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

‘High Chamberlain – take note,’ said Leo suddenly, spinning on his heel. ‘I charge you with sniffing out this. . . this vermin. Do you hear?’

‘Of course, Majesty.’

‘No stone unturned. No one above suspicion. We must take care. We can afford no mistakes. Send the sons of Kallinikos to me. They must be warned. And protected.’ These ‘sons’ – known as the lamproi, the ‘Brilliant Ones’ – were the only men in the empire who understood the secret of its greatest weapon. Kallinikos – a Jew who had fled Syria ahead of the Arab tide – had saved the city a generation ago with his liquid fire. Now his sons were charged with saving it a second time.

‘It will be done without delay, Majesty.’

‘You have done well, fair lady,’ Leo said, addressing Lucia. ‘Uncommon well.’ The Jewess bowed gracefully. ‘Arbasdos did not overstate your skill.’

‘He knows me well, Majesty,’ she said demurely.

The emperor chuckled. ‘I’m sure. Go then. Lord Katāros, see she is rewarded.’

Outside, the pair walked the full length of the first hallway in silence. Only when they had turned a corner did Katāros speak, choosing his words carefully.

‘A remarkable achievement,’ he said.

‘Do you think so?’ she replied, a smile twitching at the corners of her small mouth. ‘Oh, by the way, Abdal-Battal sends his respects.’

Katāros stopped. She stopped with him. ‘So,’ he sneered, ‘where are the marks?’

The confident smirk faltered. ‘Marks?’

‘I take it you required some persuasion.’

A long eyelash flickered. ‘Across my back,’ she admitted.

‘Any others?’

‘They were enough.’

‘Not so skilful then,’ mused Katāros, half to himself, then strode on. Lucia hurried to keep up with his long, swinging stride. ‘Easier to sneak in, than out.’

‘It was. Then again to send a woman in there was a folly only Arbasdos would’ve been conceited enough to make. But the emperor will soon pay the price for his friend’s mistake,’ she added, spicily.

‘Did they speak my name?’

‘They didn’t have to. As soon they told me they had another within the walls, I knew.’

‘How?’

She gave a tinkling laugh. ‘Call it a woman’s intuition. Alas, you would not know of such things.’

‘You understand nothing of what I would or would not know.’

‘Oh, my! And I thought your kind could feel nothing. But your pride is pricked as easily as any real man’s—’

‘Enough of this nonsense,’ he snapped. ‘What have they told you? Did Lord Battal give you any message for me?’

‘Lord Battal, is it—’

‘Quickly now.’

‘Patience, little one.’

‘What did he say?’

‘They want the fire. They want it soon. Soon enough to arm the new fleet.’

‘So the fleet is coming?’

‘Of course.’

‘Why did you give Leo the truth?’

‘Why withhold the truth when he will find it out in time anyway? He will only trust me the more.’

‘You didn’t have to tell him of their spy.’

‘No,’ she conceded with a smile. ‘But I thought it would keep you honest. With me, at least.’

‘You meddlesome little—’

‘What better way to prove your loyalty, High Chamberlain? I’m sure you will have no trouble turning out a whole army of little traitors, scurrying about the gutters of the city. Hey?’

Katāros nodded slowly. There was, after all, some sense in that.

‘Meanwhile,’ her sweet-husk voice hardened, ‘you can do what you should have done a long time ago. Or is the task beyond you?’

Katāros ran the tip of his tongue along the edge of his teeth, refusing to rise to her goading. ‘I think I can see a way to it. Now. And you?’

‘Oh, don’t worry for me. I have my own charge.’ Her mouth contracted into a teasing pout. ‘I shall not delay so long as you have in fulfilling it.’

‘Hmm.’ He regarded her with a sardonic eye. ‘You seem to enjoy this work. Far more than if they had turned you by force alone. I thought you were Arbasdos’s creature.’

‘I was,’ she smiled.

And that was all she would say.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

‘How is our friend?’ asked Lilla briskly one morning when Gerutha was brushing out her hair.

‘As crabby as ever,’ replied Gerutha. ‘Yesterday she was angry because I only brought her one flask of wine. She’s made me promise to amend for my meanness, as she calls it, by bringing her three next time.’

‘Three!’ laughed Lilla. ‘Gods in Asgard – you’re supposed to help the poor people, not drown them in drink.’

‘Alethea thinks that is helping her.’

‘And what does Domnicus say?’ This was the priest who held some office or other in the palace, whom Gerutha seemed to have befriended – or else he had befriended her. She had become a regular companion of his on his forays into the darker nooks of the city to bring succour to the poor.

‘He doesn’t approve, of course. But he overlooks it.’

‘It would be a brave man to deny Alethea her wine,’ observed Lilla.

‘Or a cruel one.’

On occasion Lilla had joined them, wanting to escape the scented hallways and echoing staircases of the palace and see for herself the squalid alleys and dismal courts of the poorer quarters.

The worst of them were truly wretched – dark, fetid places, a welter of disease and misery. The people were not yet starving but the cold made them suffer all the same. Domnicus, a lean, long-shanked man with a sparse sandy beard and eyes bright as blue flames, sought out the poor like a dwarf digging for gold. The elderly, the sick, the maimed, the hungry. The cold drew them forth into the narrow, lightless lanes like a flame driving lice from a seam. There was no shortage of work for him.

She and Gerutha would bring baskets of scraps gathered from the palace kitchens, or else blankets and copper coins. And of course wine.

Alethea was a beggar for whom they had both developed a fondness, although she was a truly repellent creature. She had no legs. She wedged her stumps into a small box on ill-cut wheels and pushed herself about with wooden blocks – even though she only ever sat on the same corner of the same filthy passageway next to the same little