Everything was a mess inside the citadel. Tables, chairs, and shelves were smashed or thrown aside in every room, hall, and corridor. The Latins had trashed this place, but it seemed there was little to steal. Normally loot would be piled in mounds outside these buildings, or soldiers would be walking around covered in pearl and diamond necklaces before exchanging them for women and wine, but the jewels, tapestries, carpets, and other treasures usually hidden inside citadels were absent. Neither silk, gems, nor gold could be found. Here and there a few Latin soldiers felt along the stone walls for hidden compartments.

Narses snorted with amusement. Suddenly he understood.

The criminals were so desperate they sold everything they could lay their hands on. The wealth built up by generations of Romans—gone in a few months, all to gratify a few madmen. Their leaders say they work for the people, but really they just work for themselves.

Paper was also scattered everywhere. Narses thought that strange, since it was so expensive. He knelt to pick up one sheet, then gasped and dropped it, shocked at how thin it was—its edge sharp enough to cut flesh. Once more he picked it up and rubbed the material between his fingers.

Not parchment, he thought. Not papyrus, either. Something else.

Whatever it was, the criminals had made a lot of it, and then covered each sheet with notes and drawings. To an ordinary man, these scribbles would have looked incomprehensible. Yet thanks to Narses’s old world memories, he recognized diagrams for machines, gears, wheels, windmills, miniature basiliks that could fire more than one shot without needing to be reloaded, and carriages that lacked horses yet still moved of their own volition.

Other sheets even displayed the double-entry bookkeeping used by Latin, Jewish, and Sarakenou merchants. Narses barely knew anything about this—he was a soldier, not an accountant—and it looked as though the Trapezuntines were in similar territory. Many notes were crossed out and rewritten, as though by students. The numbers they used, too, were the unholy Sarakenou markings, with that strange circle repeated so often, and that vaguely Hebraic, almost cabalistic style. No proper Greek or Roman numerals were present. In the old world people did arithmetic in this unholy manner to conjure demons from the void.

How can they add figures like this? he thought. What were they planning?

He grimaced and tossed aside the paper sheet, or whatever it was. Then, just as he was walking out of this room, he stepped on a booklet. Looking down, he recognized the design on the cover. It looked like two swirls dancing around each other, like the yin yang symbol from the old world, but bound together more tightly and in a more complex way, like they were boiling and rippling inside a puddle of water.

The Zhayedan Fighting Manual, he thought.

Narses picked up the booklet and flipped through it. Neither he nor even His Majesty could read Seran letters, but they had learned enough about the farr just from studying the diagrams in their own copy of the manual, which they had burned long ago. This booklet, however, had been translated into Roman. Even people as exotic as the Seres must have been in the city.

By searching the floor, Narses picked up three more manuals.

The criminals were copying it, Narses thought. Trying to spread dangerous disinformation. But there are so few monks here. How could they have copied these books so quickly?

He tucked the three manuals into his pocket, then realized that even the idea that you could carry books so easily like this threatened all that was good and noble in the world. The rabble would have their minds scrambled by this nonsense. Narses needed to show His Majesty.

We have much to discuss.

He continued walking through the citadel, thinking to himself that it was good that His Majesty had sent the Latin mercenaries here, and fortunate they had succeeded. Otherwise, with enough time, the criminals could have constructed some of these sacrilegious machines, which might have shaken the Roman armies.

Narses descended to the citadel cellar. There he found a Latin soldier dozing on a stool against the wall beside a locked door and a sputtering lamp that filled the air with the heavy reek of burning olive oil. Lifting the lamp to the little barred window in the door, Narses saw old men and women sitting or lying down in darkness on the other side. Some glanced at him, and their red rheumy eyes shone in the lamp light.

Useless, he thought.

Returning the oil lamp to its spot on the floor beside the dozing Latin, Narses climbed the stairs, listened for activity, and tried to focus on anything other than how messy it was. Had he been in charge, he would have ordered the prisoners to set everything in its proper place. But he needed to compromise—for now.

Lord, give me strength.

