You may try to escape the uprising, Herakleia had once told Gontran. But it will follow you like your own shadow to the ends of the Earth. Some people flee merely in their minds, infuriated by the slightest reminder of its existence, telling themselves it’s all just a bunch of nonsense and nothing to fear. ‘Guillotines? They couldn’t possibly build them downtown! Not where I live! I’m a good person! My workers could never do that to me!’ But Louis never saw it coming. Nor did Nicholas. Nor did tens of millions of others. They all thought they were just as smart and just as lucky as you. They all thought the uprising could never happen.

Others flee in other ways. They flee to faraway places where they think the conflict can never touch them. They hide in fortresses with a thousand protections. Machine guns. Robot guards. Enough food stored underground to last years. But no human lives alone. We are all connected, like cells in a body the size of the world. Where there is economic exploitation, there is class struggle—sometimes hidden, sometimes in the open. Sometimes it’s just a worker turning away and raising his eyebrow when his boss makes a request. Other times it’s a riot torching a city—a rebellion that seizes entire nations and engulfs the world.

Gontran had believed he could escape. The choice to leave the uprising had been hard, but he had made it. And then, at almost that exact instant, the uprising had pulled him back. His mind had changed—it had been a sea change—with the oceanic force of his unconsciousness. All the frustration of these past weeks of failure and loss had built up within him to the point where a nudge from a fool had set him off. After blinking once, Gontran had found bodies lying on the ground, his bloody sword swinging in his hands, his skin bursting with sweat, his muscles strained, his companions gaping in awe. It was hard to believe he had done this. Yet memories of bloodshed pulsed in his mind as he rode past peasants working their fields to Vicenza and then Padova, this last city so close to Venice that the Serenissima’s campaniles could be seen on the eastern horizon, basking in the pink sunset through the tangled trees.

Ugh.

In Padova he found a stable for his horse and a tavern for his flesh. He ate, drank, rested, asking himself all the while—even as he requested a room, ordered dinner, sucked down his tasteless repast—how he could have let this happen. How could he have betrayed them? He must have lost his mind, that was the only explanation. They were his crew. Each life aboard the Paralos was his responsibility.

Live and learn. Not used to being katapan over so many people.

Now he would return to Venice, that awful place, and either free his crew, or die trying.

I’m sorry, Ra’isa, he thought, surrounded in the tavern by conversation, laughter, and singing which he was unable to hear. I’m sorry.

It was impossible to go back to his old life. Impossible to just be a merchant again, chasing earthly pleasures. He’d been with the uprising too long. It had changed him. He’d gone from Gontran the merchant to Gontran the katapan. Giving up now would also dishonor Joseph. If the uprising failed, then the boy died for nothing.

I’m an upriser now. There’s no going back.

Gontran stomped upstairs to his room and threw himself into bed. It was hard to sleep—hard to shut his eyelids—though he had been riding almost since dawn. He either slept dreamlessly, or failed to sleep at all, he was unsure. Almost the instant the first sunlight began tinging the sky, he was at one of many busy piers sunk in the Mirano shore muck, paying a lighterman a stolen solidus to ferry him and his horse across the lagoon to Rivoalto.

Thirty-five solidi left.

The shallow waves vibrated in the breezes—that blew between the rustling marsh grass—and danced with the wakes of passing ships. With little interest, Gontran watched leaning sailboats whose canvasses were full of wind, galleys raising and lowering banks of oars, rowboats rowing, fishing boats piled with reeking mounds of silver fish that swarmed with laughing gulls, ferrymen plunking their long wooden poles through the surface of the waters and into the muck beneath, the swirling silt. A few of these men were bellowing songs that sounded like opera, the proto-opera they had learned from the muezzins of the Mediterranean emirates.

Busy place.

