Bloodline Rising Read online

  Thales smirks. “There’ll be no circus for you tonight, my boy,” he says.

  I have to think about Tecca to stop myself laughing at him. I’m so full of sin, using poor Tecca like this, but I’m sure she would not mind.

  “You’re wanted,” Thales goes on. “You’re to go up to the villa before the sun is down. Do you know where it is?”

  We both know that I have been admitted into the chambers of our Emperor more times than he. Fool! I tell myself. Don’t let him see you think he’s not got the brain of an ox. I smile, saying, “I think I know it well enough.”

  What does he want, I wonder, feeling a tiny flicker of fear. It pays ill to get on the wrong side of our master, and he does not like us to forget this. I cannot help thinking of Black Elias – till last summer, he was our master’s golden angel-thief who could do no wrong. And then word got out that instead of tumbling his stolen prizes into the lap of the Emperor, Elias had been selling them to traders out of Chalcedon. Elias has not been seen for many a long month. They say he was found floating in the harbour with both hands missing. The Emperor of Thieves does not make a quick end for his enemies.

  But what am I thinking? I’ve done no wrong; I’m not like Elias. All that I steal, I hand over to my lord.

  “I hope you’ve been behaving yourself, little Ghost,” Thales says. “I wouldn’t want to be in your place if you’ve not. Better go directly to Master, hadn’t you?”

  Thales is boring me now. And he is right. It’s time I was away. The Emperor does not like to be kept waiting, and besides which, I’m curious. What can he want? But before I find out I must teach the Knife a lesson.

  It happens quite easily – all thought, all colour drains from my mind as I step away from the leaping shadows of the cook-pot fire.

  Thales shakes his head; if he’d a friend with him he might try not to look scared, but he’s alone – he cannot help it. “Where’ve you gone, you little witch? Your tricks don’t scare me, brat,” he hisses.

  Just because he cannot see me, he thinks I cannot hear him. He is wrong: there is no ungodly magic here. I am just quiet, and quick, but it fills people with fear when the next moment I am just not there any more. Up the wall I go, digging my toes into gaps, curling my fingers over crumbling ledges, gripping at plants creeping out of cracks. I’m climbing up to the light – there’s a hole in the vaulted roof where a paving slab’s fallen down into my underground lake.

  I feel the breath quicken in my body; I want to laugh as I climb.

  Thales is standing now, holding on to one of the rope walkways, looking around. “You think you’re so cunning, don’t you?” he says. “But one day soon you’ll get what’s coming to you, you and your barbarian witch-father. He’s a traitor now, or had you not heard the news? Don’t think I don’t know who you really are, Ghost. You’ve no place in the Empire of Thieves.”

  My father. A cold, empty feeling washes over me. What does Thales the Knife know about him? But I don’t stop climbing. That’s what Thales wants. He wants to goad me into coming back, so I try to fight him. As if I’d be that foolish. He’d love an excuse to finish me off.

  Who does he think I am?

  I’m nearly there, nearly out into the street. I can feel the light warm on my face. Up, up. I’m out. Out on the street, pressing my face against the sun-baked pavement. A woman nearly trips over me and looks back, cursing. She cannot see me. It is a skill I have. I can go anywhere without being seen; I can do anything.

  It is why they call me the Ghost, and it is why no one can stop me.

  In the Garden of the Emperor of Thieves

  I GO OVER the roof-tops, thirsting with the need to leap all silent and quick through the night. It is dark now, but the shadowy city is festooned with firelit windows like so many winking, blinking jewels. To the west, the sea shimmers, a silver path laid across it by the moon. There is just a faint, fine line of purply light across the horizon, and as I watch, that too disappears. The sun has gone; it is night.

