Imperial Fire

XXIV

Minarets and domes under an eggshell moon gave Hero his first sight of Bukhara the Noble. The expedition camped in an orchard two miles from the capital and left at dawn, faces scrubbed, clothes laundered and armour polished. They hadn’t ridden a mile when a troop of lancers and archers blocked their way.

Vallon passed Hero letters in Arabic and Persian penned by the Logothete’s department. ‘I’ll leave you to negotiate.’

The commander wore a coif and mantle of fish-scale armour over silk robes. After listening to Hero’s address, he despatched a lieutenant to the emir’s palace with the documents and then withdrew his troops a distance, leaving Vallon’s expedition to simmer on the highway. A smog of smoke and dust hung over the city. Behind its dun walls a mosque’s sea-green dome floated in the pall like a polyp, a gold cupola shining dully behind it and minarets like slim phalluses receding into the haze.

Permission to proceed arrived from the emir’s secretariat in late afternoon. The soldiers formed up on each flank of the convoy and escorted it through a gate set in a fortified tower rising forty feet above the ramparts. Immediately inside lay a suburb favoured by the city’s elite, a few open gateways offering glimpses of courtyards and well-watered gardens. The escort led the expedition to a ribat or caravanserai built against the ramparts. From the outside it resembled a prison, with blind mud walls and towers at each corner, the inner towers forming part of the city’s defences. The company entered through a set of carved wooden doors let into a keep constructed of bricks plaited in knotwork designs. Inside lay a serene courtyard centred on a rectangular pool shaded by mulberry trees and surrounded by cloistered accommodation that included airy dormitories and apartments built above stables, kitchens and a bath house. A staff of servants stood ready to attend the foreign guests and a stooped gardener and his boy went about their work, watering rose beds.

The escort’s commander informed Hero that the emir’s representative would call on the expedition after morning prayers the next day. In the meantime, the cooks, launderers and ostlers stood ready to service the travellers’ needs. The moment the gates closed behind the escort, soldiers armed with bows filed onto the parapet and took up position ten yards apart, facing inwards.

When Vallon had found his quarters and arranged his chattels, he summoned his leading men to a council in the caravanserai’s iwan, a vaulted three-sided hall open to cooling breezes from the north. He swept out his gown and looked over the courtyard.

‘I’ve seen worse billets.’

Hauk eyed the guards. ‘A jail scented with roses is still a jail.’

Vallon half-raised a hand. ‘Patience.’

That was a quality whose tensile properties the Vikings had stretched to breaking point. They were sea rovers hundreds of miles from their element, fair-skinned northerners who wilted under the fierce Asian sun.

‘Remind us who we’re dealing with,’ Vallon said to Hero.

‘Bukhara is ruled by Karakhanids, a Turkish tribe related to the Seljuks and opposed to them. Like the Seljuks, they’re Muslim converts who have adopted Arab and Persian culture while retaining some of their nomad ways. The ruler styles himself both Sultan and Khan; his governor in Bukhara carries the titles Emir and Beg. The present khan is called Ahmad, grandson of Ibrahim, a lord of the horizons who considered walls to be a prison and ruled the city from a nomad encampment. Despite their wilderness origins, the dynasty are generous patrons of religion and the arts, endowing many madrasahs and burnishing Bukhara’s reputation as “the dome of learning in the east”. Avicenna, the great historian and physician, was born in the city. As a young man, Omar Khayyam, the brilliant mathematician, astronomer, philosopher and poet, studied algebra here.’

Hauk wasn’t interested in the Karakhanids’ cultural heritage. ‘How do we milk the bastards?’

Vallon winced. ‘We’re fewer than two hundred surrounded by thousands. Act the pirate here and you’ll die like a pirate. I should warn you the Turkmen have ingenious methods for executing malefactors. The blunted and barbed stake inserted up the rectum is one. A night cast into a pit with venomous serpents and scorpions is another. And I’m sure that doesn’t exhaust their cruel inventiveness.’

One of Hauk’s lieutenants, a hulking specimen with bleached eyes, a snub nose and a plaited beard, leaned forward and spat insultingly close to Vallon’s feet.

‘We’re only here because you denied us a few barrels of water.’

Vallon touched the hilt of his sword. ‘The only reason you’re alive is because I took pity on you.’

Hauk put out a restraining hand. ‘Peace, Rorik. We command our own destinies now and have enough gold to pursue our ambitions.’

Vallon smoothed out his gown. ‘Precisely. You can follow any wind you find favourable.’

