One day passed, then two, then three, and the rioters continued to besiege Narses and his supporters in the palace and the hippodrome.

“Kill the Narsites!” they chanted, their voices echoing across the City. “Kill Narses!”

“No one would ever call them inventive, would they?” Narses said to Oromazdes and Konstantinos.

“Of course not, aphéntēs,” they said in unison, bowing.

“It’s already such an old slogan,” Narses said. “Not creative at all. Nobody cares about their stupid protest.”

“Certainly not, aphéntēs,” Konstantinos and Oromazdes said together.

“Get out of my sight.” Narses had tired of their obsequiousness. Both slaves bowed and rushed out of his bedroom, closing the doors behind them.

No one to talk to, he thought. No one but slaves. I wonder where Erythro is. She moved all the way to Blachernae, didn’t she? She would argue with me. She would challenge me. Paul said I should spend time with her. But that’s not going to happen until these riots end.

Who else could Narses spend time with? No one. They were all sycophants. Narses was therefore left alone.

Always alone.

He needed to get a dog. He had always loved dogs. A big German shepherd. But did those even exist here? The only dogs that were around were mutts and Molossian mastiffs. He needed to get one for himself. A purebred Molossian mastiff, of course. He would name him Wolf. Narses confessed to having a lifelong obsession with dogs and wolves. His father back in the old world hated dogs and never let them into the house. Sometimes Narses had no desire at all to follow in his father’s footsteps. Maybe it would have been more interesting to do something artistic with his life, like theater or even painting. He remembered that Latin horn music from the Trebizond beach, how it had stirred his soul like nothing else. Opera. A grand orchestra. Singers bellowing as loud as they could for hours. Yes, that would have been nice. But there was nothing like that here. These people were so backward and pathetic. Narses had to do everything himself.

On the fourth morning of the riots, Paul knocked on Narses’s apartment door.

“I have positive news,” Paul said as he entered Narses’s bedroom, striding past the slaves Konstantinos and Oromazdes and the Varangians Sigurdsson and Ironside.

Narses was still lying on the floor under his blankets, facing away from the doors. He didn’t react to Paul’s entry.

“You ought to know, your majesty,” Paul said. “I took the liberty of ordering the fleet into the Bosporos in just the nick of time. None of our new ships have been damaged thus far in the, em, rather unfortunate conflagration that has consumed the City, thanks be to Holy God. They lie only a short distance from the palace dock, awaiting my signal.”

Narses said nothing.

Paul cleared his throat. “Majesty?”

“Your signal for what?” Narses said.

“Why, to leave, majesty. To go into exile.”

Narses laughed. “Where?”

“Majesty, if the gate fails, anywhere will be better than here.”

“The west swarms with Latin filth.” Narses was still turned away from Paul, and talking as if drunk or half-asleep. “The north and east, Turks. The south, Sarakenoi. Nowhere to go. Nothing to do.”

Paul glanced out the windows, where smoke was still rising over the domes and columns, and people were shouting: “Kill the Narsites!”

“We could live to fight another day, majesty.”

Narses sighed. “What sort of fool gives up the imperial diadem? I will die before people cease to call me emperor…my burial shroud will be purple silk.”

“Yes, of course, majesty, you will always be our emperor, and we could make sure to bring along the diadem and some purple burial shrouds. But in the mean time, there is the matter of our dwindling food stocks, seeing as how the riots caught the palace completely by surprise, we were unprepared. My sources tell me that dissent is also growing in the ranks. The men are saying ‘we didn’t sign up for this’ and so on and so forth.” Paul waved his hand. “You told them they would be fighting the enemies of Rome, not Rome itself.”

Narses turned to face Paul. “Obviously there are problems with Rome, otherwise why would its territory have shrunken so? Our enemies are not just external. They are also internal. Too many backstabbers lie in our midst. You can see them now, burning down the world’s most beautiful city, and for what? If we fail to take on the corrupt elites who are paying the mob to destroy all that is beautiful, they will profit from our deaths.”

“Which corrupt elites, majesty? Give me names.”

