Though everyone was tired, sore, and wounded, they spent much of the night cleaning as best they could. They feared that disease would spread from the corpses, which were soaked in the water that Miriai had shunted into the caravanserai from the heavenly river. This ichor of the gods now reeked like nectar.

Miriai informed Alexios, Za-Ilmaknun, the young Serindian woman, and the surviving merchants who were helping them clean that the water would halt the spread of disease and even purge bodies of pollution, both physical and metaphysical. But everyone else thought that the bloated bodies and the green vines stretching out from their skins were too disgusting to ignore.

“Ach, you still treat me like an old worthless woman,” she said, “disregarding what I tell you whenever it isn’t convenient—”

“Just let us get these bodies out of here so we can sleep!” shouted a Kipchak trader named Shamseddin. “Who on Earth would willingly rest in the arms of the dead? Can you answer me that?”

“But the waters of Piriawis will purify them—”

“Enough!” said Shamseddin. “Either help rid us of the bodies, or keep out of the way!”

Miriai waved her hands as if to say that he was hopeless. Shamseddin ducked when she did this—his red robe flying, his huge white turban nearly falling from his head—out of fear that Miriai would summon the heavenly river again, and wash his life away. But she was only exasperated with him.

Then, because Kassia and Basil were whining that they were tired, Alexios brought them back to their room to put them to bed. When he returned to the courtyard, he found everyone using the battering ram carriage to dump the corpses into a pile just beyond the gate near the usual refuse mounds that could be found outside most towns and cities.

“We’ll bury them later,” Shamseddin said. “Or their families can collect them in the morning. I don’t know. They seem like unsavory characters to me. Perhaps they have no friends or family here.”

“This reminds me of one I know,” Miriai said, eyeing him.

Shamseddin muttered some slur against old women in response.

After hauling these heavy bodies for nearly an hour, everyone except Alexios and the merchants gave up and went to sleep. This latter group stuck around in order to salvage what they could from the wreckage of the battle and also claim valuables from the pockets of the dead. Yet the old weaponry and dull jewelry they found from the wet bodies was worth little in comparison to the goods the merchants had lost.

“I’m ruined,” said Ibn Haytham, a young Arab merchant dressed in a white thawb. He and Alexios were catching their breath in front of the refuse mounds. “I’ve lost everything. We were so close to finishing our journey to Homs. My family’s waiting for me there. What shall I tell them? How shall I feed them?”

“I’m sorry,” Alexios said.

“Not good enough,” Ibn Haytham said. “All of this happened in the first place because of you.”

Shamseddin and the other merchant gathered nearby to listen. This latter person, dressed in an orange robe with a large yellow Jewish hat, was a Babylonian trader in silk and incense named Joshua Ben Joseph. Taomá the Assyrian Christian had gone to bed.

“They were looking for you, Alexios,” Ibn Haytham said. “That’s your name, isn’t it? I only heard them scream it a hundred times! If it hadn’t been for you—”

“I can sign a document, if you want,” Alexios said. “The Republic of Trebizond will compensate you for—”

“Don’t make me laugh,” Ibn Haytham said, raising his hand to keep Alexios from speaking.

“What an inane offering,” Shamseddin murmured.

“Trebizond!” Ibn Haytham said. “Are you serious? How am I supposed to get there? How can I count on those people to honor your signature? I don’t even know who you are!”

“If we’d just turned him over to that soldier, what was his name, that Barsúmes,” said Ben Joseph, “none of this would have happened.”

“You want me to go to Trebizond,” Ibn Haytham said. “Meanwhile, I don’t even know how I’m to make it to Homs. My donkeys were all killed in the fire. I’ll have to walk without any supplies. I haven’t even a goatskin of water to my name!”

“We have all lost much,” said Shamseddin. “I trade in wine and olive oil. I carry it from the Lebanon to desert towns in Arabia and the Tihama, exchanging it in Hadhramaut for frankincense I sell to all the different temples of al-Quds, but what happened here tonight has wiped out months of investments.”

“Can you give me an estimate of your losses?” Alexios said, eyeing the three merchants.

“Fifteen dirhams for each lost mount makes sixty dirhams for the donkeys alone,” Ibn Haytham said. “For the spices I was carrying from Sindh and Hind, that comes to hundreds of dirhams.”

“You traveled that far?” said Shamseddin. “Crossing even the deserts and mountains of Makkuran?”

“You know how it works with us,” Ibn Haytham said. “The farther you go carrying lightweight expensive goods, the more money you make. But nothing like this has ever happened to me.” He turned to Alexios. “I would estimate my losses at four hundred dirhams. Do you possess such an amount? Your appearance suggests that you do not!”

Ben Joseph and Shamseddin laughed.

“A dirham,” Alexios said. “That’s like a nomisma, right?”

