlets and a beard that was almost white. He had a large nose and sharp eyes. And his pose of bluff goodfellowship was well done.

  But Andronikos had seen the harbor. It was full of ships. Mostly warships, and he didn’t see any way that Constantinople could possibly survive. Constantinople had ten warships, galleys. They were poorly crewed and old. Half of them suffered from barnacles and rot below the water line. There were also merchantmen, but they would run at the first sight of trouble. And the new sailing rigs that the French delegation brought would only mean they ran away a little closer to the wind.

  He looked at his host again. There really wasn’t any choice. “Signore di Campofregoso, I can help you achieve a proper outcome in Constantinople. My father is much too much under the influence of the French and the Venetians.”

  So began the negotiations. The truth was that all Andronikos had to offer was the possibility of a negotiated settlement. And there was only so much that Genoa was going to pay for that. But he had little choice. His father was not a true leader and never had been. His little brother Manuel was a traitorous toad, and Andronikos was the only one with true royalty in his character. The only hope for Byzantium.

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  As the evening wound down, Domenico di Campofregoso watched his guest. Buying treason was always a careful dance, but tonight’s purchase was surprisingly easy. Andronikos IV Palaiologos was a natural born traitor. Over the next several days they learned all Andronikos knew of the state of the Byzantine fleet and the dispositions of the defenses of Constantinople. They learned the Byzantine formula for gunpowder and the structure of venturi, as well as the design of a demon-lock rifle and a demon-powered drop forge to make the barrels. And a hundred other tidbits that Andronikos had in books he’d brought.

  Location: Tarnovo, Bulgaria

  Time: Mid-morning, June 3, 1373

  Ivan Shishman looked at the map and considered invading. He considered invading his half-brother, Ivan Sratsimir, who was technically in rebellion since he failed to recognize Ivan Shishman’s rank as the emperor of Bulgaria. He considered invading Byzantium to take control of the northern part of that country. Mostly because John V was such an ineffectual horse’s ass, and he had converted to Catholicism in the hope getting money and troops from the west, thereby betraying the Orthodox cause. He even considered invading Despot Dobrotitsa, who held much of his coastal territory of Bulgaria, but Ivan didn’t consider that for long, because Dobrotitsa was one tough bastard and his army and navy were even tougher.

  The door opened and his sister came in. “Contemplating war again, brother?” Kera Tamara asked. “Give it up. Unless you have a tame demon, Byzantium is out of the question. And if you attack Ivan Sratsimir, his Catholic relatives will come to his aid.”

  “What do you recommend, then?”

  “The same thing I have been suggesting for the last several months. Send an embassy to Constantinople and figure out how to get some demons of our own. For that matter, I understand that the patriarch has called the Archangel Michael to his icon in the Cathedral of Hagia Sophia.”

  “And you want to be that ambassador.”

  “Yes, I do. But what you should be doing in the meantime is strengthening our lands. We have a Black Sea coast line of our own. We have control over a fair piece of the Danube River. We can block trade to Despot Dobrotitsa if he tries to tax our vessels. We need trade with Constantinople and the rest of the world.”

  For now at least, Ivan would listen to his sister. For now. />
  Location: Venice, Italy

  Time: Mid-morning, June 3, 1373

  Doge Andrea Contarini looked over at his friend, Vettor Pisani. “Well, what do you think?”

  “I think that if we don’t intervene Genoa will eat Constantinople whole, and we will be blocked from the eastern trade, unless we want to use the new French maps and go around the Cape of Good Hope, which is a mighty long way.”

  “We’ll have to do that anyway,” Andrea told him. “And have you seen those maps? But I agree. Much of our most lucrative trade is through the Black Sea. Besides, I would much prefer to be on good terms with Bertrand du Guesclin than bad. Especially now that he’s no longer under Charles V’s thumb. The question is: how do we do it?”

  From then on the discussions were about how the battle for Constantinople might best be arranged, and what Venice might expect to gain for coming to the aid of Constantinople in this time of great need.

  Location: Bursa, Capital of the Ottoman Turks

  Time: Dawn, June 20, 1373

  The sun was barely peeking over the horizon as Devlit ben Bakir began to incant. Included was all he could glean of the name of an ifrit lord. Partly the name was found through the books in Constantinople, but mostly it was from records in madrassas in Egypt and Babylon. Devlit was a scholar and had copies of many of those records from correspondents around the Islamic world. Old scrolls of old religions that pre-dated Islam and Christianity, and perhaps Judaism as well.

  This king of djinn was named something that was almost unpronounceable, but that was related to Phoenician. “Amar Utu Marduk bul et . . .” and on like that for four pages. Devlit carefully mouthed the syllables, and as he did, the image of a large man with a lower body of smoke and flames filled the pentagram. His chest was bare except for a bejeweled vest, his skin was red and flicked with flames. He wore a golden turban with a ruby brooch holding it in place. He had an Egyptian or Sumerian cast to his features, and he didn’t look happy.