Justinian

MYAKES

Little Goldentop, Brother Elpidios? Yes, Justinian was blond. So was his father, come to that. The house of Herakleios sprang from Armenia, that's true, but as soon as they got out of Armenia and found there were yellow-haired women in the world, they started swiving them. Why, Constantine once told me old Herakleios himself had a bastard boy by a Visigoth from Spain, and let her name him Athalaric after her own father. She must have been a beauty, or good between the sheets, to get away with that.

Oh, quit spluttering, Brother. If you don't hear worse from Justinian later on than you just have from me, I'll be much surprised, that I will.

Justinian? If you want to know the truth, he reminded me of nothing so much as a cat. His face was long- that was true of everyone in his family I saw, and of the others, too, if their coins don't lie- but it narrowed sharply from the cheekbones down, so that he had almost a woman's rosebud mouth and a pointed little chin. And he was graceful, too. Even that young, he always held his body just so: tight-strung, you might say.