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

she was a trick of the imagination, a pulsing incarnation of the rhythm of the drums. Her silhouette swayed and shifted, her curves lithe as a serpent. Katāros chuckled to himself. Silanos had had this marvellous creature concealed out there on the balcony all evening, awaiting her entry. She wasn’t about to waste it now.

All at once she padded in through the curtain, as light on her feet as if she’d been blown in by a zephyr. There were flashes of skin gleaming with scented oil. The impression of nakedness, although Katāros saw her bosom was discreetly obscured with small silk coverings, and a pair of black silk breeches hung low off her hips and clung to her thighs. Her feet were bare and her hair coiled behind her head, black as the night; and wrapped around her midriff was a string of little bells that jangled with every movement.

But the centrepiece of her dance was the object in her hand. The long, curved sword was oiled and glinted orange and white in the flame-flicker. She moved with the song, slowly at first, hips rising and falling, her naked stomach undulating like a beckoning hand, calling to a man’s eyes as the little man’s song called to his ears.

But I am no man, thought Katāros. It was a bitter truth still, after all these years.

Her movements were exact. The tinkle of her little bells, the gleam of the shifting metal, mingled in his mind with the strains of the musician’s song, the cadence building and building till she was whirling around, trance-like, the sword indistinguishable from her body. With a sudden flick of her head her hair shook loose, whipping around her shoulders as the drums built to a maddening frenzy until, suddenly, she fell as though struck dead to the floor, her hair fanned over her outstretched arms. Only the sword was visible, a sweep of bright metal pointing straight at the emperor.

There was a long moment of quiet.

The only sound in the room was the girl’s panting, the only movement the heave of her back as she lay flat against the marble. Slowly, she drew herself up until she stood, poised on her toes, then bowed low to her emperor and her master. The guests broke into limp applause until a brittle voice silenced them.

‘Behold, Salome!’ The eyes were bulging out of the old patriarch’s skull. ‘My lord, did you bring us here to make Herods of us all?’

‘Herods?’ snorted Arbasdos. ‘What are you talking about, old man?’

‘The enemies of God are on the march this very moment. The destiny of our city rests on the Almighty’s favour – yet you would allow such a thing! And before your emperor, before Christ’s envoy on Earth!’ He cast a mottled hand at the dancing girl who, Katāros noted, retained her poise despite the old man’s tirade. ‘I should not have come.’ Germanus struggled to his feet. ‘I am insulted. God is mocked.’

‘Calm yourself, old friend. Sit. Please!’ insisted the emperor. ‘The woman is beautiful, to be sure. But is her beauty not a gift of God? What harm is a little dancing?’

‘It is an abomination, Majesty. It stirs up lust. Her dance is worship to other gods.’

‘I’m sorry my hospitality is not to your liking,’ said Arbasdos, his face dark with suppressed rage. ‘Or to that of our Lord.’

‘You know I only speak the truth, even if you do not wish to hear it.’

The company fell silent, soured by this exchange. Katāros noticed a look between Arbasdos and the girl. She stood composed, her breathing calm now, but in that look he’d seen an understanding that went far beyond that of master and slave. Silanos clapped his hands. At once the girl tipped the sword onto her shoulder and ran out, her footsteps a soft patter under the sound of her jangling bells.

At the doorway, she glanced up at Katāros for an instant and in her kohl-ringed eyes he saw mirth, pride, mischief, and then she was gone, leaving only her scent to linger in their senses.

‘What think you of our Lucia?’ Silanos said in a murmur when the conversation had begun to pick up.

‘Impressive. Although not to everyone’s taste, it seems.’

‘Indeed. Her mother was a Jewess. Her father, God only knows,’ the steward chuckled.

‘I see Arbasdos takes a proprietorial interest in her.’

‘Mmm. I suppose he shall have to give her up. With all this.’ Silanos gave Katāros a knowing smile.

‘Yes. . . But will he?’

Not that it mattered much to Katāros. This alliance, these great men, these pampered patricians. Their voices were like echoes from beyond the grave. They were about to be cut away like rancid flesh from a diseased wound. The hurricane had risen in the deserts of the south. And he, for one, intended to be on the right side of history’s unforgiving blade. If that also meant avenging the wrongs done to him against the Queen of Cities. . . well, so much the better.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Erlan was lucky to be alive. His act of defiance had not gone down well with his new master. Arbasdos had railed like a fire-worm with a spear in his guts and, looking back, Erlan was surprised the general had not had him butchered right there while Georgios’s blood was still filling the paving cracks. In the heat of that moment, Erlan would have had few regrets if he had.

But Silanos’s calming counsel had prevailed. Erlan had been bought, the steward reminded his master, for a considerable sum of gold. If the Northman were now despatched to the afterlife, this sum would be a lamentably wasted cost. And that was something Arbasdos was loath to suffer even more than the demise of his favourite spatharios. Silanos’s second ground for sparing the Northman’s life was that, regrettable though the outcome had been, it did seem to prove the point which he himself had been trying to make. Namely, that the cripple could fight. No other spatharios