Chapter 40: The Canticle of the Unnamed

The Hippodrome roared. Leo felt its hunger through the stone floor of the gallery, a beast of ten thousand throats baying for the sight of emperors and the blood of horses. The feast of Saint Basil had begun in earnest, and the city had poured itself into the curved bowl of the arena, a sea of linen and wool and restless flesh.

He pressed his palm against the cool marble of the balustrade. One hour. Perhaps less. The fourth bell would toll soon.

Below, the imperial box blazed with gold and Tyrian purple. Nikephoros sat like a carved icon, his beard unkempt, his eyes fixed on the sky rather than the spectacle. He wore the crown, but it sat on his brow like a yoke. Beside him, Theophano glowed in silk the color of a summer dawn, her face a mask of serene devotion. She did not look up at the gallery. She did not need to.

Leo turned from the rail. A eunuch in the green livery of the palace stood at the gallery’s arch, his hands folded, his gaze empty. He did not speak. He only inclined his head, a fraction of a degree, toward the corridor that led to the skeuophylakion—the treasury of the Great Palace.

Basil the Parakoimomenos was waiting.

Leo’s mouth was dry. He had given the key to no one. It was hidden in the hollow heel of his boot, wrapped in waxed linen, pressing against his skin like a brand. The decree from the dead emperor lay beneath a loose floorboard in his cell, sealed with a stone. He had told Tzimiskes the truth, and Tzimiskes had smiled.

And now the eunuch was calling.

Leo followed.

The corridor twisted through the bowels of the palace, past storerooms that smelled of cloves and old wine, past chapels where lamps guttered before icons of soldiers and saints. The Green Livery walked ahead of him, silent, unhurried. Leo counted his steps. He counted his heartbeats. He counted the lies he would have to tell.

The door to the treasury was bronze, studded with nails, and it opened without a sound. The Green Livery stepped aside.

Basil sat in a carved chair at the room’s center, a ledger open on his lap, a silver stylus in his fingers. The lamplight carved hollows into his ancient face, and his eyes, when they found Leo, were the eyes of a man who had already read the ending of this story.

“The Hippodrome is full,” Basil said. “The emperor is watching the races. The empress is watching the emperor.” He turned a page. “And you are here, Leo Anatolius. Watching me.”

Leo bowed low. “I am your servant, my lord.”

“You are no one’s servant.” Basil set down the stylus. “You are a man who has stolen from a tomb, negotiated with a rebel, and bedded the ambitions of an empress. And still, you stand.” He tilted his head. “I find that remarkable.”

“I have learned to stand where others kneel,” Leo said.

“Or to kneel where others stand. The difference is often a matter of timing.” Basil gestured to a stool before him. “Sit. We have little time, and I have questions you will not wish to answer.”

Leo sat. The stool was hard, unyielding, like the eunuch’s gaze.

“The key,” Basil said. “Where is it?”

Leo did not blink. “In a place where only I can retrieve it. If I am killed, it will be lost forever. The throne will remain hollow, and Tzimiskes will find only ash when he reaches the chamber.”

Basil’s lips curved, a thin crescent of amusement. “You have learned to bargain. A useful skill.” He closed the ledger. “But you misunderstand the nature of my interest. I do not want the key for myself. I want to know who will hold it when the throne is taken.”

Leo felt the words settle on him like a shroud. “You want me to choose.”

“I want you to understand what your choice will cost.” Basil leaned forward, and his voice dropped to a whisper, dry as old parchment. “Theophano believes she will rule through Tzimiskes. She believes she will be the mother of emperors, the regent of a new age. But Tzimiskes is a soldier, and soldiers do not share power with women who have outlived their usefulness.” He paused. “He will cast her aside. He will cast you aside. He will burn every record of this night, and your name will be a ghost in the chancery, a rumor that no one can prove.”

Leo said nothing. The words were not new. He had thought them himself, in the cold hours before dawn, when the city lay dark and the palace breathed with the sleep of the doomed.

“But I am not Tzimiskes,” Basil went on. “I do not burn records. I keep them. I have kept them for forty years, through emperors and usurpers, through iconoclasts and iconodules. I am the memory of this empire, Leo. And if you walk the passage first, if you bring me the crown, I will write your name in letters of gold.”

“And if I refuse?”

Basil’s smile widened, a crack in the marble of his face. “Then I will write your name in letters of ash. And the next emperor—whoever he may be—will read it and know that you were a traitor to every master you ever served.”

Leo felt the cold seep through his thin-soled shoes. He was trapped. Theophano had claimed him. Tzimiskes had smiled on him. Basil was writing him. And Nikephoros, the soldier-emperor, was watching the races in the Hippodrome, blind to the blade already drawn.

The fourth bell tolled.

Its bronze voice rolled through the treasury, through the stone, through Leo’s bones. One hour left. Perhaps less. The gates were open. Tzimiskes was coming.

Leo stood.

“I have made my choice, my lord,” he said.

Basil’s eyes glittered. “And what is it?”

Leo touched the place where the key was hidden, the waxed linen warm against his skin. He thought of the decree from the dead emperor, warning that Theophano would not get the throne. He thought of the iron crown, waiting in the darkness of the chamber beneath the Church of the Holy Apostles. He thought of Tzimiskes’s cold smile, and Theophano’s burning ambition, and Basil’s ledger, where every name was a debt.

He thought of himself, Leo Anatolius, the low-born scribe who had dreamed of a purple robe.

“I have chosen,” Leo said, “to walk the passage first.”

Basil rose, a slow, deliberate motion, and for a moment he looked almost human. “Then we have an accord. The crown is yours, if you survive the taking.”

He extended his hand. Leo took it.

The eunuch’s grip was cold, but his eyes were warm with the promise of a story yet to be written.

And somewhere in the darkness of the palace, Leo heard the sound of boots on marble—many boots, moving in unison, a sound that did not belong to the feast.

The hunt had begun.