When she woke the next morning, she had no idea what to do.

If I leave, I lose, Herakleia thought. If I stay, I lose.

She lay in bed, growing more afraid that she would remain there all day—until, sooner or later, Robert knocked on her door to ask what was wrong. Then, if she refused to behave, he would toss her into the dungeon and forget her. This would be her reward for surrendering her body.

Regardless of what she did, she lost.

Yet the choice kept presenting itself at every moment of every day. Should she remain true to her ideals, or betray them?

She sat up and mouthed the word: “Never.”

The embers in the hearth had turned to ash, and the water in the washbasin was frozen again. She cracked the ice, splashed her face, then threw on the mink coat she had found the day before. In the old world, she would have wondered what time it was, but in the eleventh century it was enough to know that the sun was shining through the gray clouds outside, and Jamshied the Blacksmith was already hammering his anvil, the ringing clangs echoing across Trebizond. The Latins had an ugly word for this time—“primus”—while the Romans called it the first hour, with the day starting at sunrise.

Monks were already chanting, horses were neighing and clopping. A whip cracked in the distance. This was her least-favorite sound from the past, and among the most common. It always interrupted her concentration, and its meaning was awful enough to make her long for the old world. Troublesome as that place was, it had fewer whips.

She left her room to walk the cold dark citadel, unsure of where she was going, focused on the idea that she would somehow help the uprising and fight the colonial occupation, even if it meant bashing her head against the wall. Chlotar of Metz had returned from his rest and was now the armored guard posted outside her door. For the first instant she saw him, he seemed to be sleeping while standing with his eyes open, but the next instant he blinked, bowed to her, and even said bonjour mademoiselle la princesse. She found herself curtseying awkwardly, and then returned his greeting.

Might as well be nice to them, she thought as she left Chlotar, who remained at his post. Might be able to convince some to join us, especially the ones bored out of their minds on guard duty. But maybe they’re chosen for guard duty because of how reliable they are? And if Ra’isa saw me, she’d say I was being nice to them because I’m on their side!

Remembering Ra’isa brought Herakleia’s mood down.

The uprising is finished, Ra’isa had said. It ended when you made love to the man who destroyed it.

Herakleia tried to think of something else. Only the servants and guards were awake in the citadel this early in the morning, but they all greeted her the same way, and she returned their greetings. This might have struck her as annoying, tiresome, or artificial, but she had felt lonely the evening before, and appreciated the human contact, even if it was fake and predicated on violence. Any servant who failed to bow to their superiors would be beaten.

Soon she found herself in the kitchen, which was already the building’s hottest room at this time of day. Robert had shipped his master chef across the ocean—his name was simply Guillaume le Chef—who was busy here with his Gaulish apprentices. He was the first relatively fat man Herakleia had seen in months—fat in comparison to most medieval people, at least. His clothing was normal for the Gauls, consisting of a plain beret over his long brown hair, a brown sleeveless tunic with a red long-sleeved shirt beneath, dark blue tights, and wooden shoes called savate. Almost all the Gauls wore these savate, which clopped on the floor like horse hooves and appeared uncomfortable and awkward in comparison to Roman sandals. The only item of clothing which set Guillaume apart was his white apron, which seemed to be made of wool. He was already sweating in the heat. Amid the smells of baking bread, roasting meat, and spices and herbs, Herakleia discerned his body odor, as well as those of his assistants.

Speaking in Gaulish, Guillaume was ordering his journeymen and apprentices to knead the day’s bread, shove the round loaves inside the brick oven with a long wooden peel, and then remove them from the whirling flames and place them on a table for cooling, all among dangling pots, pans, spoons, and knives. Only one apprentice, a young orange-haired boy, was a Roman Jew, and if he answered Guillaume’s orders with a Roman yes instead of a Gauilsh oui, Guillaume slapped his face and made him cry.

The contradictions of the guild system, Herakleia thought. It cannot function without child abuse. Yet it’s still an upgrade over slavery.

Guillaume tasted the bean stew bubbling in a gigantic cauldron which was set in an even larger hearth, the wood beneath brought in and stoked by the serving boy. Herakleia remembered him from the orphanage—Joseph, that was his name. He was one of Queen Tamar’s students, and a friend of Alexios’s children, one of Narses’s former child soldiers who had marched to Trebizond all the way from Nikaia, where Narses had massacred the boy’s family.

A life of tragedy, Herakleia thought. And so young!

Herakleia met Joseph’s eyes, but he showed no sign of recognition and returned to work, blinking his stinging sweat away.

