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"Grazie, amico. Phaidros will stay and help. I can get Con back on my own."

Phaidros crossed his arms. "If the Ottomans breach, you'll be dealing with them behind and a crush of people in front."

"I'll manage. I'm not putting you at risk as well." Alexis tried to give him an encouraging smile. "Can you imagine what Aelia would do to me if I got both Con and you hurt?"

"If Aelia were here instead of you, she would break my leg and leave me as a distraction while she got Con away," Phaidros said.

The sad thing was, he actually believed Aelia would. Alexis knew better than to try to correct him.

They went over the route and contingencies if fighting blocked the roads. They went over the moment-by-moment of what would happen if Alexis was seen, if the breach came at the wrong gate, if Mehmed delayed, if Con moved.

They went over it until Alexis was satisfied that it could be done. Arslan rose, made a small bow, and went away down the walkway to attend to the Order brothers and the sheltered creatures in his care.

Phaidros watched Arslan go, then turned to Alexis.

"Con is never going to forgive you," Phaidros said quietly. "I thought if you saw him again, you would change your mind."

"I know, but seeing him only strengthened my resolve. At least, he'll be alive to hate me."

Phaidros poured them more wine and pushed a cup across to Alexis.

"I've been thinking about whether I would do it to you if you were Con," Phaidros said.

"And?"

"I would." Phaidros drank a mouthful of wine. "I'd probably hit you harder than necessary, just for dragging me into a goddamned seige."

Alexis choked on a laugh. "You're a comfort and balm to my troubled soul."

"I do my best."

They drank again, and Phaidros refilled them.

"Don't pout so much," he said. "He is Con. He can't stay angry forever. He and Aelia fight like animals, then make up again. He'll forgive you too."

"Not in my lifetime."

"You don't have a lifetime, fratello. You have all of time."

"He does too, and he'll use it to be angry. Trust me on this. His squabbles with Aelia are small things. This won't be small."

"Then he'll forgive you in two centuries instead of one. Either way, he won't be gone, and that's what we are doing this for." Phaidros looked at his cup. "Even if he's an insufferable bastard and doesn't deserve it."

Alexis spun the ring on his index finger. It was faded silver with a chunk of purple amethyst. Con had given it to him when he was still emperor. "I hope you're right."

Phaidros grinned. "I bet you twenty zecchini that he'll come crawling back in under two centuries."

"You still owe me fifty tetradrachm from when Miltiades won Marathon," Alexis complained, but he shook his brother's hand anyway.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Two and a half hours before dawn, Alexis stood on the inner wall above Saint Romanus Gate with his hood low over his face and his back against the stone of a merlon. The bombardment had stopped for the moment, and his ears were ringing in the silence.

At the postern, he bribed the captain to keep his key long enough to make a copy, and had the door glamoured so no enemy soldier coming that way would see anything but a blank wall.

Alexis was leaning against a wine-cart when Con walked past with three captains and didn't turn his head. Con would know he was there anyway. He had been a soldier for a thousand years and the second-longest-reigning emperor in Rome's history. He had a cat's situational awareness and a fox's cunning. He didn't look at Alexis or try to send him away, and that was probably the only thing that stopped Alexis from losing his nerve.

The ringing silence broke at the eastern edge of the Mesoteichion, where the Lycus valley fell away from the wall. It was the long ululating cry of the bashi-bazouks. Mehmed was sending them first because they were the meat for the wall to break its teeth on before the regulars came.