Four horse-drawn carriages piled with food, blankets, clothing, and medicine trundled south along the Satala Road, passing mountains covered with watchtowers and honeycombed with caves. Herakleia slept through that first cold dreary day, sitting at the front carriage, bundled in a warm blanket beside Jafer El-Hadi, who held the reins and also kept her from falling off. The amazons Simonis and Euphrosyne rode horses which scouted ahead of the convoy, sometimes for hours. Ayşe, unskilled at riding, was unable to join them.
The scouts climbed nearby mountains whenever they could, doing their best to watch for raiders—searching with Herakleia’s spyglass—though they spotted none. It was just mountains, valleys, forests, and rivers in every direction. The Romans had names for these places, and had divided them into themes, but most people said they were part of Armenia, since the majority of people living here had been speaking Armenian before the language itself had even been called Armenian. Atop one mountain, Euphrosyne on her horse with the spyglass had surveyed these lands, and, smiling to herself, even used the Roman word for them: “Armeniakon.” The weather was cooler than on the Euxine coast. Armenia’s winters were of an arctic coldness and snowiness—a brown, rocky land watered by snowmelt dripping from mountains. Its people blew mournful songs from the deep-toned duduk flute, worshipped Jesus and the sacred fire and even Allah, and lay claim to Ararat, in olden times called Urartu, where Noah’s ark had come to rest after the waters of the flood subsided, the white dove with a sprig of laurel in its beak pierced by a blinding sunlight shaft.
Armenia. Land of apricots and pomegranates, of ruined chapels and cities, some so old no one knew their names. They were vanishing into the hills. Herakleia remembered that in the old world, the Ottomans marched millions of people living here out of their homes and into the Syrian desert, where—if they survived the journey—they sat in the heat for days upon days, weeks upon weeks, until they died of heat stroke or thirst.
Modernity first comes into the world covered in dirt and blood. Primitive accumulation.
The genocide would so horrify the survivors who escaped that they would rarely even speak of this place. It was too painful. But Armenia existed whenever two Armenians came together. The roots of the tree of Armenia extended deep into the past, far beyond recorded history, and though its limbs might sometimes be felled, the trunk was still strong and full of flowing sap. It would never stop growing.
Some Laz huts of mud and thatch huddled in Armenia’s mountains, where shepherds led sheep and goats to pasture, but these people had little to do with the outside world. Their more worldly cousins already lived in Trebizond or other cities. A few served the Romans or Turks. Some were famous riders, adventurers, and warriors, their horses always galloping. It was said that their mountains were packed with silver. Verily the mountain hearts throbbed with veins of ore. Each town was Silvertown, Argyropolis, in Lazistan, another name for this place.
Aren’t they Colchians? Guardians of the golden fleece. Chaldeans, but not the Assyrian kind that was drunk on astrology.
Herakleia woke, fell asleep, and woke again as the carriage rumbled along the muddy road. Sometimes she wondered what she was doing here. At other times, she leaned against Jafer El-Hadi, and thanked him for his help.
“It is nothing, strategos,” he said. “Already I miss my wife and son. You will have to do in their place.”
“Your driving has kept us from getting stuck in the mud,” she said.
“Only for the moment, strategos, and thanks only to the grace of Saint Sara the Kali.”
“I wonder why there aren’t any other carriages on the road.”
“It is spring,” Jafer El-Hadi said. “Roads are difficult. The crop also will not be in for many months. There is little to trade. At least that is what I tell myself. And these lands are dangerous. We might run into a thousand bandits around the next bend.”
She was already falling asleep again, and barely heard him, though he was trying to scare her. Perhaps he was even flirting. Or was she projecting?
At the first day’s end, the convoy camped at the edge of the Death Worm Marsh, located near a mountain village called Tzanicha. The death worm itself had not been seen since last year, when Gontran, Diaresso, and the heroic warrior Berkyaruq had apparently killed it. The death worm’s body had never been found, but Trapezuntine patrols reported that Laz villagers had returned to Tzanicha and sometimes ventured into the marsh these days. Alexios had also passed through here without incident on his way to Melitené, so it was probably safe to camp on the marsh’s edge, even if little traffic came this way, aside from the occasional Trapezuntine patrol. Merchants, armies, caravans, whoever—they all usually tried to go around. Tomorrow the convoy would move through the marsh as quickly as possible.