“Doubtless they are in league with the Turks. They feign outrage over our temporary borrowing of church property.” Narses gestured to the window. “Though the instant the Grand Turk walks through the Golden Gate, just watch as they bow to him and scream ‘Allahu Akbar!’ Every last one of them will do that so loud their throats will bleed. With their bare hands, they will demolish every church in the City, and use the bricks to build mosques in their stead. All without even being asked.”

Narses was getting worked up. He climbed out of his blankets and walked to the window, completely nude. Paul looked away from the emperor’s scarred brawn.

“I will not wait here for my enemies to destroy me.” Narses watched the sun rise over the burning City. “Nor will I flee with my tail between my legs. No, I have rested enough. Now I will meet the enemies of God. I will wrestle Satan with my bare hands if I must. Yes, everything has fallen apart without me, as usual. But now the time has come. If this is to be the final battle, the final confrontation, so be it.”

Paul bowed. Narses snapped his fingers at Konstantinos and Oromazdes, who were watching him from the doorway, their heads lowered. Within moments, they were dressing him in clean clothes and oiled armor, and strapping his rhompaia to his waist.

Narses drew the rhompaia and hefted it, the dark blade gleaming and ringing in the morning light, the slaves lunging out of the way as they continued to dress him.

“This was the weapon of Megas Konstantinos, was it not?” Narses said. “Sharp as the day it was forged. I almost don’t even miss Almaqah anymore.”

Paul looked to the side. “Almaqah, majesty?”

Narses fixed his blazing eyes on Paul, who stepped back. Then Narses sheathed the rhompaia. “My sacred blade, Paul. It was stolen from me by the boy Romanos. You remember him, don’t you?”

“There are so many men with that name, majesty…”

“Indeed, most men here are named Michael or John or Romanos…or Paul. Yet I’m the only Narses.”

Paul smiled. Perhaps this was the first time Narses had ever seen him smile genuinely in his company. “You are certainly unique, majesty. No one would ever deny that.”

“This was the young Romanos from Nikomedeia,” Narses said. “The boy I favored on the march to Trebizond. We escaped the criminals together, and survived, somehow, through the winter, working our way to the Kerasos Signal Tower, where he betrayed me, and after all we had been through together.” Narses looked at Paul. “How did you survive the first siege of Trebizond, by the way? I never got around to asking you. So far as I know, you, me, and Romanos are the only survivors. Hundreds of good soldiers and engineers perished at the hands of those bloodthirsty fanatics.”

Paul cleared his throat. “Oh, you know, majesty, I just got lucky, found a horse, rode away, made my way back here, that sort of thing.”

Narses watched him. “Very lucky.”

Paul nodded, laughed nervously, and shrugged. “It happens, majesty.”

“Indeed.”

When Narses was suited up and prepared for battle, he ordered Sigurdsson and Ironside to send all the Varangians in the palace to the Hippodrome. Then he went there himself, entering through the emperor’s secret gate to join his tagmata, which were camped in their orderly tents. Everyone stopped what they were doing—chatting, gambling, eating—and turned to face him.

“Good morning, my brothers!” he roared, raising his arms. “Are you tired of waiting around for a fight?”

There were some murmurs of assent.

“Are you ready to go to war with the fools who call you murderers?”

“Yes,” some said, their voices growing louder.

“Should we let such slander go unpunished?”

Almost everyone yelled: “No!”

“Tell me: what do you think of these fools who attacked us during Makrenos’s funeral? What should be the fate of creatures who dare to insult the memory of fallen veterans?”

“Death!”

“Then suit up!” Narses cried. “Prepare for battle! I made you rich, my brothers, punishing Galata for its misdeeds. The time has come to do the same to Konstantinopolis—a far richer place, I’m sure we can agree, the richest in the world, the greatest in the world!”

His men yelled their assent.

“Any traitor on the streets has forfeited his property, his woman, and his very life to you!” Narses cried. “Do with these things as you will! Riches lie beyond the walls of the Great Palace, ripe for the plucking. All we must do is stretch out our hands and take them!”

“Narses! Narses!” They cheered his name, and some even dared to lift him on their shoulders and parade him through the Hippodrome.

Before long, everyone was suited up and armed. The three tagmata were assembled in good order before the Chalkē Gate, as were hundreds of Varangians, all prepared to kill and die. Over the walls, the riots continued with the same energy as always—as if they had only begun moments ago, rather than four days in the past.