  What does Thales know about him? I am thinking of my father – a sport I ought long since to have given up. He’s a traitor now, is he? I will never believe that. Father is so stuffed full of barbarian notions he has honour and loyalty coming out of his ears. He is so true to the Empire he has forgot his own kin. I spit as I leap from one roof-top to the next, imagining my spittle landing right in his black, glittery eye. I hear word of him almost every day in the market-place – how could I not, when everyone knows who he is? If there is not some girl cooing over his great beauty, a pack of brainless young men will be telling the latest tale of how he slayed five Arabs with one sweep of his sword. He’s in the desert now, they say, bargaining with the Caliphate. Sometimes my father rides out with tribes who wander the wilderness and live all year in tents, and he listens to secrets whispered along the trade paths from a great land far to the east. God’s Fire, they call him, for his skill in sending the enemies of the Emperor off to the next world. Not my Emperor, the Emperor of Thieves – Father has a different lord, Constans the Second, Imperial Master of the New Roman Empire.

  I’m not going to think about him. What is the use?

  I have never gone into my lord’s house through the front door. The first time I tried this trick, everyone thought I had lost my senses. He’ll have your throat cut as soon as look at you, Iskendar said. There’s rules, Niko told me. Ways of doing things. You’ve to get up to the door and knock five times, and if you’re let in, you’ve to drop on your knees straight away.

  I did none of those things. I went over the garden wall, like I’m doing now. There’s an old peach tree growing right up it, and over I go. The Emperor of Thieves is the one person in this city who may leave his doors unlocked, his windows unshuttered for days and nights on end. Who would be so mindless as to steal from here?

  The garden is heavy with the scent of jasmine and rosemary, lavender and mastic-sap. It makes me feel dizzy, but the Emperor likes his garden to sing to him, or so he says when he’s in a confiding mood.

  Grass brushes against my ankles; I catch the reek of roses, of thyme. It’s not so dark I can’t see the house, and my eyes are good at night anyhow. All the windows are lit – the Emperor of Thieves has no cause to skimp on lamp oil. The window I want’s on the upper floor. Up the trellis I come; waxy vine leaves brush at my face, stickying my fingers with the juice of summer’s last grapes. One hand on the ledge. The other. Nearly there. I wait, listening.

  I can hear low voices – just two – and the scrapings and chewings of men eating their supper. I have caught my lord at table. So much the worse for him: if he did not want me, he ought not to have asked for me. Arms straining, I haul myself over the window-ledge and drop on to the cool tiled floor, crouching immediately in the shadows. Who’s here? At the far end of the room’s a table; my lord sits there with Narxes, his eunuch. No one loves my Emperor more than Narxes, and no one’s madder, or more dangerous. Apart from maybe my father. Narxes is not from the Empire. He is pale-skinned and his cheekbones are high – Black Elias told me once that Narxes was taken as a slave from Slavic lands and served in the Imperial Guard up at the Palace. Narxes has got that softness about his face that all eunuchs do. Not quite a woman, but not quite a man.

  He’s pouring my lord more wine, leaning forward across the table. The lamplight glints off his shaven head.

  “That will be enough,” says the Emperor of Thieves, holding out one of his long, delicate hands. “We have a visitor.”

  Narxes jumps slightly and looks vexed with himself for doing it. Seeing me, he says, “It is usual, boy, to knock.”

  My lord laughs, and quick, quick, I come forward to bow my head before him. I glance up and see Narxes sitting back in his chair, frowning slightly. There’s a big platter on the table heaped with what looks like stuffed kid; it smells of garlic and fish sauce, and has that rank, goaty stink about it too. Narxes does not seem delighted that I’ve got in the way of their meat. He is fiddling with the stalk of a half-eaten
pear by his plate. He is twitchy. Why?

  “So,” says my lord. “The race is now begun. How went your little chat with Demosthenes, Ghost?”

  “He had not forgotten, my lord. He swears he shall not win.”

  My lord smiles, and the skin creases around his ruined eyes. I cannot help staring, sometimes, wondering what it would be like to lose my sight, to have my eyes scraped from my skull. No one knows what crime the Emperor of Thieves committed, long ago, but I’ve heard he was born to the Purple, that he is close bound to the Emperor Constans by blood, and that his eyes were taken from him that he might not be a challenge to the throne. I’ve heard that Narxes was the only member of the Imperial Guard loyal to him, and that is why Narxes serves the Underworld now instead of the Empire. But you never know what’s true and what’s made up. For all I know, the Emperor of Thieves was nothing more than a pickpocket with a good head for trade.