Herakleia woke when Jafer El-Hadi stopped the carriage. Her stamina was almost fully restored. Everyone was climbing out, groaning, and stretching, and the amazons were returning from their latest scouting mission, with fatigue shadows under their eyes. Jafer El-Hadi was already unhitching the horses from his carriage when Herakleia joined him.
“It’s alright,” she said. “I’ll take care of it.”
“Strategos—”
“You’ve been working all day. It’s my turn.” She looked at the rest of the convoy. “Did everyone hear that? Settle in, sit down, I’ll take care of everything.”
Some members of the convoy acknowledged her, while others glared at them as if they wanted to argue, though they were too tired to do so. Only Ayşe was exempt.
Herakleia pointed at her. “You’re with me, princess.”
Ayşe’s shoulder fell, but she acknowledged the command with her sweet, polite, refined voice. Soon she was helping Herakleia unhitch the horses, feed and water them, and clean the shit from their asscheeks. This added XP to Herakleia’s rudimentary horse stewardship skill (Initiate, 1/10). The two women then washed their hands with olive oil soap, set up the tents, started the campfire, and cooked dinner—pancakes made from hard tack mixed with water and whatever else they could throw in. Herakleia once more noted that Ayşe worked hard for someone who had been a princess only days earlier.
“Please, strategos,” said Jafer El-Hadi. “I will take care of these chores.”
“Sit and rest,” Herakleia said. “It's no trouble.”
Jafer El-Hadi bobbed his head as if to say: “well, if that’s what you want.” Then he sat on the ground. He was so tired he struggled to keep from lying down. Herakleia wanted to feed him as soon as possible so he could sleep. Soon she was sweating despite the cool damp weather and the gray light of the cloudy evening.
“We’re princesses at work.” Ayşe wiped the sweat from her own brow.
“I told you, I’m not a princess anymore,” Herakleia said.
Ayşe bowed. “Of course not, strategos. Forgive me. I suppose I am not, either.”
“I’ll stop calling you princess if you do the same for me.”
“Alright,” Ayşe said.
“It’s a work program for former aristocrats,” Herakleia said. “That’s what we’re doing. We’ll atone for all the sins we committed back when we each had a hundred servants to do whatever we wanted.”
“It will take a long time to make up for that,” Ayşe said.
As they cooked together—Ayşe was in charge of keeping the fire fed with dry wood—Herakleia found that two of Alexios's friends from the south had joined the convoy. They must have climbed onto the rear carriage when the convoy was leaving Trebizond. Herakleia had forgotten their names. One was an Aethiopian witch doctor who dressed in white linen, wore a backpack stuffed with herbal medicines, and carried a thin wooden staff which was painted like a rainbow and shaped at the top like the Greek letter tau. He also had a crucifix carved into his forehead. The other companion was an old Arab woman, a mystic who was also dressed in white. She had brought a book written in a language resembling Arabic—the script was similar yet different—and also a bag of medical supplies.
At first Herakleia was surprised to see these two elders here. She wondered if it might have been better for them to remain in Trebizond. After all, caring for refugees would mean a lot of hard physical labor. Could Alexios’s friends handle it?
Soon everyone was settled around the fire and eating. Ayşe kept watch. Jafer El-Hadi joked that food never tasted better than when it was prepared by prominent political leaders.
“The strategos has a very strategic way of cooking,” he added.
Most people either ignored him or rolled their eyes.
Herakleia needed to eat quickly, since she was up next for watch duty. Ayşe was, at the moment, the only one keeping an eye on the camp, and anxiously waiting her turn to eat. Nonetheless, Herakleia looked to Alexios’s two elderly companions, anxious to talk about her friend and sometimes lover.
“I’m sorry,” Herakleia said. “I know you two have been living in Trebizond for the last few months, but we still haven’t been introduced.”
The Aethiopian witch doctor bowed. “Greetings, strategos. I was wondering when you would ask this question. I have heard much about you, and seen you about your work, but what you say is true—God has not, until now, seen fit to grant us the opportunity to speak. I am Deacon Dawit Tewodros Za-Ilmaknun. I hail from Axum, also called Aethiopia, a great Christian empire that lies to the south of the Mare Erythraeum, beyond the deserts of Nubia and Arabia and the gushing cataracts of the River Aegyptos. I was originally the companion of yet a third princess to dwell in the holy city of Trebizond—the young and beautiful Princess Isato of Zagwe.”
