Hagop and Masud continued talking, but Herakleia was distracted by the sights in the shadows that lay before her. Dark and blurry in Herakleia’s vision, the miners rammed their pickaxes into the walls. Soon Herakleia rejoined them, shamed into getting back to work by the miners’ dedication. Other workers picked up fragments from the ground, loaded them into tubs, and shoved them along the rails back to the shaft. They sang and chatted as they labored, lightening the burden of working in the depths however they could. There was real camaraderie here. In the old world, people constantly talked about community because they lacked it, being alienated from their neighbors, their friends and family, even their own bodies and minds, such was the intensity of exploitation; here the word community was rarely used because the concept itself was ubiquitous. Those miners like Hagop who had studied in Trebizond’s new schools sought to teach the others, and these others were eager to learn while they worked, all so curious they never stopped talking. Yet the job was hard and dangerous. At any moment a breath of poison fumes released from the seam could ignite their oil lamps and incinerate them all.
How can anyone live like this? Herakleia thought. Working alongside these miners only increases my respect for them.
“We keep Trebizond warm through this cold and dreary winter,” an older Arab overseer told her. This man, Herakleia later learned, was Fatima’s husband, named Ghiyath al-Din, one of many toilers of the east.
“We light the way forward,” he continued. “We meet the target quota every day, no question.”
With his pickaxe he struck the seam so hard that a chunk the size of a column fell and would have crushed him had he failed to leap away in time. The chunk slammed against the opposite wall, then exploded onto the floor. The other miners stared at him for a moment, then burst into laughter
“That was close!” Hagop shouted.
“Ghiyath has more lives than a cat!” Masud said.
“Be quiet, you’ll jinx him,” Hagop said. He looked at Herakleia. “Forgive me, I’ve spent so much time around these people, I’ve learned many of their ways, and adopted some of their superstitions, of which they have more than I could ever hope to note down. The richness of the lore here is most extraordinary. A day shall come when our libraries are bursting with books documenting their ways and ideas…”
“We have to be more careful,” Herakleia said. “We need all of you alive and healthy.”
“One day you live, another day you die, strategos,” Ghiyath said, as the miners got to work smashing the huge chunk he had separated from the wall. “For some it’s today, for others, tomorrow. But death comes sooner or later, for all is as Allah wills. The all-wise and all-merciful no lord in his palace can escape no matter how much coin he hoards. Praise Allah for death, it gets us all in the end. Death’s passage cleanses the world of even the most bloodthirsty murderers. In death is a profound peace which in life cannot be found.”
“We just hope all this hard work makes a difference,” said Hagop. “Death may kill the rich, but it also takes far more poor people too soon.”
“I know our work makes a difference,” Ghiyath said. “I attend workers’ council meetings. I know where all our coal goes—to exchange for gold to buy those things we lack.”
“Soon we shall lack nothing,” Hagop said.
“Tell me,” Herakleia said to Ghiyath as she worked. “How did you come here?”
Ghiyath smiled at her. “You wish to know my life?”
“Now you’ve done it,” Hagop said. “You’ll be down here for years listening to this.”
“I promise, I will keep it short,” Ghiyath said.
“Five years later…” Hagop said.
Ghiyath sighed pleasantly as he continued to hack at the coal. “I was living in a tent for many months. In Aleppo, once. My family and I, we were free peasants, but we lost our land to drought and debt, selling off our inheritance piece by piece just to buy food.”
Isn’t that what happened to Diaresso? she thought.
“We had nothing,” Ghiyath continued. “Soon we were beggars, just sitting in the hot street all day—we even had to fight for that space. It wasn’t one of the good spaces where you could beg more easily from the lords passing by back and forth in their chairs held on the shoulders of their slaves, so we rarely got anything, and robbers attacked us when we did. Some said there was work in Trebizond, and food, so we went, along with many others. The journey was hard, and lay across burning lands with little water. Many died of thirst. When first we came here, Bagrationi was doux, and it was also hard.”
“Whatever happened to that fellow?” Hagop said.
“I’d rather not even talk about it,” Herakleia said. “He left the city with Sophronios the Metropolitan. They went to Alania, I think. The Bagratids have ancient lands there with some noble named Imaret Dadian of Mingrelia.”
“Weren’t you engaged to be married to him?” Hagop said. “To Bagrationi, I mean?”
“I told you,” Herakleia began. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
Hagop raised his hands. “Apologies, strategos. We all make mistakes.”
He was getting on Herakleia’s nerves—Hagop seemed so insensitive to her feelings—but she said nothing.
