As the sun shone over the horizon, Diaresso and Gontran unfurled the Paralos’s sails, and Alexios and Herakleia turned the ship away from Konstantinopolis, leaving the dark figure raging on the mole behind them, and completing their previous quest. Herakleia instructed her rescuers to travel north to the Pontic Sea, then to turn east along the coast until they reached the city of Trebizond, where they would arrive in a few days if the wind held. The voice announced that traveling to Trebizond was their new quest. This was the uprising’s capital—although who could say how long the secret would last? Gontran asked Herakleia if she had told the Romans, and she answered that she would die before betraying her comrades.

“Sometimes it isn’t a matter of what you want,” Gontran said. “If they torture you enough…”

“Consciously I couldn’t remember that Trebizond was our base,” Herakleia said.

“Convenient,” Gontran said as he eyed the passing landscape. “Still seems like they’re going to figure things out sooner or later.”

“It’s true. We can’t run forever. Eventually, we have to fight.”

Gontran bowed and smiled. “After you, your highness.”

As the Paralos sailed up the Bosporos, the towns studding either coastline signaled each other with fire. The fugitives also spotted horsemen chasing them along the roads that rose and fell with the hills. Konstantinopolis sent ships to pursue the Paralos, but the dromon was too far ahead and also unusually fast. The crews in the other galleys rowed hard for hours before they gave up and let their sails do all the work.

Once the immediate danger had passed, Alexios collapsed, his stamina exhausted from using the farr. With his great strength, Diaresso kept the steering oars steady while Gontran carried Alexios down into the hold.

“So it turns out you’re pretty good in a fight,” Gontran said as he helped Alexios into a hammock.

“Water,” Alexios gasped.

“Water—yeah, right.” Gontran searched the hold for a jar, a flask, an amphora—anything that held fresh water. Many containers reeked of wine or olive oil, but eventually he found one with fresh water inside and brought it to Alexios. Gontran thought the ship should be inventoried. They could be here for awhile, especially if Herakleia failed to come through with the reward. It was also a fast ship, and well-built. Maybe Gontran could take it after dropping off Herakleia in Trebizond and collecting his reward.

Alexios downed all the water in the flask, then asked for more, and Gontran brought it. Soon the boy gasped for food. Gontran brought him a stale loaf of bread and a wedge of cheese. These the boy also devoured.

“Moving around really takes it out of you, huh?” Gontran said.

Alexios nodded, too busy eating to speak.

“I’ve never seen someone move like that,” Gontran said.

As Alexios continued stuffing food into his mouth, he pulled something from his pocket—a paper booklet—and handed it to Gontran. Page after page of martial arts diagrams and Seran writing lay inside. Thanks to all his travels, Gontran had learned to read a little of the text the scholars, merchants, and fortunetellers there used, but his education skill was too low to understand more than the basics. He made out the number three here, since that was just a trio of horizontal lines; elsewhere was the word for “person,” which looked like an upside-down letter V. He returned the booklet to Alexios, who by then had finished eating. The boy nodded his thanks, stuffed the booklet in his pocket, lay back, and fell asleep.

Gontran watched him for a moment, thinking of how young Alexios looked sleeping like that. Then he climbed the ladder to the deck, where Herakleia was helping Diaresso with the steering oars, though the man from Tomboutou was doing most of the work. Since it was now midmorning, ships crowded the Bosporos, and although the Paralos crew was exhausted, they worked together to avoid collisions. Gontran himself was now ready to pass out, but he offered to take over for Herakleia. It was clearer now in the daylight just how badly wounded she was. The Romans had burned, beaten, and cut every inch of her.

She nodded and descended belowdecks, returning soon after with more of the ship’s victuals for Gontran and Diaresso. All three ate together, though this was awkward because neither merchant could sit, which meant that Herakleia needed to hand them their food.

