As he ran, he wondered how Mirrane had known he was coming. She must have stopped by to see how her chanters were doing and talked with the one of whom he had been asking questions. If he had come back the same way he had gone, he would have fallen into her hands. As it was, she had a gift for putting him in difficult spots.
It had been worse in Daras, though. Now he was on the streets of his own city. He knew them; his pursuers did not. If they were going to catch him, they would have to work at it. I le darted through an alleyway that stank of rotten fish, turned sharply left and then right. He paused to catch his breath. Behind him he heard the monks arguing in Greek and hissing Coptic. “Split up! We’ll find him!” one of them shouted.
Moving more quietly now, the magistrianos came to the mouth of a blind alley. He picked up half a brick and flung it at the wall that blocked the way, perhaps twenty paces down. It hit with a resounding crash.
“Mother of God, what was that?” a woman cried from a second-story bedroom. Several dogs yapped frantically.
“There he is!”
The shout came from three directions at once, but none of the monks sounded close. Argyros hurried down a lane that ended about three minutes’ walk from his home.
At the first cross street, he almost bumped into a monk. It was hard to say which was the more surprised. But the monk had only Mirrane’s description of him. That led to a fatal second of doubt. Argyros hit him in the face, then stamped on his unshod foot. As the monk started to crumple, the magistrianos kicked him in the pit of the stomach, which not only put him out of the fight but also kept him too busy trying to breathe to be able to cry out. The whole encounter lasted only a few heartbeats. Argyros turned onto his own street. He walked along jauntily, pleased at having escaped Mirrane’s trap. She had been someone to fear in Daras, he thought, but here at the heart of the Empire all the advantage was on his side.
Thus filled with himself, he did not see the dark-cloaked figure come out of a shadowed doorway and glide after him. Nor, thinking back on it, did he really hear anything, but at the last moment he sensed the rush of air from behind. He threw himself to one side, far enough to keep the knife that should have slipped between his ribs from doing more than taking a small, hot bite out of his left arm. He stumbled away, groping for his dagger. His foe pursued. Starlight glittered coldly off the assassin’s blade. Argyros’s own knife came free. He dropped into a crouch, his arms outspread, and began slowly circling to his right.
Seeing he knew what he was about, his attacker went into a like posture. They moved warily, each seeking an opening. The assassin leaped forward, stabbing up from below, underarm style. The magistrianos knocked his knife hand aside with his own left forearm, stepped in close, and thrust himself. His blow was similarly parried. Both men sprang back, resumed their circling dance. Argyros’s eyes flicked to one side. He was in front of his neighbor Theognostos’s house. He took a few cautious steps backward, dragging his heel to feel at the hard-packed ground under his feet. Then he staggered and, with a groan, went to one knee.
Laughing—the first sound he had made in the whole encounter—the assassin rushed toward him, knife upraised for the easy kill. His right foot came down in the same hole the magistrianos had walked around earlier in the evening. His arms flailed as he strove for balance. Argyros lunged forward under his faltering stroke and buried his dagger in his foe’s belly.
The iron scent of blood and the death-stench of suddenly loosed bowels filled the street.
“Sneaky—bastard,” the assassin wheezed. His eyes rolled up in his head as he fell. Argyros approached him with caution, wondering if he was hoarding his last strength for a try at vengeance. But his assailant was truly dead, as the magistrianos found by feeling for a pulse at his ankle. He turned the man onto his back. This was no monk from Alexandria, but a Constantinopolitan street tough. Argyros knew the breed, with their half-shaven heads and puff-sleeved tunics pulled tight at the wrists by drawstrings.
Something had jingled as the man bonelessly went over. There was a well-filled purse at his belt. The magistrianos tucked it into his own beltpouch and, sighing, went to look for a guardsman. What with explanations, formal statements, and such, Argyros did not see his bed until dawn was beginning to lighten the eastern horizon. The sun streaming through the window-woke him much sooner than he wanted. He splashed cool water on his face, but that did nothing to relieve the gritty feeling in his eyes, the tiredness that made him fumble as he laced up his sandals.
He also had trouble remembering why his pouch was heavier than it should have been. Digging, he found the little leather sack he had taken from his assailant. The nomismata that rolled into his hand were smaller and thicker than the goldpieces minted in Constantinople. Instead of the familiar CONOB mintmark, they bore the legend A?K?, for Alexandria.
The magistrianos nodded, unsurprised. He should have figured Mirrane would have more than one string for her bow.
Woman or not, she knew her business. It was unfortunate, he thought, that part of that business was getting rid of him.
The Emperor attended the second session of the ecumenical council, as he had the first. This time his retinue included fewer courtiers and more imperial guardsmen. Their gilded armor and scarlet capes were hardly less splendid than the costumes of the great prelates whom they faced, impassive, over their painted shields.
The hint of force, however, did nothing to deter Arsakios. He returned to the same respectful attack he had launched against the images the previous day. He even allowed a sardonic grin to flicker on his lips as he reiterated his theological paradox.
But his amusement slipped when Eutropios was quick to reply. The patriarch of Constantinople surreptitiously glanced down at his notes from time to time, but his presentation of the ideas hammered out only the night before was clear and lucid. George Lakhanodrakon paid him the highest compliment: “I didn’t think the old fraud had it in him.”
“Amazing what fear will do,” Argyros agreed.
Yet anyone who had expected the patriarch of Alexandria and his followers to yield tamely to Eutropios’s defense of images and their veneration was wrong. No sooner had Eutropios finished than half a dozen eastern bishops were shouting at each other for the privilege of replying.
“Why should I hear you?” Eutropios thundered from the pulpit as NikephorosIII watched. “By denying the reality of the Incarnation, you deny Christ’s perfect humanity and brand yourself Monophysites!”
“Liar!” “Fool!” “Impious idiot!” “How can base matter depict divine holiness?” Turmoil reigned for several minutes as iconoclasts and iconophiles hurled abuse at one another. The two sides went from there to shaking fists and croziers, and seemed about to repeat on a larger scale the squabbling that had gone on in Eutropios’s apartments.
The Emperor Nikephoros uttered a low-voiced command. His bodyguards advanced two paces, their ironshod boots clattering on the stone floor. Sudden silence fell. The Emperor spoke: “The truth should be sought through contemplation and reason, not in this childish brawling.” He nodded to Eutropios. “Let them all speak, that errors may be demonstrated and those who wander be returned to the proper path.”
The patriarch bowed in obedience to his master. The debate began in more orderly fashion. Argyros listened for a while and was impressed to find that many of the points the opponents of images raised had been anticipated the night before. When an iconoclast bishop from Palestine, for example, claimed that icons were of the same substance as their prototypes, the skinny little man who had thought of that problem used elegant Aristotelean logic to deny their consubstantiality. Biblical quotations and texts taken from the church fathers flew like rain. After a while, Argyros regretfully tore himself away from the argumentation and left for the Praitorion to try to catch up on the work he had neglected for the sake of the council.