When Guillaume noticed Herakleia, he bowed, greeted her, removed his beret, and—speaking Gaulish—offered bread and stew. She accepted, sitting at a small table against the wall. This made Guillaume tense, however. He bowed and gestured to the doorway, perhaps indicating that she should eat in the dining hall, as befit a noble lady, but she shook her head and insisted on remaining in the kitchen, where it was warm and where she could be around the kind of people she liked—workers.

Shrugging, Guillaume snapped his fingers at Joseph, who brought Herakleia a fresh loaf of bread, a bowl of bean stew, and a cup of watery breakfast wine. Lacking utensils, she ate with her hands, dipping the stew with the bread. When Guillaume seemed to ask if there was anything else he could do, she shook her head and gave him the thumbs-up. This gesture he understood. The hunting mastiffs Terrible and Horrible had slipped into the kitchen, in the mean time, and were now eating food right off the tables. Guillaume snatched a huge knife and chased them away, shouting furiously in Gaulish.

Herakleia wanted Joseph to join her, as the poor boy looked tired and hungry. He should have been warm in bed, having breakfast of his own, or heading off to read, write, and play with his friends at school. But when she recalled what had happened yesterday with the beggars outside the church, she refrained from disrupting the medieval way of doing things. If she fed Joseph, she would have to feed all the journeymen and apprentices in the kitchen. They would stop working, and Guillaume would complain to Robert, who would punish her.

So Herakleia acquiesced. Rather than opposing the occupation—as she had meant to do, upon leaving her room—she accepted it.

The uprising is finished. It ended when you made love to the man who destroyed it.

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At this point Herakleia lost her appetite. A moment ago the food had seemed delicious, but now the stew was her comrades’ blood, the bread their flesh. She felt sick. Looking at Joseph one more time—he was hauling wood to the oven—she staggered out of the hot kitchen and fell back against the ice-cold wall in the dark hallway outside. There she gasped for breath and wiped away the tears that burned her eyes.

I’m trapped, she thought. I’m surrounded by child slaves and I can’t free them.

Somehow she found herself outside the citadel in the Upper Town. Passing the church—where the beggars were still begging like yesterday, with everyone else treating them as though they were invisible—she continued into the Lower Town, moving toward the Northeast Gate. It was open and manned by Latin guards. These checked the long line of Romans who were entering the city for the day’s work. One by one the guards examined the Romans’ rags for hidden knives—always taking extra long to feel up the women—and then gestured for them to pass. One of these women was Queen Tamar. Herakleia started at the sight of her. Still beautiful as always, Tamar’s long black silky hair needed to be combed, and her youthful face was hollowed out and sagging from exhaustion and stress. Tamar kept her eyes low, and offered no resistance as the Latin guard repeatedly felt her breasts, her buttocks, and between her legs, grinning at his friends, who urged him on.

Diaresso would kill him. Herakleia stopped in her tracks and clutched her hands to fists.

Yet she did nothing. The Latin guards bowed to her and left Tamar alone when they noticed her, but the slaves averted their gazes. Already they must have learned to refrain from challenging their masters by meeting their eyes.

This was what had happened to the proud freedom fighters who had torn off their chains and defeated an empire.

Queen Tamar—now a nameless slave whose beauty only meant more attention from her abusers—walked past Herakleia and entered the city to serve her Latin masters.

Tamar! Herakleia screamed in her mind, leaving her with 1/100 farr. But Tamar must have already been too distant. She neither answered, nor showed any sign that she had heard. Perhaps she was ignoring Herakleia. Or perhaps Herakleia’s Beginner Telepath skill was too low. Nonetheless, she still gained a little XP from attempting mind-to-mind communication.

Taking a deep breath, Herakleia moved through the gate without knowing where she was going. No one checked her for weapons, but the guard who had felt up Tamar approached Herakleia and, speaking Gaulish, respectfully insisted on escorting her through this dangerous part of town. When she asked him to leave her alone, he kept mentioning monsier le duc Robert. The duke must have ordered someone to accompany Herakleia whenever she left the city walls. Doubtless this was to police her behavior, but he also wanted to protect her from her former comrades, some of whom might have been angry enough to hurt her.

I don’t care, she thought. I deserve worse.

With the Latin guard keeping close by her side, she entered the Daphnous suburbs. Unlike the inner city, these still showed signs of the Latins’ ransacking. Doors were splintered, bricks were charred, windows were smashed, and the filthy streets smelled like shit, piss, and blood. The community center had burned down. No one was working on the unfinished wooden apartment buildings, either. The Latins had killed the men, raped the women, and enslaved the children, which meant that the suburbs—formerly full of laughter, music, bread, wine, conversation—were now silent. A few old slaves shuffled here and there with bowed heads under ragged hoods. Sometimes a Latin would ride his horse along the street at full gallop, oblivious to the chance that he could run someone down. Venetian merchants were also taking notes or interviewing people with the help of interpreters.

