Yet nothing Lilla had seen till now could compare to the ceremony being played out before her. She stood as a guest with the empress and her attendants – all female, naturally – in the upper gallery of the great temple the Christians called the Hagia Sophia, or Holy Wisdom. She had seen it before and been awe-struck by its cavernous domes and arches, by the magical veils of sunlight floating through its many windows, by the scattered shards of gold reflecting off the mosaics that covered its inner walls. But here she saw the building as it was surely meant to be: filled with people, the air swirling with incense, the marble columns echoing with the sound of the holy men’s chanting, a thousand candles dancing among the crowd and the procession of priests. She was glad of the imposition of silence. Brittle conversation with the empress would have been too stifling. Instead she wanted to surrender to her senses for a while, to the strangeness and gentle charm of the Christians’ ritual, although she understood it very little. Yet something in her spirit was nourished nonetheless. She found the relentless goad of her revenge, the weight of sadness in her womb, the raw wounds in her heart, the hollowness in her bones after her long fever, the obsessive thoughts and cares that turned and turned in her mind but never moved forward – all these receded into shadow for a while and something else drew forward. Something unnameable, something unknowable. Some thirst that cried out for quenching.

And here at last was water.

It was too much, yet not enough. Some secret hidden from everyone – or else some great pretence to which all were party. As if the ritual, the robes, the processions, the serious expressions on everyone’s face, from the emperor down to the beggars filling the square – all of it was some colossal joke, which would crumble into absurdity if only one person were to let the mask slip and laugh.

But no one did.

Erlan had marched in time – as best as his ankle would allow – in the emperor’s guard of honour, from the Great Palace across the Augustaion to the atrium of the huge church, parting on their way a sea of thousands – nay, tens of thousands – like the prow of a great longship, his entourage of officials and highborn nobles trailing in their wake.