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

stayed in the navy. Any sailor with an evening to kill comes in here. A few of us soldiers too.’ In his short time in the city, Einar had learned to appreciate the distinction.

‘So if I tell him his wine tastes like pig piss he won’t have too much to say on the matter?’

‘Not much,’ the soldier chuckled. ‘Then again his wine’s cheap and there’s plenty of it. That’s all most in here want.’ The owner himself seemed entirely indifferent as to the quality of his wine.

‘And the women?’

‘What about them?’

‘Well, I take it these aren’t your comrades’ wives.’

‘Hah! I hope not. A few whores. Some actors. Like that one.’ He pointed out a woman with light brown curls falling over startling green eyes who had more admirers fawning over her than the others. ‘She can fill the Hippodrome, that one.’

‘What’s an actor? Or the Hippodrome, for that matter?’ He vaguely remembered something about horses.

‘You’re a foreigner here I take it.’

‘Oh, you could tell?’ Einar sculled back his wine.

‘Well, you’re in the right place. This is a city of foreigners.’ He swept his cup around the room. ‘Thrace, Cilicia, Italia, Greece, Macedonia, Illyria, Bithynia. . . Everyone comes from anywhere but here.’

‘Yet here we all are.’

‘Aye.’ The man tapped the rim of Einar’s cup and drank. ‘Go on then. Where are you from?’

‘Which way’s north?’

The man raised a hairy knuckle.

‘Well, head that way a few thousand miles and you’ll be getting close. And you? Just another foreigner?’

‘Armenia.’

‘Never heard of it.’ Einar found his attention momentarily distracted by the green-eyed girl whose gaze kept darting over a bare shoulder at him.

‘You will. We’re the best fighters in the empire. Maybe the whole world.’

‘I know a few back home would dispute that.’ Einar took another sip, this time holding the woman’s glance over the rim of his cup.

His drinking companion noticed this and uttered a knowing chuckle. ‘You like actors, huh?’

‘Hey?’

The Armenian grinned and turned to the room. ‘Hey, Orlana – you’ve got an admirer over here! How about one of your acts, eh?’ The deep boom of his voice carried over the tavern hubbub. The woman turned, slow and supple as a cat. ‘And which act d’you have in mind, darling?’ Her voice was like liquid honey.

‘The Empress, of course!’ the Armenian roared. The crowd liked the suggestion and the little tavern was soon filled with bellows of ‘Aye – the Empress! Show us the Empress!’

Whoever this Orlana beauty was, she propped one foot on her bench and her robe fell loose, revealing a thigh like polished marble. Even from there, Einar could see a shadowy orb of flesh and the flash of a dark nipple. Aye, he thought, full of distractions this city.

She planted a hand on her shapely hip. ‘I see no geese.’ This only made the crowd cheer the louder.

‘I’ll be your goose!’ cried one sailor.

‘And me!’ yelled another.

In a second, the room was fairly bursting with volunteers. Seemed everyone in the place knew what was about to happen except for Einar. But the woman could certainly work a crowd. A flick of her hand and they all fell silent. ‘None of you slavering dogs,’ she said, to groans of disappointment. ‘Her.’ She pointed a long-nailed finger at another woman standing along the counter from Einar.

Whether this other woman knew the actor or not, she affected total surprise. She was a lissom piece under a cloud of hair dyed red. Ignoring her token protests, the sailors dragged her to the table. Someone was yelling for grain. Einar leaned back on the counter and accepted another refill from his drinking companion.

‘You’ll enjoy this, Northman. It’s quite the spectacle.’

Somewhere at the back of the shop, a bag of grain was produced and passed forward, spilling kernels over the laughing customers. ‘What’s that for?’

‘You’ll see. They say it was the favourite trick of the Empress Theodora two centuries ago. Back in her days at the Hippodrome.’ The Armenian winked. ‘Before she was raised to the purple.’

Einar could only imagine that if their empress had been anything like Orlana, life at the imperial court must have been anything but dull. She ordered the jugs and cups cleared from the table in the middle of the tavern. The redhead was led forward. The crowd was yelling something fearsome, but Orlana took the woman’s hand and helped her onto the table. It was all done so deftly that Einar began to suspect this wasn’t the first time they had done this together. The redhead lay on her back, her scarlet fan of hair falling in a cascade over the end of the table.

‘I have to say,’ observed Einar to the Armenian, ‘none of you folk seem much concerned about the hundred thousand Arabs camped outside your gates.’

The Armenian’s eyes didn’t shift from the table. ‘Those walls have taken everything thrown at them for two hundred years. Every household has provisions enough for three winters. The cisterns are brimming. The navy’s at full strength. We’re well led. Now, anyway,’ he added. ‘What’s to worry about?’ He had to shout now because Orlana had just mounted the table and was standing astride the redhead, loosening the flimsy girdle around her slender waist and shrugging her robe off her shoulders. Einar had seen a good deal in his long life, but so far nothing had disarmed him quite like the sight of that splendid torso in the flickering torchlight. She stood there, naked as a babe, apparently with no shame at all. Einar skulled back the rest of his cup.

‘So what’s your trade?’ said the Armenian, as if the sight of that goddess shining like a sun in this dingy hovel was nothing new.

‘Back home, they call me a hus karl.’

‘What’s that then?’

Orlana was crouching over the redhead’s face. Someone passed her the jug full of grain and she began to pour. Einar’s gaze followed the trickle of seeds south between her breasts and down the shallow furrow of her stomach. ‘A guard, more or less.’ He