This must be how one felt after love: this glorious release, this utter lassitude. Alf’s power, sated, returned docilely to its cage; he turned from it to the outer world, sighing a little, suddenly aware of his body’s weariness.
Rough hands seized him. Voices roared in his ears, shaping slowly into words. “Liar! Impostor! Latin spy!”
The hall was in an uproar. Even the Emperor was on his feet, howling like a beast. “Kill him! Kill him!”
The hands began to drag him away. They belonged to Varanrgians, he realized. Even yet he was too numb and spent to be afraid. The last thing he saw before a scarlet darkness enfolded him was the Emperor’s mad rage, and beyond it the Moor’s wide white smile.
As the tumult receded, Alf struggled free of the Guardsman’s cloak that had wrapped him about. They half dragged, half carried him down a long glittering corridor, marble-cold and deserted.
Alf fought to walk; after a step or two they let him, keeping still a firm grip on his arms. “Where are you taking me?” he asked them.
Neither replied. Nor did their faces tell him anything. The eyes of both were blue and hard.
The palace was a labyrinth, their passage through it tortuous and interminable. Once they passed from building to building under the sodden sky. Alf’s feet ached; he might have laughed at himself, the tireless pilgrim, grown too soft from his months in the City to walk any proper distance.
Abruptly the Guards halted. A door opened; they thrust him through it and slammed it behind him.
He had fallen to one knee. He straightened slowly, shaking back his hair. This was no prison cell. A reception room, he thought, furnished with a chair or two, a wine table, a divan beside a glowing brazier. The walls shimmered with mosaics, beasts and birds in a garden, a golden fish leaping high out of a fountain spray.
His eyes returned from the wall to the divan. On it reclined a languid smiling figure. “Greetings,” said Michael Doukas.
There was a chair nearby; Alf took it.
“No doubt of it,” observed his host, “you have style. Courage, too, or should I call it folly? To prophesy so calmly, in such exquisite detail, and to his own face, the downfall of an emperor.”
“He asked for it,” Alf said.
“He asked for a web of soothing lies. It’s well for you, sir prophet, that he never asked your true name or nation, and that his sorcerer knows you only as the healer of Saint Basil’s.”
Alf’s entrails knotted. Michael Doukas smiled, arching a delicate brow. “So, Alfred of Saint Ruan’s, is your courage not absolute? Or do you fear for your friends in House Akestas?”
Alf clamped his jaw, but the other read the question in his eyes.
“I have my spies. The Doge admires you, I understand, though you’ve never performed for him as you have for us. We’re enormously flattered, if somewhat disconcerted. Has anyone ever called you Cassandra?”
“Yes.”
“Indeed?” Michael Doukas was interested. “Someday you’ll have to tell me the tale. I plan to survive this, you see. The others will tell themselves that you lied, that all your dooms were simply empty words. I shall build upon them.”
“Can you be sure that I tell the truth?”
“How not? I’ve read a book, and I’ve heard a tale or two. I know what you are, Master Alfred. Alf—Theo—who named you so wisely and so well?”
“A monk in Anglia and the Master of Saint Basil’s.” Alf raised his chin. “You aren’t alone in your wisdom, sir. The Moor too knows what I am.”
“What. Not precisely who. Or,” added Michael Doukas, “where.”
“So,” Alf said. “What will you do with me?”
The dark eyes glinted upon him. “I have you in my power, don’t I? It’s not often I have to deal with one quite so good to look on. More than good, if truth be told. What is it like to look in the mirror and see what you see?”
He expected an answer. Alf gave it, shortly. “Maddening.”
Michael Doukas laughed. “Indeed! You’re behind it and can’t enjoy it. There’s a tragedy for old Euripides.”
“Aristophanes,” Alf muttered.
Again that sweet, sexless laughter. “Such wit! You have an alarming array of talents, master seer. And very little patience to spare for me. I play with you, you think, like a cat amusing itself before the kill. No doubt you expect me to keep you here until I tire of you, then hand you over to His Majesty’s torturers.”
“You don’t serve the Angeloi,” Alf said. “You only seem to. Are you going to make me prophesy for your black-browed cousin?”
“No,” answered Michael Doukas, “of course not. My handsome kinsman has no use for a seer. I serve myself, Master Alfred, and perhaps the City. If what you foretell comes to pass, there will be great need of a man with wit and intelligence and a thorough knowledge of the empire’s workings. Rulers may change with dismaying regularity, but a competent administrator is worth more than a hundred kings.”
“And I, who know all of this, am in your hands. In all senses. The Emperor has decreed my death. You know all there is to know of me; most particularly that while I have no dread of my own death, I feel quite otherwise about the deaths of my friends. Again I ask you. What will you do with me?”
“I like you, Master Alfred. Yes,” Michael Doukas said, “I like you very much indeed. Brave as only a Latin can be, clever—almost—as a Greek, and completely unafraid to tell the truth. Would you enter my service?”
“What would I be? Your prophet? Your bedmate? Your fool?”
“Fools are a Frankish affectation. A prophet you’ve already been. The other …you are heartbreakingly beautiful. But you are also quite obviously, and quite tiresomely, the sort of young man who cares only for women.”
Alf’s face was stony. Michael Doukas smiled. “No, I want you for other things. To look at, perhaps. To tell me the truth.”
“Then you should find yourself a slave. Or an intelligent lapdog.”
“And not a Latin wanderer who tries to pass as a Greek? Rather successfully, I might add. Your accent could merely be provincial.”
“I’ve refused to serve the Franks, who after all are my own people. Should I turn traitor?”
”Some might say you already have. You’re here, are you not?”
“Not of my own accord.”
“No one forced you to come to the City.”
“I came as a pilgrim. I remain as a healer. To which occupation I would like very much to return.”
“Well then, you shall be my physician.”
Alf regarded him with a clear pale stare. “You are in excellent health and likely to live to a great age if your intrigues do not bring you to a sudden end. You have no need of my services, Michael Doukas.”
“How proud you are! Lucifer before his fall.” Michael Doukas rose and smoothed his robes. “You are adamant?”
“Yes.”
“So.” The eunuch raised his voice. “Guards!”
They came at once, filling the room with their presence, no longer the Emperor’s Varangians but those who had accompanied the chamberlain to Saint Basil’s. He indicated Alf with a languid hand. “If the Emperor should ask, this man is dead. He died in most exquisite agony, as befits a spy and a traitor. Upon his death, in the way of sorcerers, his body shriveled and fell to dust.”
“And if the Moor asks?” Alf inquired.
“If the Moor asks, we cut you up and fed you to the menagerie.” Michael Doukas paused, half smiling. “You had better not appear at Saint Basil’s for a time.”
“Until His Majesty is well distracted?”
“You know your own prophecy.” He beckoned. “Take him away.”
Alf stood in their hands, eyes upon the eunuch. “Why?” he asked.
Michael Doukas shrugged. “I like you. And,” he said, “you might be of use to me later. Remember what I know, and what I have not done.”
“Could I forget?” Alf smiled suddenly, startling that polished courtier into a brief, wide-eyed stare. “You are an utter villain. But for all that, a strangely likable man. Look for me at Armageddon.”