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

happiness together will be a rock in these troubled times. And I will do all in my power to defend it.’

She nodded. If her heart was bursting with joy at her happy prospects, she hid it well.

‘I raise my cup to this marriage. To this seal of our friendship. Brother to brother.’

‘You flatter to call me brother, Majesty.’

‘Does any other man stand closer than you? Come now, all of you, drink! Raise your glasses, my friends. To my daughter, my jewel. And to my brother. May this be the most blessed of unions. Please God,’ he cast a nod at the old patriarch.

They all drank, exchanging solemn glances with the emperor and with each other. The empress beamed and the princess demurred. As for Arbasdos, he looked like a man caught on the knife-edge between high honour and extreme discomfort. Katāros chuckled inwardly. Arbasdos wasn’t a man to enjoy having his freedom curtailed.

After the toast, glasses were replenished, but Leo still stood. ‘It’s like a riddle of the ancients. . . How does a brother become a son? Well, soon, you will be both to me. And fathers are supposed to give sons gifts, are they not? I have one for you.’

‘This is too much, Majesty,’ laughed Arbasdos.

‘You may not thank me for it. But we have a time of testing ahead of us. I trust you above all others, and there is no man in all the empire more skilful in the arts of war.’

‘Except for yourself.’

‘Hm!’ Leo smiled. Katāros noted that he did not deny it. ‘I’m appointing you commander of the imperial fleet.’

‘Fleet?’ exclaimed Arbasdos. ‘You are joking.’

‘No joke, my friend. There will be no office more vital to the city’s survival.’

‘But I’m a soldier. Blisters and broken boot-straps are what I know. What do I know of the sea?’

‘Well, you have time to learn something. . . Though not much time, true,’ he added.

‘What? Have you heard news?’

‘Word came from Aeolis this morning. Pergamon has fallen.’ There was a gasp around the table.

‘Christ’s blood,’ exclaimed the eparch. ‘That’s less than three hundred miles from here.’

Leo waved down the general consternation. ‘I told you it would be like this. The caliph’s army is on the march. This time they will not turn back.’

Several of the guests spoke at once, but it was the shrill words of the Patriarch Germanus that cut through the babble. ‘Judgement is coming on this city!’ There was something about the astringent tone of his sexless voice that sent a shiver down Katāros’s spine. ‘Judgement!’

‘Nonsense!’ protested the fat eparch. ‘We are ready for them. The walls of Theodosius have stood for two hundred and fifty years. They are impregnable against all comers.’

‘Those walls will serve us nothing if the Almighty’s favour has left us,’ Germanus replied ominously. ‘You may look to our military defences, my lord. But God has granted me charge of our spiritual walls.’

‘Are those not intact then, old man?’ Arbasdos’s disdain for the patriarch was widely known.

Germanus gave him a cold look. ‘Who can ignore the signs of His displeasure? Think of what has already befallen the empire since the coming of the False Prophet. The Holy City overrun, the richest provinces of the empire snatched from us. And now our very heartlands are threatened with devastation. I ask you, when will we listen?’

‘Then what, Holiness, is the message?’ said the emperor, his voice steady.

‘Turn back to God! Flush out all sin and rebellion against the Holy One from among us. The Great God can have no charge against us if the city is to be delivered from the hands of the infidel.’

‘I’m no expert in these matters, Your Holiness,’ said Arbasdos. ‘But I doubt there was no sin to be found in the days of Constantine Augustus, when last the caliph’s armies came. Don’t tell me every man, woman and child in the city was found white as a newborn lamb. . .? And yet the walls stood.’

‘You forget, my lord, how Constantine called for a day of repentance each year they came.’ The patriarch swung his gaze back to Leo. ‘Do the same, Your Majesty. I implore you. And soon.’

‘It has not yet come to that, I think.’

‘Has it not? How much worse must it get, Majesty? If this city falls, the empire cannot survive. It is written, you shall not put the Lord your God to the test.’ Germanus stabbed the scented air with his bony finger. ‘He will not be provoked. Fall to your knees willingly now, rather than be forced to them later.’

‘An emperor does not grovel, old man,’ drawled Arbasdos impatiently.

‘I will think on this,’ said Leo.

‘Fear God, o Solomon!’ The old priest had riled himself into a fine lather.

‘I said, I will think on it.’ The weight of Leo’s gaze seemed to bring Germanus to his senses. The old man sank back onto his couch. ‘Come,’ continued the emperor. ‘Enough of this talk. It was not my intention to spoil our evening.’

Arbasdos took this as his cue. ‘Friends. Take more wine and we can enjoy a little entertainment. Silanos!’

As if conjured from the shadows, Silanos reappeared and clapped his hands. A curtain drew aside and in ran two musicians, each clutching a pair of small drums. Taking their places either side of the veils billowing off the balcony, they began to play.

They were easterners, darker of skin than Greeks or Armenians, probably from the spice lands in the far south. Slight men with sinuous fingers that moved so fast over the surface of the drums they were nothing but a blur. One of them began to sing. A single high note at first, hovering in the air, waiting for the guests’ ears to bite, and only then plunging into a juddering, stuttering song, without words, without meaning – as far as Katāros knew – yet weaving a strange spell all the same.

The dancer appeared like a shadow, an outline against the flimsy screen of veils, so subtle that for a second Katāros thought