He looked up, could see the sympathy in her eyes, could see how she wanted so badly to understand. Didn’t she deserve to? After all that had happened?

So slowly he began to tell her. He told her the whole story from the beginning – who Inga was to him, why he could not stay. And why he could never go back. She listened to every word gripped in silence, a silence that endured long after he had finished speaking. He stood. ‘There, you see. Huh. That look on your face. That’s why I never should have told you. Why I swore I would never tell anyone.’ He went to pick his sword and scabbard from the corner of the room. ‘I will live, Lilla. And I will come back to you. If you still want me.’

His hand was on the door handle when at last she spoke. ‘Erlan.’ He stopped but didn’t turn. ‘Until you forgive yourself for what happened, you’ll always be a stranger. Even to yourself.’

He paused for a long moment. And then, without another word, he went to fight the emperor’s war.

After he had gone, Lilla sat in the gloom, thinking, listening to the toll of a hundred bells resounding around the city. It was too much, all of it. Too exhausting to untangle the web of his past. Her own past weighed heavy upon her. The debts of her dead. Maybe she was wrong. Maybe she had to walk her path alone after all. But she knew it did not lie here.

It was not long after Erlan had left when a sentinel called at her chambers with a message from the emperor, asking her to join him.

‘What for?’

‘For your protection. He says he believes you.’

‘Believes me? What about?’

‘He said you would know, my lady.’

It could only be Katāros. She was glad, except that his change of heart probably meant the chamberlain had already escaped. ‘And he says you should wear something warm.’

‘Warm? Where are you taking us?’

‘You will see.’

A short time later, she and Gerutha were following the sentinel, wrapped in their woollen travel cloaks. The guard led them to the sea wall in the south-eastern corner of the city promontory. He led them up to the top of the wall, then inside a stone tower and up again to the upper platform. There, they found Emperor Leo, no longer dressed in purple, but in his general’s uniform.

‘A strange day,’ he said, after greeting her. The excitement was rising off him like a wolf’s scent. ‘One of great portent, I think. There is a struggle for the soul of this city, far beyond what can be seen with human eyes.’

‘You sound like one of your priests.’

He chuckled softly. ‘Do you not have such mystics where you come from? Ones who see ahead?’