Page 19 of Immortals and Ink

He hadn't dared to hope it would be there. That was why he hadn't come sooner. So long as he never looked, the possibility could burn bright, rather than be extinguished by the cold, crushing certainty that it was gone.

Standing on the deck of the Eos with Arslan beside him, Alexis still didn't know which outcome he was more afraid of.

CHAPTER EIGHT

The Church of the Holy Apostles sat on the fourth hill of Constantinople like a jewel that had been held up to the light for so long it had forgotten it was a stone. It had five domes and a cruciform plan that had made Justinian's architects weep with pride.

Alexis had been inside the crypts only once, a lifetime ago, on the afternoon he had helped carry Constantine's body down the stairs in 337 C.E, and he had never gone back.

The main reason was that Con had woken up again, thanks to a miracle (or a curse, depending on how one looked at it), and had sent a note a year later when he wasn't a raving madman.

Con was currently somewhere east of Edessa in a caravan he had attached himself to for reasons he would have to explain when Alexis next saw him. Alexis intended to have words with him about it, because leaving in the middle of winter with no warning or forwarding address wasn't what friends did to each other.

"You are muttering," Arslan observed as they approached the church through the side gardens dressed as two minor clergy on late business.

Alexis grunted. "I'm thinking about a friend who isn't answering his letters."

"You are worried about him?"

"I'm always worried about him. It is how the friendship works. He is reckless, and I worry. He complains about it, but I worry anyway. Then he does something reckless again, and we start the cycle over. We have been doing this for hundreds of years now."

Arslan chuckled softly. "That would be exhausting."

"It sounds like you have already met him," Alexis replied. He had wanted Con with him for this trip, and if he hadn't been so secretive about it, maybe Con wouldn't have gone off with a bloody caravan.

Perhaps it was a blessing in disguise. If Con saw a fleet of crusaders about to invade the city, he would see it as a challenge and not a threat.

Arslan smiled a little at the paving stones but didn't tease him about being a mother hen. They reached the side door of the nave, where Arslan opened the door, and they stepped inside.

The nave was empty but for two lamps still burning and one old monk sweeping the floor with a steady rhythm that suggested he had been sweeping the same floor for fifty years and would sweep it until he died, and no one would stop him because no one had ever been able to.

"Good evening, Father," Arslan said softly.

"Good evening, my sons." The monk's voice was thin and deep at once. "You are working late."

"A small matter in the crypts. Father Gregorios sent us."

"Father Gregorios has been dead for three years."

Well, there goes that idea, Alexis thought grimly.

Arslan didn't blink. He made a small gesture of apology with his free hand and said, with the rueful tone of a man admitting an embarrassing mistake, "Forgive me, Father. I sometimes forget which Gregorios. The new Gregorios, then. My apologies. He has sent us."

The old man cleared his throat."The new Gregorios is a boy."

"He is a boy, yes."

"He isn't old enough to send anyone anywhere."

"He isn't, Father. We are humoring him. He's taking his duties very seriously, and we are allowing him to feel useful."

The old monk considered Arslan for a long moment and looked at Alexis for a longer one.

"You are not priests," the old monk said finally.

Alexis's hand moved, very slightly, towards the blade Lyca had given him. Arslan's hand, not looking, caught Alexis's wrist and held it.

The old monk smiled. "You are not priests, but you are something else. I don't mind. My father told me a story once about how he met a man with eyes that didn't match his face, and how the man had saved him from a bandit in the street in Nicaea. The man had then walked away and had never asked for thanks. I have always wondered whether I would meet such a person myself before I die. It seems I have now met two."