Herakleia scowled for an instant at the mention of the woman who had stolen Alexios’s heart.
“But she has departed for the east with Kentarch Alexios Leandros.” Za-Ilmaknun was too preoccupied with his own eloquence and self-importance to notice Herakleia’s reaction. “This has left me with little in the way of purpose, and I can’t very well return to my homeland—it’s thousands of farsangs from here, and the journey was dangerous enough the first time! Thus I decided to bring myself and my talents along for this somewhat shorter trip, if you do not mind, for I seek to repair the world, however God may permit.”
“Of course I don’t mind. It’s a pleasure to meet you.” Herakleia turned to the old woman, who bowed.
“Hello, darling,” she said. “My name’s Miriai Sabti. I met up with your Alexios when first he came to my caravanserai in Pirin last winter, a real winter of discontent, wouldn’t you agree?”
Herakleia laughed. “Yes.”
“Anyway,” Miriai continued. “Pirin, it’s a small town in Arabia, on the road between Malatya and Samosata, and it’s got a nice spring. That’s a big deal, when you have one of those things in the desert. So as I was saying, Alexios and I went on a whole bunch of adventures together. He talked a lot about you, at least until he changed.”
“I was hoping I could ask you about that,” Herakleia said.
Everyone else around the campfire was also listening. (Simonis even needed to tell Ayşe to focus on making sure no one attacked while they were eating.) All Trebizond had noticed that their kentarch had changed.
“Ach, that’s when he became Alexios the Faraway,” Miriai said. “He and I, you know, we met the god Hermes Trismegistos, this sort of alchemical uthra, I suppose you could call him. He’s still out there in the desert, near a place called Harran, reading and writing his books, uncovering the secrets of the Worlds of Light and Darkness. He took Alexios and me on quite the little night journey. We visited all kinds of interesting places, passed through the matartas—the divine toll houses—and saw all sorts of interesting things. It’s hard for me to explain.”
“That’s what Alexios told me,” Herakleia said.
Miriai nudged Za-Ilmaknun—sitting beside her—so hard he almost dropped his trencher. “Hey buddy, did you know when you go up real high, the horizon starts to curve, until the whole world below turns into a giant glowing ball?”
“She has been calling me ‘buddy’ for months, even though I am no ‘buddy’ of hers,” Za-Ilmaknun said.
Ignoring Za-Ilmaknun, Miriai turned her wide eyes to Herakleia. “We went to the end of time and space, my dear. We saw the whole history of the universe, from beginning to end, all in one instant, the way the uthras see it. I suppose I was prepared, as much as anyone can be, but it was hard for dear Alexios. After that, he was never the same. Hermes Trismegistos offered to make him into a god, but he refused, saying he needed to help all of you first.”
This was one of the stranger things Herakleia had heard in her life. Earlier she would have wondered if Miriai was on drugs—there was a hippy-like vibe to her—though Alexios had spoken similarly, on those rare occasions when he even attempted to explain his experiences in Harran. It was also sort of Bodhisattva-like, wasn’t it? Weren’t Bodhisattvas like Buddhas who turned back, on the cusp of nirvana, to help other people follow the threefold path? Or something? But it was impious for Miriai to talk like this. Za-Ilmaknun had crossed himself and murmured a prayer at her mention of Hermes Trismegistos. Any god, ghost, or djinn separate from the trinity, the angels, or the saints was a demon in Christian eyes.
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“I’m confused,” Herakleia said to Miriai. “Let’s assume everything you’re telling me is true.”
“Why wouldn’t it be?” Miriai said.
“Couldn’t Alexios have helped us more if he had turned into a god?”
Miriai shook her head. “That’s not how it works, dear. We aren’t just the masters of the universe—we’re part of the universe, and we change the universe as the universe changes us. When you turn into a god, are you going to care about this?” She gestured to the night encroaching upon the camp, the stars emerging from the sunset that glowed like a distant forest fire between the dark mountains. “Many millions died to make us who we are, to make the world what it is, as it progresses toward its destiny. Disasters happened in the past which are beyond reckoning. To become a god is to cease to care—to cease to be human. To accept the past, for all its faults, as part of the present, and to accept the present, for all its faults, as part of past and future. And Alexios, he didn’t turn into a god. But he had a chance, which is more than most of us can hope for. He got a taste. That was enough for him, let me tell you.” She nudged Herakleia. “Alexios came back to Tibil, to Earth, after we voyaged to the World of Ideal Counterparts. He helped us get to Trebizond, and then he found out you’d managed to free it without his help.”
