“Basina was ill tonight, Your Majesty,” said Chira, with a reassuring smile. “She sent me to entertain you in her absence.”
“You’re an assassin,” said His Majesty.
“Of course not, Your Majesty,” said Chira pleasantly. “I am here entirely for your pleasure.”
“No, you’re an assassin, you must be an assassin, I’ve never seen you before and you came in here without my eunuch.”
“Your honored wife sent the eunuch away in the antechamber,” said Chira. “She wanted to speak to me in private before I came in to you.”
“Did she tell you to assassinate me?”
“Your Majesty,” said Chira, looking graciously shocked. “Of course not. She herself is so solicitous of your safety that she would not allow me in until she had reassured herself of my benign intentions. She has deigned to allow me to enter your bedchamber.”
“Prove that you are not an assassin,” he said, not moving from his defensive stance by the side of the bed.
Chira continued to smile at him, adjusting the tone of the smile to try to reassure and calm him. She shimmied easily out of Basina’s long royal-blue robe, which she had not fully secured specifically so that she could remove it easily. Because of all the jewels and stiff metallic thread, it landed inelegantly, but she stepped out of it with a sinuous grace, presenting as much of herself as possible directly to him. She slipped the drawstring of the kalonji-seed bag over her wrist and palmed it. Entirely unclothed, she smiled invitingly at him, crossed to him, and took his hand with her free one. He stared at his hand in hers as if this was an experience he had never had before. She examined his face. He seemed on the verge of a panic attack.
“Would Your Majesty like to examine my person himself, to see that I have no weapons?”
She ran his hand across her breasts, and then down her belly and between her legs. “Please inspect as carefully as you would like,” she whispered into his ear, and closed her lips over his earlobe. He began to tremble.
“If you’re not an assassin, you must be a spy,” he said, pulling his head away. “You are from that navy of so-called Pilgrims that are wintering in Zara, aren’t you?”
“I do not know what you speak of, Your Majesty,” she said, and squeezed his hand between her thighs. He made a confused moaning sound but tried to pull his hand away.
“You’re from Montferrat, aren’t you?”
“I have never heard of Montferrat, Your Majesty,” she whispered, and again closed her lips upon his earlobe. Then she licked the back of his ear.
A moment later he was naked atop her, bucking away, and a few moments after that, with a loud sob of relief, he finished and lay panting on top of her.
Immediately the door to the chamber pushed open, and Empress Euphrosyne stormed in with two large Varangian Guards behind her. The Emperor did not bother to raise his head.
“Thank you,” said Euphrosyne briskly. “Alexios, get off of her, we’re sending her home.”
Without further acknowledging Chira, the Emperor rolled over on the bed and lay staring up at the gold-tiled ceiling with a morose expression. The Empress picked up Basina’s blue gown and Chira held her hand out for it. “I don’t think so,” Euphrosyne said with a laugh, and tossed it into a corner. “Alexios, I’m giving her your nightshirt to wear.”
The Emperor was already asleep.
Euphrosyne picked up the garment and tossed it to Chira. “Put that on quickly, Jewess. These men are taking you back to Pera.”
This was convenient enough, as the second part of Chira’s task was to get across the Golden Horn to Pera, to leave the kalonji seeds with another witch (KCW from previous Strands, but still a stranger in this one) in the Jewish section of the city. Getting an armed imperial escort was not how she had done it in previous Strands, but this would take less effort on her part.
One of the guards offered her a woolen cloak and she wrapped it round her shoulders. She allowed them to take her down various flights of stairs and across yards and gardens and halls and down corridors, until she was once again disoriented. Eventually the smell of briny water began to waft past her nostrils, so she was not surprised when they came to an enormous wooden gate that opened onto a street at the edge of the water. There was a boat with two oarsmen who wordlessly rowed them across the Golden Horn—the deep protected harbor, less than two bowshots wide, that led to the hilly northern suburb of Pera, in the shadow of Galata Tower.
Upon landing at the foot of the steep hill (not an official dock, although there were several in either direction), the oarsmen secured the boat, and the two guards got out and then hoisted her directly to the shore. Throughout this she had maintained her firm hold on the kalonji-seed bag and now was mindful not to let the harbor water touch it.
“Where’s your home?” asked one of the guards, with the clumsy, angry-sounding accent of the Britons who made up such a large percentage of the Varangian force.
Suppressing a mischievous urge to address him in modern English, she responded in Greek. “It is directly behind the synagogue,” she said. “My father is Avraham ben Moises. I will show you.”
The three of them marched up the steep hill along the street, which was not very broad but paved with stones and well maintained. About halfway up was the synagogue, a large building with a fenced garden. Chira directed them to the rows of neat wooden homes behind this, all dark as it was now about midnight. In the middle row of houses, set on leveled-off stone foundations, Chira pointed to one house in particular.
One of the guards took her by the shoulder and the other pounded on the door.
After a confused moment, there were voices within both this house and the surrounding homes, and candlelight appeared in windows. Eventually the door opened and a man barely old enough to be Chira’s father opened the door. He sported a long beard, longish hair covered by a felt cap, and dark robes. A woman, obviously his wife, stood behind him, and behind her were the shadowy forms of several children ranging in age from approximately seven to full-grown.
“What do you want?” asked the man in Greek, fearful, staring up at the Varangian Guard.
“We’ve brought your daughter back,” said the guard, sounding bored.
“Our what?” the man said, amazed.
“Your daughter,” repeated the guard, in a warning voice.
“All of our daughters are here with us already,” the man said, looking alarmed and confused.
The guard took a step forward to tower over him in the doorway. “To disown your daughter because she has been with the Emperor is to disown the Emperor himself,” he said warningly. “Either you receive her into your home or I will bring you back to answer to His Majesty for the insult directly.”
Looking mystified, and a bit spooked, the man stepped back into the house and somewhat robotically held his arm out in a gesture of welcome. The other guard pushed Chira through the doorway.