The whole citadel was oddly quiet. Almost everyone was resting. Yet he heard laughter behind one door. Hauling it open, he discovered an impromptu banquet lain out on a long table in a dining hall with a fire searing the fireplace. Duke Robert, Paul the Chain, Bohemund, and Sikelgaita were sitting with a tired young woman wearing a silk dress. She looked like the twin of Zoë Karbonopsina, the barbarian queen who had bewitched Narses months ago in the Anatolian highlands.

While Paul and the Latins gorged themselves on wine, grapes, meat, and bread, this twin stared at the floor, unbound by any rope or chain.

Herakleia.

Narses’s body went rigid, and he clenched his jaw, hardly able to contain his rage. How many of his brother immortals had died because of this whore? Romanos, who was like a son to Narses, had nearly perished in the first siege because of her. He glared at Paul and the Latins.

How could they?

“Ah, General Narses, welcome to this, our quaint little repast!” Duke Robert stood and gestured for him to sit at an empty chair directly across Herakleia.

Paul scowled the moment he saw Narses. Sikelgaita and Bohemund stood and watched him with gracious smiles, while Herakleia continued to act as though she had been drugged.

“Of you we were only just speaking.” Duke Robert walked around the table, reached out to shake Narses’s hand, then pulled him close for a hug and clapped his back. “Welcome, great warrior.”

“Your grace,” Paul said. “Pardon me, but do you recall how I told you earlier about the danger inherent to touching this man—”

“Nonsense, Paul, he saved the lives of my wife and heir!” Duke Robert moved back from Narses but continued to clasp his shoulders. “Until now I’ve not had a chance to thank you for it.”

Narses bowed. “I only did my duty, your grace.”

To address a barbarian like this still enraged Narses, but circumstance forced him to do so.

God grant that one day soon, circumstance changes, he thought. The Latins are still sanctioned by His Majesty—which means they are still sanctioned by me.

As Bohemund and Sikelgaita sat back down, Duke Robert led Narses to his seat, then gave him a plate, a bowl, a knife, a spoon, and a cup, serving him meat, fruit, bread, wine, as well as some kind of thick salty soup. Narses hardly noticed, since he was so focused on Herakleia.

“Look at you, father!” Bohemund exclaimed. “You belabor yourself like a regular slave!”

“Ah, but it is the least I can do,” Robert said. “Not so long ago, our great-grandfathers earned their daily bread by the sweat of their brows—in the long-gone days before they sailed down from the fjords to go viking in foreign lands.”

Bohemund rolled his eyes as if to say: not this again. Sikelgaita elbowed him.

“Besides,” Robert continued, “our servants are at camp. As for the Greek servants, they are all imprisoned, for none can be trusted. A crafty race, they all give themselves airs, and will cut our throats at the first instance of our repose. They are nothing like the honorable Romans of old.”

Narses gritted his teeth beneath his lips.

“It seems they hate to fight,” Sikelgaita said.

“Mostly they hire Saracen or Germanic mercenaries to do their fighting for them,” Bohemund said.

“So they treat with heathens?” Sikelgaita said.

“These days the Greeks aren’t so martial as their ancestors once were,” Bohemund added. “Yet anyone angry enough will fight. Even these Greek paper-pushers. Anger them too much, and we will awaken the ancestral warriors lurking in their bloodlines, Pyrrhus of Epirus and such like.”

Annoyed by these inanities, Narses noticed that forks were also on the table, but the Latins were too uncouth to use them. Mostly they ate with their hands and dirty knives which they wiped on their clothes.

Barbarians.

No cutlery was within Herakleia’s reach, but she seemed to lack an appetite.

Narses felt the same. It was all he could do to keep from drawing his sword and hacking her head from her shoulders. Yet that would have ruined the Latins’ dinner.

This reminded him that he had taken Herakleia’s sister Zoë’s essence months ago just beyond Ankara’s gates. Narses had meant to tell Herakleia about this when he had arrived at Trebizond during the first siege, but that was when she had overthrown the doux who used to rule this place, whatever his name was. The spectacle had been so entertaining that Narses had forgotten to inform Herakleia that her sister Zoë’s spirit was even at that moment bashing her head against her prison bars—the ribs of his ribcage.

