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

you were. Whatever strange magic just occurred, even if you’re free from the Witch King, you’re still not free from yourself. I just don’t understand why. Why?’ she exclaimed. ‘We’ve all lost ones we loved. We grieve, we say goodbye. Then we get on with living—’

‘Is it not living here? Is this not life?’

‘Not our life, no.’

Erlan slumped into a chair. ‘I’m sorry, Lilla.’

She sank down on a couch opposite him. ‘Who was she then?’ she said in a quiet voice. ‘This love. . . I need to know.’

He looked up, could see the sympathy in her eyes, could see how she wanted so badly to understand. Didn’t she deserve to? After all that had happened?

So slowly he began to tell her. He told her the whole story from the beginning – who Inga was to him, why he could not stay. And why he could never go back. She listened to every word gripped in silence, a silence that endured long after he had finished speaking. He stood. ‘There, you see. Huh. That look on your face. That’s why I never should have told you. Why I swore I would never tell anyone.’ He went to pick his sword and scabbard from the corner of the room. ‘I will live, Lilla. And I will come back to you. If you still want me.’

His hand was on the door handle when at last she spoke. ‘Erlan.’ He stopped but didn’t turn. ‘Until you forgive yourself for what happened, you’ll always be a stranger. Even to yourself.’

He paused for a long moment. And then, without another word, he went to fight the emperor’s war.

After he had gone, Lilla sat in the gloom, thinking, listening to the toll of a hundred bells resounding around the city. It was too much, all of it. Too exhausting to untangle the web of his past. Her own past weighed heavy upon her. The debts of her dead. Maybe she was wrong. Maybe she had to walk her path alone after all. But she knew it did not lie here.

It was not long after Erlan had left when a sentinel called at her chambers with a message from the emperor, asking her to join him.

‘What for?’

‘For your protection. He says he believes you.’

‘Believes me? What about?’

‘He said you would know, my lady.’

It could only be Katāros. She was glad, except that his change of heart probably meant the chamberlain had already escaped. ‘And he says you should wear something warm.’

‘Warm? Where are you taking us?’

‘You will see.’

A short time later, she and Gerutha were following the sentinel, wrapped in their woollen travel cloaks. The guard led them to the sea wall in the south-eastern corner of the city promontory. He led them up to the top of the wall, then inside a stone tower and up again to the upper platform. There, they found Emperor Leo, no longer dressed in purple, but in his general’s uniform.

‘A strange day,’ he said, after greeting her. The excitement was rising off him like a wolf’s scent. ‘One of great portent, I think. There is a struggle for the soul of this city, far beyond what can be seen with human eyes.’

‘You sound like one of your priests.’

He chuckled softly. ‘Do you not have such mystics where you come from? Ones who see ahead?’

‘We do. Their methods are rather different, of course.’ She had often thought of herself as one gifted with the far sight. But here, in the dusty lands of the south, she had been proven deaf and blind.

‘No doubt. Tell me, is Erlan—’

‘He’s gone to do his duty,’ she said.

‘Good, good,’ he muttered. He sucked in a deep sigh and dismissed the guard with a wave of his hand. ‘You were right in that other matter, it seems. Katāros has vanished. I thought you safer here with me, and we have no time to find him just now. But we will, I promise you. And we will deal with the wretch as he deserves.’ He beckoned her forward. ‘But first we have more pressing matters. Come.’

He moved aside so that she could see out between the battlements to the south-east. Gerutha lingered at a respectful distance behind them. ‘We saw the new fleet arrive,’ Lilla said. ‘Then it turned away. We didn’t know why.’

‘Perhaps they heard what awaits them in the straits.’ He smiled drily. ‘They sailed past that point there, you see, to Chalcedon. We counted four hundred ships.’

‘Four hundred? And all war-ships?’

‘Most. Transports and war-galleys, also cargo ships, no doubt laden with Egyptian grain. God willing, Maslama will never taste a grain of it,’ he added.

‘Will you deploy your fire-ships?’

‘Patience, Lady, patience. Things must develop first.’ He pointed west. ‘Maslama’s forces began their attack against the land walls some hours ago.’

‘Yet you are here. Aren’t you concerned?’

‘Our men on the walls can hold them for now. But I have a surprise coming for my old friend.’ He glanced back over the rooftops of the palace at the falling sun. ‘Soon.’

‘Basíleus!’ cried a nearby guard. ‘Sails to the south!’

That way, the sun was on its slow descent, sending light bouncing over the glassy waves of the Marmara. Lilla had to shield her eyes from the dazzle and then, slowly, she watched the horizon fragment into smaller pieces. Out of the golden blur she saw ten sails, then twenty, then more, until dozens of ships filled the approach to the straits.

‘They’ll turn away as well.’ Leo’s chest was pressed tight against the stone in his excitement.

She was about to ask him how he knew this when she heard her own name cried behind her. She turned to see Princess Anna mounting the last step onto the platform. Despite the girl’s robes, she ran to Lilla and threw her arms around her, engulfing her in a cloud of perfume. ‘My poor sister! I heard about the terrible trials you have suffered. You poor, poor thing.’ She sounded as if she might burst into tears herself, then suddenly she