Ghiyath continued. “Others said there was another leader—one named Herakleia—who had gone on a long journey to help us.”
“Who was that, I wonder?” Masud winked at Herakleia. “Not this dirty miner here!”
“One day she would return and bring justice to the land,” Ghiyath said. “That was what people told us. But soon we grew tired of waiting and organized to gain justice for ourselves, since no one else was going to save us. Now that we have taken power, we see change every day. Every time we go up to the surface, there’s a new building in the city with room for twenty families. Everyone eats in the canteen. Everyone learns to both read and write, thanks to the schooling of men like this.” He nodded to Hagop.
“Just doing my job,” Hagop said.
“It’s better than anything we knew in our old homes.” Ghiyath slammed his pickaxe into the seam. “It makes a difference. We’re happy to do this if it means feeding the children. Too many times we’ve seen children starving in the street. We’ve heard our children complain of hunger, with nothing to give them. We’ve seen children in chains, for they are the easiest to control. The blood the overseers whip from their backs makes rich the lords and masters.”
Herakleia wiped a tear from her eye. She was a sucker for these kinds of speeches. Hearing about anyone suffering from poverty would render her speechless with sadness and anger.
“That’s just the way it is,” Hagop suddenly sang, breaking the silence. Herakleia had taught them the catchy chorus to this song from the old world. “Things will never be the same! That’s just the way it is!”
Back in Trebizond, the accompaniment was played on a santur by the blacksmith Jamshied al-Tabrizi. The pianos used in the original song had yet to be invented.
—
Somehow Herakleia worked that entire day in the mine. The shift seemed to last forever; it needed to be long to minimize the chance of accidents on those ladders in the endless shaft. Several times she almost passed out—either from exhaustion, or from poisonous vapors—the natural gasses—circulating in the air like the invisible djinn and ifrit spoken of by Masud and Ghiyath, who were convinced of their reality.
It doesn’t matter how much I work, she thought in her exhaustion. Some people will always see me as a princess or a parasite, not a true worker. I’ll never be able to prove myself.
She kept working nonetheless, doing her best to pace herself, even as her bones and muscles ached and pleaded for rest. Besides, if she had collapsed, someone would have needed to carry her out of the mine. How was it even possible to carry someone out of this place? The workers would have shoved her through that crawl-tunnel. Then, to deal with the ladders, they would have lashed her to someone’s back. In the city, in the People’s Hospital—formerly the Church of the All Holy Gold-Headed Mother of God—she had seen healers struggling to save miners crushed, gassed, or burned in the depths.
Workers only occasionally accomplished the amazing nightmarish feat of carrying their wounded brothers and sisters out of the mine. The victims’ heads lolled on their shoulders and their limbs flapped as the men carrying them ran beneath.
At the day shift’s end, when she climbed those ladders to heaven and returned to Earth, it was still dark outside, only now the sun had set. She had first entered the mine before sunrise. It was a relief to be back on the surface breathing the chill air of early winter, with the salt smell of the sea wafting on the breeze, the soft gentle splashing waves unrolling on the shore, and the night shift workers greeting her as they passed by. But she also felt as though she had lost a day to Mount Kárbouno. She told herself that it was for a good cause.
Cultivate that revolutionary superego, she thought.
The next morning she was almost too sore to get out of bed. She still dragged herself to the daily workers’ council session in the new community hall, which had been finished only a month ago outside the Northeast Gate, where a plaque left centuries earlier by Emperor Justinian commemorated the improvements he had made to the city’s walls. The community hall was one of Trebizond’s larger buildings, and modeled on Varangian mead halls, with room for hundreds to eat inside, where they could also enjoy music, poetry recitations, theater, and even a growing public library—this last feature an unimaginable luxury for almost everyone, in a time when books cost as much as cars from the old world.
Though Trebizond’s population consisted of only about five thousand people, refugees filtered in from the four cardinal directions every day, blown to Pontic shores by the wind gods’ puffing cheeks. The workers therefore planned to construct other halls around the city in order to conserve resources and also provide everyone with meeting spaces. Some people preferred to take a plate of food back to their homes—needing a break from the social contact they got all day—but for the most part workers agreed that there were worse ways to while away long winter nights. Hundreds of workers were already inside, sitting on benches at the long tables and having breakfast; most were listening to the council session, which had already begun.
“Well, really, princess, now I know why you didn’t join me yesterday for shatranj like you promised,” Samonas the Arab eunuch said as Herakleia got in line for breakfast. He rubbed his thumb on her hand and showed it to her: it was black with coal. She had been so determined to get here that she forgot to wash up.
