A Burning Sea by Theodore Brun (i am reading a book txt) 📕

Time, Abdal-Battal, is the necessary ingredient of success. Prince Maslama surely understands the need to save face. There are elements within our walls who would risk all to save Christ’s citadel from falling into the caliph’s hands. Insurrection. Murder. Stiff-necked resistance at every turn. These are what he could then expect.’ Leo smiled suddenly. ‘The people must be lulled. Like a little child, they must be put to sleep. Do you understand?’

The envoy’s brow knitted tighter. ‘I fear not, Majesty.’

‘The siege must go on for now. We, within these walls, must feel its bite. Let us sleep with a little fear and uncertainty for a while. Enough that the appearance of resistance is convincing, so that when I do relinquish control into the caliph’s hands, the taste of submission proves a good deal sweeter than people feared. Then they will look to me with gratitude. Who knows, perhaps they will even see me as their saviour? I dare to hope as much. . . Do you begin to see now?’

Abdal-Battal didn’t answer at once. Katāros noticed his fist tighten, his knuckles straining against the skin. He found he could tell a lot from a man’s knuckles. This man’s were all bone and sinew. Perhaps under all that finery was hidden one of those warrior-ascetics who had so terrorized the borderlands, like the famously fragrant Caliph Umar before him.

‘You cannot hope that nothing will change, Majesty. The city is full of idols. Such blasphemy cannot be allowed to continue. Even here, in this golden hall.’ He glanced up at the dome above where a million gilded tesserae formed the face of the Christ. ‘Idols stare from every wall. They must be torn down.’

‘I do not disagree with you. I’ve always thought the reverence of images strays easily into idolatry. But there are ways of guiding people to the truth. Do they not say in your own land, if you cut off a man’s nose, there’s no point giving him a rose to smell?’

The young envoy snorted. ‘It is not we who are famous for cutting off noses, Majesty.’ Nevertheless, he considered the emperor’s point. ‘This, then, is your answer to my Lord Maslama.’

‘It is.’ Leo’s eyes flashed at Katāros. ‘We each have our part to play. For now.’ His tone brightened abruptly. ‘But you must call on us again, Abdullah Abu Yahya al-Antaqi al-Battal.’ He rattled off the name with ease. ‘Your lord must treat me as a brother prince. And brothers talk, do they not?’

Abdal-Battal cast him an uncertain look.

‘That is all.’

Whatever thoughts turned in the envoy’s mind, he drew himself up and, with an elaborate bow, took his leave.

Leo waited until the golden doors had closed behind him and the envoy’s footsteps had grown faint before he turned to Katāros.

‘As you doubtless understand, there is more to this than you know, Lord Chamberlain.’

‘So I see, Majesty.’

‘An explanation for another time, I think,’ he sniffed.

A mere play for time. Katāros knew he would never tell him. Or if he did, it would be some shadow of the truth. It didn’t matter. Katāros had already begun to fill in the missing pieces for himself.

‘Do you think it wise, Majesty, to gamble with an entire empire?’

Leo chuckled. ‘To catch a lion, my friend, you need a large piece of bait.’

Katāros hurried down the corridors of white marble, past porphyry pillars and ivory statues of emperors and their consorts long dead. He saw none of it.

Leo had delayed him too long, talking much – of reinforcements, supplies, councils – but giving away nothing. Well, let Leo have his schemes. Katāros had some of his own.

His footsteps rang off the stone as old memories circled in his mind like crows in search of carrion.

Vengeance. A word he knew so well.

For what, though? For a lifetime of bitterness? A sea of injustice? An ocean of torment?

Yes. A thousand times, yes.

For all of it. . . all the way back to the beginning. For the wrongs of the seiðman who saved him from a pitiful death only to force on him a still more pitiful life. That black-souled scoundrel had called himself ‘father’. ‘The closest you’ll ever know to one, anyway,’ he’d croaked. But he treated him like a slave not a son. He named him Skírpa – ‘Scorned’ in the Norse tongue. ‘Because no one else wants you.’ Only he cared for him. Only he loved him. Yet no child ever endured such hatred.

And then the nights became a terror, too. . .

They had wandered down from the north, through fen and forest, selling deception. His so-called father taught him seiðr-magic, and seeing its power, he had learned it well. He was a quick-minded boy. Quicker than his master, to be sure. And he grew strong of limb, broad of shoulder, a fine-looking youngster. But the seiðman was too blinded by wickedness to notice. Then one night, after the wicked old goat had visited his bed and then drunk himself into a stupor, the boy had drawn his little knife and slashed open his grizzled throat. He left the corpse for the wolves.

For a time guilt weighed on his heart but he soon learned to bear the burden. He drifted south, drawn by the sun, his only friend. His body became lean and hard, his hair grew long and dark, though he always looked a beggar. He came to the great Danube river. There, he started to sell his skills for scraps of food. Trivial things, at first: he’d tell folk’s fortunes, work illusions of magic, carve runes, weave spiteful curses to stoke housewives’ petty feuding. But in this foolery, he began to see dark things, to discover that his words carried the power to bind. In one village, a boy threw a stone at him. He answered the blow with a curse. The boy died almost on the instant; the branch he was sitting on snapped and he smashed his skull on the ground. There was an outcry. He fled. The men of the