Chapter 49
Dust swirled across the courtyard.
The morning sun glinted off the metal of the kontarion and the drawn swords.
Shouts of command echoed through the air.
Amid all the commotion, the sound of Nirma and Arya's footsteps rang against the stone floor beneath them, carrying them closer and closer to the covered carriage that was their destination.
Upon reaching the carriage, Nirma did not waste a single second.
She shouted at the top of her lungs—a voice she had never used before—a voice that startled the Prefect's soldiers who had just arrived behind her and moved immediately without asking questions.
"Open the door! Open this carriage door at once!"
The soldiers exchanged glances briefly.
Then, without hesitation, they rushed to the side of the carriage.
Their rough hands pulled the locking lever and opened the heavy teakwood door with a loud creak.
Nirma leapt inside without waiting for the steps to be lowered.
Arya followed just as swiftly.
Inside the carriage they had just entered, with the teakwood door still wide open and the Prefect's soldiers standing around it with questioning faces, Arya drew a long breath.
He glanced at Nirma, receiving a small, almost imperceptible nod.
Then he jumped down from the carriage in one quick motion.
The Prefect's soldiers immediately made way.
Their eyes remained alert, scanning the courtyard still unsettled by the movement of the three layers of troops earlier.
Arya stood before three soldiers representing the Honor Guard, Nikephoros' Personal Troops, and the non-combat staff.
All three looked at him with a mixture of respect, confusion, and barely concealed fear.
When Arya began to speak, his voice was calm yet clear.
It was a voice that ensured every word carried across the front courtyard of the residence of Caesar Nikephoros Melissenos.
It did not need to shout, yet it possessed the strength to make anyone who heard it understand that this was no ordinary message.
"There is danger approaching if we remain in this residence any longer," Arya said, his sharp eyes moving from one soldier to the next.
"We do not have time to explain the details, and you do not need to know more than what is necessary.
All you need to do is deliver this message to Caesar Nikephoros Melissenos, your lord."
He paused briefly, allowing his words to settle.
Then he continued with the same firmness.
"Tell Nikephoros Melissenos that if Nirma and Arya are declared dead on the journey toward the third suspect, then the entire burden of responsibility will fall upon him.
Not partially. Not halfway. All of it.
Emperor Alexios I Komnenos will know that our deaths are his doing.
Those restless crusader soldiers will know that the deaths of their couriers are part of a larger scheme.
And all of Constantinople will know that Caesar Nikephoros Melissenos, the Emperor's own brother-in-law, has added two investigators' lives—who were merely carrying out the Emperor's orders—to his long list of sins."
The three soldiers fell silent.
Their faces paled under the increasingly scorching midday sun.
The soldier from the Honor Guard—a man with an upright posture and a purple-gold robe still neat despite the chaos—nodded slowly.
His eyes showed that he understood the weight of the message he had just received.
The soldier from Nikephoros' Personal Troops—a blond Frank with a scar on his chin—simply stared at Arya with an expression difficult to decipher.
Yet within his eyes lingered something akin to admiration mixed with fear.
The old servant in the worn gray robe who had earlier guided them lowered his head.
His shoulders trembled, perhaps from fear, or perhaps because he knew this message would shake his master more than anything in recent years.
Arya did not wait for further response.
He turned back, leapt into the carriage with the same speed as before, and sat beside Nirma, who had been silently gripping her wax tablet tightly.
"Prefect's soldiers," Nirma's voice broke the silence inside the carriage, firm yet not raised, "move this carriage now. Immediately."
The Prefect's unit, already in position—two mounted on the horses pulling the covered carriage, the others on their own mounts—moved at once without waiting for another command.
The whip cracked through the air.
The powerful black horses neighed softly before breaking into a run.
The carriage wheels creaked against the stone courtyard.
Within seconds, the covered carriage had left the main gate of Caesar Nikephoros Melissenos' residence.
From inside, through the gaps in the silk curtains covering the windows, Nirma and Arya could see the silhouettes of the three layers of troops still standing in the courtyard.
They gradually shrank as the distance widened.
At last, they vanished entirely behind the winding bend of the Blachernae road.
They did not speak.
They did not exchange glances.
They did not need to.
Both sat in silence inside the carriage that jolted with speed.
They felt every vibration of the wheels against the stone.
Every pounding hoof upon the increasingly crowded streets of Constantinople.
Every cloud of dust rising behind them.
They were heading toward a destination they had not yet revealed to anyone—perhaps not even to themselves.
Inside the carriage racing at high speed, leaving the district of Blachernae and entering the main avenues of Constantinople now alive with morning activity, Nirma and Arya sat facing each other in silence broken only by the creaking wheels and pounding hooves.
Nirma leaned forward, bringing her face within inches of Arya's.
When she spoke, her voice was little more than a whisper, nearly swallowed by the roar of the moving carriage.
"Arya," she murmured, her single eye locking onto his with growing intensity, "how ready are you to face them? The unit from the Temporal Cross-Police. Because if my intuition is correct—if my right eye's constant twitch is the omen we have always recognized—then they will arrive soon. Perhaps in minutes. Perhaps in hours. But they will come. And we must be ready."
Arya did not answer with words.
He only nodded slowly.
His right hand slipped swiftly into the folds of his old brown robe.
He searched briefly, then withdrew holding a small object tightly in his fingers.
It was very small—no larger than a pencil sharpener commonly used between the years 2000 and 2010.
Yet when he extended it to Nirma with his right hand, there was certainty in his eyes that required no explanation.
Nirma accepted the object carefully.
She felt its light weight in her palm.
Its smooth surface, slightly rough in certain parts.
Its simple design, concealing technology far beyond human imagination in the year 1101 AD.
Arya then raised his left hand, revealing a small control device nearly invisible between his fingers, and began to speak in the same hushed whisper.
"This is a projection device, Nirma.
It may be small—small enough to slip into a pocket without drawing attention. But do not be deceived by its size."
To be continued…