Both emperor and empress were arrayed in rich, heavy silks of purple. Leo’s wife, Maria, was handsome enough but too thin in the face to be called beautiful, although she had grace about her. Her jet-black hair, common to all Cilicians, was interwoven with golden threads and fashioned in a style not unlike Katāros’s own. Eunuchs and empresses, he thought ruefully. More alike than either would care to admit.

Their daughter the basílopoúla, Princess Anna, was hardly more than a girl – sixteen at most – and she spent most of the evening blushing behind her veil and looking away whenever her future husband’s gaze ventured anywhere near her. Katāros wondered what Arbasdos would make of that, especially if what he had heard of the general was true. But then this marriage was to seal a friendship, not to serve the general’s notoriously insatiable appetites. Doubtless he would look elsewhere for that.

Still, whatever awkwardness existed between the future bride and her high-ranking betrothed, the rest of the company seemed at ease and spoke freely together.

Daniel the eparch was the senior official overseeing the administration of the city. His gluttony was something astonishing to behold but Silanos had made ample provision for it. The eparch greeted every course with a great sigh of pleasure and was always first to whichever new dish was laid before them – something that put his wife into paroxysms of shame since the emperor was supposed to be served first. Leo, apparently, didn’t care.

As for the patriarch Germanus, Katāros held a special loathing for him, despite what they had in common. Or rather, lacked in common. A wizened old stick, he possessed a long thin nose like a heron’s beak, down which he had made a lifelong habit of peering at his inferiors. He even picked at his food like a bird, with sudden snatching movements of his silver-plate fork, and when the talk moved around the table he would squint at the next speaker, struggling to identify who it was. His opinions were a good deal stronger than his eyes.

Katāros watched wave after wave of food served and taken away. Even he would have struggled to name half of what he saw. There was a spiny-headed gurnard, a sweet-and-sour dish swimming in a sauce of saffron and spikenard and vinegared mushrooms; an entire sucking pig slathered in honey vinegar; fried steaks of sea bass; loins of wild Anatolian gazelles served with celery root and fennel; a foamy dish called aphraton made from chicken and egg whites; sweetmeats and frittered fruit pieces; mountains of figs and peaches. And of course wines by the dozen: rose wine, violet wine, chamomile wine, twelve-spice wine, wormwood wine. Katāros felt nauseous just watching, and the guests touched barely half of it, except for the eparch who manfully rose to the challenge. Katāros had counted seven courses when Emperor Leo rapped on the marble table.