Free Byzantium by Michael Ennis

terrain could no longer be postponed. ‘Yes. I know that a beast waits for me there, a fear as terrible as the world-devouring dragon itself. And when I awaken in the middle of the night, I am certain that if I ever face it, I will die.’
    ‘You are ready to face it. Even the last dragon itself. You are a poet and a warrior. You showed that the other night in the Podol. And you have learned, far earlier than most men, how bitter is the outer world when a man seals off his inner world, thinking that the demons he never confronted will no longer trouble him. You know that that is no life to be clung to, not at the cost of a pure and honest soul.’
    The Jarl turned away from Haraldr and faced north, thinking of the cool emerald and azure summer in a land he would never see again. ‘Haraldr, even when you were a boy, I knew you had a mind that someday no man, perhaps even no god, could ever command. I choose to believe that Odin will guide you to your beast and help you confront it, but your own will is equally capable of leading you through the spirit world. Chosen by Odin, chosen by your own will, what does it matter? I only know that you are ready to stand before the dragon.’
    Jarl Rognvald said nothing more. He left Haraldr to his thoughts and the death-dark, murmuring Dnieper.
     
     
    Maria, Mistress of the Robes, fanned the eunuch away; her milky hand moved like a ghost through the thick steam. Despite her utilitarian-sounding title, she was the second ranking lady at court; only the Empress Zoe and the Augusta Theodora, who no longer resided in the palace precincts, were accorded more prestige. Maria studied a rivulet of perspiration as it descended from her cleavage to her navel. She pressed her finger into her navel and drew a liquid line to her glossy black pubic triangle. She pulled her legs up and thrust her arms between them, a curiously simian posture for a disturbingly beautiful woman. Her blue eyes were like tiny, miraculously illuminated grottoes in the heated mist. ‘Your husband’s brother has sent Irene away, she said languidly. Her voice chimed against the marble walls of the bath.
    The Empress Zoe towelled her moisture-beaded breasts. ‘We are already surrounded by spies.’ She sounded drowsy. ‘And our companions are no doubt happier elsewhere. But I will miss Irene. Remind me to have Symeon send her something.’
    Maria turned to the Empress, who sat next to her on the marble bench; their shoulders touched lightly. She decided not to ask the question she had considered; Zoe would speak of it when she wished. But it had been two weeks now since the Emperor had spent the night in his wife’s bedchamber. ‘Ata came to see me yesterday,’ said Maria. ‘He advises that I have neglected the amorous component of my nature.’
    Zoe’s eyes opened; they had a lovely amethyst cast. ‘Ata? Oh, yes, the palmist who came to us out of the Orient, in the company of that rather charming yet woefully disenfranchised emir.’ She paused to recall the name. ‘Salah. We haven’t seen much of Emir Salah since my husband’s brother extended the generosity of our treasury. I believe he has taken his pension and has bought some estates near Nicaea. I presume this Ata still finds our court rewarding. Darling, wasn’t the Emir one of your . . . amusements?’
    ‘I will never allow a dark-skinned creature to crawl into my bed again. He wanted to impale me from behind like one of his goats, and when I insisted otherwise, he was finished before I could draw three breaths. He then remarked that his wives were more submissive. I told him that if he was at all representative of his race, the appropriate custom would be to have one wife for twenty emirs, instead of the other way around. I could not understand what he said next. I arranged to have him ejected from my chambers as quickly as he had spewed his dubious manhood into me. The next time I saw him, I spat in his face and told him I now presumed to have given