Porphyry and Ash

1452: After a thousand years, the sun is setting on the Eastern Roman Empire...

The covetous eye of the Ottoman Sultan has set itself firmly upon Constantinople. His great army prepares to strike, while the Byzantine court is split between those who would sacrifice everything - including their religion - to defend the city, and those who would prefer rule by the Turkish turban. But amid the deadly undercurrent of court politics, religious division and a brutal siege, Anna Notaras, youngest daughter of Byzantium's richest family, has a more mundane issue to solve - how to be rid of an unwanted betrothal to a loathsome Venetian.

When she meets John Grant among the mercenaries flocking to the city's defence, she thinks she might have found a solution. Scottish, world-weary and repentant, Grant hopes holy war can bring absolution for his dark past. He soon discovers that life in Constantinople is never so simple, and the cannons and scimitars of the invaders beyond the crumbling walls might prove less lethal than the dangers lurking within them: a flamboyant Genoese general with a secret agenda, a firebrand monk with the mob in his thrall, a murderer with a taste for the theatrical. And although Grant has the requisite strength and skills to overcome all of these, in the beautiful, astute, monstrously ambitious Anna, he might have met his match.