The Furnace of Deceit

With Helena's convoy already far past Crete, a deeper quiet settled over the Palatine. Constantine, sunk in calculations for harbor dredges and revisions of provincial grain quotas, mistook the tension for routine bureaucracy. He had grown more comfortable among maps and figures than in the world of living men and women. It was a habit born of conquest, and in peace, it dulled his instincts to shadows that moved beyond the edge of his lamp.

Yet in the corridors of his palace, the air trembled with the weight of things unsaid. Palace chamberlains whispered in alcoves and fell silent when Fausta's litter swept past. Her ladies obeyed with nervous precision. Valerius, returning from an inspection of the arsenal, sensed it in the posture of every doorkeeper and the jump in every slave's hands. Jealousy and fear, those acid solvents of trust, were everywhere-except in the Emperor's own study.