Herakleia found herself looking through the broken doorways and windows for her old friends. Where were Artemia, Fatima, Ghiyath al-Din, Masud, Hagop, Qutalmish, Jamshied, and Samonas? She could find none of them.

The Latins must have killed them all, she thought.

Outside the suburbs she stopped at Anna’s tomb, a plain stone affair constructed following the siege. It lay on the road which led up Mount Minthrion and through the Pontic Mountains, where Alexios must have fled.

Although Herakleia had complicated feelings about Anna—who had almost stolen Alexios from her—the tomb was built for all those who had given their lives to defend their comrades in the first siege. It was a glorious monument to sacrifice and victory, a symbol of Trebizond. Yet the Latins had smashed it.

Herakleia lowered her head, while her Latin guard yawned. The city’s refuse mounds were nearby, and the Trapezuntines who had died in the second siege had been thrown in a pile close to this and burned, at first leaving only their blackened skeletons, an act which denied them bodily resurrection. Some had been tossed to the flames while they were still alive. Bishop Herluin said no prayers for them, and kept the priests, imams, and rabbis of the city from doing the same.

Murdered once in life, then a second time in death, Herakleia thought.

These skeletons had then been buried, however, probably at night by slaves sneaking out to honor the dead and beg their forgiveness, working hard to shovel the snow and break through the icy soil. Now only a low brown mound remained. It would stop the vultures and crows from flapping their wings hard and fast against the bones, prying away the last bits of flesh with their beaks. The Latins had been too lazy to desecrate the graves—for now.

At least someone took care of the bodies. This is one way the Trapezuntines fight back, even as I acquiesce.

She looked around. Where to go? What to do? Up ahead lay Mount Minthrion and a few despoiled monasteries. If she took the Satala Road, it would bring her—after weeks of mountains and valleys—to the hot lands of Tourkía and Arabia. There the Sarakenoi filled huge libraries with complicated books and confounded the world with their machines of war, their powerful armies and vast impregnable cities, their endless orchards and lands gushing with rivers, their towering gardens.

If she tried to travel there, she would never make it. She would starve or freeze before she arrived. The Sarakenoi would enslave her.

To her left lay the sea, where Roman fishermen were already hurling nets into the waters for their Latin masters, the harbor quiet as Venetian galleys bumped their wooden prows against the stone pier. If she could steal a small boat and sail it on her own—a big if—only a few destinations were open to her. Eastward lay mountainous Alania, which was Queen Tamar’s homeland. To the north was the vast steppe of the Khazars and the Rus, while westward was the Bulgar Khanate.

All these places were filled with dangerous people who would think nothing of enslaving her. If they learned her identity, they would ransom her back to the usurper.

The sea was closed. The land was closed. That left Trebizond. From this distance the city behind the walls was loud with neighing horses and chatting people; the sound of hammers striking wood and iron echoed across the gray morning. Then there was the citadel rising above the rooftops, as Duke Robert himself rose above all other men. If he had bothered to wake up, he must have been fucking another slave by now, this man who claimed to love all women—especially those who, due to their class, were unable to resist his advances.

Finally, there were the Daphnous suburbs. These enclosed Herakleia. They were quiet like someone who had already slipped into unconsciousness on the cusp of death.

Herakleia needed to do something. Glancing at her guard, who was yawning again, she felt the urge to kill him and run. Her farr had dwindled since her capture, but she needed no magic to take this scumbag. She could punch his face, grab his sword, and stab straight down through his head, which lacked a helmet. His teeth would scatter and his brains would gush through the wound in the roof of his mouth, soaking his tongue, which would writhe as he choked on his own blood, his soul plummeting through the Earth and into the Hell of the Damned.

The only question was, where would Herakleia go? There were few places to hide. For hundreds of miles no food could be found save what the Latins hid in the bellies of their ships and what the Trapezuntines had stored in their granaries. Would her comrades help her? She could prove her revolutionary bonafides by killing this man, but even if her friends hid her in the suburbs, the Latins, in searching for her, would tear every house apart. They could slaughter dozens of Trapezuntines in retribution for this act of individualist adventurism—killing a random Latin soldier who was merely one of thousands. Yet she would freeze to death if she hid in the mountains or forests. They would find her tracks. They would use dogs. If she hid in the valley that lay along the Satala Road, the Latins would spot any fire she started to keep warm.

They had defeated her in the world, and now they were defeating her in her mind. Any thought that came to her was stopped by an enormous Norman knight, standing before her ideas like a wall of muscle and armor. She was alone.