When Herakleia awoke, she thought she was still locked in the Great Palace dungeon. The darkness was thick as ink, and planks pressed against her from all sides. Seawater soaked her clothes, and splashing sounded through the wooden boards. A man snoring nearby groaned in his sleep. It was Gontran.

Memory returned. They had rescued her from the palace, stolen the armada’s fastest ship, and sailed into the Pontic Sea—where the Romans had caught them. Now the fugitives were hiding under the floor belowdecks.

A growing pressure in her bladder drew her attention. She must have been sleeping for a long time because she needed to pee. But where was she supposed to go?

As she was trying to figure out what to do, men shouted, and footsteps pounded the deck. Seagulls were laughing in the sky beyond Herakleia’s private universe of wood-enclosed darkness. Had the Paralos returned to Konstantinopolis? In the capital, bells were always ringing in the Latin churches, rattling wooden semantrons marked every hour, and you could hear the Hippodrome crowds across the Propontis. Ships and people should have been everywhere, too, with that distinct fish reek mixed with cinnamon and incense choking the air. Konstantinopolitans liked to say that somebody was always out there. People walked the streets every moment of every day. No matter what, you were never alone in Konstantinopolis.

It was too quiet here, wherever here was. So the Paralos must have been somewhere else. But where would the Romans have taken them? Maybe to the closest garrison. That probably meant Sinope, a small city on Paphlagonia’s northern coast.

The hull bumped something—a pier?—and the deck shook so hard she almost yelped. Then men were laughing and climbing off the deck with the horses; the whole ship shifted with their weight. Talking as they walked away, the Roman voices and clopping hooves faded into the distance. Then all was silent.

By the Grace of God, the Romans had moored the Paralos and departed. Still, some soldiers must have been left behind. Regardless, Herakleia decided to look around. If the coast was clear, she would rouse her friends. If not…

Was she even armed? She searched her wet sailor’s tunic, and her hand brushed past a hilt. This jogged her memory. At some point she had strapped a sword to her side. That was all. Herakleia needed this to guard against the Romans as well as her rescuers. She knew almost nothing about Gontran, Diaresso, or Alexios, but she was no fool. Anything could happen to women who traveled alone. They might even betray her to the Romans. Some fates were worse than death.

She would never go back to the palace, not unless she was at the head of an army. Paul the Chain, General Narses, and Emperor Nikephoros had tortured her for days. The experience was so traumatic she had trouble recalling it, yet the rage, sadness, and helplessness from that time made her tremble.

No one will torture me again.

In the dungeon she had blamed herself for her capture, but with the clarity brought from rest she realized now that it was not her fault. A wave of sudden confusion had caused her capture; a demon had possessed her while she was riding a horse. This demon—a young male Aethiop with the odd name of “Jackson”—still spoke like an actor bestriding the stage of her mind, his voice echoing from the theater’s acoustic walls, interrupting her thoughts. Did her body even belong to her?

More memory flashed in her consciousness. Paul the Chain was rending her body and snapping her bones. A blinding bright fire poker seared her skin. Sharp metal hooks gleamed in the flames. She screamed for so long that her voice detached itself and floated in the air like a ghost.

If I can just hold on for five more minutes, she had thought, they’ll stop. Then I’ll be alright.

She had repeated this thought for minutes, hours, days.

Now she was in the darkness under the ship’s hold, shivering as memory seized her. George Vatatzes was dead. Struck by an arrow, falling from his horse, he gasped and reached out for her, then slammed onto the earth. Her friend—the man with whom she had adventured across half the world and back again—was taken in a moment of confusion.

But now her thoughts shifted back. Could she blame random confusion or demonic possession for her mistakes? That was a cop-out. In reality, Herakleia had killed Vatatzes. It was her own negligence; she was too weak. What the priests and nobles and even her own mother Prokopia had said a million times was true: she belonged in the palace. There she should have lived in her future husband’s shadow, taking his orders, scrubbing his body, bearing his children. But instead she had pretended to be a man, and now George Vatatzes was dead. If she had just accepted who she was…

“No!” she growled, shoving the floorboard into the darkness.

She stopped, realized that she had exposed herself, then retreated to her alcove, terrified of being discovered. Aside from the sleeping fugitives, however, no one had noticed. Was it safe?

Herakleia hauled herself onto the floor, crept past the swaying hammocks, and climbed the ladder to the deck. Here she checked to ensure that she was alone, and noted the black city buildings obscuring the stars. This city was too small to be Konstantinopolis.

