Asbjørn travels with Haraldr Sigurdsson from Kiev, to join the Varangian Guard. Yet he has a secret that not even his friend Haraldr knows: his connection to a casket that has enveloped his family with its secrets for two generations. He has been trained in the art of fighting by his father’s companion Þorgil, in reading and writing by the priest Rastislav, and in the art of runes and mastering the berserkergangr by his sister Sigga, an influential seiðkona. However none of this is enough to prepare him for coming up against the powerful brotherhood of Lampros once they realize who he is. Secrets are stock and trade in Constantinople… and knowing them can make or break you.
Sigga, for her part, has her own secrets. Her son Vseslav is fathered by the prince of Polotosk in his desire to beget a child gifted in the secret arts in response to a prophesy that only such a child could regain for his household the throne in Kiev. He seeks a son who will carry on his mother’s skill at walking the Nine Worlds. But even the young Vseslav is no ordinary seer. He has inherited his family’s curse of the Ulfhednar. Even his training among the Volkhovs in no guarantee that he will be able to tame the wolf in his blood.
In Constantinople, the Empress Zoe has taken unto herself every magician and seer who can promise her a child even as she approaches an age past childbearing. When one Persian mystic Ashan, who has trained under Zoastrians, makes good on enabling the empress to conceive, she finds the cost of doing so was not what either of them had anticipated.
Ashan flees the city, for the kingdom of Hungary, but not before the Adelfótita tou Lámprou – The Brotherhood of Lampros – discover his connection to a secret that was not his to divulge.
As for Asbjørn, he becomes drawn into the web of Katja, a courtesan and brothel owner who is desperate enough to pass false coin for Ignatios Bourtzes whom Asbjorn has been pursuing. However it soon becomes apparent that the imperial court wants Bourtzes for far more than counterfeiting. And Asbjorn’s association with him could prove to be his own undoing. Asbjørn has become enamored of a woman named Maria who shares her love of the Iliad. But when it turns out that Maria is much more than who she says she is, Asbjørn must step carefully.
Many wish to topple Zoe from her precarious place as a woman on the throne of the most powerful and wealthy government in the western world. A coup by Emperor Michael V threatens to throw the glittering city of Constantinople in uproar and in the chaos that ensues, Asbjørn must figure out who killed his father and what lies at stake from the Brotherhood, in the final hours before truth is reduced to ash.