Page 31 of Immortals and Ink

"Con would overreact about many things, but having his city destroyed would never be one of them. Mehmed believes he's going to be the one to fulfill the hadith about taking Constantinople, and there's no reasoning with a man like that. He will give it everything he has or die trying." Alexis’s expression turned grave. "Con knows it will be all or nothing because he thinks exactly the same way."

Phaidros only grunted something under his breath about stupid men and went back below deck.

On his last trip, Alexis had left before the smell of war smoke could even start for the same reason that Phaidros didn't want to smell it now. They had both seen far too many conquerors and witnessed their wars. They had been fighting in a war that had broken Atlantis long before the volcanoes did.

Alexis gritted his teeth against the memories trying to drown him, set the tiller a touch east, and the Hésperos followed the smell of distant burning.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

The glamour shimmering around the ship was holding, but only just. Alexis sat with his hand on the keel of their skiff, feeding magic into the spell laid through the wood and into the water under them.

It was a small magic, but a tiring one. Holding it over salt water at night, with the Ottoman guns of Rumelihisarı a thousand paces off the starboard bow, was like holding a wet sail in his fist and not letting it slip.

Phaidros sat in the bow with his hood up and his shoulders hunched against the cold. The Hésperos herself rode at anchor in a sheltered bay, three coves back, with another glamor over it to hide it from Ottoman patrols.

Above them on the European shore, the fortress crouched against the sky. Boğazkesen, the Turks called it. The throat-cutter. Mehmed had built it the year before to make the Bosphorus impassable to any ship that didn't have his blessing.

A Venetian galley had been sunk under its guns in November. Her captain had been impaled afterward for the offense of trying to get through without paying the tax.

Alexis kept the cog tight against the shore, where the guns couldn't depress far enough to reach them if his glamor failed to hide them. He had measured the embrasures with a glamor-thrown gull the night before and knew their arc to within a finger's width.

They slipped past the fortress in silence. The current was running with them, which was a mercy. Alexis let the tiller play loose under his palm and allowed the river of the strait to do the work.

A long time later, the lights of Galata showed on the port bow. The Genoese suburb rode the hillside above the Golden Horn in a tumble of red tile and lamp-warm windows, with the squat black bulk of the Galata Tower at its crown.

Beyond it, across the Horn, the great city was dark under the moon, low-lit at the walls and at the few churches that still kept their watch lamps burning.

"Mio Dio," Phairdros whispered, shooting Alexis a worried look. "We might be too late."

There were Ottoman ships already in the Golden Horn.

"The city would be burning if it were," Alexis said grimly. "We need to find Arslan."

Alexis brought the little boat around a Genoese trading hull, slipped her between two other anchored ships, and ran her up onto a strip of shingle.

They dragged the cog under the lee of a stone wall, threw a tarred sail over her, and Alexis laid a small 'don't look here' cantrip on the heap that would last until they came back for her.

Galata was still awake, despite being in the middle of a siege. The wine shops were full with sailors arguing over a dice game in a language that started Genoese and ended somewhere near Greek. Across the Horn, the city slept badly. They could hear, very faintly, the bells of one of the monasteries striking the hour.

Alexis kept his head down and hood up as they crossed streets, ducked under a vine-heavy arch, and came out in a small square.

On the far side, Arslan's church still stood. Above the door, the triangular mosaic of Sophia and the dog-headed saint shone in the dim light.

Alexis exhaled a shaky breath. You've kept your post safe, old friend.

The door was made of new oak under old iron. Alexis put his palm flat to it. The wood warmed under his hand, and the latch lifted.

"Already breaking and entering," Phaidros chided.

Alexis glanced around, the hair on his neck shivering in warning. "We don't know if he is out in the city, and it's better if we are off these streets."

Inside, the chapel was small and warm. Beeswax candles burned in three iron stands lined with sand. The walls had been painted with new frescoes since Alexis had last seen them. A man in a brown robe was lighting candles near the altar.

He looked up at the sound of the door, studied Alexis for a half-breath, and bowed his head a fraction.

Alexis nodded back. Clever boy not to draw attention.

A door behind the altar opened, and Arslan came through it.