Herakleia looked to the cart drivers and amazons, all of whom had fought in the siege and the subsequent resistance to the Latin occupation.
“It was a group effort,” Herakleia said.
“Over time I think he stopped caring about anything,” Miriai said. “Alexios, I mean. Except for that hyena woman, what’s her name, Isato. A bit of a firebrand if there ever was one. Don’t piss her off, or she’ll eat your head!”
Za-Ilmaknun winced. “I must ask you not to speak of the princess like that. If only you knew the riches she stood to inherit, that is, if we could just find a cure for her—”
Miriai waved her hand as if to say, who cares what you think? This shocked Za-Ilmaknun into silence.
“And Alexios’s kids,” Miriai continued. “Those little malaki, Alexios still loves them, too. But as for everything else, he has this almost cosmic perspective, I suppose you could call it. He’s still living in a human body, but nothing seems to matter to him anymore. He views the whole world from the perspective of a god, even though he’s still pretty far from that…in certain ways.” She chuckled.
“It’s terribly inappropriate to speak like this in front of the children.” Za-Ilmaknun gestured to the drivers and amazons.
“What are you drinking, old man?” Miriai said. “None of them are kids! All of them could marry, if they wanted. They went through more in a few days than you did in your whole life!”
“I mean, really,” Za-Ilmaknun said.
As they bickered, everyone else tried to think of a way to excuse themselves and go to bed. That was when Ayşe spoke. (Amat al-Aziz had volunteered to keep an eye on the camp in order to give Ayşe a chance to eat; Herakleia was not yet finished eating.)
“Forgive me for interrupting,” Ayşe said. “I only wish to know more about what you’re discussing. I don’t know any of these people or ideas you’re talking about, but they all sound so interesting!”
“Believe me, there’s a lot to know,” Herakleia said. “A lot of lore to catch up on. But people are usually pretty friendly if you ask.”
“Speaking of lore,” Dekarch Euphrosyne said. “Tomorrow we should arrive in the ruins of Satala. They’re in a valley, which will be the perfect place to ambush us, so everyone needs to be rested and on their guard.”
“Maybe that’s why Satala turned into a bunch of ruins in the first place,” Simonis said. “It’s in a valley, right on the border with Persia, Skythia, and Arabia.”
“The watchtowers say the first wave of refugees is coming from the direction of Ani,” Euphrosyne added. “To the east.”
“That’s the capital of Armenia, isn’t it?” Herakleia said.
Simonis nodded. “The old capital. But it’s been a shell of its former self for decades. My parents fled the destruction of the city at the hands of the Seljuks many years ago. They were Tondrakians—peasants who used carved wood spears to fight lords. They settled in Sinope, which is where they gave birth to me.”
“And thank god they did!” Herakleia exclaimed. “Are you Armenian, by the way?”
“It’s my ethnos, but that’s all,” Simonis said. “When my parents arrived in Sinope, they wanted to forget everything about where they had come from. They thought something about our culture contributed to our people’s near total destruction. They embraced Roman ways, speaking Roman even at home, though they’ve never been good at it.”
Almost everyone had finished eating by then. Most said goodnight, wrapped themselves in blankets inside the tents set up around the fire, and were soon snoring. Ayşe stretched, yawned, and was about to join them when Dekarch Euphrosyne spoke.
“No you don’t,” she said. “You wanted to come out here even when we told you it was too dangerous, remember? You need to keep the strategos company—keep her awake on her watch.”
“Sir,” Ayşe said.
“It’s really alright,” Herakleia said. “I slept all day, and I’ve done this before—”
“Begging your pardon, strategos, but are you going to keep interfering with the chain of command?” Euphrosyne said.
“No.” Herakleia shook her head. “Of course not.”
“Alright then,” Euphrosyne said. “Have a good night, you two.”
“Same to you,” Herakleia said.
Euphrosyne joined Simonis in her tent and closed the flap behind her. Herakleia looked at Ayşe, who slumped, shut her eyes, and snored, before she jerked herself back awake again, stood at attention, saluted Herakleia, and said: “Ready to do my duty, sir!”
Some of the sleepers in their tents groaned for her to be quiet. Ayşe frowned.