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They’re like—what’s that word from the old world? Zombies! Yes, that’s it, zombies! The rioters are like zombies, and we should treat them like zombies!

Standing before the gate, Narses looked up to his men. Two thousand must have been gathered here, counting the Varangians, and they were all watching him, the sun gleaming on their armor.

“Let this be a contest,” Narses told them. “Who can kill the most men? There will only be one prize…something worthwhile. What should it be? Why not the royal fifth?”

The men looked at each other and then roared their approval, drawing their swords and pounding them against their shields. The Varangians, meanwhile, were stuffing their faces with mushrooms, raising their arms, and singing war songs to their gods.

“After all, I’m rich enough already,” Narses said. “I can go a day without my royal fifth—and it’s a special occasion, besides! It calls for a celebration! But how are we to count these kills, I wonder?” Narses placed his hand on his chin. “We need some token, one that can’t be faked. I know! Take their right ears—not their left. Take the sword arm ears. Pocket them, put them in a sack, it doesn’t matter. And try not to get stabbed by someone else when you’re cutting them off.”

The men laughed.

“Stay safe,” Narses said. “Fight hard, work together, remember your training. The man to your right is your shield, as you are the shield to the man on your left. And—most importantly—let the man with the most ears win!”

Their screams were deafening. Narses drew his rhompaia and turned to face the gate. Sweaty, anxious, tired-looking palace slaves were waiting to raise the heavy crossbar. Narses nodded, and they shoved it away from the heavy doors so that Narses could push them open.

“Let’s kill them all!” he screamed over his shoulder, where his purple cloak was clasped. “Let’s take our beautiful city back!”

“Narses! Narses!” the men chanted.

Outside the opening doors, he found a scene similar to Galata. The Baths of Zeuxippos on the left, the Augustaion on the right, and the Milion up ahead were all charred black. Broken stones lay scattered on the streets, and rioters were everywhere—hordes of them down by the Milion, and many others lurking among the outer pillars of the Augustaion. They must have heard the soldiers cheering. As soon as the doors opened, rocks flew toward Narses and his men—hurled with arms, whipped with slings. Arrows whispered past, clattered against stone, bounced off armor, sunk into flesh. Bricks and pieces of fallen statues swooped over heads. Anything that could be picked up was thrown. Narses raised his shield only just before slingers’ bullets cracked against it.

The kentarchs’ whistles blew, and the men marched forward, stomping and hooting together as the cornus blasted behind them and the drummers pounded their drums. Skirmishers dashed ahead of the ranks to engage the closest rioters, then retreated to the columns as soon as they were overwhelmed, never turning their backs on their foes. But the Varangians walked forward like statues brought to life. For them, there was no retreat—only glory in Valhalla, only the valkyries descending from glowing clouds on galloping eight-legged horses to carry them to the Halls of the Valorous Slain. Rioters sometimes cut their muscled arms tattooed with Arabic scrawl, but the Varangians kept silent. Their sharpened axes whirled through the air, whistling, humming, and heads toppled to the cobblestones, and bodies fell with red blood bursting like geysers from the neck stumps, the limbs still quivering. But the Varangians only advanced. They refused to retreat, even if surrounded by men with long sharp spears. And so some were brought down like raging bulls in the Hippodrome, pierced by twenty weapons lunging at them from all sides.

Narses was part of the action, too, swinging his two-handed rhompaia—the heavy blade swooped and swooped—his eyes shining so brightly that nobody could even look at him as he drank the souls of his foes to replenish his health, stamina, and farr. Back and forth the blade cut, and rioters fell to their knees, raising their arms, crying out in agony, the blood gushing upward like ocean waves. The legionaries behind him fought over who got to cut off their ears.

But the rioters were far from finished. As Narses and his men advanced to the Milion, the rioters converged on them from three sides—attacking from the Mese ahead and to the left, the Basilica Cistern ahead and to the right, and Hagia Sophia all the way on the right. Thousands at least were packed together. But they lacked armor, weapons, training, and they were tired from two days of destroying their own home. It only took minutes of stabbing into their ranks before they turned and fled, pushing through the crowds behind them, screaming for everyone to get out of their way. Soon there was a stampede. Rioters crushed the breath from each other’s lungs and trampled one another to death. Only at this point were their ranks broken. Aside from a few stragglers who were still mad enough—in every sense of the word—to keep fighting, the rest had run off like cowards, leaving Narses and his men almost completely alone near the Milion.

