The Third Fire

Constantinople, 1203. The greatest city in the Christian world is about to be betrayed by its own allies.

Theodora Rhodane runs her late husband’s sail workshop on the Golden Horn. She survives as an interpreter, softening every promise between Greek officials and Venetian creditors into words both sides can swallow. When a crusader fleet arrives to put an exiled prince on the throne, her careful lies become the city’s currency.

Then a rope maker hangs on evidence written in her own hand.

Theodora begins a secret ledger. It records the false debts and the double pledges, and the names of the men who made them. It could destroy the most powerful official in the city. It could also get everyone she loves killed.

Across the harbor, a Venetian clerk named Pietro da Murano is falling in love with her. The men he works for are reading every letter she sends him.

As three great fires tear through Constantinople, Theodora must decide what the truth is worth, and who will pay for it.

Drawn from the eyewitness accounts of the Fourth Crusade, The Third Fire is a novel of love and betrayal inside a city destroyed by the army sworn to defend it.