The Byzantine Wager

Chapter 52 - Down the Drain

Chapter 52

Down the Drain

The coverlet was wrapped too tightly around him. The combined weight of his three pleasure girls, as they snuggled close for warmth in the nippy predawn made Andronikos feel confined. One lay on his arm. No longer as strong as he once had been, his elbow and shoulder were beginning to hurt from the way in which she lay. Similarly, another girl laying on his legs was causing a prickling sensation in his toes from the loss of regular blood flow.

Uncomfortable in body, his dreams carried him back to that claustrophobic and nightmarish place.

* * *

If Andronikos had thought that he could escape by slithering out of the dungeon through a drainage pipe in the floor of his prison cell, he was mistaken. He was one of the largest men in the empire.

As he slid down the square brick lined aperture, skin scraped off his hips and shoulders. His feet hit the bottom leaving the top of his head exposed at about eyeball level even with the floor. That was all, he could go no farther.

Except. Hold on. He could - barely - drop to his knees and fit his feet into the drainage pipe which ran horizontally.

Oh shit. What was that dampness? Was he kneeling in... shit? And now he really was stuck - completely wedged in, hardly able to breathe.

The man from the next cell spoke. "Who was the princess? And why was she in need of rescue on a rainy night in a siege camp?"

Running out of breath, with his fingertips on the rim of the drainage hole above his head, he heaved and regained his footing. No way out. Andronikos was about to shriek in his frustration, but instead he hesitated and became completely silent. An idea was forming. He let the low fellow's question go unanswered.

Not a way out. But... perhaps... a palace to hide. Shhhh. A smile played at the corners of his mouth. A trick, an illusion, a magician's disappearing act. Quietly, by the flickering candlelight his large fingers began to weave a spell using the thin thread from the spool his wife had dropped - material component of his invisibility spell.

When he judged the time to be right, Andronikos placed the chair next to the hole, and sank back down into it again. He lowered the metal grate back into its original position above his head. He tugged the thread which was carefully knotted around the chair's leg pulling it until it sat directly on top of the grate. A gentle tug at the other end of the thread and the knot came free. Patience.

He heard the servant's footsteps, breaking crockery, the exclamation and running retreat. The rapist in the nearby cell hissed something. It was working. Guards arrived.

"How in Hell?" Keys jangled. The lock turned. The door opened.

How he wished that he could see their faces.

Again, "How in Hell?"

"That was locked? Just now?"

"Of course you saw me unlock it."

"And the key, was it on your belt all night?"

"All night, on my life."

"It may well be - 'on your life.' Do you have any idea how much trouble we are in? Go Boy. Summon the head Papias."

He could hear the guards' clunky footsteps above. One rummaged in his bedding as if he were to be found there, the other sat on the chair directly above his head, cursing and fretting. Andronikos wanted to laugh, but continued to breathe through his nose - rhythmically and quietly - concentrating on putting the cramping in his legs and pain in his knees aside.