Narses was in the Great Palace throne room, kissing Erythro Komnenē, Emperor Nikephoros’s daughter. The old emperor himself was lying face-down on the cold marble floor, his life energy drained into Narses’s chest. There it joined the energies of Zoë Karbonopsina, a Roman princess, and Hagop, the Trapezuntine gang leader, both beating their heads against the prison bars of Narses’s ribcage as he digested them. Paul the Chain, too, would dwell there soon, but the traitorous eunuch chamberlain had slipped out of the throne room just a moment ago.
Narses gripped Erythro and forced his tongue inside her mouth, even as she groaned—moaned?—and struggled to escape.
Yet Narses always felt empty when he kissed women, which he only did because it was God’s will. Erythro would become Narses’s wife and give him an heir, then he would pack her off to some nunnery on the City’s north side so he could focus on saving the empire. This was his sacred mission, the one vouchsafed him by God. Other men supposedly enjoyed women’s company, but those men were fairly womanly themselves, already half-eunuch.
Erythro shoved Narses back. Incredulous, she glared at him, then looked to the emperor.
“Papa?” She rushed over to him. “Papa!”
Kneeling, she shook him, then hauled him onto his back. He looked only asleep. His broad, meaty, bullish face wore a placid expression.
Erythro turned to the two Turkish guards, who were still kneeling by the doors. “Get Doctor Shabbethai Donnolo,” she shouted. “Hurry!”
The guards looked to each other, then to Narses.
“What are you waiting for?” Erythro cried.
Narses nodded to the Turks. “Find Paul the Chain,” he added. “Bring him to me.”
The Turkish guards bowed. “Yes, effendi,” they said.
“You will address me in Roman, not Turkish. In fact, you will speak Roman at all times from now on. I am not your tekfur, I am your basileios. Say ‘aphéntēs,’ not ‘effendi.’”
“Yes…aphéntēs,” they said.
They jogged out of the throne room, their heavy mail and armor clinking.
After all, what difference did it make if they brought Nikephoros’s personal physician? Narses knew the emperor was dead, and that was enough. But Erythro still needed to perform her womanly duties. Her period of mourning would last three years. She would have to wear black the entire time—and abstain from sex.
Yet I cannot wait three years for her to produce an heir.
Narses needed to make the patriarch grant an exemption. What was that bumbling old fool’s name? His Beatitude, Eustratios Garidas. But it would be easy enough to change his mind about Erythro’s penance. Garidas could also be muscled into supporting Narses’s accession to the Throne of Solomon. Narses had never seen this man—Emperor Nikephoros’s mother Helena had appointed him only months ago, just before she had died—but the patriarch would submit to Rome’s needs.
This situation had surprised Narses. Moments ago he had been fighting for his life, as old emperor Nikephoros had sought to kill him for failing to do absolutely everything perfectly always. They had battled each other to the death in a labyrinth of memory. There had been other revelations that Narses didn’t want to think about.
Now Narses was emperor—Equal of the Apostles, Vicegerent of God—at least inside this throne room. Yet he still needed to get the City’s various factions on his side. The military, the people, the bureaucracy, the senate, and the church would all need to be won over. Then, for the rest of his life, Narses would need to balance these powers against one another, all while fighting off barbarian invasions and reconquering the Roman Empire.
Those two Turkish guards, whatever their names were, would spread the news of Nikephoros’s death. Why were Sarakenoi even allowed inside the Holy City in the first place?
We’ve fallen on hard times, Narses thought. We’ve been forced to pay barbarian mercenaries to police our own people. But hard times make hard men.
Rome had gone soft, as of late. Nobody wanted to fight anymore. The military was an honorable profession, and it was customary for new emperors to increase the soldiery’s pay, and even grant good earth in the countryside in exchange for service. Yet especially since the army’s destruction at the Battle of Mantzikert at the hands of ravening savages just over ten years ago, few Romans in Konstantinopolis or the themes had answered the call to defend their country. These days all they did was cut off their balls, write poetry, and allow their minds to be scrambled by university professors with traitorous agendas. Narses needed to remind Romans who they were.
