The Devil’s Treasure

By Richard Blake

Ravenna 619 AD

At fifteen, Rodi is the youngest agent in the Byzantine Empire’s Intelligence Bureau. Fraud,
forger, blackmailer, snoop, hypocrite, thief – none of it loses him a moment’s sleep.

It’s the murder that’s his problem.

It shouldn’t be like this. His plan seemed as neat and elegant as anything the Bureau ever arranged. Find a child-murderer, cannibal and all-round beast, and lean on him to do the business – then have an alibi elsewhere in Ravenna while it was done.

Only, everything has gone disastrously wrong, and Rodi is chased through early mediaeval Italy by the directors of an illegal and obscene cult.

What do these people want of Rodi? What is Prince Aripert’s latest money-making scam? What is Simeon the Jew’s actual involvement in this? Can Rodi stay alive in the snake-pit of Lombard court politics? Is there a message in the nightly riot of his dreams?

In this fourth instalment of his “Rodi Series,” Richard Blake paints his usual canvas of a world pushed along who-knows-where on its vast and sordid under-belly – a delight for those who know his work, and an introduction for those who know him not.

Richard Blake is an historian, broadcaster and university lecturer. He lives in Kent with
his wife and daughter.