The well-dressed man shrugged. ‘If you’ll leave your weapon and promise to take my message, I’ll escort you to him,’ he said. ‘But if he’s with the – er – Empress – you won’t be allowed in.’
The palace was as empty as the streets. The Ordinaries were locked down in their barracks – a bare minimum of them walked the corridors, and those few flattened themselves against the walls when the soldiers approached.
They crossed the Outer Court and entered the Inner Court. The Scholae barracks were full, and the handsome young man took Mortirmir to the duty clerk and entered his name on a roster. Then they crossed the yard. A pair of Nordikans stood like statues in full hauberks, with great axes as tall as Mortirmir’s shoulders.
‘Is Master Derkensun at liberty?’ asked the Scholiast.
‘DERKENSUN,’ bellowed the nearer of the two blond giants. He nodded. ‘Just off duty after a murder. In the prison.’
A sleepy giant came to the door. As soon as he saw Mortirmir, he grasped both of his hands. ‘You!’ he said. ‘The witch woman said we were to be bound together.’
Mortirmir might, under other circumstances, have had to proclaim his total disdain for anyone who went by the title ‘witch woman’, but an hour before he had caused a man to die by fire, and the universe was suddenly very strange.
‘Anna sent me,’ he said. It seemed a silly thing to say.
But Derkensun’s smile burst over his face like sunrise after a long, dark night. ‘By the gods!’ he said. ‘You are a true friend. Is it chaos out there?’ He turned and bellowed something – the sound, to Mortirmir, very much like two dogs fighting.
‘By our gracious Lord, is that what Nordikan sounds like?’ he asked.
His Scholae guard grinned. ‘That’s what we say.’
Derkensun took the two men aside. ‘I’ve called for my corporal. Listen. The Emperor is taken-’
‘That much is all over the city,’ Mortirmir said.
‘But too many of the officers fell with him – or have gone over to the Duke.’ The Nordikan shrugged. ‘This palace is a dark place, and no mistake.’
‘This man offered to bring food,’ the Scholae knight said. He offered an arm. ‘Giorgios Comnenos at your service, ser barbarian. You, I take it, are a student?’
‘Is Maria Ekaterina Comnena your sister?’ Mortirmir asked.
‘First cousin,’ the man smiled. ‘You know her at University, I suppose?’
Mortirmir looked away, and didn’t say ‘she coined my nickname’. Instead he said, ‘Oh, we’ve met. Pardon my rudeness, kyrios – I am Morgan Mortirmir, of Harndon.’
‘You speak our tongue so well I’d never have taken you for a barbarian,’ Comnenos said.
Derkensun put a hand on both men’s shoulders. ‘Listen, friends, enough pleasantries. We’re all good men here – let’s act the part. Morgan, can you fetch food? Do either of you know what it would take to get deliveries moving again?’
‘My father’s steward would probably know,’ Comnenos said. ‘But if I leave the palace, half of the Scholae will leave and never return.’
The only black-haired giant that Mortirmir had ever seen came out of the barracks and bows were exchanged. He was introduced as Durn Blackhair, acting Spatharios. It was a strange title – Mortirmir’s pedantic young brain tended to translate every scrap of Archaic, and that one seemed to mean ‘sword bearer’. Not really a title at all.
Blackhair drank off a pint of unwatered wine. ‘The Duke wants a fight,’ he said. ‘I just had word that he’s moving his camp closer to the walls, and he has threatened to bombard the city with his siege machines. We need access to the farms – without them, I guess there’s no food.’
Mortirmir felt odd, speaking up when all the men around him were – well, twenty-five. Which seemed like a great age to him. ‘It seems to me,’ he said, and they all looked at him. ‘It seems to me that the taverns and inns have food – they lay in stores.’
Blackhair nodded. ‘That’s good sense,’ he said. ‘But it won’t feed the city.’
‘It would feed the palace for another day,’ Derkensun said.
‘Long enough for . . .’ The knight of the Schola shrugged. ‘You know.’ He exchanged a look with Derkensun.
‘Three days without markets,’ Comnenos said. ‘By tonight, there’ll be hungry people offering to open a gate.’
Blackhair took a deep breath. ‘Right. Young master, if you can find us two cartloads of food, we won’t waste it. I’d like to say the Empress will be grateful, but I’d say the odds aren’t too good she’ll still wear the purple.’
Mortirmir nodded. ‘Can she pay for it?’ he asked.
‘If she wins,’ Comnenos said. ‘She’s thrown her dice.’
Mortirmir laughed, caught up in it. ‘Well, I can pay,’ he said. ‘It beats going to school, anyway.’
Blackhair slapped him on the shoulder, which almost drove him to his knees. ‘I won’t forget this,’ he said. ‘Get it done and you’ll have the thanks of the Guard.’
‘Those that are left,’ said Derkensun.
‘Let me write a note for my bride,’ said the officer. He pulled a beautiful red leather cased wax tablet from his belt pouch and wrote hurriedly. Then he turned the tablet over and wrote again, and pressed the ring on his finger into the wax. ‘Green side for Despoina Helena Dukas. Red side for Kyrios Demetrios Comnenos, my father.’
As it proved, delivering the tablets was as easy as returning to the square of the smiths; the Comnenoses’ palace dominated the square, with four tall marble towers glistening wetly in the late afternoon rain. And the Dukas palace stood across the square. Of course, a damp and exhausted Mortirmir was not at first invited to meet the lovely despoina in person, but he heard a shriek of delight from above him, and a beautiful girl of seventeen or so with bright gold hair came down the stairs, sprinting like a professional messenger, and he had to endure her thanks, her offers of money, and a hundred questions – was he all right? Had he taken a wound? Was he a hero? What was the Empress doing?
He survived, downed a cup of wine, and suggested to the girl’s father that if any supplies could be spared for the palace, they would be most welcome.
Lord Andronicus Dukas gave his bedraggled visitor a somewhat sketchy bow. ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘But until there is a legitimate Emperor, we would hesitate to act.’
Mortirmir shrugged. ‘Ah, kyrios, I am only a poor ignorant barbarian, but it seems to me that the Empress is even now restoring order. I gather that she is victorious.’
It didn’t seem to have any effect, but Mortirmir hoped it made the bastard squirm. He crossed the square, bid farewell to his escort, and passed the other note to the lord of House Comnenos. This old patriarch met him in person, and bowed politely – more than the lord of House Dukas had done.
‘How is my young scapegrace?’ he asked. ‘Staying in trouble? Humiliating his family properly?’ But he read the note, and grinned.
‘I gather you are a student, and not just a messenger. I will prepare a cart and a dozen men-at-arms to escort it. May I offer you any further assistance?’
Mortirmir bowed. ‘If you could provide me a shirt of mail and a horse, I’d appreciate it,’ he said.
Despoina Stella filled a cart with food and wine in two hours. He spent four semesters’ worth of fees on hams, sausages, fresh baked bread and lentils. Stella and her husband, who emerged with a spear in his hand, scoured the tavernas of the neighbourhood and found a wagon, a team, and an escort of spearmen raised from their own ranks. No one challenged them on their way to rendezvous with the cart provided by the Comnenos clan; they had an escort of mounted and armoured stradiotes and ten Smith’s Guild crossbowmen when they crossed the Great Square and stood outside the Outer Court. Mortirmir, now utterly exhausted, had a moment of panic as the great gates remained resolutely closed.
He could hear hoof beats. They were far away – ten or twenty blocks – but there were an awful lot of them. The city was dark, there was no watch out in the streets, and all lights were extinguished. The sound of hooves was frightening.