Imperial Fire (33 page)

He officiated while a waiter poured the chai from a silver pot into shallow white bowls. The proprietor held one of the vessels to the light to demonstrate its translucence and flicked its rim, producing a clear ringing sound.

‘Porcelain,’ said Hero. ‘Also from China.’

He breathed in the chai’s smoky scent and sipped, rolling the astringent beverage around his mouth. A servitor set down a platter of pancakes smothered in black liquid honey.

‘No charge, sir,’ said the proprietor. ‘An honour to serve such distinguished guests.’

Hero smacked his lips and set down his bowl. ‘It agrees with me,’ he said. ‘It refreshes and soothes at the same time. Do you think it would find a market in Constantinople?’

Aiken’s lips puckered. ‘Men nourished by strong wine wouldn’t choose to drink something as insipid as this.’

‘I expect you’re right,’ Hero said. He yawned, drowsy in the dappled shade, and reviewed the clientele. One gentleman seated with his legs folded beneath him was reading a book between sips of chai. From his faint smiles, Hero deduced that the codex wasn’t a holy text, and when the gentleman laid the book down and stared away, his chai growing cold in front of him, Hero couldn’t contain his curiosity. He rose and soft-footed over.

‘Forgive me, Aga. I too am a slave to the written word, and I see that the book you’re reading has laid a trance on you. May I enquire who wrote it?’

The scholar weighed the manuscript in both hands. ‘It’s a collection of the rubaiyat penned by Omar the tent-maker’s son, God bless his posterity.’

‘Omar Khayyam,’ Hero breathed. ‘I’ve heard of that great polymath’s achievements in natural science, but I’ve never read his poems.’

The scholar leafed through the pages. ‘Here’s the one I was reading.

‘Consider, in this battered caravanserai
 

Whose doorways are alternate night and day
 

How sultan after sultan in his pomp
 

Lived his destined hour and went his way.’
 

Hero allowed a silence. ‘I’m lodging in a caravanserai near the western gate. I travel with a company bound for China.’

‘My favourite nephew left for China with a mercenary force last winter. Three days ago I received news that he’d died at the Jade Gate fort.’

‘Oh, my commiserations.’ Hero turned in a whirl of confusion. ‘Please forgive my thoughtless intrusion.’

‘Wait,’ said the cleric, ‘Tell me where you come from and why you’re journeying to China.’ He arched a finger and a waiter hurried over to refresh their bowls.

Aiken joined them while they conversed. ‘I can’t believe it,’ Hero told him. ‘This learned imam met Master Cosmas Monopthalmos here in Bukhara twenty years ago. Imagine.’

The cleric stood. ‘I have to attend a mosque council.’ He picked up the book, hesitated, then held it out to Hero. ‘For you, my friend.’

‘I couldn’t possibly.’

‘Take it. You face a long and dangerous journey. Omar Khayyam’s poetry might solace, inform and inspire you during the lonely desert nights.’

Hero sprang up. ‘At least let me pay you what it’s worth.’

The cleric was already leaving. ‘Please don’t offend me with money. I’m not a shopkeeper and wisdom can’t be weighed in silver.’

Hero and Aiken watched him walk down the street, somehow remote from the bustling crowd. When he disappeared, Hero opened the book to its title page and read the dedication in Arabic.
To Kwaja imam, the most glorious, most honoured proof of the nation and the religion, sword of Islam and scimitar of the imams, lord of the religious laws
…
From the least of slaves, Omar Khayyam
. Hero’s hand flew to his mouth. ‘Oh my goodness. Look. It’s signed by the poet. I can’t possibly keep it. Here,’ he said, thrusting the book into Aiken’s hands. ‘Run after the gentleman and return it.’

Hero was still fanning himself when Aiken jogged back out of breath. ‘I couldn’t find him.’

Hero appealed to the proprietor for help, but the man could not or would not divulge the imam’s address.

Walking back to their lodgings, Hero dipped into Omar Khayyam’s quatrains. ‘How ingenious they are. The tentmaker’s son can distil a world of meaning into four lines.’

Aiken tried to steer Hero around a heap of human ordure. ‘Careful. Too late. Never mind.’

Hero wiped the turd off against the dust without raising his gaze from the page. ‘Here’s a good one, containing a truth for both of us.

‘Myself when young did eagerly frequent
 

Doctor and Saint and heard great argument
 

About this and that and everything.
 

Yet though I listened, I returned by the same door as in I went.
’

‘I saw Lucas,’ Aiken said.

Hero stumbled. ‘What?’

‘In the slave market.’