Ibn Haytham looked at him. “All of this is beyond you, is it not? And of no concern, either. You may return to whatever little world you came from, while the rest of us suffer the consequences of that which you have done here tonight.”

“Please just tell me,” Alexios said, “how many nomismas is a dirham worth?”

Ibn Haytham sighed. “Yes, I suppose, if the quality is good, the dirham and the nomisma are equivalent.”

“Thank you,” Alexios said. “That’s what I thought. I just wasn’t sure. I’m going to find a way to compensate all of you. Give me a moment.”

“A moment?” Ben Joseph said. “How can you locate these funds in a moment?”

“One of us should go with you,” Ibn Haytham said.

“I’m not running away,” Alexios said. “My kids are here, alright? They’re sleeping in our room right here in the caravanserai. I’ll be right back.”

“There is no reason to trust you,” Ibn Haytham said. “How do I know you won’t simply abandon your children?”

“Because I could have done that when Barsúmes came here looking for me,” Alexios said.

“Merchants can be more dangerous than angry mobs by far,” Shamseddin said.

“For each of us, the losses are comparable, are they not?” Ibn Haytham said, looking to Shamseddin and Ben Joseph. He turned to Alexios, stretched out his hand palm-up, and then pointed to his fingers. “I want four hundred dirhams for me, and four hundred dirhams for him, and four hundred dirhams for him also. That makes twelve hundred dirhams! How will you come up with such a sum?”

Purely by coincidence, this was the same amount the Latins in Trebizond were offering for Alexios and his children to be captured alive.

“It’s a kingly amount,” Shamseddin said. “With that, one could buy a thing or two.”

“There are fortresses that go for less in Frangistan,” Ben Joseph said. “A donjon. That is what they call them.”

“Find the money, Alexios,” Ibn Haytham said. “Or we will find you. And be careful, lest your children spend the rest of their days working off this debt.”

Alexios left the caravanserai without answering.

Need to get to Barsúmes’s corpse, he thought. Pray that it still has some money. A lot of money.

This was his only plan. At the moment, he had just under sixteen dirhams to his name.

Ibn Haytham, he thought. Jesus, fuck that guy. I get where he’s coming from, but man, come on.

Alexios was so anxious to locate Barsúmes’s body that he almost tripped over it in the darkness beyond the gate.

He’s such a problem he’s even knocking me over when he’s dead.

Although Alexios could barely see, he dragged the body toward the few torches that were burning just outside the caravanserai walls. Then, holding his breath to keep the stench of blood from his nose, he searched Barsúmes’s pockets as best he could without dirtying his hands. Inside he found a knife, two keys—which he took, the game voice announcing that he had equipped them—and a white handkerchief decorated with woven strawberries. But there was no money. Someone had already stolen Barsúmes’s gladius, shield, and armor.

What now? Alexios thought. Am I going to fight those merchants?

“Excuse me,” a shy voice said behind him.

He turned. It was the young Serindian woman. She had brought a torch. For the first time Alexios was able to get a good look at her as the firelight glimmered in the jewelry on her face and the bangles on her wrists. Her sari was green and red and densely patterned.

“I’d like to thank you,” she said. “I don’t know what happened to me, but you and your friends helped so much. I’d like to pay you back, if I can.”

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“Don’t worry about it,” Alexios said. “It was nothing.”

“Barsúmes,” she said. “He paid us to fight for him, and he said there’d be a lot more money if we brought you and the children back to some place called Trap—Trap—”

“Trebizond,” Alexios said.

“Trebizond, that’s it. I had never heard of it, but I needed the money. My husband and my children—they were taken from me, along with my whole clan. I need money to find them. I think it was slave traders. I need to buy them back—my family, I mean. There might be some more money in Barsúmes’s room, and I overheard those merchants complaining about their losses…”

“Do you know where Barsúmes was staying?”

“I do,” she said. “Follow me.”

Quickly they moved through the dark. Soon Pirin’s old stone buildings loomed against the shining stars. The Serindian woman’s torch flickered orange against the walls.

As they maneuvered along the narrow streets, Alexios asked her name. She whispered that it was Amina bint Hamza al-Ghuraba of the Bani Murra.

“But that’s an Arab name,” he said. “You don’t dress like—”

“We are Domari.” She wobbled her head. “Though most of the gentiles around these parts call us nawar—tramps. My grandparents came from Sindh and Hind, but other Domari have lived here longer. We travel from village to village every few months, living on the outskirts, singing and dancing and doing metalwork to make ends meet. My father was an Arab, so we took Arab names.”

“You’re a gypsy,” Alexios said. “Sorry—I mean, a Roma person. A Romani person. Like the atsinganou in Konstantinopolis.”

“We are Domari,” Amina said.