Who we are meant to be.
It was impossible to do that just by standing beside Erythro as she hugged her father’s body, her weeping echoing across the vast marble arcades, troubling the shafts of sun stabbing through the huge glass windows and the clouds of dust, incense, and spice that always seemed to be floating everywhere in the palace, regardless of how many times the slaves scrubbed and swept.
Mixed with the echoes of Erythro’s cries, Narses heard the cheering of a vast multitude in the distance, as though all the angels in heaven were acclaiming him. But no one could know so soon about what had transpired here. It must have been a race in the hippodrome. It would have been fun to watch from the emperor’s private box, the kathisma, but now there was no time for such things. Narses needed to consolidate.
Can’t do that as long as I look like this. He glanced down at his filthy clothes. It had taken the Venetian fleet over a week to sail from Trebizond to Konstantinopolis. And then once he had arrived, His Majesty—his former majesty—had thrown Narses into a prison cell inside the Tower of Galata across the Golden Horn. The streets there had been infested with slimy Latin merchants babbling in their greasy tongues. That was the Latin Quarter, where all Konstantinopolis’s Latins and Jews lived, ever scheming in their secretive elite societies to topple the universal empire and turn all Rome’s upright men into corrupt bureaucratic eunuchs.
Now, walking quickly, Narses left the throne room for his private apartments. But he stopped on the landing outside, realizing that he had forgotten the way. The Great Palace was so huge—it had apartments, corridors, banqueting halls, kitchens, pantries, cisterns, baths, offices, storerooms, chapels, gardens, courtyards, a theater, private docks, a monastery, a law school, an arsenal, a swimming pool, plus a polo field and a bestiary, all added on by various emperors over the centuries—it was easy to get lost, even if you’d been living and working here for years.
Erythro looked up as he left. “Where are you going?” she cried, her eyes red with tears.
Narses turned to her. “To take a bath.”
She stared at him, shocked by his lack of interest in her father’s death. But before Narses could leave, the two Turkish guards returned with the physician Shabbethai Donnolo, a tiny old Italian Jew clad in the vaguely Sarakenou black robe favored by northern Italía’s university students.
Donnolo shuffled past Narses without even looking at him and huddled over the emperor’s body to feel his cooling flesh. Erythro stood back and watched, clutching her elbows. One Turkish guard told Narses that the palace was on alert for Paul Katena.
For the moment, these two Turks were the only people who recognized Narses as emperor. Minutes ago they had escorted him here in chains. Narses gestured for them to follow as he turned right—his preferred direction, since it was usually the luckier one. But then, as he walked one hallway after another, climbed and then descended one stairwell after another, he was forced to ask the guards where he lived.
“This way, aphéntēs,” one said, gesturing forward. He spoke with a surprisingly educated Konstantinopolitan accent. Why then did he wear the white turban under his steel helmet? The way people worked was such a mystery to Narses.
Easier to sweep them aside than to understand them.
With the guard’s help—his name was Axouch—it took minutes to find the quarters for the Great Domestik. Narses had been dreaming of standing before these old doors for months. They were carved from cedarwood that came from Mount Lebanon’s sacred forests. To the doors’ right was a porphyry replica of the Four Tetrarchs sculpture—the original lay in the Philadelphion maidan among other statutes, sculptures, and ancient Hellenic temples. Narses smiled, kissed his right hand, and then placed it on the sandaled foot of Konstantios, the father of Konstantinos, the founder of Konstantinopolis.
“Good to see you again, old friends.” Narses made sure to meet the eyes of each emperor. Now he was one of them. Already he knew what it meant to join their private club. The burden of empire weighed on his shoulders.
Sword of Damocles.
Narses stepped back, looked at the cedarwood doors once more, and sighed with pleasure, just savoring the moment.
So much work to come back here. So many close calls.
“This is history, men.” He looked at the Turkish guards, forcing himself to forget for a moment that they were Sarakenoi. One was Axouch, the other was named Sulayman.
Might as well learn their names, Narses thought. Keep them happy. Pretend I care about them.
