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

her dread and pain wove together into such a pinnacle of horror that she would have told Katāros anything to stop it. If only she had something to tell. If only he would give her the words he wanted to hear then she could speak them. . . That would be her confession.

But before the silk was removed, always another voice answered her wilting resolve. Hold on. . . hold on.

For what? she would later ask herself. What did it serve her not to break? Was not death by execution in a sudden, single instant preferable to this slow erosion into Hel’s shadow in this dark place under the city? She had staked all and all had unravelled. There had been a murder. That much she now knew. She also knew there was evidence against her. But it was nothing without her confession. Enough to hold her; not enough to condemn her. Although the whole city, Katāros assured her, was clamouring for her head.

Others had confessed. She had heard their screams in that gloomy underworld of pain. A man called Silanos had admitted to betraying secrets to the enemy for which he had already paid with his life. He was Persian by blood and had cause to hate the Byzantines, so Katāros told her. There were others, too. Those of religious sects that stood at odds with the main body of the Church – dangerous, dissident voices whose dearest love was to see the empire fall and usher in some new age. Lilla knew nothing of that. But they had talked and so they died.

Only she would not.

Instead she became inured to her dread of the sounds that roused her from half-consciousness to face still more ordeals. Perhaps the half-wisdom of her younger years was at last growing into its fullness. She had plumbed the depths of despair and found she still had hope to live. She had scaled the heights of fear and found she still had courage to go on. She accepted the opening of the door to her cell and the entering in of pain like a wrestler welcoming an old opponent. Steadying herself before him, knowing his moves, wise to the tricks he liked to play.

But when one day, or night – she knew not which – the door opened, and instead of the tall figure of the eunuch, she perceived dimly a different shape, a different shadow, she wasn’t ready for it.

‘Lilla.’ The voice was strong and low. She lifted her head and saw, half-lit in the torchlight, an ordinary face, eyebrows creased in concern. ‘Lilla.’

‘Leo?’ Her voice a hoarse whisper. She tried to look at him, but found her gaze welded to the doorway which was still ajar.

‘I’m alone,’ he said, seeing this. ‘There’s no one else.’ He stood awkwardly, his mouth working. She wondered bitterly what fatuous questions rose and fell in his mind.

‘Are you all right?’

‘Are you getting your sleep?’

‘Are they feeding you well?’

‘I told Katāros he cannot kill you,’ he said suddenly. ‘Though word has spread that you are being held and many tell me to make an example of you. The patriarch warns that—’

‘I’ve done nothing against you or against this city,’ she said, the words coarse as rust. ‘Nor ever would I.’

‘Why did you befriend the lampros?’

Aye, she thought ruefully. That was the question. ‘It was you who brought us together.’

‘Only once.’ His jaw worked again. ‘It was a mistake, I admit it. Either I helped a traitor. Or else I have compromised you—’

‘Your conscience need not trouble you, either way. I am responsible for my own choices.’

‘Have they. . . hurt you?’

She lifted her head. A greasy lock of blonde hair fell across her eye. ‘There are no marks on me, Majesty. So I suppose they have not.’

‘If they but laid a finger on you, without my authority—’

‘No one has touched me.’

He nodded, apparently satisfied. But if he was satisfied with that, he was a fool. ‘I had wanted to help you.’

‘Had?’

‘Now I find I cannot trust you. . . I realize how little I know of you. . . I would release you but—’

‘The evidence.’

He nodded. ‘It demands an explanation. And you give none. Why were you with the lampros? You were heard arguing. What about?’

Lilla closed her eyes. More questions. Did they not know by now that she had no answers to their questions? ‘I must rest now,’ she said softly. ‘I am tired.’

‘Your pride will destroy you, Queen Lilla. I can end this. Only tell me the truth.’

‘What is truth?’ she murmured.

A stranger answer. She wasn’t even sure why she gave it. He looked at her with a curious expression. ‘So be it,’ he said abruptly, and left her hanging there in the cold and the dark. . .

Each day wore hard on Gerutha’s heart. She found no comfort from Yana, who seemed to take Queen Lilla’s imprisonment as mere respite from her duties. Gerutha’s attempts to see Lilla herself were met with a stone wall. She knew nothing – nothing but the gossip of the marketplace and kitchens and back passages of the palace. That her mistress was a murderess, that the evidence against her was damning and conclusive. It was only the emperor’s misplaced favour that kept her alive, the gossips said – and even he could not protect her for ever. Gerutha dreaded to think what state Lilla was in.

The only one to offer Gerutha any solace was Domnicus. ‘The Almighty knows her heart,’ he told her. ‘If she is innocent, God’s hand of mercy will protect her. Only believe. . .’

Aye, only believe, and pray. It seemed cold comfort. As if the innocent did not meet the fate of the wicked every single day in every land across the world of men.

She found keeping busy a far more effective balm for her troubled heart. And so she accompanied Domnicus whenever she could in his forays into the city to bring relief to the poor.

It took them a while to wend their