The Keyholder

A Novel of Byzantine Constantinople

von S. Kallistos

128 Seiten, Taschenbuch

Kurzbeschreibung des Verlags

Some secrets are not kept in vaults. They are kept in people.Constantinople, 843 AD. The Iconoclasm is over. The icons have been restored, the Empress Theodora rules as regent, and the empire breathes again. But beneath the surface of triumph, the palace keeps its secrets - and its dead.When a minor secretary is found dead in the Sacred Palace, with his hands bound and his death announced as suicide, Theophano Doukena, a young widow serving as Lady of Honour, begins to ask questions no one wants answered. What she uncovers is not a single murder but a chain of silence stretching back years: a secret brotherhood known as the Keyholders, guarding the empire's darkest truths, a husband whose death on the frontier was no accident, and a conspiracy that reaches to the throne itself.As Theophano follows the trail from coded ledgers to hidden archives, she is drawn into a dangerous alliance with the one person she should not trust: the Empress herself. What begins as investigation becomes love - secret, unequal, and impossible to confess - between two women whom rank and ceremony were built to keep apart.But in Constantinople, knowledge is the most dangerous weapon. When those in power decide that silence must be enforced at any cost, Theophano must choose: protect what she loves, or expose the truth that could bring down an empire.For readers of Umberto Eco, Hilary Mantel and Madeline Miller.

• Reihe: Independently published
• ISBN: 9798252866413
• Sprache: Englisch
• Erscheinungsdatum: 19.03.2026
• Größe: 229 x 152 mm
• Verlag: Independently published