Or have I just done this unconsciously for effect? she thought.
After retrieving her breakfast, she sat at a table near the council, and then struggled to make herself eat some bread, though her hands were covered in coal. When the council and the audience of workers asked for her report on the mines, she walked to the stage where the council members sat on stools. These people were the elected leaders of the city’s different unions: Kentarch Leandros led the soldiers' union, Artemia the union of medical workers (doctors, nurses, midwives, caregivers), while Jamshied led the union of blacksmiths, engineers, and craftsmen; Ghiyath the union of miners, and Samonas the union of scribes and teachers. Also present were the leaders of other unions: peasants, cooks, cleaners and laundresses, students, women, refugees, construction workers, and even children. (Was it so ridiculous for children to participate in politics on an equal footing with everyone else when in the old world, elderly people who could barely remember their own names were often elected by wealthy minorities of the populace to the highest positions of power?) In short, every kind of worker was represented.
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In her exhaustion Herakleia stumbled on the stage, but Samonas—who was often by her side—caught her and helped her into a stool, clucking about how she had almost knocked him over, since he was already unsteady enough on his feet. Ghiyath approached to sit on a stool beside her; she stood for a moment to shake his hand and nod to him.
“Hello everyone,” she began, “I apologize for my appearance. I spent yesterday working in Mount Kárbouno. I will make this speech quick. I believe, based upon my admittedly brief experience, that all mining must stop until proper safety equipment can be constructed for every miner.”
Gasps and murmurs arose from the crowd. Some workers and peasants stood to speak, but Herakleia asked them to allow her to continue.
“We need lighter and stronger helmets,” she said, “brighter illumination which won’t ignite dangerous fumes, a proper elevator, plus metal ladders welded to the rock, as well as air filtration masks and goggles.” She looked to Ghiyath, who stood and joined her on the stage.
“Miners have been complaining since the siege ended,” he said. “It’s a miracle more haven’t been injured or killed. And a pity that our complaints have been mostly ignored until now.” He looked at the delegates and the crowd, and he breathed heavier, growing angrier. “Our blood is what keeps this place warm. Our blood is what pays for the new buildings. It flows through these walls, these tables and chairs, but no one cares!”
“Of course we care!” someone shouted from the audience. Herakleia knew her; she was Jelena, a young Ungrou mother from Western Tourkía.
“You care, yes, but not enough to help us!” Ghiyath shouted back. “What are honors, what are rewards, what’s a pat on the back when I have to go down there today—when my brothers and sisters are already working there now as I speak, with the entire mountain ready to fall on top of them? We don’t need your charity and we don’t need your thanks. You can keep it!”
“I will go,” Jelena said. “I will join you. I will work with you. You’re right, it isn’t fair—”
“Enough lives are already being risked.” Ghiyath waved his hand to stop her. “We have enough miners. I’m not here to ask for more—or to disrupt whatever union you’re in. I’m here to ask that we stop this madness for good!”
“What about the roofers?” said Khatereh Parvaneh, a court singer from Mazanderan. “Do they not risk their lives in these icy conditions? And those who give birth to newborns, is that not a deadly risk? The soldiers, the farmers, the fishermen, do we not all take risks? Have we not all taken a risk just by coming to this city?”
“Yes, it’s dangerous just being here,” Ghiyath said. “But some workplaces are more dangerous than others.”
“Then let’s trade places,” Parvaneh said. “You can give birth to ten children, I’ll go down into the mines.”
Ghiyath was about to answer, but Herakleia put her hand on his shoulder. For a moment, all was silent.
“The good Ghiyath al-Din,” Samonas said, “an officially recognized Hero of Labor and an elected leader among his fellow miners, has asked that all mining be halted throughout the Republic of Trebizond. And yet all of us have learned, thanks in large part to the extensive teachings of the strategos and her friends, that we cannot develop new tools without exporting coal and iron. We have been told repeatedly that the salvation of our cause relies on these exports, that we cannot defeat the armies of Rome or Persia, of Tourkía or Skythia without these exports—”
“This is why we have been risking our necks in the mines under these dangerous circumstances,” Ghiyath said. “We believe that our labor will improve future conditions for all—that we are freeing generation upon generation of children from the chains which the emperor is already preparing for them.”
“But now you have accepted these chains,” Samonas said. “What’s next? Will you come to love them?”
The miners in the audience roared, stood, and pointed at Samonas. A Kurd named Baha Muzzafar ibn Marwan demanded that the eunuch take a break from his styluses and wax tablets and try working in the mines.
