Thessalonica

“Do you know,” George said to Dactylius as they paced along the wall, bows in hand, quivers on their backs, “I used to come up here when the weather was fine, just for a promenade: take a little walk, you know, and get out of the city stink for a while if the wind was blowing in the right direction. I’m not going to do that anymore. I’ve seen altogether too much of this awl.”

“If you weren’t a shoemaker, that would make even less sense than it really does,” Dactylius answered. “As things are, it leaves my ears ringing.”

George took two or three steps before realizing his friend had topped him, a measure of how badly he’d been topped. He sent Dactylius a reproachful look. “John and I are the ones who make jokes like that.”

“Contagious as the--” Dactylius had probably been about to say plague, but remembered George had lost family from it. “--the grippe,” he finished.

“Can’t trust anybody anymore,” George said, mock-serious. Dactylius smiled in something like triumph.

The little jeweler pointed out toward the tent where the Avar priest or wizard made his home, and to the smaller ones nearby that belonged to the Slavic wizards. “I wish they hadn’t chosen to camp near the Litaean Gate,” he said. “If they were somewhere else, we wouldn’t be able to watch them getting ready to work all their magic.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” George said. “For better or worse, I want to know what’s going on as soon as I can. It wouldn’t stop happening if we didn’t find out about it till it came down on us like a building falling over.”

“I suppose not,” Dactylius said, “but if I didn’t see them at their sorceries, I wouldn’t worry about them so much.”

“Of course you would,” George said, having known his friend for many years. “You’d just be shying at shadows, not at anything real.”

Dactylius sighed. He wasn’t ignorant of his own faults; like most mortals, he had trouble doing anything about them. “You’re probably right,” he said.

“Besides” --George sent Dactylius a sidelong look-- “sometimes you cause the trouble you complain about afterwards. If you hadn’t bounced an arrow off that Avar’s corselet, that priest of theirs wouldn’t have tried to drown the city with a thunderstorm.”

“In the end, though, it showed the power of God,” Dactylius said, and George supposed that was true. But it had also shown the strength of the powers upon which the Avar had called. Dactylius continued in musing tones: “I wonder what they’ll try next.”

“No way to tell.” George didn’t want the jeweler working himself up into a swivet over the incalculable. But then, being who he was, the shoemaker tried to figure out what he’d just said could not be figured out. “The storm had spirits of the air in it, and maybe spirits of water, too. That water-demigod was certainly one of those. And when the Avar tried to take the bishop’s blessing off the grappling hooks, the earth shook, even if it didn’t shake very hard.”

“Earth and air,” Dactylius said, musing still. “Water and-- It’ll be something to do with fire, I’d bet.”

“I think you’re right,” George answered. “I hope you’re wrong.” He knew he was the one who would start worrying, start shying at shadows, now. Fire was a constant dread in every city, Thessalonica no less than others. Once it started spreading, you could do so little to put it out.

“What can we do?” Dactylius whispered, echoing his thoughts.

“I don’t know.” George pointed toward the Avar priest’s tent. “Keeping an eye on what he’s up to strikes me as a good idea.”

“Well, of course it does,” Dactylius exclaimed, and then had the good grace to turn red. “You have me this time, don’t you, George? A little while ago, I said I wished that tent was somewhere else.”

“That’s true.” George bowed to Dactylius, as he might have done before the city prefect. His friend looked puzzled. He explained: “You also just admitted you were wrong. That doesn’t happen every day, or every month, either.”

“Oh.” Dactylius looked abashed. He started to say something more, chewed on it, and shut his mouth tight instead. George thought he could guess what his friend hadn’t said: that, living with Claudia, he’d had practice confessing he was wrong, whether he was or not. George would not have chosen to live with Claudia. But then, Dactylius hadn’t exactly chosen to live with her, either. His parents had done it for him--or rather, to him.

One of the Slavic wizards came out of his tent and looked toward Thessalonica. His shoulders moved up and down: not a shrug, George thought, more likely a sigh. Seen by himself, the Slav, like the couple of his compatriots whom George had encountered in the woods, didn’t seem threatening. When you put him together with all his compatriots, though . ..

Dactylius said, “He looks like he’s sick of the whole business.”