‘But I’m a soldier. Blisters and broken boot-straps are what I know. What do I know of the sea?’

‘Well, you have time to learn something. . . Though not much time, true,’ he added.

‘What? Have you heard news?’

‘Word came from Aeolis this morning. Pergamon has fallen.’ There was a gasp around the table.

‘Christ’s blood,’ exclaimed the eparch. ‘That’s less than three hundred miles from here.’

Leo waved down the general consternation. ‘I told you it would be like this. The caliph’s army is on the march. This time they will not turn back.’

Several of the guests spoke at once, but it was the shrill words of the Patriarch Germanus that cut through the babble. ‘Judgement is coming on this city!’ There was something about the astringent tone of his sexless voice that sent a shiver down Katāros’s spine. ‘Judgement!’

‘Nonsense!’ protested the fat eparch. ‘We are ready for them. The walls of Theodosius have stood for two hundred and fifty years. They are impregnable against all comers.’

‘Those walls will serve us nothing if the Almighty’s favour has left us,’ Germanus replied ominously. ‘You may look to our military defences, my lord. But God has granted me charge of our spiritual walls.’

‘Are those not intact then, old man?’ Arbasdos’s disdain for the patriarch was widely known.

Germanus gave him a cold look. ‘Who can ignore the signs of His displeasure? Think of what has already befallen the empire since the coming of the False Prophet. The Holy City overrun, the richest provinces of the empire snatched from us. And now our very heartlands are threatened with devastation. I ask you, when will we listen?’

‘Then what, Holiness, is the message?’ said the emperor, his voice steady.

‘Turn back to God! Flush out all sin and rebellion against the Holy One from among us. The Great God can have no charge against us if the city is to be delivered from the hands of the infidel.’

‘I’m no expert in these matters, Your Holiness,’ said Arbasdos. ‘But I doubt there was no sin to be found in the days of Constantine Augustus, when last the caliph’s armies came. Don’t tell me every man, woman and child in the city was found white as a newborn lamb. . .? And yet the walls stood.’

‘You forget, my lord, how Constantine called for a day of repentance each year they came.’ The patriarch swung his gaze back to Leo. ‘Do the same, Your Majesty. I implore you. And soon.’

‘It has not yet come to that, I think.’

‘Has it not? How much worse must it get, Majesty? If this city falls, the empire cannot survive. It is written, you shall not put the Lord your God to the test.’ Germanus stabbed the scented air with his bony finger. ‘He will not be provoked. Fall to your knees willingly now, rather than be forced to them later.’