Thessalonica

the way she scooped them up, she might have suspected they were counterfeit. Thus encouraged, George gulped down the wine and left.

It had started to snow while he was in the tavern. Snowflakes danced in the air. A thin layer of white lay over everything, not yet streaked with soot, not yet trampled into slush. George stood outside the doorway for a moment: the falling snow was beautiful.

It was also cold. He wrapped his tunic more tightly around himself and hurried off toward his own home and shop. The snow crunched under his boots. Every time he exhaled, he breathed out fog.

As he walked along, shivering, he thought about what Father Luke had said. Crotus and Nephele thought differently: he’d said as much himself. The Avar priest had thought differently, too, till the centaurs put paid to him. Who had the right of it?

“Menas, a part of God’s plan?” George snorted. The notion was absurd on the face of it.

He walked a few steps farther. Then, despite snow, despite cold, he stopped. Was it absurd? Or was the pattern of events larger and more complex than George had perceived till this moment? Had God cured Menas’ paralysis so that the rich noble, having become George’s enemy, could, by shutting him out of the city, force him up into the hills to meet the centaurs, to gain Perseus’ cap, to bring Father Luke up into the hills to get the centaurs drunk so they would have the spirit to attack the Slavs and Avars besieging Thessalonica and help save it?

He looked up into the gray sky. Was that God’s will he saw, or only his own imagination running away with him after a couple of cups of wine? Either way, how was he supposed to tell?

A snowflake landed on the tip of his nose. He brushed it off and started walking again. He was only a couple of blocks from home.