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Eudokia’s position was expected to be surrounded by pretty young things, and because it occasionally gave her pleasure to gossip and play as if she were still a girl. Irene was only the latest in a long slate of women Eudokia had brought under her wing, tended and nurtured and married off.
    She was stop-short beautiful. Her hair was a black so dark it seemed almost blue, her skin white as alabaster. She had sparkling eyes and a bosom that demanded attention, even when she wasn’t wearing something cut to show it off, which she almost always was. Her one flaw – physically, at least, since morally the girl was very much as rotten as a sewer – was her tremulous, high-pitched voice, like a hinge begging for oil. Eudokia knew that she had never been so lovely as Irene, not even in the very prime of her youth, but at least when she baited a lover she didn’t sound like a eunuch.
    Not that Eudokia had any doubt as to whom the average man would prefer. It was good practice, she found, trying not to hate Irene on general principle. Mostly, she even succeeded.
    ‘How goes the day’s work?’
    ‘Well enough, dear child, well enough.’
    Irene’s gown had all the fabric of a hand towel, and when she took the seat across from Eudokia her chest strained the cloth. Overdone, Eudokia thought, particularly as she would return home and change before the evening’s entertainment. ‘I’ll never understand,’ Irene began, ‘how you bear up under so heavy a load.’
    Eudokia smiled. It wasn’t that she enjoyed the flattery, particularly – true pride does not require affirmation – but she was a strict believer in upholding the hierarchy. Irene was her creature, and it was well that she gave frequent evidence of it. ‘How was your evening?’
    ‘Dull to the point of madness. Of course we had to make an appearance at the Hypatos’s little amusement, and with him living out towards Broad Hill it took our palanquin an hour to get there and an hour to get back. By then there was nothing to do but stop in at the Second Consul’s, and the Second Consul being the Second Consul he was less than sober and more than willing to try his hands with any girl foolish enough to let him.’
    Irene continued in this fashion for a while, light gossip that Eudokia had long since ceased to cause but still enjoyed hearing. The surrogate sins of an adopted daughter, red meat for a mother now used to softer fare. Jahan leaned against the far wall, chewing betel nuts and groping the girl with his eyes. The Parthan lacked the most basic social graces, though Eudokia had no intention of improving them. It was the effect Irene had intended, after all, and a woman who could not deal with a man’s attentions was no such thing at all.
    Irene was midway through an amusing little piece of calumny when the steward interrupted her apologetically, announcing an arrival. Without anything being said, Irene stood, curtsied and left by the side exit. A moment later the main door opened and Gratian Eyconos, senator, walked in.
    What was it that made a man powerful? Eudokia often wondered. Birth, first and foremost. Gratian came from a family that could trace itself back to the foundations of Aeleria, back to the first ships that had come north to the Tullus Coast hundreds of years prior. His ancestors had helped carve out a kingdom amidst the human nations that had long lived there, sheltered beneath the protection of the Others. And they had died in droves at the Lamentation, when the demons had ridden down Aeleria’s last king and slaughtered his line, leaving the throne empty and giving birth to the Republic.
    Apart from that, there wasn’t much to recommend him. Whatever looks he’d once possessed had long retreated against an onslaught of working lunches and second helpings. He had a basic education, could quote the more popular poets and philosophers, though not understand them. He had never commanded a thema, and Eudokia felt confident in asserting that