Hero watched the Vikings leave. ‘I’m glad we’ve seen the last of that gang.’

Vallon nodded, but something about the general’s expression suggested that a clean break with the northern marauders wasn’t a foregone conclusion.

It wasn’t just the heat stored in the sun-baked walls that kept Hero from sleep. He couldn’t stop marvelling at the fact that he’d travelled further east than almost any man before him, further even than Alexander, the conqueror of the known world. Once he passed Samarkand, only a week’s journey away, he’d be treading ground even Master Cosmas Monopthalmos hadn’t stepped on. He threw back his sheet, lit a lamp and took a copy of the Logothete’s itinerarium onto the balcony. Unrolling the scroll, he traced their progress sea by sea, city by city. He calculated that they’d covered between a third and a half of the distance to China. After Samarkand, the landmarks were no more than names — Kashgar, Khotan, Cherchen, Chang’an and, in a blank space at the end of the scroll, Kaifeng, capital of Song China.

A cock crowed. The first call to prayer rose and was answered from all directions, the sounds overlapping, one voice rising as another faded out, blending into a clamorous, melodious hubbub.

Hero turned and smiled. ‘Couldn’t you sleep either?’

‘I’m too excited,’ Aiken said.

‘Let’s go up and watch the sun rise.’

They climbed a twisting staircase built into one of the towers and emerged onto a high platform. Birds flocked past, black shapes winnowing across the peach and lilac sky. Hero rested his hands on the parapet and watched the sun swell above the metropolis, striking lustre from the green and blue tiles cladding mosques, minarets, mausoleums and madrasahs.

The sun rose and the clamour of the waking city rose with it. Flat-roofed houses, ribbed melon-shaped domes and feathery treetops faded into the smoke and dust of another day.

‘Are you glad you came?’ Hero said.

‘Oh yes. I feel as if I’m treading in the path of emperors.’

After breakfast Hero visited the bath house where a taciturn giant laid him on a slab and pummelled and thumped him, cracking each joint in turn and finishing by lifting up his head and bending it forward until something inside gave. On the slab next to him another masseur trod Vallon’s backbone with his feet.

Clad in a shot grey silk kaftan, Hero stood at Vallon’s side to receive the emir’s representative. The double doors opened and a mounted column high-stepped into the yard, preceded by a band playing fifes, trumpets and kettledrums. Behind the vanguard rode a young aristocrat with features so finely etched they should have been struck on coins. Only the suggestion of an epicanthic fold hinted at steppe origins. In his right hand he carried a gold-inlaid axe as badge of office. His spirited horse also commanded attention — small, chiselled head sprung on a long powerful neck, sturdy crupper and shortish straight front legs. Its flowing mane and tail suggested that at full gallop it would give the impression of flying.

Hero presented the official to Vallon. ‘His Eminence Yusuf ad-Dawlah, Second Secretary in the Office of Foreign Affairs. His Eminence trusts that our accommodation meets our expectations and assures us that this house is our house for the duration of our stay.’

‘I should hope so,’ Vallon said. ‘We’re paying enough for it.’

Yusuf sat his horse, exuding authority and the faint scent of amber. A tattered mob of crows flew cackling overhead.

Hero explained their mission, stressing the benefits that would accrue to all centres of civilisation from an alliance with the Song emperor.

Yusuf didn’t seem impressed. ‘God above is closer to us than the emperor of China. Nevertheless, it’s not our intention to deny you progress. You may proceed east with the emir’s blessing and at your own risk.’

‘We’ll need guides and fresh pack animals.’

‘That will be arranged.’

‘Ask him to arrange an audience with the emir,’ Vallon said.

Yusuf’s response was silky. ‘His Excellency would love to receive you. Alas, the emir is making a progress through the provinces, ensuring the peace and prosperity of the great khan’s dominion.’

Hero decoded the lie. ‘I suspect the emir doesn’t want to be associated with us if we fail — not after the last embassy perished.’

‘Ask the minister what he knows of their fate.’

Yusuf’s expression veiled. ‘They passed through Bukhara Sherif last summer and we afforded them every courtesy while warning them of the dangers they faced. They paid no attention. If I may say so, they struck me as arrogant and ill-prepared.’

‘That’s not a failing you’ll find in us,’ Hero said. ‘We’ve suffered setbacks and know that more await. We would welcome any advice you can offer.’

‘My advice? Turn back. Our khan, may God the exalted show mercy on him, can guarantee you safe passage only as far as Kashgar. Beyond that the roads to China unravel. Forts lie empty and crumbling. Gangs of deserters lie in wait for the few caravans desperate enough to risk the journey.’