“Have you been introduced?” Duke Robert gestured to Herakleia as he sat back in his seat. “Or do you already know each other, perhaps? This is Princess Herakleia, daughter of the last emperor.”

“Her name sounds like Hercules,” Bohemund said.

Sikelgaita snorted. “She is not so strong.”

“Outrageous names these Greeks give themselves.” Bohemund bowed slightly to Paul and Narses. “Present company excepted, of course.”

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Narses could only glare at Herakleia. He had already forgotten that Robert was waiting for him to answer his question.

Paul cleared his throat, startling Narses.

“We are acquainted, your grace,” Narses said.

“All of us are familiar with each other.” Paul smiled at Duke Robert. “Once upon a time, just a few months ago before all this trouble began, we all lived together under one roof, like one big happy family. I myself am intimately acquainted with the princess, as a matter of fact.”

This statement seemed intended to get a rise out of Herakleia, but she remained still.

“It is that series of copper roofs, is it not?” Bohemund said, breaking the silence. “I have seen the Great Palace. It is many different buildings—a city within a city.”

“Your grace is perceptive.” Paul bowed to Bohemund. He was always bowing. It was so annoying!

“Much space is required for the imperial family and for the administrators of our politeía,” Paul continued.

“Politeía,” Sikelgaita said. “What is that word?”

“You’ll have to forgive her,” Bohemund said. “She’s a bit rusty with the Greek.”

“Shut up,” she said.

“It is an excellent question, madame,” Paul said, stooping so low as to utilize barbarian vocabulary in his speech. “The word politeía refers to our res publica, our land—the, how do you say it in Latin, forgive me, I’m rather out of practice these days myself—the oikoménē, the commonwealth, the Imperium Romanum. That is how you say it, is it not?”

“We’re not so sure ourselves,” Bohemund said. “We know Greek, French, and some Italian, but Latin—that’s for priests and lawyers, and half the time they don’t know it, either.”

Robert laughed. Narses was startled by the rich depth and warmth of his amusement. The duke was in such a good mood, he would laugh at anything. Yet how could he, with a traitor in his midst?

“Your grace,” Narses said, looking at Herakleia. “Why is she here?”

The laughter stopped. Paul covered his face with his hand.

“Whatever do you mean?” Robert said. “She is of royal blood, is she not? His Majesty told me she was his niece not two weeks ago in Constantinople!”

“Yes, your grace, but—”

“Here and there she may have made a few mistakes, but she is still a noblewoman. Do not forget, she surrendered peacefully, and is therefore accorded the privilege of ransom.”

“But who is going to ransom—”

“Besides, I do not blame her for the terrible calamity that has befallen this place. I think it likely she was fooled by some conjurer, don’t you? What other explanation can there be?”

Narses kept silent. The man loves to hear himself talk.

“Perhaps she was poisoned,” Robert continued, “or a devil possessed her soul. How else could someone of her parentage, wealth, and power possibly believe in joining a peasants’ revolt? It is madness, of the purest and simplest kind. Lord knows, a priest shall have to exorcise this evil from her flesh.”

“It’s as absurd as an innocent lamb joining a pack of ravening wolves.” Bohemund shook his head, and his long flowing flaxen locks shook with him. “I too should like to understand such a profound mystery.”

“But she is so silent,” Sikelgaita said. “She speaks not.”

“Ah, but who could ever blame her?” Robert said. “She must be disappointed in us, for we have brought to an end her little adventure. It will take time for her to remember her proper place in the grand order of things.”

“That is why His Majesty the Emperor sent me here,” Narses said. “I was searching for her…but there is also another criminal, one named Alexios, who is not a noble. I desire to find him above all others. He is not in the city. He is Zhayedan.”

“My dear general, what is the meaning of this new word of yours?” Robert said.

Narses glared at Herakleia again. “Where is Alexios?”

She neither looked at him nor spoke.

“You eloped with him from the palace,” Narses growled. “He must be your lover, you lying whore—”

Sikelgaita gasped. Paul dropped his fork onto his plate.