“Then let’s get going,” Herakleia said.
They relieved a grateful Amaz al-Aziz. Before long, the rest of the camp was asleep, and Herakleia and Ayşe were alone with the fire, the stars, and some wolves howling in the distance. This last sound made them both tense. Ayşe even huddled close to Herakleia, who whispered that they were just wolves, and the fire would keep them away.
“Wolves are nothing.” Herakleia adopted a dramatic tone. “What we really need to worry about are men—men lurking in the darkness, waiting for the chance to STRIKE!”
Ayşe gasped and her eyes widened.
“Sorry.” Herakleia rubbed Ayşe’s back. “I’m just messing with you. Mostly. But maybe that’s because you’re so fun to mess with.”
“No one ever spoke to me this way when I was a princess.”
“Well, you aren’t a princess anymore. And it was your choice, remember? We all tried to stop you. But it seems like you don’t listen to anyone.”
“When what they say matches what I want, then I listen.”
Herakleia laughed. Ayşe added some more sticks to the fire, which was burning down.
“We should probably put out the fire,” Herakleia said. “If any bad guys are out there, they’ll be attracted to it—like, well, like moths to a flame.”
“We could get cold,” Ayşe said.
“If that happens, we can always relight the fire.” Herakleia kicked dirt over the flames, plunging the camp into darkness. The peepers grew louder, and the few stars that poked through the clouds brightened.
“I’ve never been out here like this,” Ayşe said. “In the dark, I mean.”
“Must be a lot of firsts for you,” Herakleia whispered back.
“Yes, strategos. Every day is full of new things. It’s almost overwhelming!”
“It was like that for me, here, once. It was like that for all of us. Almost everyone in Trebizond came here from somewhere else and needed to learn completely new ways of being.”
“But it seems it is so natural for you, and so difficult for me.”
“You know, when I first got here, I was even worse than you,” Herakleia said. “I was like a baby. I didn’t know how anything worked.”
“Ah, yes, I know how you felt. I now feel exactly the same way.”
“No, I mean, I didn’t know how anything worked. It’s hard to explain. But I used to have two lives. One was as a princess, a lot like you. But another was something else entirely.”
“Pardon me, strategos, but how can you have had two lives? Whatever do you mean?”
Herakleia waved her hand in the dark. “A few friends and me aren’t originally from here. Not from this time, I mean. We come from about a thousand years in the future. We seem to be inside some kind of living game, where everything is very similar but also slightly different. There’s no farr where I come from, for example.”
“I have heard of this farr. I have seen amazons use it. But they say I am not yet ready.”
“Nobody is, the first time. Fighting for what’s right is like cocaine. And like cocaine, it feels great.”
“What is cocaine?”
“Sorry. Forget it.”
“The other things you said, I do not understand, either. What does it mean to come from the future?”
Herakleia laughed. “That’s right, I forgot. Nobody here even understands the concept of time travel. ‘What’s the point of time travel when history moves so slowly you barely even notice, and everything is supposed to stay predictable and pretty much the same until the end of time?’”
“I still do not understand.”
“When I first got teleported here, I could barely even speak the language. I was also a guy in the old world—the place I came from, I mean. I was a man, in the traditional sense, anyway. I had a dick.”
“Do you mean you were castrated?”
“I guess.” Herakleia felt her own breasts for a moment. “But the surgery was quick, painless, and free, and seems to have gone pretty well. As did the hormones. Nobody knows unless I tell ‘em. And everything seems to work. All the machinery, I mean. I could probably even crank out a baby if I wanted. It’s interesting, wanting to wear dresses and makeup, and feeling more emotional at times, even if I only feel like that now and then. But having periods is a pain in the ass. That’s how you know god’s a misogynist. It’s so unfair that guys don’t need to deal with that. And it was weird, having to adjust to cleaning myself every time I pee. I miss being able to stand and piss wherever I want. But being a guy is hard in its own ways.”
“What do you mean?”
“A lot of the time, women hide our power level. We’re actually much stronger than men—even physically. A woman can and will beat the best man at any sport, one day. One day we’ll even destroy the concepts of ‘man’ and ‘woman.’ People will simply be people, whether they have pussies or dicks or whatever. It was like that in the past, when women ruled the Earth. Men hate to admit it, but they desperately need us. Even men who aren’t sexually interested in women still crave our company. Women could destroy men if we wanted. We could make their lives completely miserable. And we often do, because they often deserve it. They ask for it. They think women are their slaves. But a good man, a strong man, a handsome, kind, intelligent man—there’s nothing better. A good man is better than silver and gold. Meeting men like that almost makes you forgive the rest.”