‘What, just now?’

‘No. Before we stopped at the chai-khana. The trade minister lied to us. Lucas is here and is being sold into slavery as I speak.’

Hero gawped. ‘Why didn’t you…?’ Understanding dawned. ‘Oh, Aiken. Well, we’ll leave that for later.’ Hero had grasped the implications and spoke as rapidly as thought could run. ‘Tell Vallon. No, not Vallon. Fetch Wayland and bring money. Lots of it.’ He tugged Arslan’s sleeve. ‘Take Aiken back to the caravanserai. Quick. As quick as you can.’

Hero trotted back up the road. Everywhere he looked, his dim sight revealed animated gatherings. Hurrying towards one crowd, he discovered that a storyteller was treating them to a tale of Rustam’s exploits. Tacking towards another, he came up against a wall of spectators wagering on fighting partridges. He clutched a passer-by’s sleeve. ‘The slave market. Where is it?’

The man didn’t understand and detached himself.

‘Someone show me to the slave market,’ Hero cried. His distraught gaze fell on a sober elder observing him with mild alarm. Hero latched onto him. ‘Sir, please help me. I must get to the slave market.’

The elder called out in an authoritative voice and two touts homed in on Hero and commenced fighting over who had the right to bleed this wealthy foreigner. ‘I don’t have time for this,’ Hero said, grabbing one of them and taking a glancing blow to the jaw in the process. ‘You,’ he said. ‘Take me to the slave market. Not a moment’s delay.’

The tout waded through the crowd until he reached a dense picket of prospective purchasers, casual spectators and, no doubt, a few pickpockets and prostitutes. He barged through the crush, the promise of gold proof against any amount of protests and indignant buffets.

‘The man I’m looking for is a young Frank,’ Hero panted.

His guide winked.

‘Hurry!’

Even the tout’s bullish efforts weren’t enough to penetrate the crush. Three ranks from the front an armed man slapped him around the face and harangued him for his coarse manners. Hemmed in on all sides, Hero stood on tiptoe to find the podium bare.

‘Too late,’ he groaned. ‘Oh, Aiken.’

The tout dug an elbow into his ribs and bared his teeth to their sallow roots. ‘Frankish.’

Hero craned up to see two men manhandling Lucas onto the stage. The auctioneer followed and after an aloof survey of the audience launched into his pitch, pointing a baton at Lucas while his assistants showed off the young Frank’s selling points, shoving him about as if he were livestock.

Hero heaved against the crowd. ‘Let me through. There’s been a dreadful misunderstanding. That young man is a member of a diplomatic mission.’

But the crowd held firm and bidding had already started, the auctioneer playing the crowd like a practised showman.

‘What’s he saying?’ Hero demanded.

‘This slave is the pick of the bunch,’ the tout told him. ‘Young and healthy. Very strong and lusty.’

‘Tell the auctioneer I’m interested in buying the Frank. Ask him to speak in Greek or Arabic for my benefit.’

At the tout’s bellowed request, the auctioneer leaned forward to evaluate Hero. Having gauged his worth, he acknowledged the request with a flick of fingers before resuming in both Turkic and Arabic.

Now Hero could follow the bidding, and it was brisk, half a dozen hopefuls in the market for Lucas. At forty dirhams – roughly one solidus – the bargain hunters fell out, and at one hundred dirhams only four were left in the bidding.

The tout prodded Hero. ‘Why don’t you bid, sir?’

‘I don’t have any money.’

‘No money? Sir.’

‘Hush,’ Hero said. The bidding had slowed to a drip, each advance squeezed out. Hero couldn’t see his competitors.

The auctioneer raised his baton. ‘I have one hundred and eighty dirhams. Any advance on one hundred and eighty. No?’ he said, staring at Hero. ‘Then going once, twice and…’

‘Ten gold solidi,’ Hero blurted.

Space opened up around him as the astonished audience drew back to view this profligate infidel. A voice launched an angry protest that rolled off the auctioneer like water off oil. Delighted, he raised his baton to conduct the finale.

‘I have a bid of ten solidi from the Greek gentleman.’

‘Twelve,’ a voice said.

‘Fifteen,’ Hero responded.

‘Twenty.’

‘And another five,’ Hero said, feeling sick and elated.

A disturbance around him, an aggressive pressing-in warned him that his rival wasn’t taking Hero’s intervention lightly. A man with a brutal face shoved the tout aside and confronted Hero.

‘Stop bidding, you foreign dog.’

‘On the contrary,’ Hero said, and gave an airy wave. ‘Thirty.’