“Keep me alive,” he told the Turks, “and I’ll make you richer than your wildest dreams. I’ll grant you lands, titles, whatever you want. Only keep me alive.”
“Yes, aphéntēs.” They bowed.
Narses nodded to the doors, and the guards hauled them open.
Inside, blankets and clothes were strewn on the marble floor. Cups of rancid wine and plates piled with old half-eaten meat covered the tables. Flies buzzed in the sunlight shining through the windows. The ikon of the Virgin which Narses had left on his private altar last summer was turned around so that only the rear gilded frame was visible.
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Narses stepped inside. Before he could even wonder who had done this, he heard something. It sounded like groaning—coming from his bedroom.
“Oh, domestikos!” a man said, his voice muffled by the doors.
“Your majesty!” another man said.
Narses lunged forward and opened the bedroom doors. On his bed were his two eunuch slaves, Oromazdes and Konstantinos, both dressed in his own silk robes, Oromazdes wearing a laurel crown while Konstantinos wore a steel helmet. The former slave was penetrating the latter. Narses felt a strange stirring in his loins at this sight, but he told himself to stop thinking about it.
Both men yelped with surprise, threw themselves off the bed, and hid behind it the instant Narses walked inside with Axouch and Sulayman. These last two glanced at each other, biting back their laughter. Oromazdes was an educated Arab scribe who had been captured in battle many years ago in some Assyrian shithole. Evidently he had taught the vices of the Sarakenoi to Konstantinos.
“Domestikos,” said Oromazdes, standing hesitantly, covering himself with a blanket. “You’ve—you’re back!”
“I have returned,” Narses said. “But I’m not a domestikos anymore.”
“You’re,” Konstantinos stammered, “you’re a—you’re a—”
“I’m your emperor, now.”
Konstantinos and Oromazdes threw themselves down on the marble floor flat on their faces and stretched their hands out, palm-down.
“O despota mou,” they babbled in a cacophony Narses could hardly follow, one speaking over the other straight onto the floor. “O hē sē basileiā, o despota mou hagie, o autokratōr, o sebastos, o galēnotatos, o eusebēs eléison—”
“Enough,” Narses said. “Where are Euphrosyne and Simonis?” These were his two young slave women. “Are they busy fucking each other, too? Are they busy scissoring? Busy rubbing their crotches together? Should I check the kitchen? Is that all you’ve done, while I was fighting to save the empire—your empire? Turned my home into a den of sin?”
Konstantinos and Oromazdes kept their foreheads stuck to the floor.
“Speak!” Narses said.
“They left, despota mou,” Oromazdes said, trembling.
“Not so long after you,” Konstantinos added.
“They ran away, you mean?” Narses said.
“Yes, despota mou,” Konstantinos said.
Narses turned away, so angry he could hardly say anything. Well, the whores had run off. Now there was no one to wash him. He would have to do everything himself. As usual.
I’m surrounded by incompetents. And I’m blamed for their failures.
Narses turned back to his two slaves. “Put your proper clothes on.”
They stood, bowed, and averted their eyes, rushing around him, repeating the phrase: “yes, despota mou.”
“Burn the clothes you’re wearing,” Narses added. “And the blankets and sheets on my bed. And my mattress. Replace it. Clean my apartment entirely. I’m going to wash myself. When I’m finished, I need a change of clothing. Something regal.”
“Yes, despota mou,” they kept saying.
“I shouldn’t have to explain any of this to you,” Narses said. “From now on, you will perform your duties without being told, or you will face chastisement.”
“Yes, despota mou.”
Narses turned to Sulayman and Axouch. “Keep by the apartment entrance. Allow no one entry, save these two slaves. And Katena, if he shows up.”
With serious expressions, the guards bowed, said “yes, aphéntēs,” and left.
The whole palace would be gossiping about Narses’s return to his apartment for days. Then the City would hear about it. And, after that, the entire empire. Even Skythian nomads galloping over the lands of Gog and Magog would crack jokes about this. The Seres at the world’s end. The burnt-face Aethiopians. The wretched Kelts of Ultima Thoúlē. All would say: “Did you hear what happened when Narses finally got back to his home, after all his troubles?”
