Work Text:
The afternoon sun slanted down from high above, casting long angles of light through the narrow streets.
The market that had been crowded all morning was now beginning to thin out. Street vendors chatted with acquaintances as they prepared to close their stalls for the day.
Sam listened carefully to the conversations around him, gathering scraps of information that might interest the spymaster hiding in the cellar below.
The Jewish Quarter appeared to be passing through another ordinary afternoon.
Leaning against the wall of the synagogue, Sam idly nudged a pebble with the toe of his boot and let his gaze travel from the gate to the far end of the street.
His mother had brought him back to Kuttenberg from Prague when he was still a child. Since then, the people had changed, but the city itself had remained much the same.
At that moment, Jacob—who was supposed to be standing watch—came hurrying toward him.
He was breathing hard, and mud had splashed all the way up to his ankles, as though he had been running.
One look at his face was enough for Sam to know something was wrong. Jacob had gone pale.
Pushing himself away from the wall, Sam turned to face him.
Jacob took a moment to catch his breath before finally speaking.
“He's gone.”
“What?”
“He's gone. Nowhere to be found!”
Jacob leaned against the wall beside Sam and lowered his voice, pressing close as he spoke.
Or rather, he seemed so shaken that he was only barely managing to keep himself from raising an alarm.
Sam rubbed at his brow.
Ever since they had begun sheltering John, they had been plagued by his unpredictable behavior.
Sam understood the nature of John's work. He did not expect the man to explain everything.
Still, it would have been nice if John spared a thought for the people left worrying after him.
Jacob handed over a worn piece of parchment.
“This was left on the desk. I think it's a note.”
Scrawled across the old parchment were the words:
I have something I wish to verify, so I am going out.
I will return before evening.
Sam frowned.
“He could at least have said something.”
Jacob grumbled.
Sam assumed that John had probably left through the underground passages.
John was usually meticulous and rarely acted carelessly.
Even so, venturing outside the city in broad daylight seemed reckless.
Jacob leaned back against the wall and looked up at the sky with a sigh.
“Do you really think this is going to work? What we're doing?”
There was a weary resignation in his profile, the exhaustion of having his life constantly disrupted by someone from outside their community.
Sam tried to stiffen his friend's resolve.
“So what? We should just accept all of this and do nothing?”
“Yeah, but nothing's happened so far.”
“Think about Prague. Think about the day this city's walls were torn down. If the king is replaced, the same thing will happen in every city sooner or later.”
“This city hasn't changed since we were kids.”
Jacob gazed down the street, as if unable to believe that anything could truly change overnight.
Then he turned back to Sam.
They still had no idea where John was.
But if John had left of his own accord, Jacob doubted anyone would find him easily.
So he decided there was little point worrying about it for now.
“So? Anything unusual happen? If he went out on his own, there must've been a reason.”
“No. Nothing around here. Everyone's talking about Isaac's baby.”
“The bris is the day after tomorrow, right?”
“Yeah. Looks like relatives have been coming in from outside the city. But...” Sam shrugged. “Nothing that would interest John.”
The relatives would apparently be staying for a while.
That meant Sam would have to increase the tavern's provisions starting tomorrow.
As far as information went, that was all he had learned today.
“One thing I still wonder about is that dragon bone rumor.”
Jacob said it in an offhand tone, and Sam snorted with laughter.
“You're still thinking about that?”
Sam himself had never thought the rumor had anything to do with their current situation. When he had mentioned it to John before, the man had merely scoffed. Jacob, however, had become strangely obsessed with it. Whenever he found someone returning from Bylany, he would ask whether there had been any new developments, much to everyone else's amusement.
“Wasn't the story that the Church sent people to investigate and found nothing?”
Sam shrugged.
Jacob turned to him with complete seriousness.
“Sam.”
He sounded as though he genuinely meant it.
“They could be lying. Maybe they found it and decided to keep its power for themselves.”
“What kind of nonsense—”
Sam broke off abruptly.