“General Narses,” Robert said. “I am well aware that the Greeks do things differently, yet this manner of parlance ill-befits our table, would you not agree? For here we are all friends.”

“Once a common riffraff, always a common riffraff,” Paul muttered to himself.

“She knows where a murderer is,” Narses said. “A violent criminal who has killed many good men. I must find him before he can hurt anyone else.”

“If he’s in the city, he’ll turn up sooner or later.” Bohemund waved his hand. “And if he escaped…”

“Maybe he was on that ship,” Sikelgaita said. “The escaped ship.”

“Ah yes, that vessel that moved so rapidly upon the waters,” Robert said. “It may be so.”

“A ship escaped the harbor?” Narses said.

Bohemund nodded. “Early this morning, or didn’t you see? It was of Greek design, and unusually swift.”

Narses fell back into his seat. It was the Paralos. It must have been.

They took it again.

Suddenly he stood. “Your grace, please give me permission to pursue them. Let me take a vessel and—”

“My dear general, please, will you not sit?” Robert said. “I have already deployed three of my own personal vessels in pursuit of these rebellious peasants. They cannot escape divine justice forever. My finest ships crewed by my best sailors will catch them. I have also ordered hunters to pursue those few reprobates who escaped to the south on horseback, including a Greek hireling who told me he knew you from the palace, a certain Barsúmes—”

“I beg your pardon, your grace, but that ship is more dangerous than you know. Your sailors are already dead.”

The room fell silent. Everyone was watching Narses, except for Paul, who seemed to be quietly pleading with God for help; and Herakleia, who was staring into space.

“How can that be?” Bohemund said.

“They destroyed one of the best warships in the Roman armada only a few months ago,” Narses said. “We lost an entire century.”

“But is it not too late?” Duke Robert said. “If this ship moves at such a rapid pace, however can you hope to catch it?”

“I have ways of motivating men to work harder than they ever thought possible,” Narses said.

“Yes, good, anything to get him away from me,” Paul blurted.

“What of the Princess Herakleia?” Bohemund said. “Have you already lost interest in her?”

At the mention of her name, Herakleia kept still.

“She is finished,” Narses said. “Just as I finished her sister.”

Herakleia looked at him. “What are you talking about?”

“Oh, didn’t you hear?” Narses said. “I found Zoë Karbonopsina near Ankara. She was living sinfully with Skythioi.”

“She was alive?”

“Too alive,” Narses said. “But I punished her for her transgressions.”

“You…you killed her?”

“Her soul lives in me.”

Herakleia stretched out her hand, and the knife on the table in front of Narses flew into it. As Paul and the Latins were standing and shouting, she leaped onto the table and swung the knife at Narses. The blade blurring and whistling through the air forced him back. He fell onto the floor, and she was on top of him. He had no farr, and was unable to stop her. If only he could drink her sweet spirit—

Just as Herakleia was about to cut Narses’s throat, Robert seized her wrist and threw her off. Bohemund tackled her, and Sikelgaita bound her wrists with a strip of cloth she tore from the table cover.

“Let me go!” Herakleia screamed.

“Your grace,” Paul stammered, “I apologize—”

“Get her out of here!” Robert shouted. “Would you look at this? I cannot even enjoy a simple meal with my family!”

Bohemund hauled Herakleia to her feet and dragged her to the door. She struggled with him, but he held her.

“Wait a moment,” Robert said.

Bohemund stopped and turned. Herakleia was glaring at Narses, who was lying on the floor and smiling at her.

“I’ll make you pay,” Herakleia said.

Narses nodded, squinted, and pouted, as if trying to soothe a colicky baby. “I’m sure you will, your highness.”

“Princess,” Robert said. “This is an outrage. I invite you to my table, I extend only magnanimity to you, and this is your reward?”

“Would you have acted differently if he had killed your sister?” Herakleia said.

“I have no sister,” Robert said. “My mother bore only sons—twelve of them for my father, a man most favored by God. As for you, this witchcraft I cannot abide. It imperils our grand enterprise. Utilize it once more, and we shall have no choice but to execute you. The priests will insist upon purging your sins with fire. Such devilry as that which you have displayed here before us is an affront to God.”