The odd thing was that, as Gontran drew closer to rescuing his friends, he felt more like himself. For five days he had been so caught up in either being enslaved or escaping slavery that there had barely been a moment to think. Always chasing after food, always getting chased by Venetians. All this frenetic activity meant that, at the moment, he not only lacked a plan, but also a disguise. Any of the passengers on the lighter—mostly peasants who reeked of body odor, men and women and children heading to work in the Serenissima’s fabbriche—could have recognized him, seized him, and presented him to the Loredani for a reward. Gontran would have given anything to have Diaresso and Ra’isa at his side. Talia could have swept through Venice like a whirlwind of razor sharp steel. Gontran longed, too, for his pistol-sword. He assumed the Loredani had stolen it—was there anything they hadn’t taken?—but he really had no idea.

The lighterman brought his passengers to Cannaregio, the Venetian district closest to the mainland. These were Venice’s working-class slums, where pigs, chickens, and naked children wandered mud paths covered in slop, horse dung, and sewage. Gontran wrinkled his nose; even with the lagoon breeze, the smell was appalling. Almost every imaginable kind of medieval building was present here: from peasant shacks to lordly manors walled with stone to worker tenements leaning into the lagoon sludge, from ancient madonnina shrines to elegant new churches covered in scaffolding, from vegetable gardens to orderly farmland to a few remains of Dante’s dark and savage forests of the self, from taverns to guild halls, from mills to bakeries, and on and on, a teeming hive of feudal activity. The canals were crowded with piers and boat workshops, some manufacturing only rowboats, others building three-masted galleys that were almost too large to squeeze through the lagoon’s shoals. It seemed like every other man was hammering wooden boards into place. Salt warehouses—which made Gontran shudder—jostled with bell foundries where workers poured white molten bronze into cold iron molds. Bells that might have been lathed here were ringing from campaniles across the city.

After stabling his horse, Gontran made his way to the doge’s palace, crossing crowded bridges over canals, some looking as though they had been constructed only yesterday. The streets were packed, as were the canals themselves, where from gondolas merchants hawked fish, bread, pasta, the usual meat pies, and sad chickens and ducks and geese trapped in wicker cages.

Where they trap animals, they also trap people.

Deeper inside the city he found a campo. This was an unpaved piazza, a field surrounded by plain multistory buildings of wood and brick sinking into the mud. In this particular campo, white men had set up a wooden stage to sell white women and children. Adult male slaves were the exception here, not the rule, for the maestri preferred to enslave women and children, as most slavery in the city was either domestic, sexual, or both. The factory-like slave plantations of the future Americas—where entire nations would be thrown into the maw of industrial machinery, which would grind their flesh and blood into capital, there to circulate in the arteries of empire to the present day—this was only the faintest dream in the hearts of these maestri. Women and children were also popular due to the lack of mechanization here. In the eleventh century, there were no mechanical washing machines to save labor, which meant that doing the laundry for even a small family took hours of dull exhausting work each day. A female slave, too, was almost the same as a wife, but without the threat of infuriating her family and losing her dowry from beating her too much. If you had the money, you could purchase a pretty Slavic woman and do whatever you wanted with her for as long as you liked merely because you were lucky and she was not. That’s what Herakleia would have said.

The market brings forth these treasures. The market enslaves us like a god. When we make the excuse that ‘if I don’t do it, somebody else will’—that’s how you know that the market is far more powerful and divine in your own mind than any other god has ever been for anyone else.

Being in a place as merciless as Venice meant that Herakleia’s dicta were never far from Gontran’s thoughts.

All the slaves for sale were nude, and prospective buyers climbed onto the stage to stick their grimy fingers into their mouths to examine their teeth. After all, when you bought something as expensive as a slave, you wanted to make sure you were getting your money’s worth.

Gontran also noticed, among the crowds, priests and monks watching with interest, and sometimes even bidding.

Burn this place to the ground, he thought.

Gontran’s wrists and ankles still ached from the iron manacles which had shackled them only days ago. He nervously examined the faces of the crowds, afraid that among all these capped and robed people lurked the Loredani or their hirelings.