“Oh, hey. Jacob, look at that.”
He pointed down the street.
Jacob immediately followed his finger, suddenly alert. For a split second, he thought Sam had spotted the missing nobleman wandering back into view.
Instead, there was only a dog carrying a bone it had likely been given by the butcher.
“Oh, come on.”
Sam doubled over laughing at Jacob's reaction. Throwing an arm around his friend's shoulders, he grinned at the sour expression on his face.
“Could be a dragon bone. Why don't you go get it?”
“Oh, shut up. Wait...Who's that?”
Jacob nodded toward someone farther down the street.
“The owner of the bone?”
“No. The woman. Who is she? I've never seen her before.”
He indicated a woman browsing a fruit stall with a tilt of his chin.
She was examining a row of apples, dressed in a neat burgundy gown.
“One of those relatives from outside the city we were just talking about. I saw her earlier today.”
Sam glanced her way.
“You really do notice every woman, don't you? Shame for you—she's not exactly a young girl anymore.”
“Says the man who noticed her too.”
Sam opened his mouth to argue, but before he could, the woman finished her shopping and turned around.
Both young men instinctively drew back.
At first, her face remained hidden behind a veil. Only the lower half was visible.
But as she passed in front of the two youths frozen against the wall, she casually lifted the edge of the veil.
Like any curious young men, Sam and Jacob stole a look.
Her eyes remained concealed, making her expression impossible to read.
Yet as she passed, the corners of her mouth seemed to curl into the faintest smile.
Then she turned back quite deliberately, blew a kiss toward Sam, and gave a small wave.
At least, that was how it seemed to Sam.
Perhaps it had been meant for Jacob instead.
When Sam glanced sideways, Jacob was standing there with his mouth hanging open in the exact same astonishment.
Leaving the two of them speechless, the woman resumed the modest, reserved demeanor she had worn before and continued on toward the King Solomon Tavern.
Only when she had gone far enough that they could no longer call after her did Jacob finally recover.
“Sam! Hey, Sam!”
He smacked Sam hard in the chest, nearly vibrating with excitement.
"So even an older woman like that falls for you!"
Uneasy now, Sam rubbed his chin.
Had that really been directed at him?
Could he have imagined it?
Had they met somewhere before?
Or did I really look that eager for a woman?
Sam thought about it seriously.
“I honestly don't remember her.”
“Maybe you've met her before and just forgot. Otherwise, why would she do something like that?”
Jacob seemed even more excited about it than Sam himself.
A worldly older woman was exactly the sort of thing that stirred a young man's imagination and sense of adventure.
“You're questioning my memory now?”
“Even if you'd never met her, she obviously knew who you were.”
“I was standing here earlier, too.”
The two young men became so absorbed in deciphering the meaning of the blown kiss that they completely forgot the reason they were supposed to be standing watch.
“Aha.”
Jacob suddenly made a strange noise.
It sounded like he had just thought of something.
“I don't like that tone.”
Sam immediately grew suspicious.
“I've figured it out. That's the source of it. You slept with Rebecca, didn't you?”
The accusation was so blunt that Sam nearly choked.
Several people in the street glanced over at the commotion.
Realizing it was only two young men exchanging nonsense, they quickly lost interest and moved on.
“Keep your voice down! How did you even arrive at that conclusion?”
Jacob grabbed Sam by the shoulder and pulled him closer, as though about to share a secret.
His voice, however, remained just as loud as before.
Sam rubbed at his brow.
Jacob's theory went like this:
He had heard a rumor that Rebecca had recently been singing the praises of a man she'd been involved with.
And Isaac's wife was as close to Rebecca as a sister.
So perhaps the story had reached that widowed relative from outside the city as well.
At least, that was Jacob's reasoning.
“That doesn't mean it was me.”
“But you didn't deny sleeping with her.”
Jacob grinned smugly.
Sam shoved him away and jabbed him in the stomach with an elbow.
