Seven for a Secret Read Online Free

would regale their friends and families with the incongruous spectacle of a tall man in fine robes in pursuit of a grubby street urchin, and not a few of the theories advanced to explain the spectacle would be of a lewd, not to say obscene, nature.
    The boy veered sideways into an alley.
    John followed.
    It was possible he was being led into an ambush. He did not think so. There was no doubt the pursuit had attracted attention, which assassins would wish to avoid.
    The alley turned at sharp angles, threading its narrow path first one way and then another, its course defined by the surrounding buildings.
    John leapt over a pile of rotting cabbages, his boots sinking into a semi-liquescent puddle surrounding the remains of some farmer’s unsold wares, not yet found by the hungry. He slipped, righted himself. His shoulder slammed into a brick wall an arm’s length to his right.
    For a heartbeat he had taken his gaze from the boy, who had vanished.
    Impossibly, because John was at the entrance of a cul-de-sac.
    A perfect spot to be waylaid, if attackers closed off its one entrance.
    Except there was no place for potential assassins to hide—or for the boy to have gone. The buildings closing in the airless space were devoid of doors or windows. The wall John had briefly touched was hot. He guessed there was a furnace of some sort on the other side. Later in the day, the narrow passage would be stifling.
    Ahead, three long steps led up to what must have once been a portico. Pale circles on the platform at the top of the flight revealed where columns had stood. The wide door to the building it originally graced had been partly boarded over and secured with a heavy rusted chain. It had obviously not been opened for some time.
    However, a corner of the board had been cut out and the metal strapping bent aside, creating a gap large enough for a boy, or a man as lean as John, to crawl through.
    He ran up the steps and knelt by the opening. It appeared to have been gnawed by giant rats but was, no doubt, the work of beggars seeking shelter. Constantinople was too small for its populace. No space was allowed to go unused. Any place where rent was free attracted the homeless who scratched out a living, and often died, in dark corners and on the city streets.
    A cool draught emanated from the building. John thought he could hear the fading sound of footsteps.
    Then the boy was not lying in wait for him.
    Others might be.
    It would be folly for him to go in there.
    He stilled his breathing and listened.
    There was no sound.
    He was certain no one was on the other side of the door. He had no sense of any other presence.
    He took a handful of nummi from his coin pouch and flung them through the gap. The copper coins rang noisily against stone.
    From within, there was no reaction. No intake of breath, no muffled sound of a weapon shifted, automatically, defensively. No scuffling for the coins.
    John pulled his short blade from his belt, took a breath, and squeezed through the hole. A protruding nail ripped his robe from shoulder to waist, tearing a scrap of flesh with it.
    He scrambled to his feet.
    It was not entirely dark. Shafts of light, filtering through fissures in the derelict building above, criss-crossed a cavernous space interspersed with soaring columns. He was at the top of a flight of steps, matching in width those outside, but descending more steeply into darkness.
    John’s foot touched something heavy and unyielding.
    As his eyes adjusted to the dimness, he realized it was one of several pieces of broken statuary—legs, a wing, and a horn such as the fabulous beasts described by Aristotle and Pliny might have displayed.
    He started down the steps.
    There was a movement in the darkness below.
    Something pale. A mist. A phantom. It floated up toward him as he descended until it had resolved itself into a human form.
    It was John’s reflection in water.
    He stopped abruptly at the edge of the gleaming surface. The water