Who was she? Where was she? When was she?
She had forgotten everything. They had burned and beaten and drowned everything out of her. A voice said that her low health was affecting her stamina. Chained up in the dark, every muscle felt torn. Her bones had been bent nearly to the breaking point. Her skin was ripped and bruised. She had gotten used to the smell of her own blood, and her own cooking flesh.
All was dark and silent. This was the hole. The pit. What they called solitary confinement in the old world. Sometimes boots clopped on polished stone upstairs, but mostly she was alone. Such was her loneliness, in fact, that she looked forward to meeting her torturers. The door would clank open, blinding light would pour down the wet uneven stairwell, and—grunting—they would haul her up to the room, strap her down, and resume their questioning. She was now incapable of speech, but that didn’t stop them.
Then, one night, due to their incompetence, they let her go. One of the guards had unchained her in the dungeon and left the door slightly ajar before walking away. Herakleia, shocked, crawled up the dim stairs—she was too weak to stand—and slithered like a worm along the parquet flooring outside, wincing from the pain of her injuries. For the first time in days, weeks, who could even say how long, she felt the cool night air on her face, saw the stars shining in the night above the fragrant jasmine in the garden. Guards walked past, even sometimes seemed to look straight at her, but she hid in the shadows pooling where the walls met the floor, and no one saw. The fools, they never thought to look in those places, they never expected to see a human worm hiding there.
It took hours to navigate the palace, climbing stairs up and down, moving through doorways and along corridors and chambers, but she had grown up in this place, and knew how to get to the exit even in the dark. She was getting closer. She was really going to do this. Every door yielded to her hands. It was a miracle. When she reached her friends—when she returned to the uprising, and safety—she was going to have such a story to tell them. No one would believe it. They would laugh and drink together, and say a toast to the foolish Roman guard who forgot to lock the door.
All she needed to do now was to get across the final courtyard that led to the Chalkē Gate. Guards, she knew, were always on the other side of that gate facing the Milion Square, but maybe she’d be able to slip into the crowds, or act like one of the mutilated beggars who could often be found there. After all, she probably looked even worse than they did.
The problem was that the courtyard was open space. She would be completely exposed. There was nowhere to hide—no fountains, potted plants, or benches. No matter. It was the middle of the night, and it had taken hours to get here. All the activity in the palace had died away. Everything was almost completely quiet. The palace seemed to rumble with the deep sleep of the imperials, eunuchs, and courtesans inside. It must have been close to dawn. At this point even the most loyal guards on the night watch were struggling to keep their stinging eyelids open.
Now or never.
She crawled across the courtyard as quickly as she could, biting her lip to keep from screaming in pain. They had burned and bruised almost every part of her body, focusing on the areas people rarely saw—her chest, back, and upper arms and legs. That way, when they finally burned her to death in the Hippodrome, no one would know that she had been tortured. But the most insidious thing about it was how they were always pretending to be on her side. All Paul Katena ever talked about was how much he was trying to help her. “We just have to get back to normal,” he kept saying. “Then you’ll be fine. We want our good old Princess Herakleia back to her happy regular self.” He pretended to be her friend, even went easy on her—brought her gourmet food from the emperor’s kitchen, cool sweet water, and even good wine—in response to the slightest cooperation from Herakleia. The whole thing made her feel like she truly was as insane as Paul claimed. She had begun to consider the possibility that he was right. What if the uprising really was just a bunch of criminals who had tricked her? What if she really was unhinged, and had just lost touch with reality?
But then, when he left her alone in the dungeon, the memories returned. She had seen so many things in the countryside that were unbelievable to her. People starving because they didn’t have enough money. People dying because they didn’t have money for medicine. Entire towns and cities and nations put to the sword. Children orphaned, executed, enslaved, or turned into child soldiers. There was no justification for any of this—save the greed of the Roman ruling class, and the empire of slavery and death they had created in order to pay for an orgiastic banquet that had lasted a thousand years.
Honestly, Herakleia would have loved to live in the palatial comfort from her old life, reading, debating, playing with friends, gossiping, learning. But it was impossible to go back. She had seen too much with her own eyes.
You can’t resist a truth you discover for yourself.
Now she was returning to the world. She was so close, she was almost laughing. Tears of joy were burning behind her eyes. A lightness was in her chest. She was reaching for the door. On the other side, she could hear the activity in the Milion Square. It was busy even in the middle of the night. Konstantinopolis was the original city that never slept, the New York before New York was even a dream—
A firm hand pressed down on her shoulder.
“Princess!” Paul Katena said. “You weren’t planning to leave us, were you?”
Mouth agape, she turned back and looked at him. He was smiling at her.