At a prompt from Vallon, Hero indicated the troopers and Vikings. ‘Our soldiers have been denied contact with society for months. They long to resume intercourse with it.’

At the thought of letting loose the lecherous soldiery on the city, a twinge of migraine seemed to cross Yusuf’s face. ‘No more than six men are allowed out at any one time, and then only under armed escort. Any crimes they commit will be punished under Bukhara’s laws. I understand that your men have human needs.’ Yusuf nodded at one of his retinue. ‘Arrange it.’ He made to turn.

‘One last thing,’ Hero said. ‘I gather that you record the arrival of every traveller who enters the city.’

‘We welcome the righteous and try to turn away the lawless. Why do you ask?’

‘A month ago, nomads seized one of our troopers in the Kara Kum. We suspect his abductors intend to sell him in the slave market.’

‘If he was taken a month ago, you should have looked for him in Khiva.’

That brought the minister’s visit to an end. His orchestra struck up and he followed it out, the gates crashing shut behind him.

Next morning Hero and Aiken set out to explore the city under the protection of a minder called Arslan. They passed through an inner wall surrounding the medina and threaded narrow lanes tunnelling between windowless mud walls. Arslan forced a passage through the jostling crowd and strings of donkeys and camels heaped with country produce.

All God’s tribes seemed to be represented on the streets — moon-faced Turkmen with apple cheeks and green eyes, hawk-nosed Arabs with iron-grey beards, Persians with features that might have been copied from miniatures. Most of the Turkmen gentry wore skull caps and striped gowns called khatans gathered at the waist by sashes broad enough to hold scimitars. The more rustic element favoured padded jackets and riding breeches and cone-shaped helmets of white felt with upturned brims. Hero observed a man wearing kohl eye-shadow and a rose behind one ear leading a tribe of wives and daughters so smothered in horse-hair veils that they resembled beehives with a narrow window at the top. Other exotic elements included Manichean monks clad all in white, wearing tall cloches; and Jews in hats of tight-curled karakul wool, obeying the sumptuary laws that decreed they tie their gowns with cords too thin to hold weapons.

Leaving the sunlight, Arslan plunged into the semi-darkness of a multi-vaulted bazaar that from outside looked like a clutch of giant eggs. Hero and Aiken followed him along labyrinthine aisles, past piles of saddlebags and prayer mats, between the stalls of cobblers, ropemakers, confectioners and goldsmiths, assistants crying the wares while the owners bargained with their customers and slandered their competitors.

Sunlight dazzled and shadows blinded. They had debouched into an open market offering everyday goods. Rose-coloured rock salt stood in piles like pink ice. Flies swarmed over racks of meat. Poultry scrabbled in wicker cages. A stallholder insisted that the foreigners sample melon with flesh as white as milk, as sweet as honey. Metalsmiths beat out household utensils on the spot, inviting passers-by to observe the quality of their workmanship.

Hero squeezed through a gate into a noisy square where the atmosphere was as much festive as commercial. Groups of bumpkins watched artistes perform stunts with snakes and nimble dogs.

A pimp with a wall eye accosted them. ‘Do you like bad girls?’

‘Certainly not,’ said Hero.

‘Naughty boys. Hey!’

Hero tugged Arslan’s sleeve. ‘I think that’s enough for the first day.’

Exiting the square into a quieter quarter, Hero noticed several drinking houses open to the street, their clientele lounging on rugs under awnings while musicians plucked lutes in the background.

‘What are they drinking?’ he asked Arslan.

‘Chai, sir, from China. It’s all the fashion among the gentry. Would you care to try some?’

‘Yes, I would,’ said Hero. He turned to Aiken. ‘Master Cosmas sampled the beverage and claimed it had many sovereign qualities.’

At a word from Arslan, the owner of the next chai-khana hurried to prepare a place on a fine rug dyed with precious lac. He showed his guests a block of chai stamped with Chinese characters, explaining that it was called Longevity Dragon Sprout, reserved for the emperor’s court.

He officiated while a waiter poured the chai from a silver pot into shallow white bowls. The proprietor held one of the vessels to the light to demonstrate its translucence and flicked its rim, producing a clear ringing sound.

‘Porcelain,’ said Hero. ‘Also from China.’

He breathed in the chai’s smoky scent and sipped, rolling the astringent beverage around his mouth. A servitor set down a platter of pancakes smothered in black liquid honey.

‘No charge, sir,’ said the proprietor. ‘An honour to serve such distinguished guests.’

