Tom Swan and the Head of St George Part Three: Constantinople by Christian Cameron Page B

first piece of deductive reasoning in many hours. Things fell into place.
    His fearless lassitude fell away, and he was suddenly and completely terrified.

    Omar Reis spoke to his daughter for a long time.
    A need to piss began to creep into Swan’s hierarchy of needs. And his posture, folded in the trunk, was growing painful. His lower legs were bent back under him. His knees burned.
    She said something imperious. Swan had been an adolescent – he knew that tone. She said something like Fine! Do whatever you want .
    More footsteps. Male. And many of them.
    After a while, he decided that soldiers or servants were searching the place.
    ‘How dare you! Not in my room!’ she said, with all the drama of the young, in Arabic.
    The cedar doors crashed open.
    I’m going to die naked, in a fancy trunk, with a raging hard-on . Swan couldn’t decide whether to be more terrified or to laugh aloud.
    Drugged. For sure.
    Drawers were opened.
    A trunk was opened. Then another.
    Then a new voice – calm, level, and wheedling.
    Idris.
    Then Khatun Bengül – a shriek of adolescent righteousness that crossed language and cultural barriers.
    In a blaze of light, his trunk was opened.
    A crack.
    Swan’s fear made him virtually unable to breathe.
    Someone’s hand held the trunk open just a little. Idris’s voice – quite close. All Turkish. Swan had no idea what Idris was saying.
    He lay there, waiting for the trunk to be opened farther. The top was ajar about the breadth of a man’s fingers.
    Khatun Bengül was weeping. She said – something – through her tears.
    Idris sounded agitated now.
    The fingers inside the trunk lid were those of a middle-aged man – the nails were clean, but there were scars across all four, and a great ring of silver, gold and a blood-red stone engraved – beautifully engraved – with a running horse. In Greek, the letters by the horse said ‘Eupatridae’. The well-born. The jewel of some Ancient Greek aristocrat, two thousand years ago. On the finger of a Turkish warlord. It had to be Omar Reis’s hand.
    Swan had time to read the stone, admire its age, and say three Ave Marias.
    The trunk slammed shut. He heard Khatun Bengül’s sobs, and her brother’s gentle remonstrances, and then – silence.
    Time passed.
    His cramps grew greater than his fear, and then his need to piss grew greater than either.
    Time passed without a rush of feet, or the blaze of light that would herald his death.
    The last footsteps died away – there were no more shouts from the courtyard.
    The trunk lid was thrown back, and Khatun Bengül leaned in. ‘My poor Englishman,’ she said. She extended him a slim hand, and he took it, and to his immense mortification, he couldn’t rise out of the box. His feet and lower legs were pinned under him, and there was no feeling in them at all.
    ‘You must come,’ she said.
    He raised himself on his arms, and she pulled on his legs until they came free. He couldn’t feel them at all – it was the oddest, and in some ways the most terrifying, feeling. He couldn’t stand. She couldn’t carry him.
    ‘You must do better! If my father finds you here, he will have to kill you.’
    Swan looked at her for a moment. ‘My lady,’ he said in Arabic, ‘you brought me here.’
    She looked at him and wrinkled her nose. ‘So?’
    ‘I was in no – ahem – danger. Where I was.’ His Arabic wasn’t well suited to the situation. He didn’t know any words to convey anything salacious.
    ‘Auntie intended to fuck you and then sell you to the Armenians,’ Khatun Bengül said, matter-of-factly, in prim Italian. ‘I assumed you would prefer to remain free and alive.’ She smiled, utterly desirable. ‘Perhaps Auntie’s body is worth your life?’
    His legs were beginning to tingle.
    ‘I can’t move until I get feeling back in my legs,’ he said.
    ‘Ah!’ she said. She looked him over. ‘Are you always so . . . solid?’ she asked with a giggle.
    ‘I’ve been drugged,’ he