The physician was a small man, whose speech was as terse as his movements. Who knew whether his healing lore was effective, but Erlan sat passively as he went about his business, examining cuts and sores and applying balms where he saw fit.

‘You must be a man of unusually strong health,’ the physician concluded, packing away his things.

‘Am I?’ Healthy was certainly not how he was feeling.

‘I’ve seen men come out of that hole wasted with wound-rot. Your body seems. . . well. . . unscathed.’

‘I guess I’m lucky.’

The physician gave a brusque snort. ‘It’s a lucky day.’ He nodded up at the grille. ‘You hear that?’

Erlan listened to the echoes rising from the courtyard. ‘What is it?’

‘The sound of celebration. Today the general marries the emperor’s daughter.’ The physician snapped his box of ointments shut. ‘If that isn’t lucky, I don’t know what is.’

The light from the window became softer as the day stretched on towards dusk. Erlan listened to the servants’ hectoring voices mellow into laughter and levity, and eventually, as night fell, into raucous revelry. It seemed the whole household was overflowing with the celebration – and not a little wine – all but his lonely corridor high above the rest of the palace.

He drifted in and out of sleep. Later on Marcellos brought him bread and gruel which Erlan wolfed down hungrily. The man stank of wine fumes; Erlan guessed he was lucky his gaoler hadn’t forgotten him entirely.

But as night deepened and his strength returned, anger started growing inside him. What was he doing sitting here, waiting? Was there nothing he could do to change his miserable predicament? Kai sprang into his memory. Kai, ever resourceful; Kai, who never waited for anything in his life; Kai, who always had an idea. A wave of sadness suddenly overtook him – he missed his friend – and when it had passed he felt ashamed. Kai wouldn’t have sat on his arse waiting for some other man to determine his fate. He would have found a way.

He sat up and turned to the wall. For a long time, he considered the bolt that fastened his chain. It was driven deep into the stone. If somehow he could loosen it or dig it out of the wall. . . But how? And then what? He imagined Kai picking his way through the rafters and tiling, out into the night, along the roof-ridge and down and down, squirrelling through the maze of the household until somehow he won clear of the perimeter walls. Out into the city and away? But what Erlan wanted was here, inside the walls of Byzantium.

What he had come for. . .

A noise interrupted his thoughts. Footsteps on the gritty staircase that led up to the landing. He heard soft murmuring followed by laughter and then the creak of the grille gate opening.