Hero smacked his lips and set down his bowl. ‘It agrees with me,’ he said. ‘It refreshes and soothes at the same time. Do you think it would find a market in Constantinople?’

Aiken’s lips puckered. ‘Men nourished by strong wine wouldn’t choose to drink something as insipid as this.’

‘I expect you’re right,’ Hero said. He yawned, drowsy in the dappled shade, and reviewed the clientele. One gentleman seated with his legs folded beneath him was reading a book between sips of chai. From his faint smiles, Hero deduced that the codex wasn’t a holy text, and when the gentleman laid the book down and stared away, his chai growing cold in front of him, Hero couldn’t contain his curiosity. He rose and soft-footed over.

‘Forgive me, Aga. I too am a slave to the written word, and I see that the book you’re reading has laid a trance on you. May I enquire who wrote it?’

The scholar weighed the manuscript in both hands. ‘It’s a collection of the rubaiyat penned by Omar the tent-maker’s son, God bless his posterity.’

‘Omar Khayyam,’ Hero breathed. ‘I’ve heard of that great polymath’s achievements in natural science, but I’ve never read his poems.’

The scholar leafed through the pages. ‘Here’s the one I was reading.

‘Consider, in this battered caravanserai

Whose doorways are alternate night and day

How sultan after sultan in his pomp

Lived his destined hour and went his way.’

Hero allowed a silence. ‘I’m lodging in a caravanserai near the western gate. I travel with a company bound for China.’

‘My favourite nephew left for China with a mercenary force last winter. Three days ago I received news that he’d died at the Jade Gate fort.’

‘Oh, my commiserations.’ Hero turned in a whirl of confusion. ‘Please forgive my thoughtless intrusion.’

‘Wait,’ said the cleric, ‘Tell me where you come from and why you’re journeying to China.’ He arched a finger and a waiter hurried over to refresh their bowls.

Aiken joined them while they conversed. ‘I can’t believe it,’ Hero told him. ‘This learned imam met Master Cosmas Monopthalmos here in Bukhara twenty years ago. Imagine.’

The cleric stood. ‘I have to attend a mosque council.’ He picked up the book, hesitated, then held it out to Hero. ‘For you, my friend.’

‘I couldn’t possibly.’

‘Take it. You face a long and dangerous journey. Omar Khayyam’s poetry might solace, inform and inspire you during the lonely desert nights.’

Hero sprang up. ‘At least let me pay you what it’s worth.’

The cleric was already leaving. ‘Please don’t offend me with money. I’m not a shopkeeper and wisdom can’t be weighed in silver.’

Hero and Aiken watched him walk down the street, somehow remote from the bustling crowd. When he disappeared, Hero opened the book to its title page and read the dedication in Arabic. To Kwaja imam, the most glorious, most honoured proof of the nation and the religion, sword of Islam and scimitar of the imams, lord of the religious laws… From the least of slaves, Omar Khayyam. Hero’s hand flew to his mouth. ‘Oh my goodness. Look. It’s signed by the poet. I can’t possibly keep it. Here,’ he said, thrusting the book into Aiken’s hands. ‘Run after the gentleman and return it.’

Hero was still fanning himself when Aiken jogged back out of breath. ‘I couldn’t find him.’

Hero appealed to the proprietor for help, but the man could not or would not divulge the imam’s address.

Walking back to their lodgings, Hero dipped into Omar Khayyam’s quatrains. ‘How ingenious they are. The tentmaker’s son can distil a world of meaning into four lines.’

Aiken tried to steer Hero around a heap of human ordure. ‘Careful. Too late. Never mind.’

Hero wiped the turd off against the dust without raising his gaze from the page. ‘Here’s a good one, containing a truth for both of us.

‘Myself when young did eagerly frequent

Doctor and Saint and heard great argument

About this and that and everything.

Yet though I listened, I returned by the same door as in I went.’

‘I saw Lucas,’ Aiken said.

Hero stumbled. ‘What?’

‘In the slave market.’

‘What, just now?’

‘No. Before we stopped at the chai-khana. The trade minister lied to us. Lucas is here and is being sold into slavery as I speak.’

Hero gawped. ‘Why didn’t you…?’ Understanding dawned. ‘Oh, Aiken. Well, we’ll leave that for later.’ Hero had grasped the implications and spoke as rapidly as thought could run. ‘Tell Vallon. No, not Vallon. Fetch Wayland and bring money. Lots of it.’ He tugged Arslan’s sleeve. ‘Take Aiken back to the caravanserai. Quick. As quick as you can.’