What a way to start an emperorship, Narses thought. Worse than Odysseus’s return.
His apartment came with a private bathroom, one which was similar to the ones he recalled from the old world. It had running hot and cold water, a shower, a sink, and even a toilet, though it did not flush. You had to pour a bucket of water inside to clean it out, wiping your ass with a sea sponge stuck on a stick, just like Ioulios Kaisaras himself. Nonetheless, Narses’s setup here was quite a luxury. Even wealthier Romans were forced to use the City’s public baths and toilets, shitting together with the plebs—without any privacy, not even a stall or door—enduring inane conversation about the weather while all you wanted was to just crap in peace. It was disgusting.
Narses pulled off his dirty, sweaty clothes. These were still singed from the fires of Trebizond, the Euxine Sea spume, the blood of the Latin chef Narses had beaten up and then cooked inside his own oven.
Narses chuckled at the memory. I really did that. Giving him a taste of his own medicine. ‘Oui, oui, hon hon, do not cook me, monsieur, si’l vous plait!’
The emperor tossed his old clothes onto the tile floor, stepped into the shower, and forgot his anger—for a few minutes—as he doused himself in cold water. (Real men always strengthened themselves with shockingly cold showers to increase their mental and spiritual prowess.) Sudsing his flesh and hair with olive soap, he then applied olive oil to his skin and finally scraped it off. By the time he was finished cleaning his body—covered with scars from too many battles to remember—Oromazdes was standing in the bathroom, head bowed, holding a cloth towel, waiting for Narses to finish. The slave had also changed into his plain red linen tunic. He dried Narses, then helped him dress in the imperial regalia. (Konstantinos had dashed back to His Majesty’s chambers to grab it.) This consisted of a purple toga studded with glimmering gems—always annoying to put and then keep on—plus a laurel crown, and purple buskins.
Outside the bathroom, the apartment was already clean. Konstantinos—sweating, now also dressed in his old tunic—was hauling Narses’s soiled mattress out of his bedroom.
Narses would be moving into the emperor’s quarters after his coronation. The question now was—what to do? Which faction to wheedle first? The most powerful were the military and the people. The church, the senate, and the bureaucracy could organize coups against him, but with the military and the people on Narses’s side, he would be difficult to dislodge. Minor factions would follow the major ones, at least for now.
Those old angelic cries Narses had heard back in the throne room echoed along the corridors and into his apartment. The entire palace shook as the hippodrome audience stamped their feet hard enough to crack the stone bleachers.
Must be a full house, he thought. Wonder who’s racing.
Just as Narses was about to leave his apartment, Sulayman and Axouch brought the sweating, trembling Paul Katena inside. They clutched the little eunuch’s arms, though his wrists were chained behind his back, and his ankles were shackled also. He nonetheless struggled to flee at the sight of Narses, though Axouch and Sulayman stopped him.
Narses smiled. “So nice of you to join us, parakoimomenos.”
“Let me go.” He was shaking his head. “Please let me go, I’ll do anything, domestikos.”
Konstantinos shuffled past, hauling the mattress out the apartment entrance and excusing himself.
“Do you remember the last time we spoke in this room?” Narses said.
“No, domestikos.”
Narses put his hand to his own chin. “What did you say? You called me an ‘incompetent,’ didn’t you?”
“I misspoke, domestikos.”
“Who is incompetent now, Paul?”
“Me, domestikos. I am incompetent. I have been greatly, terribly incompetent, I was always incompetent—”
“You convinced Nikephoros to execute me.” Narses stepped closer to Paul, who shied away, though Axouch and Sulayman held him. “That was only about an hour ago, wasn’t it?”
“I’m sorry, domestikos.”
“Not as sorry as you’re going to be. And I’m not the domestikos any longer. Haven’t you heard? I’m the emperor, now.”
Paul ventured a glance at Narses. “You? The emperor?” Despite his terror, he seemed to struggle to withhold his laughter.
“Do you find this amusing?”
