At last Mirrane spoke in Persian: “Don’t drive him away.” Argyros had a hard time holding his face straight: no use letting the girl know he was fluent in her language, though he did not think there was anything more to this than her not wanting to lose her finder’s fee. Shahin became more reasonable. As was his custom when starting an investigation, the magistrianos wandered into the taproom to drink a little wine and soak up the local gossip. Shahin’s place was good for that; it featured a mixed clientele, and talk came fast and furious in the three tongues of the imperial east and Persian as well. There was more chatter about doings in Ctesiphon, the Persian capital, than over what was happening in Constantinople.
Naturally enough, the handbills were also a prominent subject, but not in a way that helped Argyros. The townsfolk seemed much less upset about them than George Lakhanodrakon or Leontios had been. One man, well in his cups, said with a shrug, “They’re looking to break our nerve. I’ll fret when I see a Persian army outside the walls, and not until.”
The magistrianos tried to prompt him: “Don’t you think the Nestorians might invite—” Several people shushed him, and he had to subside, for four musicians emerged from a back room to take their seats on low stools by the fireplace. One carried two vase-shaped drums and had a tambourine strapped to his calf, another brought a pair of flutes, the third a long trumpet, and the last a short-necked lute played with a bow, something Argyros had not seen at Constantinople.
At a nod from the lutanist, they began to play. The drummer’s beat was more intricate than Argyros was used to, the tune lively but at the same time somehow languorous. Again he was conscious of traditions older than the Roman Empire that lived on in the east.
Then Mirrane glided into the taproom, and the magistrianos worried about traditions no more. She wore only her veil and a few jeweled ornaments that sparkled in the torchlight; her smooth skin gleamed with oil. When she moved among the tables, it was as if she sought out a particular man to slay with lust. Sinuous as a serpent, she slid away from every arm that reached out to take hold of her.
“With a dance like that,” Argyros whispered to the man at the table next to his, “why does she bother with the veil?”
The fellow was shocked enough to tear his burning gaze away from Mirrane. “It were a gross indecency for a woman to show her face in public!”
“Oh.”
Mirrane’s eyes flashed as she recognized the magistrianos, and he knew she had chosen him for her victim. Laughing, she waved to the musicians; the tune grew faster and more urgent. It would have taken a man of stone, which Argyros assuredly was not, to remain unstirred as she whirled in front of him. The oil on her skin was scented with musk; under it he caught the perfume of herself. The music rose to a fiery crescendo. With a shout, Mirrane flung herself down on the seat by Argyros, cast her arms around his neck. With her warm length pressed against him, he hardly heard the storm of applause that filled the inn.
And later, when she went upstairs with him, he ignored with equal aplomb the jealous catcalls that followed them. Knowing what was important at any given moment, he told himself, was a virtue. He woke the next morning feeling considerably rumpled but otherwise as well as he ever had in his life. The soft straw pallet was narrow for two; Mirrane’s leg sprawled over his calf. He moved slowly and carefully, but woke her anyway as he got out of bed. “Sorry.”
She smiled lazily up at him. “You have nothing to be sorry for.”
“I’m glad of that.” He politely turned his back to use the chamberpot, then splashed water on his face and rinsed his mouth from a ewer that stood next to the bed. He ran his fingers through his hair and beard, shook his head in mock dismay at the snarls he found. “You’d think the dogs dragged me in, the way I must look.”
“Do you always worry so much?” she asked, rising and stretching luxuriously.
“As a matter of fact, yes.” He went over to his saddlebags, which he had not yet unpacked, in search of a comb. Several jingling trinkets and her veil were draped over the leather sacks. She took them back from him while he rummaged.
He lifted out three or four small, tightly stoppered pots with bits of rag protruding from holes drilled through their corks. “What on earth are those?” Mirrane asked; they were not the sort of thing travelers usually carried.
Argyros thought fast. “They’re filled with clay,” he said. “I filter water from the cisterns through them; from the amount and type of sediment left behind, I can judge how pure the water is.”
“Ah,” she nodded, not revealing much interest in anything so mundane as the tools of his alleged trade. All the same, he was relieved when he finally found his bone comb and stowed the pots away. They were filled, not with clay, but with the Franco-Saxon compound of charcoal, sulfur, and saltpeter the armorers of Constantinople had dubbed hellpowder. Argyros had no intention of advertising its existence without dire need.
He combed out his tangled whiskers. “That’s—ouch—better.” When he was done dressing, he said, “I know what I do seems dull, but Daras may need all the water it can find to hold out against a Persian attack if these parchments I’ve heard about stir up the rebellion they’re after.”
Mirrane’s costume made a simple shrug worth looking at. “I’ve heard of them too, but there haven’t been many here about Shahin’s place.” She hesitated. “Are you thinking we may be disloyal because we’re of Persian blood? Shahin’s grandfather converted to Christianity—orthodox, not Nestorian—and he worships every week at Bartholomew’s church.”
He believed her. There was no point in lying about something of that sort; it was too easy to check. “I wasn’t thinking any such thing,” he said. “I’d rather not get stuck in a siege, though, especially in a city that may run dry. And,” he added a moment later, “it would be sinful to risk you.”
Since he had used the story he did, he thought it wise actually to examine some of Daras’s waterworks. One major cistern stood close to the church of the Apostle Bartholomew. He poked at the brickwork as if to check its soundness, then climbed the stairs to the top of the great tank and peered into it to see what the water level was.
One of the faces he noticed while he was puttering about seemed familiar. After a while he realized that the hawk-faced fellow lounging against a wall and munching a pomegranate was the flute player at Shahin’s tavern. The man was gone by the time he got down from the cistern, which left Argyros uncertain whether his presence was coincidental or the magistrianos’s cover had satisfied him. Leontios greeted him cordially when, having had enough playacting, he went over to the garrison commander’s headquarters. “Any progress?”
“Not really,” Argyros said. “I have more new questions than answers. First, are you sure your men have Daras sealed off from getting these handbills from outside?”
“I told you so yesterday. Oh, I’ll not deny they’d take the gold to let some things through, but not that poison. We’ve lived through too many religious riots to want more.”
“Fair enough. Next question: where can I find the best map of the city?”
Leontios tugged at his beard as he thought. “That would be in the eparch’s office, not here. He collects the head-tax and the hearth-tax, so he has to keep track of every property in the city. My own charts are years out of date—the main streets don’t change much, and they’re mainly what I’m concerned with as a military man.”
“No blame on you,” Argyros assured him. “Now—third one pays for all. Do you keep note of where in Daras your troopers have pulled down the parchments?”