Hero trotted back up the road. Everywhere he looked, his dim sight revealed animated gatherings. Hurrying towards one crowd, he discovered that a storyteller was treating them to a tale of Rustam’s exploits. Tacking towards another, he came up against a wall of spectators wagering on fighting partridges. He clutched a passer-by’s sleeve. ‘The slave market. Where is it?’

The man didn’t understand and detached himself.

‘Someone show me to the slave market,’ Hero cried. His distraught gaze fell on a sober elder observing him with mild alarm. Hero latched onto him. ‘Sir, please help me. I must get to the slave market.’

The elder called out in an authoritative voice and two touts homed in on Hero and commenced fighting over who had the right to bleed this wealthy foreigner. ‘I don’t have time for this,’ Hero said, grabbing one of them and taking a glancing blow to the jaw in the process. ‘You,’ he said. ‘Take me to the slave market. Not a moment’s delay.’

The tout waded through the crowd until he reached a dense picket of prospective purchasers, casual spectators and, no doubt, a few pickpockets and prostitutes. He barged through the crush, the promise of gold proof against any amount of protests and indignant buffets.

‘The man I’m looking for is a young Frank,’ Hero panted.

His guide winked.

‘Hurry!’

Even the tout’s bullish efforts weren’t enough to penetrate the crush. Three ranks from the front an armed man slapped him around the face and harangued him for his coarse manners. Hemmed in on all sides, Hero stood on tiptoe to find the podium bare.

‘Too late,’ he groaned. ‘Oh, Aiken.’

The tout dug an elbow into his ribs and bared his teeth to their sallow roots. ‘Frankish.’

Hero craned up to see two men manhandling Lucas onto the stage. The auctioneer followed and after an aloof survey of the audience launched into his pitch, pointing a baton at Lucas while his assistants showed off the young Frank’s selling points, shoving him about as if he were livestock.

Hero heaved against the crowd. ‘Let me through. There’s been a dreadful misunderstanding. That young man is a member of a diplomatic mission.’

But the crowd held firm and bidding had already started, the auctioneer playing the crowd like a practised showman.

‘What’s he saying?’ Hero demanded.

‘This slave is the pick of the bunch,’ the tout told him. ‘Young and healthy. Very strong and lusty.’

‘Tell the auctioneer I’m interested in buying the Frank. Ask him to speak in Greek or Arabic for my benefit.’

At the tout’s bellowed request, the auctioneer leaned forward to evaluate Hero. Having gauged his worth, he acknowledged the request with a flick of fingers before resuming in both Turkic and Arabic.

Now Hero could follow the bidding, and it was brisk, half a dozen hopefuls in the market for Lucas. At forty dirhams — roughly one solidus — the bargain hunters fell out, and at one hundred dirhams only four were left in the bidding.

The tout prodded Hero. ‘Why don’t you bid, sir?’

‘I don’t have any money.’

‘No money? Sir.’

‘Hush,’ Hero said. The bidding had slowed to a drip, each advance squeezed out. Hero couldn’t see his competitors.

The auctioneer raised his baton. ‘I have one hundred and eighty dirhams. Any advance on one hundred and eighty. No?’ he said, staring at Hero. ‘Then going once, twice and…’

‘Ten gold solidi,’ Hero blurted.

Space opened up around him as the astonished audience drew back to view this profligate infidel. A voice launched an angry protest that rolled off the auctioneer like water off oil. Delighted, he raised his baton to conduct the finale.

‘I have a bid of ten solidi from the Greek gentleman.’

‘Twelve,’ a voice said.

‘Fifteen,’ Hero responded.

‘Twenty.’

‘And another five,’ Hero said, feeling sick and elated.

A disturbance around him, an aggressive pressing-in warned him that his rival wasn’t taking Hero’s intervention lightly. A man with a brutal face shoved the tout aside and confronted Hero.

‘Stop bidding, you foreign dog.’

‘On the contrary,’ Hero said, and gave an airy wave. ‘Thirty.’

The man went for his knife and drew it back. Some force wrenched him into reverse and suddenly Wulfstan appeared, his good hand clamped around the assassin’s neck. Wulfstan kneed him in the groin and the man fell cross-eyed to the ground. Wayland and Gorka burst through the crowd, followed by red-faced and sweating Aiken.

Wulfstan picked up the knife, dragged the wretch to his feet and booted him away.

‘Shall I proceed?’ the auctioneer said, baton poised. ‘I have a bid of thirty solidi.’

