Zapolya stared at him with something like envy. “A higher one than mine. If you play this game right, you could replace Suleiman himself.”
Duffy laughed derisively and gulped some beer, using the motion to let his hand fall nearer his dagger. “I hate to be the first to tell you you’re crazy, John. If I am.” He strove to keep his tone light while trying to guess the position of the other man’s gun. “Why should Ibrahim want me to replace the Sultan? The greatest Sultan the Ottomans have ever had! This really is madness. And I can just imagine the delight the Turks would exhibit at being led by an Irishman. Ho ho.”
“Much the same, I imagine, as their delight at having an orphan from Parga appointed Grand Vizir over Ahmed Pasha, who’d deserved the post for years. These things do happen, and the next step is always unimaginable until it’s occurred.”
Can I flip this table over before he can pull the spark rasp of his gun? Duffy wondered. Probably not. “Why me, John?” he stalled. “Why Brian Duffy from Dingle? You haven’t explained that yet.”
Zapolya, for the first time during the conversation, looked disconcerted. “Brian... honestly, don’t you know who... what... you are?”
A wrenching thunderclap sounded from the rear of the building, and the windows rattled furiously. Ladies screamed, serving women dropped laden trays, and Zapolya instinctively half-turned in his chair. Duffy leaped to his feet, overturning the table on the Hungarian, whose pinned gun sent a lead ball splintering into the floor between Duffy’s boots.
There were screams and sword clangs from the back alley, and a fog of gunpowder smoke blew through the kitchen into the dining room, where the beer-fuddled crowd had united in a desperate, shouting rush for the front door. Duffy was knocked sprawling by a fat lady who was bulling her way through the press, and he lost sight of Zapolya.
“Bluto!” Duffy yelled. “Aurelianus, anyone! Grab that Spaniard! He’s Zapolya!”
No one heard him, and by the time he’d kicked and cursed his way clear of the shouting crowd, the Hungarian was nowhere to be seen. The Irishman gritted an oath and ran through the smoke-fogged kitchen.
The stableyard beyond was all aglare, lit by a furiously burning haywagon that sat on its collapsed axles in the middle of the yard. A great gap had been torn in the back fence, and through it he could see flames licking about among a scattered rubble-heap that had been a leather shop that afternoon. Bugge’s Vikings fingered the grips of their bared swords and kept wary eyes on the shadows; and after a moment the Irishman noticed three bodies sprawled on the paving stones.
“Aurelianus!” he called. “Bluto! Damn it, we can still catch him!”
“Who?” asked Aurelianus, who had followed him through the kitchen and now stood wringing his hands behind Duffy.
“Zapolya! He was here. Take a horse and race to the north gate. I’ll take the Carinthian gate. Have them close it and let no one out.” Duffy had seized a wild-eyed horse as he spoke, and now scrambled up onto its bare back. “Go!” Not pausing to see if the trembling old man obeyed him, Duffy put his heels to his mount’s ribs and galloped out of the red-lit yard.
Bluto cut another notch in the candle’s rim and watched the hot wax spill down the side. “Anna,” he said. “Another cup of bock.”
“It’s after ten, you know.”
“I know.” The hunchback looked around the dining room. Most of the revellers had trickled back, but the room’s warmth had been let out, and the chilly air reeked of gunpowder—it was a more subdued crowd gulping the beer now.
At the same moment, Duffy strode in from the kitchen and Aurelianus pushed open the street door. Both men looked tired and less than pleased. Without looking at each other they pulled up a chair and a bench at Bluto’s table.
“Uh, make that a pitcher, and two more cups, Anna,” the hunchback called. Duffy and Aurelianus nodded agreement.
“Did he leave through the Carinthian gate?” the old man asked after a minute of breath-catching. “I’ve got the north one closed and triply guarded.”
Duffy nodded. “He did. Three minutes before I got there. I followed him south for a half mile, but even in this moonlight I lost his tracks.”
Aurelianus sighed. “Are you sure it was him?”
“Yes. I used to know him, remember? He came to entice me over to the Turkish side, and to blow this place up. By the way, Bluto, I believe the missing siege mortar is in the middle of that bonfire out back.”
“It is,” Bluto confirmed. “You can see it through the flames.”
“I wonder,” Duffy sighed, filling a cup with the newly arrived beer, “why they aimed the thing the wrong way. Was it all a bluff? But why bring the gun at all if that was the case?”
“It wasn’t a bluff,” Bluto told him. “When your northmen saw those four men roll the wagon into the yard, they told them, in Norse and sign-language, to get it the hell out of there. Zapolya’s men told them to shut up, so the Vikings turned the wagon around themselves, intending to shove it back out into the street. That started a fistfight, and apparently these haywagon boys were carrying firepots or slowmatches. One of them was knocked unconscious and fell into the hay. A minute later the wagon was in flames, and a minute after that the mortar let go, taking out the fence and two buildings on the next street. Your Vikings figured this was an unfair weapon, so they unsheathed their swords and killed the remaining three intruders immediately.”
Duffy laughed grimly. “And I thought they’d never earn their keep.”
“He tried to entice you, you say?” Aurelianus asked, leaning forward. “By what persuasions?”
“Crazy things. He talked like you frequently do, as a matter of fact. That stranger-things-are-possible-than-you-know sort of nonsense.” Duffy refilled his mug. “He said if I went along and signed up, that Ibrahim would make me Sultan—and just depose old Suleiman, I guess.” He shook his head and sighed with genuine regret. “Poor old John. I remember him before he lost his mind.”
Aurelianus was deep in thought. “Yes,” he said finally, “I can see what Ibrahim must have had in mind. A wild gambit indeed! Zapolya’s mission was to buy you over or, failing that, to kill you. And to blow up this inn in any case.”
“Ibrahim could have sent a better messenger,” Duffy observed. “John never got around to mentioning money.”
Aurelianus stared at him. “Money? He offered you the third highest position in the Eastern Empire!” He shook his head. “Oh hell. I don’t know; maybe it’s a good thing you persist in regarding these matters in such a mundane light. Maybe that’s your strength.”
“Ibrahim wants Duffy here for a sultan?” Bluto snickered. “I thought sultans were supposed to be tee-totallers.”
The Irishman wasn’t listening. “He did seem a little... at a loss, right at the end, like a man offering gold coins to a savage whose tribe barters only hides and fish. He said, ‘Do you honestly not know who you are?’ and then that gun went off.” He turned hesitantly to Aurelianus. “Do you think... you don’t think... Ibrahim really sent him? To offer me... that?”
Aurelianus looked away. “I can’t be sure,” he said, but Duffy got the impression that the old man’s uncertainty was feigned.
“Who am I, then? What did he mean by all that?”
“You’ll know soon enough,” Aurelianus said pleadingly. “This is the sort of thing it’s no use telling you about until you’ve more than half figured it out already. If I explained everything now, you’d laugh and say I was crazy. Have patience.”
Duffy was tired, or he might have pursued the point. As it was, he just shrugged. “Let it lie, then. I’m fast losing interest in all this anyway.” His decision, to flee with Epiphany had given him a pleasant sense of dissociation with all of Aurelianus’ schemes and theories. “More beer here, Anna! This pitcher’s suddenly empty. Oh, by the way, Aurelianus, when do they draw the Herzwesten Dark?”