Soaked in blood once again, Narses stood beneath the arches of the massive tetrapylon, and raised both his arms as if he had just performed in an amazing theatrical production—smiling as if to say: “did I tell you or did I tell you?” The men cheered his name until he raised his right arm for silence.

“You have one day!” he shouted. “One day to take whatever you please from any building in the City save the palace, Hagia Sophia, and the Church of the Holy Apostles. Stay in your squads and take only what you can carry. At sundown, bring it back to the Hippodrome and we’ll divide up the spoils and start counting ears. And another thing—kill anyone who gets in your way. Kill anyone who so much as looks at you in a manner you find distasteful. We don’t need this town. This town needs us. Is that understood?”

They roared that it was in twenty different ways, their response so loud that the pebbles around Narses’s sandals trembled.

Then they fanned out across the City. Red light and black smoke rose once more into the sky as screams echoed from every corner. By the end of it, when the sun slipped beneath the horizon, and the men had piled a mountain of treasure in the Hippodrome, it was found that a legionary named Arsenios Autoreianos had gathered the most ears. One of his buddies roared that this was only because he had managed to find the biggest sack—a joke which made everyone laugh. And so that night, the regular soldier Autoreianos became one of the City’s richest men. While everyone in the Hippodrome was getting drunk, roasting meat, or gambling away their treasure, Narses took Autoreianos aside and advised him to invest his wealth in the new factories he was planning.

“We can expect returns in the range of hundreds of percent,” Narses said. “That means that if you put in one nomisma, three or four will come out. If you put in a thousand nomismas, three or four thousand will come out.”

“Forgive me, highness,” Autoreianos said. “But that sounds like too much to me. Is greed not a cardinal sin?”

Narses noticed that a cross was swinging around Autoreianos’s neck. He loves Jesus and killing, but not investing.

“Of course.” Narses clapped Autoreianos’s back. “But money makes money. And we always donate some profits to churches or charities—to give back to the community, you understand. After all, what are priests for, except forgiving us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us? And what is wealth, except a sign of divine favor?”

“But how can such factories make so much money in the first place? My father is a baker, the government imposes a limit on the prices of bread, olive oil, wine—on the prices of everything except luxury items, to ensure that even the poor can eat. He barely makes more money than he invests in the bakery. It has always been like that for everyone.”

“That is the trick, is it not?” Narses realized he was almost starting to sound like Goudeles, which disgusted him. But he needed Autoreianos’s money to expand production, and the petty Goudeles had never dreamed of what Narses was imagining. There had been so little time to think about any of this over the last few days. Narses had been too busy with the riots in the City, then Makrenos’s funeral, then Galata. He had been depressed, not himself. But now he felt better. He was having ideas again. And that phrase from earlier was reappearing in his mind: the factory barracks.

“There are many regulations like the ones you have mentioned here,” Narses continued. “So many cultural practices and beliefs that limit what we can do. When we abolish price controls, when we bring large numbers of slaves back into the City, and when we find more efficient ways of farming—new ways of forcing people off their land, doing more with less, so that they have no choice but to work for wages in order to earn enough money to pay for food and clothing and other necessities—the profits will change the world.”

“But forgive me, majesty, it sounds so immoral. Driving people off their land to get rich? Is that what Jesus would have done?”

“God wants us to succeed. If the land’s owners aren’t utilizing it to its maximum potential, it’s up to us to develop it.”

“That sounds like covetousness to me, majesty.”

“Did you not just spend the day plundering the City?” Narses blurted in frustration. “Did you not kill more rioters than anyone else?”

Autoreianos responded to these questions with a surprising strength and rapidity. “The rioters went against God’s will. It is literal sacrilege to go against the emperor. You are the representative of God, above even the holy patriarch. To question you is to question God. It is madness.”

“Indeed,” Narses said. “The choice is yours. You must only remember that you need to make your money work for you. If you do not invest it, if you allow yourself to lose it bit by bit, one day it will all be gone. You will be back where you started. But if you invest it in profitable enterprise, and keep reinvesting your profits, there will be no limit to where you can go. That pile of treasure you won can grow taller and wider than Hagia Sophia.”