The man went for his knife and drew it back. Some force wrenched him into reverse and suddenly Wulfstan appeared, his good hand clamped around the assassin’s neck. Wulfstan kneed him in the groin and the man fell cross-eyed to the ground. Wayland and Gorka burst through the crowd, followed by red-faced and sweating Aiken.

Wulfstan picked up the knife, dragged the wretch to his feet and booted him away.

‘Shall I proceed?’ the auctioneer said, baton poised. ‘I have a bid of thirty solidi.’

‘
How
much?’ Wayland said.

‘Thirty-five,’ said the auctioneer. His head darted. ‘And five.’

‘Ssh,’ Hero said. He stuck up a hand. ‘Fifty.’ He gave Wayland an inane smile. ‘It’s not our money.’

‘Fifty-five,’ said the auctioneer, registering a counterbid.

A drawn-out interval, the auctioneer swinging his head around. ‘I’ll accept fifty-seven,’ he said. ‘Yes, you sir. I have fifty-seven,’ he told the crowd.

‘Sixty,’ someone shouted.

‘Seventy,’ Hero countered.

Wayland groaned. Wulfstan laughed and slapped Gorka’s back.

You could have heard the hush a hundred yards away. People from that distance had wandered over to see who was on sale for a sum they could never raise in a lifetime.

‘Any advance on seventy Byzantine solidi?’ Kites wheeled above the square. ‘Asking once. Asking twice.’ The auctioneer’s gavel smacked down. ‘Sold to the Greek gentleman, and I hope he derives a lifetime’s satisfaction from his purchase.’

Hero stood in a daze while Aiken settled up with the auctioneer, leaving Wulfstan and Gorka clasped in speechless hilarity and Wayland shaking his head in disbelief. The assistants who’d forced Lucas up the steps as if he were meat on the hoof led him down as if he were a prince of the realm. Wayland took charge of him.

Lucas blinked around and his blasted gaze fixed on Gorka. ‘Thanks, boss.’

‘I only came because I couldn’t bear the idea of someone else making your life a misery.’

Lucas tried to smile. ‘How much did I cost?’

‘A fortune,’ said Wayland. ‘You’ll be paying for yourself all the way to China and back.’

‘How did you find me?’

‘Aiken spotted you.’

Lucas stared at his saviour.

‘You needn’t thank me,’ Aiken said. ‘I nearly left you there. After the way you treated me, it would have been no more than you deserved.’

‘What happened to Zuleyka?’ Wayland said in the silence.

‘I don’t know. They separated us when we arrived in Bukhara. We have to find her.’

‘We’d better scarper,’ Wulfstan said. ‘We’re attracting a lot of filthy looks.’

He and Gorka underpinned Lucas’s armpits. The youth dragged his heels. ‘No, we have to find her.’

Gorka grinned. ‘He’s a piece of work, ain’t he? Next he’ll be asking us to get his horse back.’

‘Yes, and then I’ll go after the pack who murdered Yeke and sold me into slavery.’

‘Forget it,’ Gorka said, tightening his grip. ‘Time to get you back to your mates before someone else takes a fancy to you.’

‘Wait,’ said Wayland. ‘The auctioneer will know what happened to Zuleyka. Have we got any money left?’

‘About ten solidi,’ said Aiken.

Wayland held out his hand for them and began making for the auctioneer.

‘I’m coming with you,’ Lucas said.

‘Keep him right there.’

Lucas had been the last lot and the auctioneer’s expansive manner had fallen into a kind of post-coital blank. Watching from a distance, Hero was certain that Wayland would get nothing out of him. The auctioneer tried to brush the Englishman aside and then, when pressed, he summoned his assistants to rid him of this pestering infidel. Before they could lay hands on him, Wayland said something that seemed to drip like honey into the man’s ears and made him stare at the Outlanders in a calculating manner.

His superficial smile flashed and he draped an arm over Wayland’s shoulder and walked him up and down, conversing cheek to cheek. Money passed by sleight of hand before Wayland returned.

‘Did you find out where she is?’ Lucas demanded.

‘He sold her yesterday.’

‘We’d better tell Vallon,’ Hero said.

‘I think not. Her owner is the same man who bid for Lucas and set his thug on Hero. After today’s disappointment, neither gold nor threats will prise Zuleyka from his grasp.’

‘All the more reason to lay the matter before Vallon,’ Aiken said.

‘Lucas means very little to Vallon, and the girl even less. He’s not going to kick up hell to rescue her.’

‘She means a lot to me,’ Lucas cried.

‘Take him back to the caravanserai,’ Wayland said.