Page 8

"Well, the day is young." Arslan went down the stairs, clearly not concerned that Alexis would stab him.

The stairs were older than the church, made of stone, with a worn concavity in the middle of each step from hundreds of years of the same feet. The walls were clean and oil lamps burned at intervals in small iron brackets.

The air grew cooler and smelled of still water and wick-smoke, and then, as they descended further, there was frankincense. Rose oil. A thread of bitter cardamom. The faint, musky, green-earth note of blue lotus that Alexis had last smelled in a temple outside Memphis.

The stairs ended at a short wooden bridge spanning dark water, which made quiet lapping sounds against stone pillars carved with Medusa heads. Alexis crossed behind Arslan, and the bridge brought them out into the main chamber.

Alexis stopped in his tracks to stare around him. It had been one of the dozens of cisterns that networked the hills of the city like the roots of some enormous invisible tree.

Arched vaults of brick and stone ran in regular rows, their columns reflected in the shallow water that still ran around the base of each pillar. Lamps hung on long chains from the vaulting, not oil lamps now but small glass lanterns containing what Alexis recognized instantly as magical flame, just by its clarity and brightness.

Carpets had been laid over the raised walkway that ran down the center of the chamber. There was a low table in one corner, surrounded by cushions. The table was already set with a brass tray, two small glasses, and a copper pot.

A brass hookah sat off to one side, and Alexis suddenly understood that Arslan had been expecting him. He could sense magic, but it was the small household kind that kept water hot and the shelves free of dust.

"You keep a very welcoming cistern," Alexis commented, his eyes drifting to the archways to the right, which showed shelved books.

"I keep the tea hot out of habit, and the day I stop, I am told, is the day I begin to die."

Alexis snorted. "Who told you that nonsense?"

"Unfortunately, a small voice in my head that has been right about most things."

Arslan gestured at the cushions, and Alexis sat. The carpet beneath him was so thick it took his weight the way deep snow took a footprint.

Arslan poured tea, a shocking shade of magenta, into the small glass. He accepted it, and by the scent, he knew it was made of pomegranate, mint, and a few buds of blue lotus. He would have to find out how Arslan got hold of it. He waited for Arslan to drink first before having a sip of the tangy concoction.

"This feels like two foxes at the same watering-hole," Arslan commented with a sly smile. "So you felt my magic before or after I spoke?"

"After, though, reading a book of sigils in public had my attention." Alexis sipped his tea. "I'm interested to know what it's about."

"I'm sure you are," Arslan said but didn't enlighten him. "I felt your power as soon as you stepped onto the dock this morning. I knew that Theodoros would send you to his cousin’s, so all I needed to do was wait."

Alexis hadn't considered shielding his magic because it was so rare that he needed to. "I had no idea I was so obvious."

"You dress like a commoner, which is a good enough disguise for most, but you have the bearing and energy of something…other. I thought it polite to wait until I was reasonably sure you weren't a threat before I decided to speak."

Alexis would always be a threat, just not to anyone who didn't deserve it. "And now what do you think?"

"Now we drink tea in my house." Arslan smiled and topped up his glass. "And we decide, together, how honest we are willing to be with each other."

Since the fall of Atlantis, Alexis had many different versions of the conversation about what he was and what he was not.

He had found one version with Constantine, which had begun on a cold afternoon in a forum in Nicomedia. Con had been young then, slightly afraid to look him in the eye, and was too proud to admit it.

Alexis had told the Sufi in Isfahan that he was a magician. The Sufi had smiled, bent time without pride to demonstrate his own skills, then offered Alexis a pomegranate and told him, kindly, that he was welcome to stay as long as he liked.

Considering he was too curious about Arslan's own origins, he decided to be reasonably honest with the man who drank tea beside him.

"My name is Alexis Donato. In the city of Venice, I'm known as a rich scholar. In other places, I've had other names. I'm much older than you, I'm afraid, but I won't tell you the number, because numbers of that kind tend to end conversations, and I'm enjoying this one. How about you?"

Arslan tilted his head. "I was born in 1106, by your calendar. Which would make me almost a hundred, I suppose. I was a student in Damascus and a scholar in Cairo. I was a member of Saladin's court in the Egyptian years, before he became what he became."

"A philosopher of the period?"

"A librarian of the period," Arslan corrected. "In the palace at Cairo, I found a manuscript. It was ancient and had been copied and copied again. The original hand was gone, but the knowledge was still inside it, curled up tight like a cat in a basket. I transcribed it, and the alchemist in me couldn't resist making the potion recipe I found."

"You just had to drink it," Alexis exhaled.