Chapter 31: The Scent of Violets

The crowd in the Hippodrome roared, a distant thunder that rattled the leaded glass of the window. Leo Anatolius stood in the shadow of a column in the Kathisma’s underbelly, listening to the chant for the emperor’s appearance. Nikephoros would emerge soon, a figure of gaunt piety in cloth-of-gold, to bless the chariots before the games. He would pray for victory. The crowd would pray for bread. And somewhere in the warren of the palace, Theophano would be arranging her robes and her lies.

Leo’s hand closed around the key in his pouch. It was cold, heavier than its size should have allowed, and it had already cost him a night of sleep and a fragment of his soul. Basil wanted it. Theophano wanted it. Tzimiskes, perhaps, wanted only the door it opened.

A eunuch in the green livery of the imperial bedchamber appeared at the end of the corridor, silent as a cat on wool. He did not speak, only inclined his head and turned, expecting Leo to follow. Leo’s pulse quickened. Theophano’s summons.

He followed the eunuch through a maze of service passages, past the reek of roasting meat from the palace kitchens, and up a narrow stair that opened into the private quarters of the Empress. The air changed here: heavy with rose oil and the faint, metallic scent of violets she favored in winter. The eunuch stopped before a door inlaid with mother-of-pearl and gestured. Leo entered.

Theophano stood by a window, her back to him, her hair unbound and spilling down her shoulders like dark wine. She wore a simple sticharion of deep purple, no jewels, and in the grey light of the winter afternoon she looked less like an empress and more like a woman who had not slept.

“You met him,” she said, without turning.

“In the city, yes.”

“And you offered him the truth.” Her voice was flat, unreadable.

“I offered him what he wanted to hear.”

She turned then, and her eyes were red-rimmed, though her face was composed as marble. “What did he say?”

“He smiled.”

Theophano let out a breath that was almost a laugh. “He always smiles. It is how you know he has already decided.” She stepped closer, and he caught the scent of violets, sharper now, like a blade hidden in silk. “You are playing a dangerous game, Leo. Tzimiskes is not a man who shares his victories.”

“I have no intention of sharing anything,” Leo said. “I intend to survive.”

“Survival is a low ambition for a man who has walked the passage beneath the Holy Apostles.” She studied him, and he saw the calculation behind her eyes, the hunger that mirrored his own. “What did you find there, Leo? The truth, this time.”

He had rehearsed this lie a hundred times since the tomb. He met her gaze and did not blink. “A tomb. An iron crown. A decree from a dead emperor.”

“And the key.”

“Basil took it.”

Theophano’s lips thinned. “The eunuch. Of course. He collects keys like a magpie collects silver.” She turned back to the window, her hands gripping the sill. “Nikephoros will go to the baths tonight, after the games. He always does. He will pray, he will fast, he will speak of the glory of God and the sins of the flesh, and he will not see the blade until it is at his throat.”

“And you will open the gates.”

“I will open the gates,” she agreed. “Tzimiskes will march through them with his men, and by dawn there will be a new emperor on the throne.”

“And what will I be?”

She looked at him then, and for a moment the mask slipped, and he saw the woman beneath the empress, the one who had clawed her way from obscurity to the purple. “You will be whatever you choose to be, Leo. That is the gift of chaos. It unmakes the old order and leaves room for the new.” She reached into her sleeve and drew out a folded scrap of parchment, sealed with a dollop of purple wax. “This is a pass through the Blachernae gate. It bears my seal. If you need to leave the city before the storm breaks, use it.”

Leo took the parchment. It was warm from her body. “And if I stay?”

“Then you will be in the palace when Tzimiskes arrives, and you will have to decide whose side you are on, very quickly.” She smiled, and it was a knife-edge. “I have always found that men who hesitate in such moments do not live to regret it.”

He tucked the pass into his sleeve and bowed. “I will be ready, Empress.”

“See that you are.” She dismissed him with a wave, and he turned to go, but her voice stopped him at the door. “Leo.”

He looked back.

“The key Basil took. You told me he took it.” Her eyes were sharp, too sharp. “But you did not tell me what the dead emperor wrote.”

Leo’s heart stilled. He had told her a partial truth, the decree’s warning about her ambition. But there was more in that tomb, a name he had not spoken aloud, a name that had made the iron crown seem suddenly heavy. He met her gaze and gave her nothing.

“He wrote that the throne is a burden no one should covet.”

Theophano laughed, a cold, brittle sound. “Then he did not know the weight of the crown. It is the only thing that makes the burden bearable.” She turned back to the window. “Go. And remember: I gave you the map. I gave you the truth. Do not forget who holds the rope, Leo.”

He left her chambers with the pass burning in his sleeve and the key heavy in his pouch. The corridors of the palace were already filling with the scent of incense and the distant roar of the Hippodrome crowd. The feast of Saint Basil was reaching its crescendo, and the noose was tightening around every neck in Constantinople.

He found Basil in the chancery, bent over a ledger, his ink-stained fingers moving with a scribe’s precision. The eunuch did not look up.

“You have been with the Empress,” Basil said. It was not a question.

“She gave me a pass through the Blachernae gate.”

Basil’s quill paused. “And you took it.”

“I took it. A man would be a fool to refuse a gift from an empress.”

“A man would be a fool to accept a rope from her hand and call it a favor.” Basil set down his quill and looked at Leo, his old eyes sharp as broken glass. “She will betray you, Anatolius. She has betrayed every man who has ever trusted her. Nikephoros. Her first husband. She will betray Tzimiskes before the year is out.” He leaned forward. “But I am still writing your name in this ledger. And I am still waiting for the key.”

Leo held the eunuch’s gaze. “And if I give you the key, what will you give me?”

Basil smiled, a thin, parchment-dry stretch of his lips. “The only thing worth having, boy. A chance to be remembered.” He tapped the ledger. “History is written by the men who survive. And I intend to survive this night. Do you?”

The roar of the crowd rose to a crescendo outside, and Leo felt the walls of the palace close in around him like a fist. He had three threads in his hand—Theophano’s pass, Basil’s ledger, Tzimiskes’s smile—and the rope was still around his neck.

He walked to the window and looked down at the Hippodrome, where the emperor of the Romans was raising his hands to bless the charioteers, a man who did not know that his wife had already opened the gates of his doom.

“I intend to do more than survive,” Leo said quietly.

Basil’s quill resumed its scratching. “Good. Then bring me the key. Tonight. Before the violet hour fades.”

And Leo, watching the crowd surge and the emperor pray, felt the noose tighten one inch more.