“No, domest—I mean, no, your majesty.” He gulped. “I was only thinking—I could help you. Running an empire isn’t easy, and I was already Emperor Nikephoros’s favored logothete for years. I would be happy to lend you my services. I could be your liaison to the bureaucracy—your Grand Vizier, as it were. That’s what the Sarakenoi call these things, and they seem to be doing rather well with regard to—”
“After trying numerous times to have me killed.” Narses could now drain a person’s life force just by looking at them, so long as they were close enough. He was an apprentice farr vampire (4/10), and he felt so tempted to use this power against Paul that he briefly lost control of himself, and took some of the eunuch’s energy. But Paul screamed so loudly that Narses stopped.
“No one knows the palace better, majesty,” Paul stammered, having fallen to his knees. “No one knows the bureaucracy like I do. I know all the different factions, and where their pressure points lie.” He looked up at Narses. “We can squeeze them, o despota mou.”
Narses watched him for a moment, and Paul averted his gaze again, trembling and even crying. It was amusing to watch him squirm like a worm. The eunuch did have certain talents and connections. As a military man, Narses confessed that he was unused to politics. Paul could help.
Narses pointed at him. “If I uncover one plot against me, if you attempt to kill me one more time…” He stopped at the realization of how absurd this sounded.
Politics makes strange bedfellows. Isn’t that what they say?
Paul bowed to Narses. “I will serve you, o autokratōr, for the rest of my life. I will sacrifice myself to save you and your family from any danger. I swear this by Christ, by the Virgin, by all the saints and apostles.”
Narses looked at Sulayman and Axouch. He was tempted for a moment to ask what they thought. Then he recalled that they were mere bodyguards.
“Release him,” Narses told them.
Bowing, they unclasped Paul’s restraints.
Paul rushed forward, seized Narses’s right hand, and repeatedly kissed it. “Thank you, o sebastos, thank you—”
Narses pulled his hand back. “Get up.”
Paul stood and bowed, keeping his head downcast, his eyes averted.
“So, logothete,” Narses said. “What course of action would you advise, in order to complete my takeover of the empire?”
Paul glanced at him. “First, take off the laurel crown and the purple buskins. You can’t dress like that until after the patriarch crowns you in Hagia Sophia. It’s sacrilege, and will alienate everyone you meet.”
With Konstantinos’s help, Narses removed the crown and exchanged the buskins for regular army sandals.
“Right,” Paul said. “We need to go to the hippodrome now, despota mou. You must win over the people first. But we must hurry. Other claimants to the throne will soon learn of Nikephoros’s fate and move against us.”
“Very well,” Narses said. “Lead the way.”
Paul bowed, then turned and jogged out of the apartment, followed closely by Sulayman, Axouch, and Narses. They soon found Emperor Nikephoros’s apartment. This was merely a larger and more luxurious version of Narses’s own quarters, complete with more marble, more sculptures, more mosaics and paintings, more tapestries. Nikephoros had been a slob who always kept his slaves busy cleaning up his messes, and these were still picking up the emperor’s previous meal—by the look of it, a substantial one—as Narses entered. They stopped working, bowed, and then kept still the instant they spotted him.
He watched them for a moment, then waved his hand. “Carry on.”
They bowed once more, then returned to work.
The domes of the churches of Holy Wisdom and the Holy Apostles could be seen rising above the City through the emperor’s windows. It was a beautiful winter afternoon outside, the sky so blue it ached with color, the clouds heavy with snow as the winds of Aeolos blew, the air rushing with flocks of chirping swifts.
Ah, Konstantinopolis, how I dreamed of returning to you. I wish I never had to leave you again. Even in the midst of winter, you are more beautiful than any woman.
Paul cleared his throat, jarring Narses from his daydreaming.
A locked door and a long dark corridor led straight to the emperor’s private box in the hippodrome. Once the door was opened, the roar from the crowd was deafening. Axouch lit a torch, and then the four of them walked through the darkness, the fire glinting off the wall mosaics of trees bearing jeweled fruit—until they reached the shining light at the tunnel’s end.