At the same time, the crews of passing ships were bowing to them, since they recognized that the Paralos was a Roman naval vessel. (The dragon-shaped naphtha spout overhanging the bow was a good hint.) Yet even from a distance the crews on the other ships looked confused as they examined the Paralos. They must have been wondering why the skeleton crew lacked the white tunics of Roman sailors, and why no Roman soldiers were visible. Still, none of the other ships moved to stop the Paralos.

Once Gontran had a little food and wine in his stomach, he asked Herakleia if she felt better. She nodded. The bruises and cuts covering her body were still shocking enough to disturb Gontran, even though, as a merchant, his empathy skill was low.

He cleared his throat. “Is there anything—”

“No,” she said.

Gontran shrugged. Although he had failed to connect with Herakleia, his attempt to understand how someone else felt—plus his nursing of Alexios—nonetheless added some XP to his empathy skill (Beginner 2/10, XP 25/100). To gain so much XP at once almost made him shiver with excitement. It was easy enough to level up when your initial level was so low, but then as your knowledge grew it became harder to avoid plateauing or even regressing. You needed to ask Masters for advice, and they were difficult to find, especially for a skill like empathy. It had plenty of applications when it came to buying or selling or even fighting wars—since you needed to understand what your enemies or competitors believed—but it could also make you feel crazy in an exploitative society. Every skill was a double-edged sword.

For a moment, he considered the possibility that life might be about more than buying and selling things and making money. Then he shook his head.

Nah.

Nonetheless, ruminating like this also added a little XP to Gontran’s intelligence skill (5/10 Intermediate, XP 5/100). He glanced at Diaresso, then he turned back to Herakleia.

“Well,” he said, “I should probably tell you about the reward.”

Diaresso looked up, eyeing them as he chewed his bread and cheese.

“A reward?” Herakleia said.

“Yeah,” Gontran said. “A big one. We were promised a reward for freeing you.”

“Who promised you this?”

“Dionysios,” Gontran said. “The older guy who didn’t make it.”

“Dionysios,” she said. “A comrade in our struggle. He fought alongside my father in the Dynastic Wars. I don’t think you know how devastating his loss is.”

“Honestly I’m not interested in this little revolt of yours,” Gontran said. “My partner and I need to get paid.”

She watched him. “Nothing matters to you but money.”

Gontran shrugged. “Money makes the world go round, sis. We risked our necks for you back there.”

“For your money,” Diaresso said.

“But you have no interest in joining the uprising,” she said. “You’d rather take bread from the mouths of children.”

Squinting, Gontran surveyed the gleaming Bosporos, still full of passing ships, its shores lined with hills, forests, towns, farmland.

Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit.

“I don’t know how you do it.” He turned back to her. “You don’t just have the Romans to worry about. There’s Saracens everywhere these days. Christians like us are fair game. They’ll enslave us without even hesitating. And then up in Trebizond, you have to deal with Iberians and Armenians.”

“Armenians are by far the worst,” Diaresso said. “A terrible people, deceitful and vile. When they are obscure, they are vile, but when they are famous, they are even more vile, and when they become rich and famous, they are like vileness heaped upon vileness. Armenians are truly vile.”

Everyone stared at Diaresso for a moment.

“Where the hell did that come from?” Gontran said. “I didn’t know you hated Armenians so much. When have you even interacted with Armenians?”

“They have proven troublesome in the past.”

“That’s kind of racist.”

“What does that word mean?” Diaresso said.

“Forget it. Just remember: I’m sure they aren’t all bad.”

“Only the ones I have met,” Diaresso said.

“Do me a favor and don’t talk like that anymore,” Gontran said. “Or else you’ll need to find yourself another business partner.”

“At this point, anyone else would be better,” Diaresso murmured.

“What was that?” Gontran said.

“It was nothing,” Diaresso said.

“Being among so many different people far from the capital will give us a good opportunity for diplomacy,” Herakleia said. “That’s something we have to be good at, since we’re surrounded by powerful people.”