  I’m burning to ask him what he wants, but I know I cannot. I may come in through the window – he likes that, he admires the cheek of it – but I’m no fool. There is only so far I can go. Narxes gives him a look, one eyebrow slightly lifted, and I can tell he’s not going to like what the Emperor’s about to say—

  “You have done well,” says my lord. “There are not many I could trust to deliver my messages to Demosthenes. Now there’s something else I want you to do.”

  Narxes’ eyebrow lifts even higher. He likes this very ill. It must be something good.

  “Your wish is my command, O lord,” I say.

  “Come closer, child.”

  I go and sit at his feet as if I were a tiny stripling and he my dearest papa. I look up but not quite at him, my eyes lowered in respect. My lord cannot see, but he feels everything, I swear it. He can feel the way you look at him. Narxes’ mouth is all pursed up as if he smells something bad, and now he’s gazing out the window. He is probably trying to pretend I’m not here.

  My lord smiles. “Do you know the house of Achaicus Dassalena?” he says to me.

  Achaicus Dassalena? Achaicus Dassalena? I know where he lives, all right. He is the Prefect of Constantinople, second in command only to the Emperor Constans himself. The Emperor of Thieves rules the Underworld, Achaicus very nearly everything else. “I know his house,” I say. “It’s the big villa with the blue door down near the Palace.” I hold my breath for a moment. “What would my lord have me do?”

  The Emperor of Thieves smiles, pressing his lips together. “Now listen, little Ghost. The Guild of Thieves has been revered as Keeper of Order in the Underworld since the days of Constantine himself, when Rome had only just been abandoned to the barbarians and the Empire was still full of fire. You understand me, Ghost, do you not?”

  I gaze down at the floor, wondering what have I done to besmirch this noble history. There is a chicken bone beneath the table with a shiny lump of gristle still attached; Narxes really ought to have talk with my lord’s servants. “Of course, my lord,” I say.

  This city runs with all the smoothness and mystery of the mechanical angels they have at the Palace to confuse barbarian kings. Even the Underworld must bleed tax money into the Imperial coffers. The Guild of Thieves pays its dues just as the silk-weavers, the silversmiths and all the rest of them. There is even a Guild of Sewerworkers and they are probably taxed as well. But not so high as us.

  “Well,” says my lord. “Achaicus Dassalena has just made a foolish choice.”

  I let out a tiny, relieved breath. It is not me, then, who has offended the honour of the Guild of Thieves. He goes on: “Achaicus has deemed that our Guild is no longer to be tolerated. I fear the running of the city has softened his mind: he wants to rid Constantinople of thievery altogether. He wants to close us down.”

  What an idiot. Where’s the use in that? It’ll never work, and if there is always to be thievery, bribery, smuggling and racketeering, why not have some coin out of it in taxes?

  The Emperor of Thieves leans closer. I cannot help looking at his eye sockets. The skin is thin, purply, puckered where it healed long ago. He speaks: “Do you recall the name Callias Athenas?”

  A chilliness slides down my spine. Callias Athenas used to be in the army, commander of the Thracians. There was a scandal – everyone heard whispers of it but never the whole tale. While Constans was away out east last year, fighting against the Caliphate over Armenia, there were whisperings he was not fit to be Emperor, that he’d abandoned the capital in her hour of direst need, leaving her like a virgin girl hemmed about by pirates. Then Constans came back, Callias disappeared, and the whispering stopped. It was fool’s talk anyway – if this city were a woman, she’d be a raddled, wise old whore, not a virgin girl.

  “Your silence tells me that you know something of this,” says my lord. “Am I correct?”

  I nod, then recall he cannot see me and say, “Yes, O lord.”

  “Callias Athenas was a fool,” says the Emperor. “The truth of it is he’d a lust for power himself, and when Constans was in the desert Callias took his chance and tried to win the nobility and the army over to his side so he could take the throne. Callias had all the eastern army behind him and most of the nobility – but Constans has spies everywhere, and word of the betrayal reached him. That is why he came back in such a great hurry when Muahi’ya the Arab was still razing Armenia.”

  I nod, thinking, What’s this to do with Achaicus Dassalena? Unless—

  “Constans’s spies rooted out most who’d sided with Callias,” says my lord, his voice all dry and thin. “But Achaicus Dassalena covered his trail well.”

