A Burning Sea by Theodore Brun (snow like ashes series TXT) 📗

on marble. He straightened up, tightening his fingers around the lion-head grips on the arms of his throne. The time had come to pick a fight. . .

‘You seem tired from your ride, Abdal-Battal.’ Maslama’s envoy looked a shadow of the proud young warrior who had brought his master’s representations on the other side of winter. The lines of his face cut deeper, his once gleaming beard was now dull and unkempt.

‘It was the wait that was tiresome, Majesty.’

‘The demands of state, Lord Battal. You understand.’

‘My master’s patience has long run dry. But soon you will pay the price for the lies you have told.’

‘I thought it was I who summoned you here. Yet it seems to be you delivering me a message.’

‘Time has run out, Byzantine. Open your gates or the city will be razed. Every man slaughtered. Every woman and child enslaved. You have two days.’

‘I shall save you more waiting, since you find it so tiresome. Our gates will remain closed.’

Al-Battal stooped his head. ‘Then the fate of the city is sealed.’

Leo considered the young man before him. Doubtless accustomed to getting his way. Yet to have his bubble burst. ‘I heard you took a Christian abbess to wife from Amorium. Is it true?’

The handsome almond eyes narrowed. ‘It is true my wife was once a Christian. But she was shown her error. God is one.’

Leo nodded. ‘And you do not fear him. God, I mean. That despoiling one of his maidens would stir up his wrath against you.’

‘It is we who are the instruments of God’s wrath. Allah takes no pleasure in error. But He is merciful and she is happy. Hers will be the fate of the Queen of Cities.’ His eyes burned bright with conviction.

‘Hmm. We shall see.’

‘You’ve had your chance to submit, Byzantine. But now the sword of Allah will fall.’

Leo smiled. ‘Then let the shield of faith arise.’

Gerutha hurried on through the shadowy streets. She was clutching the neck of a wine-flask she had swiped from the kitchens on her way out of the palace. Old habits meant that even now she didn’t want to visit Alethea empty-handed. She gripped it tight lest she miss her footing on the crooked pavings or else slip in some pile of excrement and drop her gift.

It wasn’t long before she saw the familiar lamp on the street corner, and her nostrils caught the more welcome smell of newly baked bread. But when she turned onto the Street of the Bakers and peered down the lane towards Cornelius’s wine shop, she saw only a small group of men seated on stools around an upturned bucket. But not a hair of Alethea.

She remembered that the old woman had said she sometimes slept in a doorway further up the street. It was the middle of the afternoon, but if she’d been drinking. . . Gerutha passed the wine shop and continued down the lane, checking each doorway and nook all the way to the end of the street. There was no sign of Alethea. She returned to the wine shop and, ignoring the glances of the men drinking outside, put her head inside. ‘Cornelius?’

The wine-keeper looked up from his broom and cast a bloodshot eye in her direction. ‘Who’s asking?’

‘I’m a friend of Alethea.’

A blank look.

‘The woman – the beggar – who sits outside your shop.’

‘Oh, her,’ he said in a gruff voice. ‘Thought she doesn’t have no friends.’

‘But you know her, don’t you?’ Gerutha replied, trying not to let her impatience get the better of her. ‘You let her sit there every day.’

‘She sits there all right, so long as she doesn’t bother my customers. Or me.’ He tapped his temple. ‘She’s crazy.’

‘Well, do you know where she is?’

‘It’s no business of mine.’

‘Can you at least tell me the last time you saw her?’

‘Don’t know.’ Cornelius expelled a long whistle. ‘Three, four days ago. Couldn’t say exactly.’

‘But isn’t that strange?’

Cornelius shrugged. ‘I told you. It’s no business of mine if she’s crawled off some place else.’

They were standing in the doorway, within earshot of the drinkers outside. One of them set down his cup. ‘You looking for the old beggar?’ The man had the look of a coppersmith – big forearms and a ruddy face.

‘That’s right.’

‘Can’t tell you where she is.’ He took a slurp from his wine cup. ‘But I did hear something.’

‘You hear a lot of things, Joseph,’ said Cornelius.

‘Maybe. . . But that empty spot there tells me this one could be worth retelling.’

‘What did you hear?’ Gerutha felt the prickle of anxiety in the nape of her neck that she’d been carrying since the palace. ‘Please.’

‘Oh, I’ll tell, I’ll tell,’ he croaked and took another swig. ‘They pulled a body out of the Prosphorion yesterday morning.’ That was the naval harbour at the eastern end of the Horn. ‘The fish had taken a few bites out of it already.’

‘What’s that to do with Alethea?’

‘Could be not much,’ the man drawled. ‘Except the body didn’t have no legs.’

Gerutha felt a little sick, her mind filling with a vision of Alethea, drunk as a Dane in her crabby little box, toppling off the quayside. She would have gone under without a murmur. ‘Did she drown?’

The coppersmith shook his head grimly. ‘Wasn’t no drowning.’

‘How can you be sure? Anyway, the authorities must still have the body. I could go and identify her. . . if it is her.’

‘Ain’t no identifying to be done.’

‘Why not? The fishes can’t have done that much damage.’

‘God’s blood, Joseph,’ snapped Cornelius. ‘Spit it out, man.’

The coppersmith calmly drained his cup. ‘Thing is. . . whoever did for the poor bitch,’ he said, ‘cut off her face.’

Katāros hurried towards the rose garden that sat nestled in a quiet, sunny corner of the Daphne palace. He was late. He was never late. But the emperor had delayed him – Emperor Leo, the Isaurian, third of his name, a man so inflated with his own smug certainty that his eyes were sealed