“More importantly, why are people discussing this when I'm not around?”
“Because it's always more fun when the person being talked about isn't there.”
Jacob laughed loudly.
If the rumor was true, Sam couldn't honestly say he disliked it.
Still, it wasn't exactly the sort of conversation one ought to be having while leaning against the synagogue wall in broad daylight.
He silently hoped his grandfather would not emerge wearing one of his disapproving expressions.
Jacob put on an exaggerated feminine voice.
“Ohhh, he was just amazing.”
“Cut it out! Just get back to the tavern and see whether John has returned.”
By then the sun had sunk noticeably lower.
The sky was beginning to fill with the red hues of evening.
Jacob headed back toward the King Solomon Tavern, repeatedly glancing over his shoulder and blowing exaggerated kisses as he went.
When Sam brought dinner down to the cellar, he found John sitting in his usual place as though nothing at all had happened.
If anything, he looked more put together than usual.
Had he somehow managed to visit a bathhouse?
Planting a hand on his hip, Sam made no effort to hide his displeasure.
“I heard you slipped out without telling anyone. Jacob was worried. You need to start treating us like we're on the same side.”
John accepted the rebuke without protest.
“You are right. My apologies. I should have said something. I never intended to put either of you in danger.”
As he spoke, he pushed aside the piles of parchments covering his desk and cleared a space for the meal.
Tonight's supper was a vegetable and barley soup, touched with a little saffron and flavored with chopped toasted pine nuts.
John took a spoonful and tasted it with obvious satisfaction.
Sam sat across from him, pretending to read a book while watching him from the corner of his eye.
The reaction gave him a quiet sense of satisfaction, but he promptly lowered his gaze back to the page as though nothing had happened.
“So? Did you accomplish what you went out to do?”
At that, John's voice brightened.
“I did. In fact, I learned something even more interesting than I expected.”
Sam looked up.
To him, it had been an utterly ordinary day.
Apparently, it had looked rather different through a spy's eyes.
“First.”
John raised a single finger.
“People cannot notice what lies beyond the limits of their imagination.”
The fact that he had begun with something other than politics immediately caught Sam's attention.
John continued.
“People have a difficult time recognizing something they believe cannot possibly exist, even when it is right in front of them.
Imagine a table where no food is ever kept. One day, an apple somehow ends up sitting on it.
If no one has ever considered the possibility that food might be on that table, they will look at the table and see only the table. The apple enters their field of vision, yet they do not truly notice it. It passes through their sight as nothing more than part of the scenery.”
He gave a small shrug.
“The eyes see everything. That's the easy part. It's the mind that decides what is real.
If your mind rejects something, then as far as you're concerned, it doesn't exist—even when you're looking directly at it.
Most people don't shape their beliefs to fit the world. They shape the world to fit their beliefs.”
As he listened, Sam found himself thinking of the rumors about the dragon bones.
“Second.”
Holding up two fingers, John interrupted whatever conclusion Sam had been drawing from the story about the dragon bones.
“You don't seem particularly interested in older women.”
The moment Sam realized the remark was aimed at him, he felt a sudden wave of discomfort.
What kind of topic was that to bring up out of nowhere?
Before he could form a protest, however, John flicked his wrist and pressed those two raised fingers to his lips before blowing a kiss.
Exactly like the woman from earlier that day.
Sam nearly shouted. Instead, he slapped a hand over his own mouth.
Mischievous eyes peering from beneath a veil.
A refined nose.
Thin lips.
A confident bearing!
One detail after another came rushing back.
And then he understood.
The reason John looked unusually well-groomed today was because he had shaved more carefully than usual.
Every hair on Sam's body seemed to stand on end. The hand clamped over his mouth could feel the heat rising in his face.
Having thoroughly enjoyed himself, John reached into the pile of parchments stacked beside his desk.
From somewhere among them, he produced a single apple and offered it to the speechless Sam.
“Now then,” he said, a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth.
“Would you care for some dessert?”