‘How much?’ Wayland said.

‘Thirty-five,’ said the auctioneer. His head darted. ‘And five.’

‘Ssh,’ Hero said. He stuck up a hand. ‘Fifty.’ He gave Wayland an inane smile. ‘It’s not our money.’

‘Fifty-five,’ said the auctioneer, registering a counterbid.

A drawn-out interval, the auctioneer swinging his head around. ‘I’ll accept fifty-seven,’ he said. ‘Yes, you sir. I have fifty-seven,’ he told the crowd.

‘Sixty,’ someone shouted.

‘Seventy,’ Hero countered.

Wayland groaned. Wulfstan laughed and slapped Gorka’s back.

You could have heard the hush a hundred yards away. People from that distance had wandered over to see who was on sale for a sum they could never raise in a lifetime.

‘Any advance on seventy Byzantine solidi?’ Kites wheeled above the square. ‘Asking once. Asking twice.’ The auctioneer’s gavel smacked down. ‘Sold to the Greek gentleman, and I hope he derives a lifetime’s satisfaction from his purchase.’

Hero stood in a daze while Aiken settled up with the auctioneer, leaving Wulfstan and Gorka clasped in speechless hilarity and Wayland shaking his head in disbelief. The assistants who’d forced Lucas up the steps as if he were meat on the hoof led him down as if he were a prince of the realm. Wayland took charge of him.

Lucas blinked around and his blasted gaze fixed on Gorka. ‘Thanks, boss.’

‘I only came because I couldn’t bear the idea of someone else making your life a misery.’

Lucas tried to smile. ‘How much did I cost?’

‘A fortune,’ said Wayland. ‘You’ll be paying for yourself all the way to China and back.’

‘How did you find me?’

‘Aiken spotted you.’

Lucas stared at his saviour.

‘You needn’t thank me,’ Aiken said. ‘I nearly left you there. After the way you treated me, it would have been no more than you deserved.’

‘What happened to Zuleyka?’ Wayland said in the silence.

‘I don’t know. They separated us when we arrived in Bukhara. We have to find her.’

‘We’d better scarper,’ Wulfstan said. ‘We’re attracting a lot of filthy looks.’

He and Gorka underpinned Lucas’s armpits. The youth dragged his heels. ‘No, we have to find her.’

Gorka grinned. ‘He’s a piece of work, ain’t he? Next he’ll be asking us to get his horse back.’

‘Yes, and then I’ll go after the pack who murdered Yeke and sold me into slavery.’

‘Forget it,’ Gorka said, tightening his grip. ‘Time to get you back to your mates before someone else takes a fancy to you.’

‘Wait,’ said Wayland. ‘The auctioneer will know what happened to Zuleyka. Have we got any money left?’

‘About ten solidi,’ said Aiken.

Wayland held out his hand for them and began making for the auctioneer.

‘I’m coming with you,’ Lucas said.

‘Keep him right there.’

Lucas had been the last lot and the auctioneer’s expansive manner had fallen into a kind of post-coital blank. Watching from a distance, Hero was certain that Wayland would get nothing out of him. The auctioneer tried to brush the Englishman aside and then, when pressed, he summoned his assistants to rid him of this pestering infidel. Before they could lay hands on him, Wayland said something that seemed to drip like honey into the man’s ears and made him stare at the Outlanders in a calculating manner.

His superficial smile flashed and he draped an arm over Wayland’s shoulder and walked him up and down, conversing cheek to cheek. Money passed by sleight of hand before Wayland returned.

‘Did you find out where she is?’ Lucas demanded.

‘He sold her yesterday.’

‘We’d better tell Vallon,’ Hero said.

‘I think not. Her owner is the same man who bid for Lucas and set his thug on Hero. After today’s disappointment, neither gold nor threats will prise Zuleyka from his grasp.’

‘All the more reason to lay the matter before Vallon,’ Aiken said.

‘Lucas means very little to Vallon, and the girl even less. He’s not going to kick up hell to rescue her.’

‘She means a lot to me,’ Lucas cried.

‘Take him back to the caravanserai,’ Wayland said.

Hero had sobered and was appalled by his reckless bidding ‘We don’t have to tell Vallon how much we paid for Lucas.’

‘Yes, we do,’ said Aiken, ‘The general has entrusted me with the accounts. I can’t fiddle them.’

‘Seventy solidi,’ Hero groaned. ‘Vallon will be furious.’

‘I’ll tell him,’ Wayland said. ‘Don’t say a word about the girl.’