“Are you Muslim?”

“We worship Saint Sara the Kali,” she said. “Black Sara. She is Mother of the Universe, Goddess of Destruction.”

“Nice.”

It took Amina some time to find the place in Pirin where Barsúmes had stayed. This inn was even cheaper than the caravanserai, and doubled as a brothel, though it was so late now that even the sex workers had gone to sleep. One story tall, it was a long brick building consisting of many separate rooms, most with nothing more for a door than a blanket draped across the doorway.

“You have to be careful here,” Alexios whispered. “They might enslave you, too—”

Amina shushed him. “Do you think I don’t know?”

Barsúmes’s room was the only one with a strong locked door. Alexios opened it using one of the keys he had taken from Barsúmes’s body. (The other key was the one which opened his room back at the caravanserai.) Inside they found a red Roman cloak on the floor—this must have been his “bed”—along with the supply bags Roman soldiers carried hanging from the spears they propped on their backs during their long marches. These men were so weighed down with supplies that people sometimes called them donkeys, although they were the kind of donkey it was a bad idea to prod.

Inside the bags were water flasks, ham and cheese and bread of good quality, a shovel, a small ax, and—at last—a large, heavy bag of money. Within were coins of many denominations—nomismas of gold and silver and bronze from the reigns of Basil the Bulgar-slayer, Diogenes IV, and Good Emperor Anastasios as well as dirhams and dinars stamped with the cursive Shahada.

Alexios soon realized that there might well have been twelve hundred silver pieces inside the bag. Wages for a typical mercenary amounted to about one nomisma per month. If Alexios somehow escaped those three merchants, he could use the money here to pay a few hundred mercenaries for the rest of the winter. But would that be enough to retake Trebizond? Where was he even supposed to find mercenaries to begin with? He would have to go to cities like Dimashq, Homs, Aleppo, Baghdad, Palestine, Gaza, or even Fustat. And if he found enough mercenaries willing to take the job, could he rely on them? What would stop them from killing him and stealing the money?

Something crashed in the darkness outside. Alexios swore, then rushed to lock the door, worried that one of Barsúmes’s surviving friends was approaching. Amina fitted her torch into a holder in the wall.

“Is it enough money?” Amina said.

“It might be.” Alexios looked at her. “How much do you need?”

“Me? You’re offering it to me?”

“You’re the one who knew about it in the first place,” he said. “We might have died in that fight back there without your help. How much do you want?”

“He promised only ten bronze fals if we stormed the caravanserai,” Amina said.

“Look, I have to get back to those three merchants, those three un-wise men, before they have a riot of their own—”

“But it’s wrong for me to take any. None of it belongs to me.”

“I don’t think Barsúmes minds,” Alexios said. “Busy as he is burning in hell at the moment. And besides, didn’t he enchant you or something?”

“I can’t even take the ten fals. I didn’t do my job.”

“Amina—”

“I can’t take anything. It’s wrong.”

“Why are you talking like this?”

“My family was stolen from me. I can’t steal from others.”

“He’s dead, and he was a bastard. And the guys who were paying him aren’t going to miss it. They have more money than you can imagine.”

“Who was paying him?” she said.

“Rome.”

“Won’t they come looking for their money?”

“They’re already looking for me. I didn’t even realize they hated me this much. I thought they had forgotten about me, or that they didn’t care…but listen, I have to go. We don’t have time for this. Are you on your own out here?”

“Yes.” She looked back and forth. “I guess I am now. My husband and child and clan, they’re all gone. All taken.”

“Do you want to come with us?”

She looked at him. “Are you serious?”

“You don’t even know why Barsúmes wanted to catch me, do you?”

She wobbled her head. “He said you had kidnapped the royal family—that you tortured children. It made me so angry when I thought about my own child…about things that happened to me when I was young…but then I saw those children fighting by your side, and I thought it couldn’t be. Children are already hard enough to take care of, but those two are so strong and fast they can kill adults. If they didn’t like you, they never would have helped you…”

“He came to catch me because we’re trying to destroy slavery,” Alexios said. “We’re trying to destroy the Roman Empire.”

Her brow narrowed. “Then you are mad.”

“This husband of yours—your kid—do you have any idea where they are?”

“Aleppo.” She wiped a tear from her eye. “Either that, or Baghdad. The first leads to the second. They must be on their way. The biggest slave market in the world is there. The people of Pirin told me that’s where the slave traders took them. They’re always looking for Domari to catch, since there are so few of us, and no one will stick up for us when people come and take us. It happened only yesterday night. I’ve been so out of my mind, I didn’t know what to do.”

“We’ll go together,” he said. “We’ll find them. I can be the thief of Baghdad if you want. I’m always up for stealing slaves.”

