Everyone in Trebizond stared at the leaping students and crossed themselves. They’d never seen anything so strange. The traders on the Satala road had been rooted to the same spot in front of their donkeys for an hour, their eyes gaping at men and women taking flight. Even Bagrationi observed from a palace window, crossing his arms and nodding in between discussions with Samonas and Cassio concerning the blacksmith problem.
Such power pushed human bodies hard, however. With practice, the students could outrun arrows loosed from bowstrings for hours at a time. But when class finished on that first day, the mothers staggered home, swaying, dizzy, close to collapse.
For some, their homes were now mansions which had belonged to the rich. A handful possessed new houses constructed in the Daphnous suburbs. But other unlucky mothers were still trapped in tents. A number were so weak they needed to be helped along by their husbands, several of whom shot angry glances at Alexios, who avoided their gazes. He worried that none of his students would return to class the following day.
Am I useless? he thought. Am I worthless?
Feeling unsure of himself, he tried to focus on his students’ accomplishments. He also told himself that the mothers might be weakened by thinking about all the day’s domestic chores waiting for them at home. Someone needed to cook dinner, make the children eat, wash the dishes, referee the children’s fights, and then put them to bed. Alexios spotted Anna with two children and no partner. He said hello, and she introduced her kids as Basil and Kassia.
“Nice to meet you,” Alexios said.
“Nice to meet you, too,” the children answered in unison.
Alexios smiled at Anna. “Excellent manners.”
“This is my teacher,” Anna told her children. “Alexios Leandros.”
They nodded awkwardly.
“Well,” Alexios said. “Have a good dinner. We’ll see you tomorrow.”
“See you.” Her eyes lingered on him as she walked away.
Alexios thought her beautiful, then reminded himself that she was his student.
She’s older than me, he thought. And she has kids!
He hated the idea that she needed to go home and care for them after working so hard. But other people had also been working that day. The refugees had organized Trebizond’s domestic labor. This meant that, rather than eating different meals by themselves, everyone ate communal meals together. Rather than a thousand different mothers making a thousand different meals and washing a thousand different dishes for their own individual families, a handful of workers made the same meal for a thousand people and washed a thousand dishes together. This saved incredible amounts of labor. The eunuch organizers streamlined the process. Samonas, liberated from his usual duties—which had consisted, before the uprising, of counting money and searching for new ways to squeeze the poor—sketched designs for machines which would produce more commodities faster and with less labor. Alexios discovered that even the children had organized themselves. Those who wished to play, played; while those who wished to study, studied. A handful of adults watched them.
Just as in a factory, the division of labor made production more efficient. The result was enough food to fill every belly, combined with actual leisure time for every worker. Leisure was necessary for morale. Exhausted workers would breed discontent, sow division, and revolt. No one would call this place a workers’ paradise if everyone was too tired to enjoy the fruits of their labors.
Eating together at large wooden tables under enormous tents that had been pulled out of the citadel, workers befriended one another and discussed their days. Alexios suspected that they were beginning to understand how their individual struggles were connected. The miner saw that his labor, however unpleasant, paid for the food that the exhausted students were eating. The carpenter saw that his newfound friends would need to continue sleeping in their old tents for longer than necessary if he slacked off while constructing new homes. The fisherman, the weaver, the palace guard, the acquisitions agent who haggled with foreign traders—all looked at the world as though with new eyes. Exploitation of their surplus labor had ended. Now, rather than enriching emperors, tax farmers, merchants, slave owners, and landlords, they were enriching each other. This made them reconsider ideas which they had taken for granted. What was the purpose of sumptuous churches and palaces, for instance? Weren’t they a slap in the face of the meek? Did Christ ever dwell in such luxury? Even those who had declared that it was sacrilege when Bagrationi melted the church’s gold and silver plates now saw that such riches were purchasing food. The doux’s former ideological enemies now wondered aloud why he refrained from selling every jewel or speck of gold dust he possessed.
Basebuilding, Alexios thought. That’s what this is called, isn’t it?
The entire city was now under worker control, but conflict among workers still arose when need became want. Those who were lazy or who took more than they needed were castigated and excluded. Economic inequality would intensify contradictions—between the mothers and miners, for instance—and destroy Trebizond. It wouldn’t be the first city in this region to collapse. After all, Anatolia was so full of ruins that no matter where you went, you could barely take a step without stumbling over a potsherd, a broken pedestal, or a shattered visage belonging to a statue whose provenance had been forgotten millennia ago.
