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Previously: DAGR EINN
The city had quieted to that thin, in-between hour when even the sea seemed to rest. The last lamps guttered low along the Mese, their light no brighter than fireflies, and the smell of char and honey from the Varangian feast still hung in the air like incense gone to sleep.
Leontios walked alone through the winding streets, his cloak drawn close. He had not drunk enough to be unsteady, only enough for warmth, and the cool breath of night pressed the wine from his blood. The marble underfoot still held the day’s heat. From the upper windows came the soft percussion of shutters closing, a child’s cry, a dog answering another somewhere farther off.
He thought of duty first, as he always did, whether his men had kept curfew at the docks, whether the Strategos’s clerk would want additional reports on the Rus tomorrow, but the thoughts failed to hold. They slipped away, replaced by another image entirely: pale eyes, a teasing smirk, and fingers that had once traced the line of his throat as though testing the beat beneath.
He grimaced at himself. Foolish.
Vali was an envoy, nothing more. A northern mercenary whose manners were half insolence, half wild charm. Yet something in the man’s manner unsettled him. That careless ease, like someone born to open spaces, unaccustomed to walls, gnawed at Leontios’s sense of order. And beneath it, that other thing: the strange flicker of recognition.
When he reached his own gate, the courtyard within was dimly lit by a single hanging lamp. His steward had done as instructed, everything prepared, no one waiting up.
Inside, the air smelled of olive oil and clean linen. His servants had worked efficiently while he was gone: armor polished to mirror brightness on its rack, boots cleaned, cloak brushed. The reports to the Strategos lay stacked and sealed with his insignia, edges perfectly aligned. Nothing required his hand. He had the rare luxury of a night with nothing left to command.
And yet, he felt anything but at peace.
He poured a cup of watered wine and set it aside untouched. The silence of the house pressed around him too heavily, like the echo after a bell stops ringing. The faint sounds of the feast still echoed in his mind, the thud of fists on tables, laughter like the roll of surf, the mead-roughened voice that had leaned close to tell him, “Perhaps you should fly and I chase.”
He unpinned his cloak and hung it carefully. The movement freed something from its folds: the small wooden carving that Vali had tossed to him days before, the tigris. It fell into his palm with a light thud, smooth and warm from where it had rested against his ribs all evening.
He sat on the edge of the bed, lamp burning low beside him, and studied it. The shape was simple but deliberate, broad-headed, short-legged, tail curling like a flame. The lines of the grain had been followed, not fought. A craftsman’s instinct guided by reverence.
It was not a cat. Not truly. The creature was older, stranger. He remembered how Vali had said the word: tígrisdýr. A beast that had looked upon him like a god.
Leontios traced the ridged stripes with his thumb. The carving was small enough to hide in his hand, yet it felt heavier than bronze. He turned it over once, twice, feeling the way the light caught in the grooves. He could imagine the hunter whittling it by firelight, knife moving without hesitation.
In another life, he thought, the two of them might have understood one another without words. One man carving what he could not tame, the other building walls to house what he could not contain.
He set the figure on the small table beside his bed but did not turn away from it. The lamp flame bent in the draft, and for a heartbeat the little tigris seemed to prowl through its own shadow.
With a quiet sigh, Leontios rose and crossed to the copper basin waiting near the hearth. The water within it was cool from the cistern. He stripped off his tunic and washed slowly, methodically, as though the act itself might rinse the night from his skin. The chill bit at him, chasing away the last of the mead’s heat. Drops rolled down the line of his spine, gathering in the hollow of his throat before he splashed another handful across his chest.
The water smelled faintly of lime and stone. It was clean, pure, grounding.
He washed the palms that had touched another’s hand, another’s wrist. The memory of that contact was still there, faint as a burn. He scrubbed again, harder than necessary, then braced both hands on the basin’s rim and looked down. His reflection wavered in the water, tired eyes, a soldier’s face lined with the years between faith and fatigue.
“You’ve grown too soft, Leo,” he muttered.
But even as he said it, he knew it wasn’t softness that haunted him. It was curiosity.
He dried himself with a linen cloth and returned to the table, leaving the basin to settle. The tigris caught the lamplight again. He picked it up, turned it once more in his hand. There was something comforting in its shape, though he would never have admitted that aloud.
When he finally lay down, he placed the carving on the small chest beside the bed, where it could watch over him, or judge him, whichever the gods preferred.
Sleep came slowly. His mind circled back over the evening: the warmth of the Varangian hall, the press of bodies, the quick spark of laughter that had escaped him despite himself. The look Vali had given him when he said Dawn.
The tigris blurred in his vision as his eyes drifted shut.
In his dream, he walked through water that shimmered like gold leaf. Columns rose on either side, vast and glimmering, and a shape, half man, half shadow, moved through the haze ahead of him. It turned once, eyes bright as the creature he held carved in his hand, and vanished into the light.
He woke before dawn, breath quick, heart beating as if he had climbed a hill.
The sky beyond the shutters had begun to pale. He sat up at once, pushed a hand through his hair, and reached for the basin again. The water had cooled further, almost icy. He splashed it over his face, grateful for the shock.
The servants were only just stirring when he stepped into the corridor. He waved them silent and left without breakfast, taking only a pouch of coins and a basket.
The baker’s hearth was already blazing when he arrived. The man looked up in surprise to see a Roman officer so early, but Leontios simply asked for rolls, fresh, sweet, wrapped in a waxed cloth. Honey, dates, sesame, nothing more.
The bread was still warm when he reached the Augusteion. The square lay silver in the first light, the great dome of Hagia Sophia glowing faintly above the mist. Bells were beginning to sound, low, distant, like the heartbeat of the city.
He sat on the steps at the south entrance, setting the basket beside him. The marble was cool through his cloak. Pilgrims began to pass in silence, their prayers whispering like wind against stone.
He waited.
It was not duty that kept him there; he admitted that much to himself at last. His reports were written, his orders clear. He was here for no reason that could be justified on parchment. He had given his word, yes, but that was not the truth of it. The truth didn't rest in the little beast of wood, but in the pulse it had awakened in him.