Part of him wanted to liberate the slaves on the stage right now. He almost tried to induce another blackout, like what he had experienced back at Lake Garda, where all the strain of the last few days exploded, where merely blinking would transform all the buyers and sellers of slaves before him into corpses. But hundreds of people were here. Gontran was not a machine like Talia, nor was he an immortal like Alexios or Herakleia. He was just a rogue, just a merchant who was rarely more than a step or two ahead of a whole swarm of enraged sleaze bags. After all, a katapan was nothing without his crew.

The question was: should he stay here and somehow try to help the slaves, or continue onward to the doge’s palace?

Help myself, or help others?

Most people would have thought: don’t intervene. They always talked about how tough and noble they were, at least until the moment of truth arrived. It was often easier to just walk away and tell yourself that nothing could be done.

But Gontran was furnished with an answer to his questions when Dekarch Ra’isa—nude save for the manacles clasping her wrists and a metal chain wrapped around her neck which a handsome young merchant held like a leash—stepped onstage. Gontran was ashamed by the sight of her nudity and looked away immediately, but the image was still burned in his mind. She looked clean and unhurt; the Venetians must have captured her while considering how much money she would fetch unsullied. They had treated her well, but the sight of her humiliation—her social death, her living death—disgusted Gontran. He even felt physically ill. Yet her dark beauty contrasted startlingly with the white women who surrounded her, many of whom were captive goddesses in their own right. She also struggled with her owner, who responded by tightening the chain around her neck. This made her fall to the stage, where she clutched her throat and gasped for breath.

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“Giovane è vitale!” the auctioneer shouted, chuckling to himself. “Bella come Frine. Feconda è selvaggia—but also a bit hot to handle. Do I have a bid for ten golden solidi? Which lucky farmer among you will plough these fields tonight? Who will sow his seeds in such dark, lush, and yielding soil?” He forced Ra’isa to turn around. “Now look at this! This right here is the ass that launched a thousand ships!”

Gontran stepped forward with his hand gripping his sheathed sword, unsure of what he was even doing, but the crowd was so dense he was unable to take another step. Some even shoved him back. At that same instant, hands shot up everywhere. The auctioneer spoke faster and with growing excitement as Ra’isa’s price climbed. In response, only a few hands fell—their owners whining that Fortuna was against them. Many were nonetheless willing to pay the value of two, three, even four slaves for Ra’isa.

Why isn’t she using the farr? Gontran wondered.

He stuffed his hand into his pocket, felt the two thin metal nails he had used as lock picks back in that shithole, what was it called—Monselice. Then he hauled out the bag of money he’d stolen from the Venetians he’d slaughtered by Lake Garda, and recounted.

Thirty-five.

He raised his hand. By now only two other men were bidding. As the price climbed, one hand fell with a groan. The bidding was now between Gontran and an older nobleman dressed in bright red silk cap, cloak, doublet, tights, and boots. Zuan Partecipazio, they called him—il Procuratore Rosso, the Red Procurator. Surrounded by lackeys, he wore a golden necklace, golden bracelets, golden rings—golden everything—and he never stopped smiling, nor did he even look at Gontran. A long life of privilege, luck, and good health had led the Procuratore to this moment.

Gontran rolled his eyes. Limited by the sum in his pocket, he was never going to beat Procuratore Partecipazio. The man could flex the sinews of infinite wealth—of trade routes stretching across the Mediterranean like arteries that flooded his flesh with gold coins, as though the man was a walking, talking moneybag, a spider plucking the strands of a web that extended all the way to fiery Baku in Shirvan, to the thalassocracy of the Chollas in southern Hind, to the great city of Dongjing in Sera. Gontran was a Professional Merchant (7/10), but even high skills could only take you so far when you didn’t have any money. That was at least what he told himself.

“No slave has ever fetched so high a price as this one,” said a man near Gontran in the crowd.

“She has the strongest, widest hips I’ve ever beheld.” This man’s friend licked his lips. “You could bear so many children with a woman like that. A whole army could come from such loins. Labor problems on your farmland would end for good!”

