‘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.