“Come, come, we were getting so close!” Paul gently picked her up and carried her back to the palace. “You and me were making so much progress! The cure indeed seemed to be in sight! It hurts my feelings that you would try to run off like this! I thought we were friends—that even, perhaps, when this terrible ordeal is over, and the both of us emerge on the other side stronger than ever, we could even get together sometimes for fun! After all, we have so much to learn from each other!”
Hope, Herakleia thought, as Paul brought her back to the dungeon. Hope is the greatest torture.
She cried when he chained her back up in the dark dungeon and kissed her cheek. Paul cried, too.
“We’re going to make it.” His face flickered in the light of the torch he was holding. “You can do this. I know you can. I know you have it in you. And believe me…your failure is also my failure. If you aren’t making it, it’s because I’m not pushing you hard enough. We both have to work harder. If we work hard and smart, there’s nothing we can’t do together. If we work as a team, there’s nothing we can’t accomplish. Work will set us free. I know it will.”
He kissed her cheek once more, wished her well, and then walked back up the stairs, taking the torch with him. The door locked behind him, plunging her once more into a darkness so profound, she was unable to see her hand in front of her face.
She cried for a long time afterward. None of Paul’s instruments of torture had hurt as much as getting close enough to touch the Chalkē Gate. She had been so close. But soon she realized that the entire experience had been engineered. Paul had set her free on purpose—just to hurt her. Just to get that much closer to breaking her.
Time passed. Sometimes it seemed like they had forgotten her. Like the days themselves had forgotten her. Getting so close to freedom, she realized, was a torture, but so was boredom. It devoured her from the inside. She had recalled every memory, had gone over every thought, and was tired of herself—desperate to be anyone or anywhere else. In the old world, she had once heard prison described as like being trapped at the DMV, but for years. Even if you could look at your phone while you were waiting at the DMV, you’d still end up dying of boredom. That was what it was like here. Boredom really could kill you. You would go insane just to relieve the boredom. You would say: this is not a chain, it’s a bracelet. This is not a dungeon—it’s my palace. This is not darkness—it’s the light. I’m not in prison—I’m bounding over the green hills. I’m in Elysium. Beautiful people are hand-feeding me grapes. I’m not hungry anymore. It’s warm and sunny.
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Some time later, who could even say how long, she sensed that things had been better in the past. Somehow she had allowed herself to be brought here. Her self-hatred therefore grew more profound. All she could think about was how she despised whoever she had once been. At times she even cheered on her torturers, thinking she deserved worse treatment than what they gave her. Empathy she only felt for them. In all seriousness she was sorry to exhaust and exasperate them.
At some point a familiar person came to the room and said they would soon cease wasting so much time and money on her—unless she gave them what they wanted. He paused to let her speak, but she could hardly look at him, let alone understand his words.
If she refused to cooperate—he continued—they would burn her in the Hippodrome. They would purge her sins in flames. Everyone would see her death agonies; everyone would know. The entire city would clap, laugh, and cheer. Then they would move on to their next entertainments: acrobats, jugglers, horse races, animal fights.
What did she care? The idea of being free was all that sustained her. Certainly the fire would hurt, but she was so weak she would pass out as the flames seared her feet and legs, snapping at her flesh and sparkling as the whirling fumes choked her like the coils of a vast serpent. Then she would be free. The door to the Chalkē Gate would open.
The man left. Her torturers returned her to the darkness, chaining her to the bricks.
She continued thinking along her previous train of thought. After death, she could rest from torture, and from herself. This thought alone gave her hope. Nothingness awaited her—she would cease to exist—but she was already more than halfway there anyway. Little of her remained to be destroyed.
To be left here forever, given food and water so that she would stay alive for many years, decaying into a toothless skeleton clothed with a thin layer of skin—that would be worse.
Something clanked and clattered upstairs, and the heavy wooden door swung open and closed again. Was it already time? Whispering and hesitant footsteps came from the stairs. Why had her torturers forgotten their torches?
Metal scraped metal, and a dim light glowed from a long straight blade.
“Jesus,” an old bearded man whispered, looking away and covering his face with his spare hand. He was the one holding the blade.
“Oh my god,” a handsome youth said, keeping his voice low. “I can’t believe they did this.”
She could hardly bring herself to meet their eyes.
“Princess Herakleia,” the youth said. “We’re here to free you.”
Were they speaking to her? Was this another trick?
“She’s really fucked up,” the old man said.
“I can see that!” the youth answered. “We’re going to have to carry her out of here.”
“That’s your job,” the old man said. “I’ll keep these fuckers from killing us on our way out.”
“That’s probably the best we can do.” The youth turned to her. “Listen. I’m Alexios. This is Dionysios. We’re going to get you out of here. Are you ready?”