Awkwardly climbing onto the deck’s edge—the opposite side from the pier to which they were docked—she squatted while balancing herself with one hand, almost like a bird. Then she pissed straight into the sea. It was loud. She winced and gritted her teeth, silently pleading with the Virgin to block the ears of anyone who might have been nearby.

When she had finished, she checked again to ensure that no one was around. Then she returned belowdecks and hunted for food, pulling a loaf of bread from a sack and a hunk of cheese from a wooden container she found by one of the hammocks. She devoured this. Although it was too dangerous to drink alcohol, to celebrate this minor victory she allowed herself a mouthful of sweet wine from a flask left under the same hammock. Her stamina was replenished, but her intellect slightly decreased.

Everything’s going to be alright, she told herself, peering into the dark with her flashing eyes. One way or the other.

Vatatzes was falling from his horse with an arrow in his back. He was reaching out, his long black hair was floating in the sunlight as gleaming pine needles swept past him.

With tears burning her eyes she commended his soul to God. Then she spilled wine from the flask onto the floor.

“What the fuck?” a muffled voice shouted from under the floorboards. It was Gontran.

“Hey,” he said a moment later. “Who’s drinking wine?”

“Shut up, you idiot!” she whispered. “What if I was a Roman soldier? What would you have done then?”

“You just startled me, that’s all,” he said as he climbed out of the floor. “What’s this? Having a little midnight snack? And you didn’t think of inviting us?”

“You were asleep.”

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“I thought nobles were supposed to have manners,” he said as a drowsy Alexios and Diaresso joined them.

But almost as soon as they had begun eating and drinking, people started talking and footsteps approached on the wooden pier. Putting away the food, the fugitives rushed back under the floorboards and replaced them. Diaresso was the last inside, however. He was so hungry that Gontran needed to drag him away. Herakleia heard him munching food underneath the floorboards. He was eating while lying on his back! She was also terrified that the noise would alert the Romans, but conflicted about telling him to stop since they might also hear.

“I can’t believe they forgot to set a watch,” a voice said. “Have they lost their minds? This ship was already stolen once…”

“It’s a terrible thing, kentarch,” said another.

Something was thumping. It sounded like two men descending the ladder.

“It’s up to us, I guess,” the kentarch said. “I’m glad you’re with me, Andronikos.”

“And I you, sir,” Andronikos said. “If I may speak freely, I hate sailing into Pontos, especially when we have to leave the coasts. The waters here are deep…”

“I don’t even know what’s happening to Romanía these days,” the kentarch continued. Things were clanking as they spoke; they were removing their armor and leaving it on the floor. “It seems like everything’s falling apart.”

“Dark days, sir,” Andronikos said.

“I didn’t sign up to kill our own people. Actually, I didn’t want to kill anyone at all. I was naïve enough to think that maybe there would be peace for my entire enlistment…”

“All of us just want that nice plot of land, sir,” Andronikos said.

“After twenty years of bleeding for the emperors, that’s what we get,” the kentarch said. “A nice plot of land somewhere. Then as soon as you get it, you either lose it to the landlord or some ravening band of Skythioi.”

“It’s the truth, sir.”

“Even if you hold onto it,” the kentarch continued. “Even if things go well, you can only leave it to your firstborn son. You aren’t allowed to divide it up, since there won’t be enough for anyone then. What are the rest of your children supposed to do when they grow up? You can marry your daughters if you can afford to pay their dowries, but what about your sons?”

“There’s the priesthood, sir,” Andronikos said. “Monasteries. The palace. The university. And the military, of course.”

“None of it appeals to me.” The kentarch sipped something. “I joined up when I was so much younger and more idealistic. Let me tell you, I stopped thinking that way pretty quick. And I don’t know. Putting down this revolt, it’s just not what I want to do.”

“You thinking of quitting?”

“After all these years? How can I? Where would I go? There’s nothing out there for an old dog like me with all my scars and broken bones. I don’t want to stay here, but I can’t quit now. I just have three and a half years left until I get my pension. It makes me sick. We should be trying to enrich Romanía, not destroy it. I just have so many regrets…”

“It’s the new Emperor,” Andronikos said. “And his new general.”

“Nikephoros and Narses, a match made in hell,” the kentarch said. “You know I was pretty fond of the last guy. Good Emperor Anastasios. I supported him. Sometimes when I get drunk I think about his speeches I heard. It makes me sad. He was doing great things. He could have done more if his life hadn’t been cut short—if he could have chosen his successor. I was escorting his daughter Zoë to be married to the Khazars when the Skythioi attacked. They carried her off before we could do anything. We thought we were dead, but her father forgave us.”

