Chapter 96
Leontios did not seem disturbed by the vigilance directed at him; instead, he grew even more enthusiastic in telling stories about his neighbor who once tried to forge a sword out of brass and how ridiculous the result was, about a stray cat that stole fish from his bucket every morning, and about a noble customer who ordered a suit of armor but never returned to claim it.
The afternoon sun continued to lean toward the horizon, its light slipping through the gaps in the wooden walls of the living room and slowly turning into a deep orange hue, making the dust particles floating in the air resemble glittering grains of gold.
The sounds of hammers from other workshops began to fade one by one, replaced by the chatter of craftsmen ending their workday, the sound of water being scooped from buckets to wash faces blackened by soot, and the voices of children being called home by their mothers from their games in the narrow alleys.
Leontios had just begun recounting his experience as a slave in Antioch thirty years ago when Arya placed his cup on the wooden table with a sound loud enough to cut through the flow of Leontios's words.
The sound was not harsh, nor threatening, yet firm enough to make Leontios stop mid-sentence and shift his gaze from Nirma to Arya. Arya returned the look, his eyes—usually warm—now sharpened, and when he spoke, his voice sounded different, lower and heavier, like that of someone who had grown tired of idle talk and wished to settle the matter at hand.
"Master Leontios," Arya said in fluent Greek with an accent that strangely sounded too perfect for someone who had only been in this city for a few months, "we did not come to your workshop to hear stories about fish-stealing cats or forgetful nobles. We came because there is something more serious—something you may not even realize you have seen or heard."
Leontios scratched his head with his left hand, his thick fingers combing through the white hair that had begun thinning at the crown of his head, and for a moment his brows drew together in a deep crease.
"A matter of the security of the City of Byzantium?" he asked in a tone half joking, half cautious, his dark brown eyes flicking quickly from Arya's face to Nirma's and back again.
"Surely you don't think I'm some Bulgar spy or a Venetian who slipped into Chalkeus on purpose?"
He chuckled softly, the sound bubbling from his throat like water trickling over small stones, though his eyes did not laugh along with it.
There was something there—a flicker of caution that appeared instinctively when two strangers who had arrived escorted by the Prefect's soldiers began asking unusual questions.
He reached for his cup of wine, drained the rest in a single gulp, and set it back on the table with a sound a little too loud, as if trying to show he was unafraid even though he was beginning to feel uneasy.
It was here that Nirma did something she rarely did in front of strangers.
Her left eye, which had been half-closed since they entered the workshop in an expression difficult to interpret—somewhere between vigilance and fatigue—slowly opened completely.
Her eyelid lifted with a movement so slow and deliberate that Leontios, who had been reaching for the wine jug to refill his cup, froze with his hand suspended in the air, transfixed by the change that suddenly felt so significant.
The eye was deep black, with almost no boundary between iris and pupil, and when it looked at Leontios, the gaze did not pierce, yet it could not be avoided.
Meanwhile, her right eye remained covered by a clean white bandage that contrasted sharply with the sun-darkened skin of her face, creating a strange imbalance—a reminder that the woman before him was no ordinary woman, nor merely an investigator sent by the City Prefect to examine everyday crimes.
"This is not about the general security of the city, Master Leontios."
Nirma's voice finally emerged, sounding different from usual—lower and heavier, with a slightly awkward yet still fluent Greek accent.
She allowed a pause to hang between them, long enough to make Leontios grow increasingly uneasy, tense enough to make the old blacksmith's heart beat faster.
"We are here because of the death of a crusader soldier. A thirty-four-year-old man named Étienne d'Arques. He was found dead a few days ago under unnatural circumstances, and Emperor Alexios, together with the City Prefect Manuel Botaneiates, has personally ordered us to find the culprit."
She paused for a moment, letting those heavy names linger in the air, then continued in a tone that left no room for pleasantries.
"The soldier was no ordinary man. He came to this city as part of a great army preparing to depart for Jerusalem, and his death before that army even moves could ignite unrest that no one wishes to see.
That is why we cannot treat this as an ordinary murder, and that is why we must question everyone who might have seen or heard something—including you."
Leontios Chalkeus's skin prickled in a visible wave along his arms, darkened by soot and burn scars.
He gripped the clay cup more tightly, his knuckles whitening under the pressure, and for a moment his eyes lost focus, staring at something that was not in this room—perhaps imagining what it must have felt like for a man the same age as Étienne d'Arques, with hair like burning embers and dreams of reaching Jerusalem, to have his journey suddenly halted by barbaric hands that cared nothing for life.
"May the one who took that man's life," he said with a voice that had suddenly grown hoarse, "be captured and imprisoned with the harshest punishment. Not only because he killed a soldier on a sacred journey, but because he tore someone away from his family, from his friends, from the future he was meant to live."
He lifted his cup as if to make a toast, then realized it was empty and lowered it again with a motion that had lost its direction.
Outside, the faint sounds of craftsmen packing up their tools drifted through the air, mingling with the footsteps of the Prefect's soldiers who occasionally passed by the window, their shadows crossing swiftly behind the thin curtain stirred by the evening wind.
Leontios straightened his back on the short bench, and for the first time since they had entered his workshop, he looked like the man he once had been—a slave in Antioch who learned to survive in a foreign city without friends and without money, who built this workshop from nothing with his own hands.
The caution that had filled his eyes transformed into burning determination, and he pointed toward Nirma with his index finger, blackened by rust and charcoal.
"Listen, Lady Nirma," he said, his voice firmer now, "I will help you as much as I can—do everything in my power so this culprit can be found long before night falls over Constantinople. I may not know much about investigations or how to hunt a murderer, but I know Chalkeus. I know every alley, every workshop, every face that has appeared and disappeared in this district over the past thirty years. If there is a suspicious stranger, if someone orders something unusual, if someone pays with gold far too valuable for what it's worth—I will know. Or at least, I know who should be asked."
To be continued…