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stratagems and conspiracies, a massive engine which required constant stoking, stacks of gold solidus disappearing into the furnace.
    Only when she had finished with these did Eudokia turn her attention to her real work. Missives from across the length and breadth of Aeleria, and from far outside it as well. From nobles and domestics, from army officers and tax-farmers, from Salucian merchant princes and Dycian shipping magnates. The greater portion of them had no idea to whom they were writing, left their news in dead-letter drops or had it filtered through some third party. Most were written so obliquely as to require outside knowledge to make any sense of them. The very sensitive were transposed to a code of Eudokia’s own design, and when she came across these she would spend a quick few minutes deciphering them. The shrinking pile of letters represented what Eudokia felt confident was the finest intelligence system in the Commonwealth – in the Commonwealth at the very least. It was the product of long years of diligent labour, carefully cultivated over the course of most of a lifetime, all the more impressive because it had been grown from nothing.
    At half past noon Eudokia drank a goblet of red wine mixed liberally with spring water. Then she walked the sack of letters to the furnace. Four separate trips it took, to rid herself of the information she had acquired that day. It was too hot for a fire, but comfort took second place to caution.
    Next she took a brisk walk round the compound, Jahan trailing close behind. A handful of slaves were busy ensuring the continued health of the grounds, pruning and watering and a dozen other activities the purpose of which Eudokia was only vaguely clear on. Eudokia loved gardens but hated gardening, in truth disliked manual labour of any kind. It was a very good thing that Eudokia had been born to a station befitting her abilities, she often thought. Imagine a lifetime spent bending over and standing upright, over and upright, over and upright till finally you don’t come upright any more. The gods had known what they were doing when they had made Eudokia who she was.
    A shorter perambulation than she’d have preferred, and Eudokia was back to work. She kept open hours twice a month – an exhausting activity, granting audience to every trumped-up aristocrat and acquaintance’s friend desperate for a favour – but among her intimate circle of supporters, it was well known that she was available most days in the early afternoon.
    She took a spot in a large armchair, one of several that sat in the centre of the library. It was her favourite room in the house – Phocas had built it for her as a wedding present, though she had chosen the decor. It did not contain the largest collection of manuscripts in the capital; plenty of senators possessed entire wings demonstrating their erudition. But Eudokia’s was large enough, and the titles were well chosen and had the added virtue of having actually been read.
    From the small end table beside her she removed a ball of twine and sewing needle and continued her work on the tunic she had begun. Eudokia averaged two articles of outerwear a week, depending on size and complexity, two a week since she had been a young woman: a hill of trousers, a mountain of socks. It played well with the image she liked to portray, and it was a good way to buy a few seconds of time if a conversation turned awkward. Of course, her work was every bit as good as any professional seamstress. What Eudokia chose to do, she excelled at.
    She’d barely got started on the sleeve when her steward knocked twice on the door, entered smoothly and announced a visitor.
    ‘Revered Mother,’ Irene said, adding a quick curtsy to the term of endearment. ‘How does the afternoon find you?’
    ‘Busy, Irene, as ever.’
    Eudokia had taken Irene on as a handmaiden because her mother had been a childhood friend, or at least an acquaintance, and because a woman in