“After just one hour down there,” Marwan shouted, “you’ll beg to be clapped in chains for the rest of your life, so long as you get to enjoy the ease of a scholar!”
Samonas was going to answer, but Herakleia told him to be quiet, and he kept silent until the miners had sat back down.
“There’s something else we haven’t talked about,” Herakleia said. “Prices for coal and iron have been dropping every time a merchant comes to Trebizond to buy. Michele Cassio tells us—”
“But there are other markets,” Samonas said. “Other places yet untapped, to the east and the south—”
“It almost isn’t even worth it anymore. Where I come from they called it the law of diminishing returns. All of us know about the increasingly problematic situation with our currency reserves.”
“Whatever can we do?” Samonas said. “If we should stop mining, then we wouldn’t have any money at all!”
“We’ve built up a large reserve of iron and coal,” Herakleia said. “Enough at least to get us through the winter. We can explore new markets, as you’ve said, but we should halt mining until prices stabilize, and spend that time developing better technology for the mines themselves.”
The council looked to Jamshied the Blacksmith. Shrugging, he told them—without rising from his stool on the stage—that he and his apprentices would do their best.
“Much of what we do,” he said, “is based upon weapons’ production for the city’s defenses: artillery, spears, swords, shields, armor, arrowheads—not to mention nails for all the new buildings. If we devote more time to developing safer mining equipment, that will mean less time for defense.”
Kentarch Alexios Leandros cleared his throat. “Our scouts, patrols, and spies haven’t seen any evidence that the Romans or anyone else is planning to attack the city anytime soon.”
“Do you mean, young man,” Artemia the midwife said to Alexios, “that it may be safe to halt or slow weapons’ production in order to focus on helping the miners?”
Alexios nodded. “Taking this risk now might pay off in the future. At the moment, our defensive situation is much better than during the siege. We have more trained and experienced soldiers—plus more armaments—than ever before. The Romans could only take the city with a much larger force than the last one they sent, and they really don’t seem capable of fielding one for the time being.”
“Thus the council,” Jamshied said, “is proposing that the blacksmiths immediately halt all defensive production, and switch to developing safer mining equipment?”
Herakleia looked to the council as well as the rows of tables and benches filled with workers. “Does anyone have anything to add regarding this matter?”
Silence.
That’s a surprise, she thought. These meetings tend to go on forever. Everyone always needs to have their say…
“All in favor?” She raised her hand.
The entire council raised its hands, save Jamshied.
“All opposed?” she said.
Jamshied kept his hand down. “It makes little difference to us. Either way, we work. This new project will take time, and I hope the council doesn’t change its mind before we’ve completed it.”
“Motion carries,” Herakleia said.
Cheers went up from the miners in the hall. Herakleia spotted Masud running outside, presumably to tell the miners in the mountain to come up to the surface and rest. Ghiyath clapped his hands and then pumped his fist into the air. The rest of the workers were less excited, however. Many viewed coal as the path to prosperity.
“Now,” Herakleia said, once the cheering had died down, “is there any further business?”
That was days ago. Many miners were now training as apprentice blacksmiths, artificers, or engineers, even if that meant starting at the bare beginning: with Hagop teaching them how to write their own names. As for Herakleia, when she wasn’t helping Artemia, she was helping Jamshied in his blacksmithing shop, newly built in the Upper Town. Other miners had switched to housing construction. At this point people only went into the mines to find ways to make them safer.
“I’ll take midwifery over mining any day,” Herakleia told Artemia, back in the citadel outside the bedroom where Fatima was nursing her newborn. “What Ghiyath al-Din does—or did, rather—is difficult and important. I understand if he doesn’t want to spend the night waiting for a baby to be born, especially since he has to spend the day training under Jamshied—”
“Don’t get fresh with me,” Artemia said to Herakleia. “You think you’re so smart, but one day soon you’re going to get your comeuppance. You know that’s not what I’m talking about. I have a feeling that even if her husband didn’t need to work, he still wouldn’t have come to Fatima’s birth.”
“You mean it’s because he’s religious,” Herakleia said.
“What a superficial comment.”
Herakleia winced.
“The man wants children,” Artemia said. “People are something nobody can get enough of. They’re the most precious thing of all. You should know that better than anyone. Even though we’ve been saving so many lives here thanks to what you and Diarresso have taught us about medicine, it takes time for people to get used to this new situation. Before I came to Trebizond, we were lucky if half the babies we delivered lived to their first name day. The number of mothers who survived childbirth wasn’t much better.”
