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Hugh shook his head. “How can any creature traverse that? We’ll have to move down toward the sea.”

Although they did this, and although it was just possible to keep moving east by sticking to the strand, they rode anyway always with one eye twisted toward desolation. It was so cheerless and barren and frightening that Anna wept.Advertisement

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HE came with his entourage of treacherous Arethousans from whose lips fell lies, false jewels each one, because their ears had heard nothing but the teachings of the Patriarch, the apostate whose stubborn greed broke apart the True Church.

Adelheid’s soldiers waited in ranks beside the gate and along the avenues. Servants swarmed like galla, each dressed in what best clothing they could muster. All must appear formidable, the court of queen and empress. The court of the skopos, the only true intermediary between God and humankind.

Adelheid did not rise to greet him as his retinue reached the court before the audience hall. She sent Lady Lavinia outside to escort him in, while Captain Falco hurried inside to report.

“This must be, indeed, the fabled one-eyed general, Lord Alexandros.”

“The one we heard tales of when we marched in Dalmiaka?”

“The same, so it appears. It’s said he became a lord by winning many victories for the emperor, who rewarded him with a noble wife and a fine title. He rides a handsome chestnut gelding and has a string of equally fine mounts, all chestnut. That suggests a man with vanity in his disposition.”

“Well observed, Captain.”

Adelheid wore a fine coronet of gold, but it looked a paltry thing to Antonia’s eyes compared to the imperial crown she should have been wearing. Still, Adelheid herself, robed in ermine, with face shining, looked impressive enough to stop any man in his tracks and distract him from such tedious details as the richness of her ornaments.

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The queen’s gaze sharpened as movement darkened the opened double doors that led onto the colonnade fronting the hall. Antonia was seated to her right but at an equal height on the dais. From the doors, they would be seen side by side, neither given pride of place: the secular hand in hand with the sacred, as God had ordered the world below.

General Lord Alexandros entered with a brace of men to either side. Three carried decorated boxes in their hands and the fourth an object long and round and wrapped in cloth. All were dressed in red tabards belted over armor, except for the general himself. He wore a gold silk robe belted up and cut away for riding but still marked at the neck and under the arms and around the hips with the discolorations of the armor he’d been wearing over it. He had just come from the saddle, had only taken time to haul off his armor, but Adelheid had wished for this advantage: that he not be allowed any time to prepare himself but would be thrown headlong in all his travel dirt fresh into the melee.

The empress did not rise. Naturally, neither did Antonia.

He paused to survey the hall and the folk crowded there. That half were servants and commoners he would not know just from looking; all were handsomely dressed, and the lords and ladies who attended stood at the front of the assembly. He had, indeed, but one eye, that one a startling blue. The other was covered with a black patch. He was swarthy, in the manner of Arethousans, not particularly tall but powerfully built through the shoulders and chest, a man confident of his prowess in battle.

“Now we will discover,” murmured Adelheid, “whether his wits are as well honed as his sword is said to be.”

She raised a hand. He strode forward, his men coming up behind. He alone was armed, with a sword sheathed in a plain leather scabbard. Of the rest of his men, none entered the hall.

He stopped before the dais, snapped his fingers, and mounted the steps as the attendant carrying the long object unfolded the cloth and opened it into a sturdy stool. As the general reached the second step, the man quickly placed the stool to the left of Adelheid’s throne and scurried back to kneel with the others.

General Lord Alexandros sat down.

Such audacity! Antonia found herself speechless. Indignant!

In the hall, folk caught their breath. Every gaze turned to the young empress.

Adelheid lifted one brow and measured him, and waited.

He snapped his fingers again. One by one the other men came forward, set their boxes at her feet, and opened them by means of cunning mechanisms fitted into the inlay decorating their exteriors.

From the first emerged a songbird, painted bright gold. It sang a pretty tune and turned back and forth, bobbing up and down as though alive. Adelheid forget herself so much that she clapped her hands in delight.

The second box revealed a rope of pearls of indescribable beauty. Each one was beyond price, and yet here were strung a thousand together. Light melted in their curves. Adelheid lifted up the rope, not without some effort, and let them slide across her lap. pqdm.com