Reabsorption

“Stamp there, and there,” Stamatia said, pointing at several scrolls. “When you are done, write your name in Arabic and Greek, then use my father’s signet to seal each one. Turn the garnet slowly. It’s an old ring, and your barbaric movement may knock the gem loose.”

It was easy for her to say when she had set the deadline herself.

With Lord Vasilios’ ring—a silver ring whose garnet swiveled on a pin—I signed and sealed a mountain of documents. I did not read the terms and conditions because they were in Greek, but I made Stamatia swear by God’s name that nothing in the letters would bind my people or me to anything beyond our work.

“It is mostly procedural, as we’re about to enter restricted areas,” Stamatia said dismissively. “If anything, I’m the one in danger, handing you my father’s ring. Be careful not to lose it, as we’ll need the ring to seal the Council’s document.”

“Then stamp it yourself,” I muttered.

“Oh, I don’t know,” Stamatia said sweetly. “Perhaps my fingers are too delicate, and I might have to call the guards to tell them that the parchment has defeated the spy.”

I pocketed the signet ring, grumbling, and went to find a safe spot for administrative work. That was the stupidest reason to delay a prayer.

When I finally prayed, I had done it beneath the shadow of an old forum. The moon was already halfway down when Stamatia joined me in an old part of the city.

“Where’s your entourage?” I asked, panicking. “Where’s your brother? Husband?”

“My entourage is you. My brother died in the war. My husband died in a cell.” Her voice caught an edge. “Don’t worry, I am not going to pounce on you.”

A sudden popping sound startled Stamatia, and she caught my robe, trembling. When I inched away, she followed me. Another popping sound had her shrieking.

“So much for not pouncing on me.” I rolled my eyes. “Unhand me! I don’t want to be seen like this!”

“B-but the g-ghosts…”

I was not sure what phantasma meant, but I guessed she meant the jinn. I sought refuge in God from the accursed satan before we entered the beginning of a sewer. I paid no mind to Stamatia, who shivered despite the temperate air. Popping sounds accompanied us as we descended.

I crouched so suddenly that Stamatia frantically followed my example. Except she threw herself flat to the ground.

“There are no jinn—phantasma—so far,” I said, letting Stamatia pick herself up. I was busy picking up a plant with several pods. “Those sounds came from this plant. Our people call it donkey’s cucumber, since it upsets a donkey’s bowels.”

I held the torch low, just in time to see a pod burst and spray its seeds.

“Oh,” Stamatia said. She stood up. “Oh. Hmph. Of course I knew that plant. I am just… being courteous. I was letting you shield me from the seeds. That was not because I am scared of the spirit of dead people, of course.”

I stared at her with dead eyes.

“A-anyway, we’re going down into an old sewer, and it will be slippery.” Stamatia held my robe once more. “I need something to steady myself, at least.”

“Are you sure it’s not because we are about to enter a latrine where a man… relieved himself?”

“Of course not.” Stamatia sounded better. “If Arius’ ghost visits us, I’ll happily kill him again.”

***

“Did Arius kill your husband?” I asked Stamatia, knocking on the wall where the sewer ended.

“He might as well have,” Stamatia said seriously. “My late husband owned an Arius’ copy at the wrong time.”

“Can I have the copy?”

“Of course. I believe the brazier is still burning. I’ll happily push you in.” She mimicked my knocks again. “What exactly are we looking for?”

“The hollow sound of a structural joint,” I replied, pressing my ear to the sewer wall. “Someone built over the latrine, so they’d have had to reinforce the base. That would create gaps. When the dull thud turns hollow, tell me.”

“You should have just told me earlier.” Stamatia walked back to the mouth of the sewer and kicked a patch of plaster. A slab overhead swung loose, and a rope dropped down. “You wasted my time, you know? The latrine is here.”

Stamatia’s husband spared decades of agony, I thought as I climbed the rope first.

It must have been a well, since crust lined the wall. Even for a man used to wearing armor for days, hauling myself up took strength. Midway through helping Stamatia climb, I realized the rope was maintained.

“Welcome,” Stamatia said, panting heavily, “to the resting place of Arius the Traitor.”

The latrine looked like… well, a privy. There was the well we had climbed, or it could have been a shaft. In the middle stood a fountain, long dry, its brass plates engraved in Greek. Only the rows of seats and the room around them remained in order. The room itself was warped, and at least two of its beams had bent.

“The treasure you are looking for is here,” Stamatia interrupted my assessment, pointing down to a latrine.

I shone the torch and wondered whether it was that easy.

Then I saw it beneath the latrine: a brass casket, half buried and corroded. The drop would have been deadly back then, but an earthquake, perhaps, had raised the ground, heaving the casket closer. It’d take effort, but two adults could get it out.

“Was it really that easy?” I muttered. “You didn’t plant that beforehand?”

“Of course not, you addled man.” Stamatia sneered. “That casket, I gather, contains Arius’ sphragis.”

“Sphragis,” I repeated.

“Or, in your language, a khatam.” Stamatia smirked.

“Signet…” I grumbled. “How do you know all of this?”

Stamatia tilted her head, clearly weighing how much she could tell me. “How about you answer, for once. What do you know about Arius?”