“It is these Saraceni of the orientale.” The first man gestured with his fingers pressed to his thumb. “They breed like mice. Now we know why!”

“She’ll bear children like a golden goose,” the second said. “A few months from now, I bet you a solidus we’ll hear she’s having twins. They’ll grow up strong as tigers.”

“It’s a bet,” his companion said. They shook hands.

At times like these, Gontran recalled that deep underneath his skin, he was a woman from the old world. Men sometimes horrified him. They viewed women as a means to making money, no differently than they would look at machinery in a factory.

“Sold!” the auctioneer shouted. “For the price of thirty-six golden solidi!”

You have lost mercantile XP, the game voice told Gontran.

Someone threw a cloak over Ra’isa. The Procuratore pumped his fist and chuckled to himself as his lackeys patted his back and congratulated him. After signing off on the sale before a notary and snatching a receipt—Venetians worshipped paperwork—the Procuratore was soon yanking Ra’isa by the chainlink leash around her neck away from the campo. Many envious eyes followed, but the Procuratore was escorted by six guards who bristled with swords and armor. This was in addition to an indeterminate swarm of black-robed yes-men.

Gontran swore. Many others in the crowd were in a similar mood, though for different reasons.

“I will never make it,” sighed another man near Gontran. “I will never succeed. Fortuna always smiles upon others, never upon me.”

“Not to worry, miei buoni signori!” the auctioneer cried. “There’s still many a fine and affordable bella here—many pleasant means by which you all may sire a whole battaglione of the most handsome bastardi!”

The audience laughed. Gontran felt like he was going to throw up.

He was already following the Procuratore, keeping behind the street corners until Partecipazio and his guards crossed a bridge or turned left or right. Then Gontran ran through the crowds after the red cloak, and stopped to watch again. Even from a distance, Gontran saw the Procuratore trembling with lust. Ra’isa also missed no chance to struggle against him, but this only seemed to excite the Procuratore further. There was no way to win. And yet Gontran refused to leave her.

As they drew closer to Piazza San Marco, buildings grew taller, wider, sturdier. The mud huts at Rivoalto’s outskirts gave way to houses of wood, then brick, and then a few palazzi with two or three stories faced with marble pillars, ornamented with elegant quadrifora—groups of four arching windows—and topped with curving roofs. Into one of these structures—a red one, of course—the Procuratore strode, its wide entrance flanked by a pair of roaring winged lion statues. Two of the Procuratore’s guards stopped and stood by these lions, turning to face the crowds with the strength and confidence of well-trained men clad in heavy steel and mail, the brims of their helmets sharp. Gontran was left standing alone in a campo of mud and grass, clutching his fists as busy Venetians shoved past, more than one muttering about stupid Franci slowing everyone down.

What now?

Herakleia would have called it adventurism, for Gontran to attack—on his own—a building like the Procuratore’s palazzo.

Without organization, without the people’s support, there is no chance of victory. Antaeus is nothing without his native land; we are nothing without the people.

Gontran would never make it past those guards. He had nothing but a blade, some mail under his clothes, an empty stomach, a bag of money, and a couple of nails. If only Diaresso were here! The pistol-sword could have dispatched one guard—it was always strange when you pointed a loaded gun at people and they reacted with indifference because they had never encountered a firearm—but there was also the problem of the Venetian crowds. At first glance, these hundreds of busy people walking back and forth in the muddy grassy campo—their step quicker than peasants lumbering about the mainland—might have seemed neutral, since none would ever possess anything like the Procuratore’s wealth. But their identity as Venetians was strong. They lapped up the crumbs from the Procuratore’s table like dogs, wagging their tales and slobbering all over the maestri’s boots. This meant that even regular Venetians would consider an attack on one rich man the same as an attack on their own bodies, even if many were too poor to own a wooden fishing rod. Gontran didn’t just have to fear the palazzo guards. Venice itself was a fortress packed with guards. Any one of the people walking past could transform instantly into a hostile and violent opponent.

