As events unfolded, however, it was not di Virenza who was chosen. The Council of Twelve in Seressa and the Duke of Macera both opposed him, and made it known, and when they acted together it was almost overwhelming, because they rarely did.

Di Virenza snarled and raged. He scattered unfinished thoughts and imprecations; he offered both cities money on a staggering scale from the coffers of Rhodias. Without success.

He wasn’t killed. It wasn’t necessary, because he dwindled into insignificance in a remarkably short time. It was pleasing for many to see it play out. If you aim for a throne and miss, that can happen.

The new High Patriarch was from Varena. A compromise choice, a deeply pious man.

No one really liked a pious man in Rhodias. He didn’t live long either. There was too much power residing in that throne and around it to have it wasted on someone virtuous. He might…he might even initiate reforms!

In the east, the star-worshipping Asharites took note of these events, and in those days the first stirrings of an intent, not just an aspiration, to conquer the golden city of Sarantium emerged. It would take time, but it would happen.

In Rhodias, the artist van Leyland worked on two new commissions. He had been told by his duke to do the palazzo first, and patiently. Barratin (a man he liked, their natures meshed well) wanted it to be a statement of northern taste and wealth in a city of wealth and some taste. The sanctuary, when it came to be built, could be decorated at speed. Not carelessly, of course, but…

There are ironies embedded in art and time. The work in the palazzo was carefully planned and achieved. Skilful, but ultimately unexciting. Blessed Victims in procession in the banquet room was the main work. Blues and golds, mostly. Expensive colours.

The quickly done frescoes in the Barratin sanctuary in Rhodias, on the dome and on the wall behind the altar, became the signature works of Claus van Leyland, forever. They were what he was best remembered for, long after.

The wall fresco behind the altar, especially, was a thing of extreme, risk-taking genius. It was a painting of the fall of Heladikos, but without the god’s son shown, no chariot of Jad, no falling boy-man seen. Heladikos wasn’t there; there was no heresy to attach to the work. It was simply a land-and-seascape off some coastline, women and men living their lives, the god’s golden sun rising, like hope. The piety was in how beautifully it illuminated life: ships on a calm sea, farmers in their fields, horses and cows and dogs. A distant stag at the edge of a forest. A cart laden with firewood on a winding road. Shepherds and their flocks on a rising slope. A plump, golden-haired milkmaid with her swain. Weavers in cottage doorways. Fields ripe with yellow grain, like the sun.