“If using that weapon to save your body damns your soul to all eternity, dying might well be the better course to take,” Father Luke said.

“If I saved myself by worshiping Satan and working abominations, then you might be right,” George said. “But that’s not what you did. That’s not anything like what you did.”

“The difference is of degree, not of kind,” Father Luke said. “I follow the Son, and thought I stayed within the limits of what is permissible for Christian men. Bishop Eusebius thought otherwise. I willingly accept his judgment.”

“But--” George gave up. Had Father Luke felt resentment, the shoemaker might have fanned it with resentment of his own. Against acceptance he had no power, and he knew it. “Your Reverence, so long as you’re content--”

“I am,” the priest assured him. He smiled again. “I do thank you for your concern. You are not the first to have expressed it; I told the others what I am telling you now.” From smile, he went to outright laughter. “Some of them were harder to dissuade than you. One suggested something I could not in good conscience even hear, though I do not think he meant it seriously.”

George had a sudden vivid vision of Rufus proposing that Eusebius be flung off the top of the wall into a dungheap. He didn’t ask who; he didn’t ask what. But he would have bet his guess was near the truth.

“Can I do anything else for you today, George?” Father Luke asked.

“No,” the shoemaker said He checked himself. “No. Wait. Yes. Maybe you can. What do you know about Constantine, the son of Leo the potter? What do you think of him?”

“Constantine?” Father Luke’s eyes sparkled. “Are you thinking of a match?”

“I’m trying to find out if I should be thinking of a match,” George said.

“Ah.” The priest nodded. “You are a prudent man-- except when you go butting into the affairs of the clergy.” George’s ears heated. Thoughtfully, Father Luke went on, “He’s a big, strapping lad, isn’t he? Truth to tell, past that I can’t think of anything remarkable about him, for good or ill. He seems a decent enough young man, whatever that may be worth to you.”

That’s not good enough for Sophia, was George’s first thought. On the other hand, he knew himself well enough to understand he wouldn’t have reckoned the city prefect’s son good enough for his daughter, not if the lad were also handsome and saintly in the bargain. He let out a rueful chuckle. “Thanks, Your Reverence. I’ll do some looking and some more asking of my own, then. No hurry with this, God be praised, or I don’t think so, anyhow.”

“All right, George,” the priest said. “I’m sure you’ll do very well, whatever choice you and Irene make for Sophia.”

Irene would be looking and asking on her own, too. Irene, very likely, had already started doing just that. What she thought of Constantine, and of Leo, and of Leo’s wife (whose name, at the moment, escaped George), would carry enormous weight. If George approved and she didn’t, the marriage would not even be broached. If she approved and George didn’t. . . he didn’t know what would happen then, in spite of being in theory unquestioned head of the household. He was glad they thought alike most of the time.

Nodding to Father Luke, he left the church and headed back toward his shop. And there, heading the other way, his arms full of straw, came Constantine the son of Leo. He was indeed a strapping lad, with shoulders wider than George’s, which was saying something. His walk was something less than graceful, but Georges would have been, too, had he borne a like burden.

Constantine nodded at George, politely enough. He was nothing special to look at (so the shoemaker thought, anyhow; his daughter evidently had a different opinion), and pimples splashed his cheeks and chin. George nodded to him in return. He looked back over his shoulder at Constantine. To his surprise, the potter’s son was looking back at him, too. Each of them tried to pretend he’d done no such thing.

Why was Constantine looking over his shoulder? The likeliest explanation occurring to George was that he’d noticed Sophia and wanted some notion of what her father was like. That was unsettling. So was the idea that what some youthful lout thought of him might be important.

When George returned to the shop, he and Irene went out to inspect the fennel again. He caught the glance that went from Sophia to Theodore, but did his best to seem as if he hadn’t. Once he and Irene were out among the herbs, he told her of what little Father Luke had had to say about Constantine.

“Yes, that sounds about like what I’ve heard,” she answered with a brisk nod.

“Does it?” George said. “And where have you heard all this?”

“Why, from Zoe the weaver’s wife, and from Julia-- you know, the widow who sells fish because her husband sold fish--and even from Claudia, though she hasn’t the slightest idea why I was interested, and from--” Plainly, Irene was ready to go on for some time.

George, however, was not ready to let her. He interrupted with a cough. “If you’ve heard all this, dear,” he said, bearing down a little on the endearment, “why haven’t I heard any of it? From you, I mean.”

“Oh, you would have,” she said blithely. “In due time, you would have. Once I knew enough to make up my mind.”

“Once you knew enough to make up my mind,” George returned. Irene stuck out her tongue at him. He did not take that for a ringing denial. “Well, I gather he’s not so good, but he’s certainly not so bad, either. What does that leave us? To make up our own minds, I suppose.”

“We would have anyway,” his wife said. “The best thing we can do now is wait. She can’t even think of marrying till after the siege is over, and she doesn’t have to think of it even then. She’s a long way from being an old maid-- fifteen is nothing to worry about. She may decide there are other fish in the sea before we need to do anything about Constantine.”

“So she may,” George said. “So there are. Some of them have shells and claws. Some of them have lots of arms all covered with suckers.”

“My dear, any boy Constantine s age seems to have lots of arms covered with suckers.” Irene cocked her head to one side. “Or isn’t that what you meant?”

“By now, believe me, it’s hard to tell,” George said. They both laughed, and went back into the workshop laughing still. Sophia and Theodore eyed them suspiciously, sure they were up to something. Since they were, they tried all the harder to pretend they weren’t.

“Do you know,” George said to Dactylius as they paced along the wall, bows in hand, quivers on their backs, “I used to come up here when the weather was fine, just for a promenade: take a little walk, you know, and get out of the city stink for a while if the wind was blowing in the right direction. I’m not going to do that anymore. I’ve seen altogether too much of this awl.”

“If you weren’t a shoemaker, that would make even less sense than it really does,” Dactylius answered. “As things are, it leaves my ears ringing.”

George took two or three steps before realizing his friend had topped him, a measure of how badly he’d been topped. He sent Dactylius a reproachful look. “John and I are the ones who make jokes like that.”

“Contagious as the--” Dactylius had probably been about to say plague, but remembered George had lost family from it. “--the grippe,” he finished.

“Can’t trust anybody anymore,” George said, mock-serious. Dactylius smiled in something like triumph.

The little jeweler pointed out toward the tent where the Avar priest or wizard made his home, and to the smaller ones nearby that belonged to the Slavic wizards. “I wish they hadn’t chosen to camp near the Litaean Gate,” he said. “If they were somewhere else, we wouldn’t be able to watch them getting ready to work all their magic.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” George said. “For better or worse, I want to know what’s going on as soon as I can. It wouldn’t stop happening if we didn’t find out about it till it came down on us like a building falling over.”