While Gontran stood here thinking about his powerlessness, the Procuratore was doubtless violating Ra’isa. Like a panther trapped in a cage, Gontran paced back and forth through the crowds, clutching his head and periodically glaring at the red palazzo and whispering to himself in an attempt to figure out what to do—behavior which was sooner or later guaranteed to attract attention from the guards. Some Venetians who were forced to step out of Gontran’s way cursed him. A ragpicker called him a “stronzo,” and a bonegatherer even exclaimed the usual medieval blasphemies—“porcodio” and “Madonna puttana,” among others, always making sure to gesture. One longshoreman even uttered the colorful “pota de Gesù!”—Jesus’s cunt. This stopped a potbellied monk and made him frown, but when the longshoreman told the monk to “vaffanculo,” the monk looked to the sky, crossed himself while murmuring an Ave Maria, then walked away, fingering his rattling wooden prayer beads.

To avoid starting a riot, Gontran kept to the campo’s edge. But as he found himself standing near a miller who was busily grinding grain while humming what sounded like Gregorian chant, Gontran wondered about his chances of working the crowd into a frenzy, then getting them to attack the red palazzo. In the confusion, he might have been able to rescue Ra’isa. Then he scoffed at the idea—rabble-rousing was Herakleia the politician’s job. Gontran had always thought she looked ridiculous when she harangued crowds. But this was his medieval self speaking. Back in the old world, when Gontran had been Helena—an overachieving studycat who rarely got a question wrong on any test—she had won student council elections, given speeches about norms and civility at peaceful protests and candlelight vigils, helped register people to vote, and gotten good roles in school plays. But things were different now. He was a different person. Almost every time he spoke with these people, they commented on his French accent, even if he’d noticed his Italian improving a lot since getting stuck here. Still, they’d never listen to some random foreigner telling them to attack a member of the city’s ruling class.

It was easy enough to incite a riot—at least one directed against himself. If he just punched and kicked people at random, soon enough he’d have this entire campo turned into a battleground. In some video games, that was all it took. You punched one person, then ducked out of the way as he accidentally punched someone else. Before you knew it, everyone was punching each other. But that would never work here. This place was too real.

He decided, after all this useless thinking and pacing, to wait for nightfall. Then he would sneak into the red palazzo. As a rogue, it was all he could do. Gontran was afraid of poking about these kinds of buildings after falling from the doge’s palace and waking up chained to a bed inside a church masquerading as a hospital, but what choice did he have? He would never leave Ra’isa.

Even if she herself left me in Venice, chained up almost the same way she was chained up now…

But he didn’t want to think about that. Maybe circumstances had been beyond her control. She might also know where the rest of the crew was.

After forcing himself to eat, he found a room above a nearby tavern and tried to sleep to recover his stamina so he could be alert in the evening. By then it was late afternoon. At first he was unable to even close his eyes, and kept looking through the window at the Procuratore’s palazzo, worried that the man would bring Ra’isa somewhere else without Gontran’s knowing. Rescuing her at night was all he could think about.

First get up and have some water. Then cross the campo along the edges. Listen for any activity. Try the front doors. Pick the locks with the nails…

To his surprise, exhaustion soon overcame him, and he fell asleep. And this time for some reason his sleep was mercilessly bereft of the nightmarish man pounding on all the windows and doors of Gontran’s soul. Yet Joseph also failed to make an appearance.

That’s the second death. First you die in real life. Then you die a second time when everyone forgets you. Or if they remember you, all they remember is a shadow of whoever you actually were.

When Gontran awoke at night, he found no candles or torches troubling the campo. It seemed like an ocean of ink had flooded the world outside his window. All was silent.

Gontran climbed out of bed fully dressed and checked the sword at his side. It still pissed him off whenever he found that his pistol-sword was gone. That weapon had become a part of him, but Annibale was probably using it for purposes Gontran had no desire to think about. Next, Gontran felt the heavy chainmail under his shirt and the two nails from Monselice in his pocket (along with his bag of thirty-five golden solidi). After drinking some water, he crept out of the tavern.