Pawn in Frankincense - Dorothy Dunnett [268]
A pity. A pity that Gabriel also was thorough, and a veteran of guile.… There remained therefore only one task to be done. Perhaps Gabriel would return from the mosque before the dead guard and the drugged hounds had been discovered; but one could not be sure. Better to wait, therefore, knife in hand, where one might least be expected.…
Half an hour had gone by. Silence outside, and so far no noise of disturbance inside the house. Lymond snuffed out the taper, and sliding between the heavy gold curtains, stepped on to the balcony. The roof was strengthened inside, as he had remembered, with short wooden beams. It was the work of a moment to swing himself up and balance there, close to the ceiling, the shuttered balcony just below him, listening for the moment when Gabriel entered his room.
Five minutes passed, and ten. Inactivity was trying. His head on his arm, he found his mind slipping too easily from its shackles; drifting off into a limbo of fantasy until shocked awake by the shift of his weight on the beam. His mouth was dry with the pungent aridity of just-swallowed opium.… Gabriel would know of that: would be already aware of its effects and ready to play on them, given the chance. The worst which could happen to Gabriel was death. The worst which could happen to himself was to be deprived, he supposed of the opium he carried. A public degradation of body and spirit under Gabriel’s eye would be less than inviting. But there was a simple way out of that.
Shortly after that he became aware that someone was unlocking the door from the house into Gabriel’s room. It was done smoothly and quietly, but the door fell open after that with a whine, and he heard several feet quickly enter the room, and the muted chink of steel against steel. A voice said in Turkish, ‘Empty. Search it.’
Not Gabriel’s voice. And no one but Gabriel, surely, would issue orders in that room, had he been here. Lymond lay very still in the shadows, his knife lightly gripped in his fingers, and listened to the search coming nearer until suddenly a strong hand ripped thecloth-of-gold curtains apart, and a blaze of new candlelight flooded the balcony.
It was more than he had expected, but he was still in the shadows, and he did not move as they all came through in turn and examined the small shuttered room. There were four of them, and they were Janissaries. The tall white caps were only inches below him as they crossed to the shutters and tried them, expecting them to be locked.
They gave at once. Lymond saw the Odabassy open them fully and first peer outside, then examine the lock with a taper. The scratches on it were probably plain.… But if an intruder had clearly entered the house by this method, he might also by this time have left.
The four men came back, talking. It was pure ill luck that with the increased draught the taper flared suddenly high, so that the Janissary bearing it looked up, concerned lest the wood should have caught. He saw Lymond in the moment that Lymond launched himself at the unshuttered window and, sliding over the frame, swung himself hand over hand down and round the side, towards the leaning branch of the almond.
The men were shouting above him. He felt a knife shave the side of his arm as he jumped for the tree; and then there were answering shouts from below. As he landed he saw other white caps running towards him from the front yard of the house. He kicked the first one in the teeth as he jumped half the height of the tree, and drove his knife into the second, wrenching it out as he ran. The Janissaries above were climbing out of the balcony as he had done and were following him, scrambling and leaping: in a moment he would have no chance at all. Lymond turned on the run and set off swiftly