“What are we supposed to do?” Herakleia said. “You know the situation we’re in. As long as people agree to play by our rules, anyone is welcome here. If we excluded people because of backward beliefs, no one would be allowed in Trebizond at all! Peasants from all over come to Trebizond every day—usually with no more than the clothes on their backs, if they even have that. Plenty of them are half-starved and can barely walk. None can even write their own names. Some have spent decades with no one teaching them anything about the wider world except the village priest, who himself doesn’t even have a Bible to read from. They are almost as ignorant as it is possible to be, through no fault of their own.”
“It would just be nice if a few things could change,” Artemia said. “Some of these poor mothers…they’re no better than slaves for their husbands. They just keep giving birth until they die. You’ve been lucky. You’ve seen only successful births. You haven’t seen one where we lose the mother or baby—or both.”
“Make a proposal at tomorrow’s council meeting.” Herakleia eyed the faint daylight glowing through the snowy windows. “Today’s council meeting, I mean. You know how it works. You can require both parents to be present when one gives birth—or something.”
“I’ll get voted down,” Artemia said. “The council will tell me such a policy would disrupt work. The arguing will go on for hours. It’s just…sometimes I wish you could take charge a little more. You always do whatever the workers want. Even if it hurts people like Fatima.”
“That’s the contradiction. The individual versus society. We can’t always give everyone exactly what they want. What we aim to do is to satisfy as many people as possible—to keep them from overthrowing us the way they already overthrew the Romans.”
“You talk about contradictions—this new word I barely ever heard before you came into my life. We may have gotten rid of the contradiction between master and slave, but we still have the contradiction between men and women. Then there’s Muslim versus Christian versus Jew versus idolater. Refugee versus Trapezuntine. Young versus old.”
Herakleia nodded. “That’s true. All we can do is hope that the influence of this place, the schools and libraries and hospitals we’re building, the childcare and eldercare, the worker democracy, everything—we just have to hope that it changes the people coming here and allows us to overcome these contradictions. And I think it will. I’m not perfect, Artemia, you know that. You’ve seen me make mistakes.”
“You can say that again.”
“In my old life I used to have so much contempt for workers, I wasn’t even aware of it. I thought they couldn’t do anything on their own. I mean, I was polite to them, but I still looked down on them. I thought that if they had been smarter or worked harder, they wouldn’t have been workers at all—they would have been business owners or paper-pushers in offices or celebrities or something.”
“You are back to using words I do not know, strategos,” Artemia said.
“Just listen,” Herakleia said. “Whenever there was a problem, I blamed the workers, and never their bosses, never the system that made everything the way it was in the first place. It was easier that way. Easier to blame the individual rather than the society, even though each defines the other. And yet workers have taught me so much—that they don’t have to be the object of history. They can be the subject. They can be the star, the lead actor on the world stage. I’ve learned so much from people like you. If I can change, anyone can.”
Artemia smiled. “You’re a good student. You would make a good midwife, but I know your heart isn’t in it. You want to lead the workers to glorious victory on distant shores. I don’t blame you. Those are glamorous things, and not everyone is cut out for them. But it still doesn’t compare to helping people give birth.” Artemia squeezed Herakleia’s shoulder. “Take charge. Believe in who you are. You’ve come far, Herakleia. But there is still a long way to go. This place is not as strong as it seems. If you don’t help the helpless, contradictions will tear our little city apart. To be kind to the malevolent is itself malevolence.”
Before Herakleia could answer, Artemia returned to the bedroom to help Fatima. Herakleia was left alone in the cold dim hallway, so tired and filthy that without thinking she found herself walking outside to the bathhouse, thankfully empty so early in the day. She stoked the fire under one of the bathtubs, poured the frigid water inside, and waited for it to warm. After peeling the clothes from her body she soaped the sweat and grime from her flesh. Clean clothes waited in the shelves near the towels; they fit poorly, but she put them on regardless. Some weeks ago, she had worked alongside the city’s laundresses, who themselves were—these days—begging the engineers to develop the fabled washing machine they had heard about in stories Kentarch Leandros told about the old world. More than anything, the laundresses wanted to eliminate their profession from existence so they could move on with their lives. Cleaning clothes was backbreaking work, and lasted all day, but for the moment someone needed to do it. Jamshied and Samonas, meanwhile, were training engineers as quickly as possible, but the demand for improvement everywhere was so great that years might pass before it was met.
Back in her room, Herakleia was so tired she collapsed into sleep as soon as her head struck her pillow. She had wanted to attend the day’s council meeting, but the workers would get on fine without her.