Herakleia said nothing.

Frowning, Robert nodded to Bohemund, who dragged Herakleia out of the dining room and into the hallway. Then Robert helped Narses to his feet and asked if he was in pain.

“The real pain is Alexios, your grace,” Narses said. “If we allow him to escape, he will return stronger than ever and destroy us. Please allow me to pursue him.”

Robert watched Narses for a moment. “Ah well, yes, I suppose I can spare one more ship. Victory always puts me in a very generous mood. Besides, these fugitives may inspire more revolts elsewhere, is that not so?”

“Your grace is perceptive,” Paul butted in. “The unbelievers may league themselves with the Jews of Khazar, or Varangian Rus. These days I can hardly tell the difference between these Skythioi and Asiatics. There are also the Hagarenes to worry about, the Ishmaelites, the Dilemites of Persia—”

“The Varangians of Rus are our cousins.” Sikelgaita sat back at the table with Robert.

“Truly,” Robert said. “They are fellow norsemen, noble and strong, though these days we seldom hear from them.”

“Forgive me, your grace,” Paul said, “but lately they sully the purity of their bloodlines with the Jews. Often the Rus-Khazars—the Russians—they send agents to the City to turn the minds of simple souls against us. They are everywhere these days, invading every land without the slightest provocation, meddling with everyone purely due to their own madness and their passionate hatred of noble Roman honor. I strongly recommend dispatching Narses to deal with them. Flawed as he may be, he is no friend of this Jewish Russian Asiatic menace.”

Memories of the Jewish dyers and weavers of Nikaia—piles of them lying on the street in their own blood—flashed in Narses’s mind.

They’ll never threaten His Majesty again, he thought with pride.

“Jews are a problem everywhere,” Robert said. “We put some in their proper place just before leaving on this our holy pilgrimage to Jerusalem, for we reasoned that if we were to take up the cross to slay dark Saracens in foreign lands, why not also avenge ourselves upon the dark Christ-killers who dwell among us at home? And, in the process, we paid for our journey here by taking back their ill-gotten lucre. It saddens me greatly, furthermore, to hear of intermarriage between Jews and Norse in these far northern lands of which you speak. The new combination shall surely terrorize the world.”

“I agree, your grace.” Narses bowed. “But I must depart at once.”

“Yes, so it would seem,” Robert said. “Paul, you’ll see to the details, won’t you?”

“What?” Paul said.

“Perhaps you should even join him,” Robert said, “now that I think about it. You two have worked well together in the past, haven’t you?”

Paul and Narses glanced at each other without speaking.

“Your grace.” Paul turned to Robert. “It is unsafe for me. General Narses will—”

“Nonsense, it is perfectly safe!” Robert said. “Isn’t it, general? You’ll guarantee his safety to me, will you not? You’ll recall the oath you swore before my person, and in the sight of Holy God?”

Narses bowed. “Of course, your grace.”

Robert clapped. “So it’s settled. And just in case it turns out that this Alexios of yours is not on that ship, we will inform nearby cities and towns that anyone who captures him will receive a great reward. There might even be some hunters here willing to look for him. Is there anything distinguishing about his appearance?”

“He knows the ways of the immortals,” Narses said.

“I’m afraid I don’t follow.”

“You saw Herakleia’s witchcraft a moment ago, didn’t you?” Narses said.

Robert shrugged. “Yes, but perhaps it was but a sleight of hand. I did not use the term ‘witchcraft’ literally—”

“Alexios, too, is talented with these sleights of hand. That is how you shall find him. He cannot help himself.”

Robert raised his eyebrows. “Very well. I’ll have the announcement made at once. Now if you’re not going to join us for our little banquet here, I recommend you depart. I had meant to have a private meal with those closest to me before celebrating with my men.” He took Sikelgaita’s hand. At this time, Bohemund returned to the dining room, sat at the table, and tore into a massive loaf of bread.

“Thank you, your grace.” Narses moved toward the door, but then stopped and turned. Paul was still in his seat.

“Aren’t you coming, logothete?” Narses said.

Paul stood, thanked Robert for the meal, and walked past Narses into the hallway. Narses followed.