“Almost,” Ayşe said.
They laughed.
“So were you always like this?” Herakleia said. “Always a budding upriser, even back in your palace?”
“I always hated when people were cruel to servants,” Ayşe said. “I don’t even know why. I was always polite to them. Whenever other nobles weren’t around, I would do my own work, or help the servants with theirs. There was always so much work for them to do. Everyone always thought me strange. But I didn’t care. Back in Zhongguo, or in Erzurum, wherever we were, I always did my best to help as many of the less fortunate as possible.”
“Were your parents nice to you?”
“Very. They encouraged me to learn whatever I wished. They were always kind to me, at least until they married me off to Chaka Bey.”
“He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named.”
They laughed again.
“He wasn’t a terrible husband,” Ayşe said. “He gave me everything I wanted. Everyone made fun of him for it, at least when he was not present. Chaka Bey ruled Great Seljuk, but Ayşe ruled Chaka Bey.”
“Then why did you join us?”
“I was a prisoner. I could not be free. I spent all my time reading novels about the outside world, attending plays and performances, listening to stories. Anything about adventurers or sword fighters. When I was a child in Zhongguo, I often dressed like a boy, and begged my parents to have me trained in martial arts. Sometimes they obliged me. I also saw how the concubines and wives and consorts schemed against each other, always murdering, betraying, and bribing each other, anything to put their sons on the throne.”
Herakleia nodded, recalling her own days in the Great Palace of Konstantinopolis. “Sounds familiar.”
“It never ended, strategos. It never went anywhere. And always the poor suffered. Always these people were squeezed harder so that the palace could live easier. Even the servants in the palace thought themselves miniature lords. They would dress themselves like lords in private, as best they could, and lie about their backgrounds, always trying to puff themselves up like false peacocks. It was quite ridiculous, especially because their masters thought them scum, yet the servants despised the peasants even more passionately than their masters did.”
“The question is,” Herakleia said, “why were you alone in caring about this?”
“Many people have terrible lives. Terrible childhoods. Even as their bodies age, their souls are not able to grow.”
Herakleia had not known that Ayşe knew anything about this subject. The recruit had seemed so awkward and out-of-place, but now Herakleia was learning from her.
Ayşe continued. “I do not know how to say it. Rich and poor alike have trouble becoming full human beings, I suppose. Always their minds are stunted, as if they stopped changing when they were very young, only babies perhaps, and never moved on, not for years, not for decades. Even as old men they are still babies on the inside, unable to be friends with people, just as babies are unable to be friends with people. Babies only care about their mothers, about taking, taking, taking from their mothers, but when you are a grown man, you are often separate from your mother, so how are you supposed to live with the world around you? These people are therefore quite hostile to everything, like babies separated from their mothers, but still obsessed with them. These people are always angry and miserable, and unable to even ask themselves why, unable to even realize that there is a problem, always blaming the weakest, always taking out their anger on the ones they already harm and steal from, in order to justify that harm and theft. Their parents abused them to make them fit with an abusive society, they suppressed their natural desires and impulses, and then society continued the abuse, the stunting, so that they live entire lives without ever knowing what it means to be fully human—to work, to love, to learn.”
“Do you think they can be helped?”
Ayşe laughed. “Yes. Whatever can be done can be undone. But it will take a lot of work.”
They kept talking until sunrise, getting up and moving around in the cold damp every now and then to warm the blood flowing around their bones. Herakleia soon realized that there was much more to Ayşe than she had suspected. At first Herakleia had believed that she was just a young, naive, selfish princess, but after talking with her for such a long time and seeing all the progress she had made in just the last week, she realized that there was much more to Ayşe.
“I’m sorry I told you to stay with your husband,” Herakleia told Ayşe. “I was wrong.”
Ayşe smiled. “All is well that ends well.”
“I’m glad to have met you, glad to have gotten to know you better.”
“I feel the same way about you, strategos. Let us always be friends and sisters.”
Eventually the sun began to shine through the gray clouds. At that point, Herakleia was nodding off, her stamina having declined almost to zero. Ayşe had already fallen asleep. That was when the glowworm appeared.