  Achaicus Dassalena, Prefect of the City, Upholder of the Law – a traitor? Surely this cannot be true? The Law in Constantinople is the will of the Emperor, and he rules by grace of God. To be sure, I am a thief, yet every coin has another face: there cannot be law without disorder. But for the Prefect to betray the Emperor is just unnatural. They are meant to be on the same side.

  I cannot help smiling. This is going to be good. It is going to be a grand old caper, which is just what I like. Narxes takes a swig of wine, still staring studiously out of the window, as if not looking at me will make me disappear.

  What would my lord have me do?

  He bends towards me in his chair. I can smell the garlic and kid-meat on his breath.

  “Somewhere,” he hisses, “Achaicus Dassalena left a trace of his betrayal. It will be in his home: he’s not fool enough to leave any sign of it in the Palace. You are going to find it for me, and then we’ll see about him putting a stop to the Guild of Thieves. Achaicus will be as a new-born kit in the palm of my hand.” My lord leans back in his chair, his thin, bluey lips twisting into a smile.

  I feel hot with the thrill of it. I have broken into many a fine villa. But never into the house of Achaicus Dassalena, Prefect of Constantinople.

  This is turning into a fine evening.

  A Robbery

  IT IS one of those nights my city feels alive. The crowds surging through her streets are blood, the jumble of buildings her ancient bones. It’s quicker to go by the alleys, but I race up along the Mese anyway. It runs like a spine across Constantinople, this street, widening out through the Forum of Theodosius where market stalls cluster round crumbly pillars and that big old statue of Emperor Justinian on his horse. As I run, the air’s alive with the stink of tanned leather, the jangle of silver. Here’s a girl selling quince sweets and ginger buns, and a wine shop cluttered with stools where careless drunks sit, their purses unwatched. The race at the Hippodrome has put fire in everyone. It must be over now, surely. I hope for Demosthenes’s sake he kept to our bargain.

  The night air is thick with cook-fire smoke that stings my eyes, and I can smell grilling fish. Just up here’s where Aikaterina the Fat has her grill-shop. I weave my way through the tangle of people, getting closer. It never pays to burgle on an empty stomach. The crowd shifts, parts, shifts again like a shoal of fish… I remember, once when I was small, we were taken out on a boat and my father showed me a
dark patch on the water, ruffled by white foam, and when we turned closer to the wind and drew nearer he lifted me. We saw a great rush of mackerel, mottled and shiny in the water as if they’d been born out of a forge-fire.

  My father used to get such a longing in his eyes when he saw the sea. “The ocean is like a great road, little cub,” he once said. “She has taken me far from home and she whispers to me at night when I’m near her, singing me the way back.”

  It’s one of the few times he has ever spoken of the north.

  I wonder if he dreams of home now, away in the desert with Muahi’ya the Arab, and what Thales the Knife meant when he said my father was a traitor. Has he gone over to Muahi’ya’s camp and become an enemy of the Empire? I’ve heard of people doing that: deciding the Prophet Mohammed had the last word after all, not Christ, and changing sides. It is not Father’s way, though – he’s still half in thrall to his barbarian gods, just like Ma who hangs bread dipped in wine from the branches of the vines in our courtyard. What has my father been doing? I’m damned if I’m begging news from Thales, though.

  I push closer to Aikaterina’s stall – I can see the stone tables laid out in the street now, and the crowd’s even thicker the closer I get, but still I can hear her yelling, “Get it while it’s hot, three coppers for fish so fresh he’s still swimming!” I smile. Aikaterina’s got such a big gob on her, I bet even the Arabs out in the desert know how much a griddled mackerel’s going to cost. Sometimes Aikaterina just gives up and hands one over to me; she knows I’ll have it whether she likes it or no. But there’s so many people in the way: a group of boys a few summers older than me – palace puppets all blown up with hot air, hawking and wine. I think the one with greasy dark hair hanging around his shoulders might even be Solon Dassalena, ever-loving only son of the Prefect himself. What a happy chance. I remember Solon from those parties in the Palace gardens: all venom and rose-petal wine among the peach trees.