Tears were in her eyes. She turned away. Alexios had only just met this woman, and was afraid of touching her even to comfort her. Yet he still sensed that different something about her. He reached out his hand. She saw it, and took it.

“You helped save my family,” he said. “I’ll help you free yours. Now come on.”

She nodded. “Very well, Roman.”

“I’m not a Roman,” he said as they gathered Barsúmes’s cloak, his supplies, and his money.

“You dress like one and sound like one.”

“But that’s not what I am.” He looked to the side, and added: “I am not what I am.”

“Then what are you?”

“A Trapezuntine, I guess. A trapezoid. A trapper-keeper.”

“You never told me your name,” Amina whispered, raising her torch into the dark. Now they were walking back along the street toward the caravanserai. That crash they had heard earlier must have been a stray cat. No one else seemed to be around.

“Alexios Leandros,” he said. “Kentarch of the Workers’ Army of Trebizond.”

“What’s a kentarch?”

“Like a captain or a commander,” he said. “Just a month ago I had a few hundred people serving under me. They elected me their commander, too.”

“An amir,” she said. “But where is your army?”

“Back in Trebizond,” he said. “Captured. That’s why we’re here. I’m worried that our entire movement’s been destroyed. I’m trying to bring it back to life.”

“I don’t understand.”

“It’s a long story, but supposedly there are some people out here who can train us—who can make us strong enough to beat the people who beat us.”

“What people are you talking about?”

“Sabians,” he said. “Worshippers of Hermes Trismegistos.”

“Sounds like strange people to me.”

“Strange but good. If we can find them.”

“Sabians,” she said to herself. “Never heard of them.”

“They’re called something like al-Sabiun in Arabic.”

“Al-Sabiun.” She stopped. “Al-Sabiun.”

Alexios stopped with her. “You’ve heard of them?”

“They’re cave-dwellers. They live not far from here. Maybe a few days—in a place called Sumatar. There is a tree there covered with blue hamsa amulets to protect against the evil eye. We passed it many times in our travels.”

“Can you take us there?”

“It’s on the eastern road,” she said. “The slave traders will be taking my family the same way.”

“Great.” He laughed to himself as they continued onward to the caravanserai, walking faster now. “All I have to do is figure out how to pay off those merchants so they don’t kill us. And then there’s Miriai. Her caravanserai is half-destroyed. I have to help her put her life back together…”

“The merchants will try to trick you.”

Alexios shrugged. “I don’t know how I’m going to be able to figure out what their actual losses were.”

“You could run.”

“No, I can’t,” Alexios said. “It’s my fault. Maybe if I’d given myself up, Barsúmes would have left them alone…”

“You don’t know that. He would have burned down the caravanserai and killed everyone inside, with or without you.”

“Oh yeah? Now who’s speculating?”

“He was a cruel man. I didn’t like him. I only worked for his money.”

“I know how that feels.”

“Merchants also trade slaves. They trade whatever makes money.”

“If those three merchants trade slaves, then fuck ‘em. But what about that Ibn Haytham guy? Is he a slave trader?”

“He seemed an honest family man to me—as honest as a merchant can be.”

“That’s what I thought. We’ve definitely got to help him out, even if he’s a little prickly. It sounded like he was going to die if he didn’t get some money.”

“Then give it to him secretly so the others don’t find out. If they do, they’ll take every coin to your name!”

When Alexios and Amina returned to the caravanserai, they found it silent and dark, the bodies outside piled beside burned and broken merchandise. On top of that, the gate was barred again. Amina tried pushing it, but it was stuck. In frustration, she punched it, then swore to herself.

Alexios was about to shout for help, but Amina told him to listen. Both kept still and held their breath. After a moment, they heard snoring. Many people and animals in the caravanserai were almost roaring with exhaustion.

“Guess they’ve had a long day,” Alexios whispered.

“They aren’t the only ones,” Amina said. “I don’t even know how long it’s been since I’ve slept. I can barely remember the last two days.”

“We’ll find you a bed. Come on.” Alexios reached out his hand.

She looked at it. “Why must I keep holding your hand?”

“Just take it,” Alexios said.

“Do unrelated men and women often hold hands in your homeland?”

“Not really,” he said. “But if we’re going to get over this gate, you need to take my hand.”

“What difference will that make?”

“Just let me show you.”

She hesitated.

“Come on,” he said. “You held my hand before and nothing happened. No one’s going to see.”

Amina wobbled her head, then took his hand. Alexios was shocked at how warm it was, and suspected that she was blushing, though in the faint light he was unable to see.

“Hold on tight,” Alexios said.

Burning through a point of farr (with 3/100 remaining), he leaped over the wall and landed in the courtyard, bringing Amina—who gasped with fright—along with him, her torch fluttering in the wind and dark.