I hesitated. It felt like a set-up, but the treasure hinged on Stamatia’s cooperation.

“The previous Caliph who sent me spoke of a letter to Emperor Heraclius,” I began slowly. Stamatia must not have expected that name uttered by a Saracen. “The word al-Arisiyyin was in that letter. Most of our scholars have not looked beyond its plain Arabic meaning. We have lived among your people in Damascus. Some of them mentioned Arius to me. I thought… could it be?”

“All that for a letter from half a century ago,” Stamatia commented.

“It’s a letter from the man we love more than our own parents.”

Stamatia must have seen me rubbing my eyes, because she turned her attention to where Arius had died. “I’ll be honest, Khabbab, this traitor you’ve been chasing is not really worth your time. Have you heard how Arius died?”

“In this latrine,” I said. “He fell sick in his old age.”

“He received divine retribution,” Stamatia hissed. “Eyes popping out and bleeding, bowel bursting forth, skin decayed like parchment, unclothed and humiliated. Long after his death, his supporters kept bringing mischief. The next Council… my father should have wiped Arius’ memory from every parchment he made me copy.”

I drank my waterskin, feeling the air seared.

“I understand that your religion branded Arius as a heretic,” I started. “But the way you say his name, it sounds like a personal grudge.”

Stamatia looked as if a jinn had possessed her.

“I am descended from Arius’ followers,” she admitted. “And my ancestor built over this place to bury Arius’ shame.”

***

“Look at the fountain,” Stamatia ordered. “Read what they had engraved there.”

I set the torch low. Then something vital occurred to me.

“I can’t read Greek,” I blurted.

“Photios,” Stamatia continued, though I caught her flushing, “is the one who signed the plates. They abandoned this place lest God’s Wrath on Arius linger. My ancestor, Photios, decided to build a public office over the latrine. He neglected the building afterwards. Smart man.”

I gulped. I had come here for history and the chance to help the scholars. It had never occurred to me that my hobby of reading theological history would lead me into centuries-old hostility. I asked for God’s Forgiveness, since my lingering around Qustantiniyya for a side errand had brought this on me.

“Th-then…” I was eager to turn her grudge on someone else. Photios was the most obvious choice. “I saw numbers on the brass plate. Are they secret codes? Oh, I know! You could not open the casket because it has a numbered lock!”

Stamatia raised an eyebrow. “No, the numbers are the materials brought when Photios fixed the fountain.”

I scoffed.

“I am serious,” Stamatia said. “You remember the bathhouse? This is similar to the plumbing, but this is more about the amount than the composition.”

“I see…”

Even without reading Greek, I could guess from the two columns that Photios recorded what he had ordered against what he had received. The same word that I suspected was a measurement unit kept repeating. A longer text, resembling a verse, ran along the base.

“As for the casket,” Stamatia continued, “I was little when my father brought me here. I couldn’t reach the casket without getting stuck. What sealed the casket was not a numbered lock but a ring. Photios’, that is. The problem is, we don’t know where Photios hid his ring.”

I peered at the dried fountain. The basin had signs of leaching. The copper surface had turned green. I stared at the seat where Arius was said to have died. My heart hammered behind my ribs.

“Did your ancestor never consider that Arius’ death might have been foul play?” I asked. “From the way you tell it, I wouldn’t rule out someone murdered him and called it God’s work.”

Stamatia snorted. “Here comes the Saracen, playing the physician. What would make an old man die humiliated in this seat except for divine retribution?”

“Bowel purging,” I said. “We just walked past the poison that causes it.”

She glanced at me sideways. “You couldn’t be more insane.”

“Humor me, will you?” I mimed walking in through the latrine’s door. “Here comes Arius, with something in his food, wanting to relieve himself. Dehydrated, he drank from the fountain’s basin, but the murderer had put the donkey’s cucumber in the basin. Arius drank. The purging intensified. He got thirsty. He drank again. He relieved himself again. The cycle repeated until his rectum prolapsed.”

Stamatia’s eyes widened, clearly conflicted about whether to empathize or antagonize Arius.

“Even if it is true,” she said cautiously, “it changes nothing about our casket.”

I paused before pointing at the fountain. “Can you read the lower text of this brass plate for me, Lady Stamatia?”

Stamatia crouched reluctantly. She sighed with relief, probably realizing that the text was not a curse.

"For He is not equal, no,” Stamatia quoted. “Nor One in essence with Him. Photios just quoted Arius’ Thalia. It only adds to Arius’ heresy."

I remembered the sweetness of Al-Ikhlas before pointing further down. “There was a second line below the quote, right?”

Stamatia scowled. “For man has flaws molded into his essence. I didn’t recognize it from Thalia; it must be Photios’ own saying.”

“As a sign of filling what’s flawed,” I interpreted. I began rapping the fountain, searching for the hollow joint. “Photios lived long after Arius’ death. He noticed that Arius was murdered through this fountain, and he left the brass plate as a warning that some of the fountain’s materials were not what they should have been.”

“Like how he compared thirteen litrai of copper with nine litrai?” Stamatia sneered. “And what fills that gap?”

My knuckles struck a hollow ring. A panel on the basin gave way under my fist. I rummaged inside the gap.

“This.”

In my hand was a swivel ring, a ruby set in it.