After the third set of rafts, the Muslims had no further River defenses. Alexios drifted along past one of their
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settlements after another. He grew bored, and also chilly from having been in the water so long, but willingly endured both for the sake of the reward he might gain from this journey.
Bornu, by the look of things, fortified its border with Shytown more intensively than the one with New Constantinople. A palisade of bamboo and timber ran from the River toward the unclimbable mountains that sealed off the back of each domain.
Not long after he passed the palisade, Alexios kicked himself away from the yew and stroked toward the shore. He held on to his bamboo breathing tube: who could say when it might come in handy again?
He splashed up onto the riverbank. Shytown’s sentries were alert; he’d hardly come out of the water before someone hailed him: “Who are you and what the devil are you doing here?”
He followed that, though he understood only a little of Shytown’s language. The people of the Mayor’s domain called it English, but it hardly resembled the English he’d learned from the Angles and Saxons of the Varangian Guard, men who’d abandoned England after William the Norman overthrew their kind. Having dealt with Robert Guiscard and his son Bohemund, Alexios did not love Normans, either.
He answered in the aftermen’s dialect of English, as best he could: “I am Alexios Komnenos, Basileus of New Konstantinopolis. I will to see your Mayor.”
“Say what?” It was a sudden, sharp exclamation, meaningless to Alexios. The sentry came up and looked him over. “Goddamn! Maybe you are him.” He raised his voice: “Hey, Fred, Louie, come here! One of you take my slot, okay? This guy says he’s Alexios from
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upstream, and he wants to see Mayor Daley. I’m gonna bring him to Hizzonor.”
Fred or Louie came up. Whoever he was, he had a torch. “Yeah, that’s Alexios, all right—I seen him once. Okay, Pete, you found him; I guess you get to take him. Beats stayin’ here, that’s for damn sure.”
Alexios caught only part of that, but he gathered Pete would conduct him to the mayor. He fell into step with the Shytown sentry. All the way to Mayor Daley’s residence, Pete bombarded him with questions. Why did he want to see the Mayor? Did it have to do with Bornu? If it didn’t, what was it about? From one of his own subjects, Alexios would have found such prodding intolerable. But the folk of Shytown had a reputation for being both free of speech with their betters and insatiably inquisitive. Alexios found it politic to make his English poorer than it really was.
The Mayor dwelled in a fair-sized palace. Alexios thought the profusion of windows on the outside extravagant; houses in New Constantinople kept to the courtyard pattern of the lost imperial city. But enough guards ringed the place that theft was unlikely to be a problem.
Pete spoke to a guard by the door, too fast for Alexios to follow. Then he turned back and said, “Do you mind waiting till sunup? They don’t want to wake Hizzonor yet.”
Alexios considered, decided to have a tantrum. He cursed in Greek before trying English again at the top of his lungs: “I am the Basileus, God dump you to hell! You keep me to wait like man with fish to sell?” If the Mayor hadn’t been awake, he ought to be now, theou thelontos.
After listening to some more ranting, the guard went
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inside. Mayor Daley came out a few minutes later, accompanied by a thin man with red hair who wore a bone cross on a leather thong round his neck. Daley rumbled in his brand of English. The thin man spoke Latin, which Alexios also understood: “I am Father Boyle, Hizzonor’s interpreter. He asks why whatever business this is couldn’t wait until the morning.”
“Because I am as much a ruler as he is, and I am here now,” Alexios answered. “Tell him that.” Because he is an upstart and I am Basileus of the Rhomaioi—he thought, though he kept that to himself.