What were they saying?
“She’s too fucked up,” the one called Dionysios said. “Let’s just do it.”
The youth named Alexios nodded. “Alright.”
Dionysios’s blade brightened, and for the first time Herakleia—if that was her name—could see all the wet brick walls in her tiny chamber. The blade burst through her shackles, and she fell into the darkness, but Alexios caught her before she struck the filthy bricks.
“I’ve got you.” He picked her up. “Let’s go.”
“No,” she said.
“What was that?”
“Let me stay,” she said, though she had no idea how she could speak, nor even if the voice was hers.
“You hear that?” Alexios said to Dionysios. “She wants to stay.”
“Sometimes people don’t know what’s good for them,” Dionysios said. “She’s just a little fucked up, that’s all. She’ll feel better soon.”
“I don’t like forcing people to do things they don’t want to do, Dionysios.”
“Too fucking bad, because the bad guys don’t give a shit what you want, and if we’re going to make an omelet, we have to break a few eggs, you know?”
“Yeah, but—”
“Let’s discuss moral philosophy later. First we need to get the fuck out of here—alive.”
Alexios sighed. “Alright.”
Herakleia wanted to fight, but she lacked the strength to even raise her head. Alexios at this point had hauled her over his shoulder and was carrying her up the stairs. They found the door locked, however.
“It locks automatically?” Alexios said. “In medieval times? How does that work?”
“Shut up and get out of the way,” Dionysios said.
Alexios stepped back down into the darkness. This made Herakleia’s heart surge with fear. Something deep inside her wanted more than anything to be free. That part of her had been suppressed; it had been too painful to acknowledge her humanity—her desire to escape—but now it was returning.
They were right. She was named Herakleia Angela. This was the Great Palace. She had lived here all her life. Emperor Nikephoros and Paul the Chain had been torturing her for days.
They would die for this. When she returned at the head of her armies, she would tear this palace down brick by brick. Only the emperor and his friends would be imprisoned. She would set everyone else free. So long as anyone was in prison, it was impossible for her to be free.
Dionysios swung his shining sword through the gap between the door and the wall. Sparks exploded into the stairwell, and the sword brightened further. Some sparks singed the old man’s beard, and he smothered them before his hair caught fire. But the blade had done its work: he pushed the heavy creaking door open into the hallway with the parquet flooring. Then he listened. The sword was loud, but no one had heard.
Dionysios crept into darkness lit by the stars and moon shining through the windows. Alexios followed, still carrying Herakleia. A soldier was lying against the wall beside the door; this man must have been guarding her. But why was he just lying there? Had he fallen asleep?
The two men ran along corridors, down stairways, past chapels, through courtyards lined with arcades. Herakleia could hardly keep track of their location, and the men needed to double back twice. Several times they also hid in the shadows when an excubitor passed clutching a torch. These guards were always so tired they were almost sleepwalking, so even people with low stealth skills could evade them. Still, Herakleia was reminded too much of her last escape attempt, and was terrified that Paul the Chain was once again setting her up for failure.
No torture like hope.
“There it is,” Dionysios whispered, gesturing to a wall at the end of the gardens. “That’s it. You can see the Hippodrome behind it. We’re almost there.”
Herakleia looked up. A vast dark shape flickering with fire was blocking the sky of stars. But was it the Hippodrome?
Bells were ringing behind them, and people were shouting. Someone must have discovered she was missing.
Then a man stepped in front of the wall. Dionysios and Alexios stopped.
“Oh, fuck,” Dionysios said.
Herakleia gasped. The man wore such dark clothing he was more like a shadow than a person. He was holding a long thin sword just like Dionysios’s—and it, too, shone in the dark.
“I’ll handle this,” Dionysios said. “You aren’t strong enough to take him, Alexios. Both of you need to get out of here.”
Alexios turned. “Dionysios—”
“For once in your life, just shut the fuck up and do what you’re told,” Dionysios said. “I’ll take out the trash—then I’ll be right with you.”
“Do you want us to wait?”
Dionysios kept his eyes on the shadow. “You’d better not.”
“Be careful,” Alexios said.
“I know what I’m doing,” Dionysios said.
Alexios took a deep breath, then ran to the wall—away from the dark man—and leaped to the top, alighting on the wall itself. The wind rushed past Herakleia’s face, and her heart throbbed inside her. He must have leaped twenty feet straight into the air. How was that possible?
“Huh,” Alexios said. “Glad that jump worked out. Wasn’t totally sure I could do that.”
Down in the Milion Square, almost everyone was gone—except for a couple of men who were with four horses. Alexios whispered for them to wait. Then, still holding Herakleia close, he turned to watch Dionysios fight the shadow in the garden.