They continued speaking. Herakleia felt tempted to raise the floorboards to talk with them. The kentarch, for one, may have been close to betraying Nikephoros.

To raise an eyebrow at the status quo is one thing, she thought. To smash it is something else. A chasm separates the two positions, close as they may seem.

She’d also been unable to recharge her farr since her capture. The level was so low she was unable to feel it. Indeed, she had forgotten that she could use the farr! But to slay these workers or hide from them would do nothing for her powers. If she could convert them, she could re-energize herself and do amazing things with these men by her side. She was a princess, after all; this special and unique class was excellent at changing minds with its professional-level charisma. Yet to lift the floorboard risked her rescuers’ lives. The four fugitives needed to discuss a move like this together. Failure could mean death. And even if the fugitives succeeded in killing the soldiers, how would they dispose of the bodies? How would they take care of the blood?

Other soldiers might be on their way here right now.

But the kentarch supported Herakleia’s father. If she could just find the words to push him over the edge…

The two Romans continued talking about politics. Herakleia could bear it no longer. The men were kindred spirits. They must have been. All they needed was someone to explain things in a new way. For their entire lives, all they’d ever heard was that God had chosen the emperor, God adored Romanía, to fight the natural order was futile and blasphemous, and besides, everyone knew the uprisers ate babies, the priests and other authorities said so.

Herakleia had no desire to harm these men, nor did she want to leave them to their fates. Sooner or later they would die in some battle to enrich Nikephoros and his wealthy supporters. She had to help these soldiers. It was her duty. Before her friends could stop her she lifted the floorboard and climbed into the light of an oil lamp resting on the floor. Both the kentarch and Andronikos were lying near each other on separate hammocks. The sight of Herakleia—who seemed to spring almost from a gap in reality itself—terrified both men. They yelped and fell out of their hammocks. Then, while she was raising her arms and telling them to calm down—and as Gontran was climbing out of his own hiding spot and swearing—the kentarch yelled for Andronikos to get help.

You have failed to change the soldiers’ minds, the voice said. Their loyalty to the emperor is much higher than your charisma.

Thanks for telling me after the fact!

They’re officers. What did you expect?

As Andronikos climbed the ladder, the kentarch snatched his sword from the floor and aimed it at Herakleia.

She raised her hands. “I’m not here to hurt you. I just couldn’t help hearing—”

“You’re under arrest!” the kentarch shouted. “All of you put your hands on your head and get on the floor!”

“Your conversation,” she said. “It’s just—you know Emperor Anastasios was my father—”

“Put your hands on your head and get on the floor!”

Gontran, leaning out of the gap in the floor, was bashing his fire-strikers together.

“If we could become allies,” Herakleia said, “if we joined the peasants—imagine what we could accomplish—”

Just as the kentarch was lunging toward Herakleia, Gontran lit the fuse of his Seran pistol-sword. He aimed the weapon at the kentarch and pressed the glowing fuse to the firing hole. The explosion was so loud it almost knocked Herakleia down, filling the cabin with smoke and sparks. Something slammed onto the floor, followed by a metallic clatter. When the acrid clouds had cleared, the kentarch was lying in a pool of blood clutching a smoking wound in his chest. He had dropped his sword.

“Great job,” Gontran said to her. He holstered his pistol-sword and climbed out of the floor. “What the hell were you thinking?”

“I just,” she said. “I’m sorry, I just thought he would—”

“He joined the army,” Gontran said as he climbed the ladder. “You weren’t arguing with him. You were arguing with his bread and butter.”

Diaresso jogged past and followed Gontran, shaking his head at Herakleia.

Herakleia knelt beside the kentarch, who was trembling in the lamp light, his pale face covered in sweat. Blood poured from his mouth.

“I’m sorry,” she told him, holding his cold, bloody hand. “I didn’t mean to…”

He scowled at her. “You fucking whore.”

The kentarch raised his other hand as if to strike her, but his strength left him, and he groaned. Then he fell back onto the floor and stopped breathing and trembling, his face contorted with rage.

She stepped away. After a moment, Alexios was standing beside her and staring at the dead kentarch.

“We’d better get him out of here,” he said.

She looked at Alexios, tears in her eyes, then hugged him—careful to keep from touching him with her bloody hand.

“What are we going to do?” she said, speaking over his shoulder. “I didn’t mean to hurt him…”

“Shit happens, as Dionysios might have said.”

Herakleia was so frightened and full of regret that she pulled back to meet Alexios’s eyes. Then she kissed him.