Free The Mosaic of Shadows by Tom Harper

of the priest, intoning crude foreign syllables into the captive’s ear. I stammered a little, and began again.
    ‘Three weeks ago this monk contracted you to murder the Emperor. You were to use a strange device, a barbarian weapon they call a tzangra , to murder him in a public street, on the feast-day of the holy Saint Nikolas.’
    There was a pause while I waited for the translation to catch up with the commanding gaze I had fixed on him. The priest went silent, and four pairs of ears were poised for an answer. Only the chime of Sigurd’s ringed armour broke the hush in the room.
    The Bulgar lifted his face, and looked at us all contemptuously. He spoke one word, and none of us needed the priest to explain its meaning. ‘No.’
    I sighed theatrically. ‘Ask him if he follows our faith,’ I told the priest.
    The Bulgar ignored the question, but after some urging from the interpreter he acknowledged that he did.
    ‘Tell him, then, that he has sinned,’ I continued. ‘But tell him that Christ preaches forgiveness to those who confess their sins. Tell him that in Vassos and the monk he has served evil masters, masters who have betrayed him. We can help him.’
    ‘We can help him screaming to his grave,’ interrupted Siguard, but I waved him to be silent and hoped the priest would not translate his words. Nonetheless, I saw the Bulgar’s eyes dart towards the Varangian as he spoke.
    ‘As long as he stays silent, he will never escape this dungeon.’ Although the prisoner’s continued silence frustrated me, I was at least learning to speak over the constant murmur of the translation. ‘But the monk and Vassos are free to drink and whore and contrive their plots. Why should he suffer while men of far greater evil do not?’
    There was a rustling of silk as Krysaphios stirred. ‘You do not seem to have his ear, Demetrios,’ he observed. ‘Or perhaps the finer points of your rhetoric are lost in the foreign tongue.’
    I worried that none of my companions understood the time it takes to pry information from an unwilling informant, however helpless and confined he might be. Krysaphios must be accustomed to seeing his will executed immediately, not waiting for an immigrant criminal to choose to speak. I feared he would soon demand more corporal approaches.
    ‘Tell us how you attempted to kill the Emperor,’ I insisted, renewed urgency in my voice. ‘Tell us what the monk wanted, why he bought you to do this terrible thing.’
    The Bulgar’s head had sagged while Krysaphios and I argued, but now he lifted it again. He opened his mouth and swallowed; I thought he would speak, and was about to call for water when – with a convulsive jerk of his body – he spat. There was little strength in the effort, and near as I was it still landed short of me.
    I stepped backwards, and gave a tired sigh of frustration. This would take many hours, and they would feel all the longer for having Krysaphios at my shoulder.
    Too long, it seemed, for one man: as the Bulgar’s spittle struck the floor, I heard a growl from behind me. With a single stride Sigurd had crossed to the prisoner and kicked his feet from under him; the Bulgar swung back like a pendulum, and screamed as the manacles bit deeper into his wrists. The cloth was ripped from his waist so that he hung naked and exposed, while Sigurd pressed his face very close to the man’s throbbing cheek. The axe glinted in his hands.
    ‘My friend Demetrios appeals to your sense and reason,’ he hissed angrily, not waiting for the interpreter to follow his words, ‘but I appeal to something to which you might actually pay heed. You tried to kill the Emperor, you Bulgarian piece of filth. You would have lifted a usurper onto the throne. Do you know what we do to usurpers in this kingdom?’ He let the axe slide like a razor over the man’s face. ‘We pull out their eyes and slice open their noses, so they are too deformed for any man to acclaim them Emperor.’ He stepped