“It’s a good opportunity to get killed,” Gontran said. “I mean, I could understand if you were fighting for the throne. But making the poor fight the rich? You might as well tell them to fight the ocean, or the wind. People have always been rich and poor. Some things may change, but that never will.”

“You are mistaken, giaour,” Diaresso said. “Where I come from in Tomboutou, there are many different kinds of societies. Sometimes there are great empires, like here, where everyone is a farmer, and the rich drain the blood of the poor. But there are the little people who live deep in the southern forests, and also Fulaw herdsmen in the Sahel. Those people only own their flocks and herds, working only for themselves. Hiring people to grow private property they do not care for. The concept is but a hindrance. They likewise think themselves the most beautiful people on Earth.”

Gontran ignored him and continued arguing with Herakleia.

“Even if you won,” Gontran said, “the same old hierarchies would just reassert themselves. You’d just have a whole new group of rich and powerful people stealing from everyone else. Nothing would change. All you’d have is a lot of dead people for nothing. Revolutions always decay or destroy themselves in the end. It’s pointless.”

“You sound like you’ve studied a lot of history,” she said ironically.

“Hey, listen, I’ve been all over the world, I know a bunch of different languages, and I also know how to read and write.”

“Go you.”

“I once got a chance to have a look at the Baghdad library while I was in between gigs. They have plenty of Greek and Latin books there. I read plenty of that stuff, so I’m not just pulling these opinions out of my ass. I spent a lot of time reading about Julius Caesar, actually. He was a lot like you—he said he was fighting for the people. But really, all he wanted was power for himself. He was just using the people for his own ends. After he became dictator, a bunch of senators who wanted to restore liberty and protect the Roman constitution assassinated him.”

“Tell me,” Herakleia said. “Who do you think wrote those histories?”

“Historians,” Gontran said. “Plutarch. Cicero. Those are the guys. Cicero is famous all over Europe because he wrote so well—”

“You misunderstand.” Herakleia shook her head. “I meant what kind of people write history?”

“What are you saying? That only rich people write history books? That it’s all just a big conspiracy, and I can’t trust anything I’ve read?”

“Do you really think that rich historians are sympathetic to the poor, especially when the poor band together to destroy the rich?”

Gontran laughed. “You’re ridiculous. You’re like a conspiracy theorist or a religious fanatic. Or a child. There are shades of gray. It’s not just the rich versus the poor. What a simplistic way of viewing the world.”

“Alright, explain it to me. How does society work, exactly, if it isn’t based on power?—on who has power, and who doesn’t?”

Gontran looked away, then looked back, searching for an answer. A woman speaking like this confused, angered, and frustrated him. No one had ever talked so boldly in his presence. Although he hated Chlotar the landlord back in Metz and especially his bailiff, Sigibert—who oversaw the peasants while they did their corvée labor—and although he also hated the educated priests and monks and the nobles who trampled with their horses any serfs who failed to clear the road at their approach, Gontran always assumed that nothing could be done about them. Nothing had or would ever change. Everything had always been like this and always would be. Even animals had their own hierarchies, and preyed upon one another, so it was normal for people to do the same. All you could do was survive within the system.

“There have been plenty of uprisings like yours,” he said to Herakleia. “Like Spartacus. He had his little slave revolt, and look what happened. He and all his men got crucified. Literally.”

“He didn’t have Mazdak,” Herakleia said.

Gontran laughed. “Mazdak this, Mazdak that. Who cares? It’s just a religion with a bunch of outdated ideas that have been proven wrong a thousand times.”

“Have you ever read Mazdak?”

“Actually, yeah, I did read a little Mazdak, now that you mention it. I thought it was dry, boring, and complicated. It had no connection at all to my life or the real world. There were a lot of words I didn’t understand. It’s been discredited, too. I didn’t get it at all.”