Autoreianos nodded and smiled. “I’ll think about it, majesty. Thank you for your advice.”

I’ve lost him, Narses thought. I’ll have to kill him and take his money. He just said he can’t defy the emperor…I should just order him to give it to me. But what would the men say?

“The pleasure is mine,” he told Autoreianos. “Enjoy your evening.”

Soon Narses left the party, allowing the men to enjoy themselves without having to worry about offending him. He had been a teetotaler and a vegetarian since that terrible coronation dinner several months ago. Narses was actually an accomplished conversationalist. He could entertain people at dinner for hours, he just never had the chance to show everyone this talent. He’d been too busy for the last year struggling to save the empire.

Before long, his drunken soldiery were abed. Narses’s last act, before bedtime, was to order the fleet back to its berths in the Harbor of Eleutherios, with two ships left to patrol the Bosporos. There was no sense leaving them all out there where a storm could destroy them at any time. Their crews needed rest, too.

In the morning, when he woke up in his apartment, he felt so desperately alone that the emotion almost suffocated him. No one cared about him, not since Makrenos had died. They feared him, yes, and they appreciated the money he brought their way, but that was it. Who would genuinely enjoy his company? He was not a statue, not a puppet, not a bronze contrivance powered by steam, he was a man, he needed friends, love, conversation, compassion. For so long, ever since all these troubles had started when he had captured Herakleia near that village, what was it called, Leandros—ever since then, he had been acting like a machine, one that brought death and destruction to all who challenged the empire. It had been necessary. A dirty job that someone needed to do. Hard times bred hard men. But it was impossible to go on like this forever. Sometimes he felt like he couldn’t breathe.

But the thought of Herakleia relieved the tension, at least for now. Lying on the floor, he laughed at the thought of her. Doubtless she had perished of hunger, cold, or disease back in Trebizond. A miserable way to go, but she had deserved worse, for all the good men who were dead because of her. Whole battalions had been wiped out thanks to that animalistic woman, who had started her little rebellion in the first place due to her boredom in the palace. Narses should have decapitated her and left her for the crows. No punishment was too severe for Herakleia. He should have cut her up into a thousand pieces, keeping her alive as long as possible. How funny would that have been, Herakleia without arms or legs? But she was still dead, and that was a good thing. He had killed them all. He was the slayer of all criminals, both within and without Konstantinopolis. No one had heard anything from them since. The criminals were destroyed, Nikephoros’s dream achieved, Narses’s new movement rising from the ashes. Nobody talked about simplistic ideas like rich versus poor anymore. Now everything was about the new spirit inspiring the Roman people, uniting them as one. They would take on the world and rebuild the empire.

Paul had even sent scouts to check Trebizond, just to be sure. And according to Paul, they reported that it was deserted and burned out. Soon it would be repopulated. Narses would send colonists. That city’s position was too strategic to ignore, it lay at a confluence of how many different trade routes? Roses would blossom along those broken walls of stone, one day soon.

But that lay in the future. For now, there was Narses’s loneliness to deal with. He could think of no one who might alleviate it save Erythro. He sent for her. It took Konstantinos an hour to ride back and forth to Blachernae Palace. The slave returned only to report that Erythro was ill.

“She must be terribly sick,” he said to Konstantinos, who was tired from riding across the City. “We ought to check on her ourselves to make sure she’s alright.”

“Yes, aphéntēs.”

“Shut up,” Narses said. “Stop talking to me.”

The slave bowed in silence.

After Konstantinos and Oromazdes dressed Narses, he walked through the palace complex to the imperial stables, found a good strong white courser, and galloped to Blachernae Palace, surrounded by dozens of heavily armed bodyguards who were similarly mounted, passing along the abandoned Mese Ordos, which was still strewn with dead bodies, broken stone, and shattered wood. The signal tower behind him at the palace was busy for some reason, but he ignored it.

Probably nothing.

Before long, Narses had ascended the Sixth Hill, and faced Blachernae’s tall, strong walls of geometric marble and brick. He stopped before the palace’s four-pillared gate, his companions shouting for the slaves inside to open the doors in the name of the emperor.