“So it must be useless,” Herakleia said. “Because you didn’t understand it. Not being a Mazdakist is the same as misunderstanding Mazdakism. To be a Mazdakist is to understand Mazdakism.”

“You know what?” Gontran said. “I’m done with this conversation. Thanks for bringing us breakfast, but I think Diaresso and I can take it from here. You’re honestly kind of a know-it-all. You could use a little more humility.”

Herakleia nodded. “Very well. You and your partner will be compensated adequately for your troubles. Then you can continue on your way to wherever fortune takes you. Can I just ask—how did you end up in this situation in the first place? You must have known that you were taking quite a risk in rescuing me, and all without any kind of guarantee that you would be paid.”

Diaresso opened his mouth to speak. “We were attacked by—”

“Nothing happened.” Gontran glared at Diaresso. “Everything was fine. We helped the boy and his unfortunate teacher because we like them.”

“Sounds unusual for someone who doesn’t care about anything but his bottom line,” Herakleia said.

Gontran eyed her, but said nothing. Much as she annoyed him, he thought she might weasel out of the reward, especially once she was reunited with this supposed uprising of hers. Then what would she do? Her friends would argue that Gontran would betray them to the Romans for a sack of gold. But would her friends harm someone who had risked his life to spring their leader out of prison?

Herakleia returned to the hold, then brought up feeding bags stuffed with oats for the horses. They were also thirsty, and needed buckets of water, which she likewise took care of. For a princess, she had little interest in shirking manual labor. Once she had a moment to herself, she even changed out of her filthy robes belowdecks, donning a sailor’s plain tunic and strapping a sword to her side. If she’d had a beard and deepened her voice a little, she could have passed as a man. For a moment Gontran thought that she was the master of two worlds—as a beautiful, clever woman and a handsome, industrious man. Then he rebuked himself for thinking anything positive about a Mazdakist.

Maybe this one’s bearable, he thought. It’s just the rest that are screwed up.

Once Herakleia had finished feeding and watering the horses, she offered to take over steering for Diaresso and Gontran, but they told her this was man’s work, and that they could barely handle it themselves. This remark infuriated her, however, and she insisted in harsher tones that they rest belowdecks.

“I suppose there’s no use in hiding it or pretending otherwise,” she said. “I may be referred to as a princess in Rome, but I’m not called that in the uprising. The workers and peasants voted that I should be called something else.”

“What is it that they call you?” Diaresso said.

“Her Annoyingness,” Gontran said.

“Strategos,” she said. “It means ‘general.’”

“I know what it means.” Gontran bowed. “Strategos. But shouldn’t it be ‘stratega’ or ‘strategeia’ or something, since you’re a woman?”

“As the officer in command, I’m ordering you both to rest immediately,” she said. “Your watch will begin at sundown.”

Gontran was tempted to continue arguing with her, but he had spent the entire night adventuring, and his stamina was so low he was in danger of collapse. Before he could answer, however, Diaresso spoke.

“Show us that you can handle this.” Diaresso nodded to the oars. “Then we will let you take over.”

He and Gontran stepped aside and allowed Herakleia to hold the oars with her wounded hands. Standing upon the deck, she gazed forward and rowed the ship to port to avoid a dhow sailing toward them. The dhow turned out to be crewed by Arabs robed in white. Aside from avoiding the Paralos, they averted their gazes from the dromon’s crew. But Herakleia, for all her apparent physical weaknesses, had kept from crashing.

Diaresso and Gontran once more exchanged looks.

“Seems good enough to me,” Gontran said.

“Tell us if you require assistance,” Diaresso said.

“I’ll see you in the evening,” Herakleia said.

“Do you really think you can stay here by yourself for that long?” Gontran said.

“They kept me in that pit for days,” Herakleia said. “Maybe it was a week or two. I don’t know how long I was down there. I’m just so glad to be out here now, with the wind and the sea…”

“Alright,” Gontran said. “Just don’t get us killed.”

She met his eyes. “I won’t.”