If the Romans defeated the Workers’ Army, they would slaughter every man in Trebizond. They would rape the women and enslave the children. Never again would the survivors have a chance to build a world free from exploitation. As slaves, workers, and peasants, the captured Trapezuntines would experience a living death, and return to enriching leeches who guzzled blood straight from their veins and stored it in underground vaults protected by massive walls, armed guards, padlocked steel doors, and legions of priests and intellectuals and artists who would spend centuries shrieking that it was right and normal and natural to suck blood—and dangerous insanity to even raise an eyebrow in response.
The students, if they could keep their eyes open—since they were the most tired of all—must have known that learning about the divine farr wasn’t just for fun. Every moment meant the imperial army was marching closer. Some students even looked to the southern valley and the Satala road, as though the horsehair crests and cloaks and chi-rho standards and muscled cuirasses engraved with bronze horses and dragons would appear any moment, the trumpets blasting, the fifes whistling, the drums pounding, the soldiers singing their love for Rome. People were even asking traders for news about the marching imperial army, but no one knew anything about it.
To cool people’s nerves, wine was also part of the bargain here, but few drank to excess. Much worked needed to be done in the morning. By sunset, the city was quiet, and most people were washing up and going to bed. Those volunteers who still somehow possessed energy were washing dishes. A few lazy people might have taken advantage of the others, but this was little different from when Roman slave owners had been running the show in Trebizond before the uprising. The real difference was that now, lazy people were no longer in charge.
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Alexios and Herakleia were scarcely more awake than their students, though they were strong enough to stand in line for food before the church in the Upper Town, Panagia Chrysokephalos, the All Holy Gold-Headed Mother of God. This was where Sophronios lived and worked, but he was nowhere to be seen.
Once Herakleia and Alexios received their plates of fish and loaves of bread, they sat by the church atrium doorway with their backs against the cool moist bricks, keeping their legs away from the workers who were carrying food or dishes back and forth to the kitchen inside. These workers were what Alexios would have called “teenagers” in the old world, though they were “youths” here.
They behave so much better than teenagers back in the old world, Alexios thought. In high school we’re smarter and stronger than adults, but we’re even less free than they are. We’re forced to take endless meaningless tests, and the administrators threaten us with our permanent records if we don’t play along. Here, though, work has meaning. If you don’t work, the people around you suffer.
Both Alexios and Herakleia gorged themselves, so hungry they were unable to speak. They returned for seconds, then thirds, building their stamina back up. Only when they had finished this last helping could they converse as they each sipped cups of sweet watery wine.
“That was a hell of a class,” Alexios said.
“Yeah,” Herakleia said.
“I can’t even believe what we did there. It was kind of touch-and-go for awhile.”
Herakleia looked around, then leaned in to whisper: “That guy Ioannes was pretty annoying.”
“He had a redemption arc, though. He’s doing better now.”
“Let’s just hope he doesn’t go over to the other side.”
“I was thinking the same thing.” Alexios was so tired he was unable to keep his eyes from roving over Herakleia’s body.
If she turns me down tonight, it’s back to Tamar, he thought. Even though the Queen of Trebizond disappeared after that amazing time we had together…I wonder where she went…
“The students were kind of unresponsive at first,” Herakleia said. “A lifetime of being beaten whenever you have a creative thought can do that to you.”
“But is that really what happened to them?” Alexios lowered his voice and looked around. “Do their husbands and fathers really beat them all the time?”
“Not all, but definitely some. I made Bagrationi legalize divorce before I left for Sera. Then Sophronios lost it. The patriarchy depends on women being baby-making machines, especially since medicinal knowledge barely goes beyond leeches and the four humors. Mortality rates are also so high. They need people. They’re always running out of people since everyone’s always dying. Population has been declining by, like, a lot, for centuries here. But when you free women from making babies, when you free people from work, they start to think in new ways. They start to wonder why they have to take orders all the time. But who knows? Maybe the abuse rates aren’t so different than from where we come from—the ‘enlightened’ society we left behind.”
Alexios laughed. “I keep forgetting we’re from the outside.”
“I’ve gotten used to being a woman, I guess. It’s not easy, though. I’m not nearly as good at it as the others. I mean, look at me!” Herakleia gestured to her white shirt and pants.
“You’ve really taken to it,” Alexios said. “You were amazing in that class, too. I couldn’t have done it without you.”
He took her hand, but she jerked it away.
“You can’t do that here.” She looked around to make sure no one had noticed. “Don’t touch me when anyone else is present.”
Alexios held up his hands and leaned back. “Sorry, princess. I mean, uh, strategos.”
Herakleia picked up her plate and walked toward the metal cauldron that was full of dirty dishes. But after a few steps she stopped and turned to Alexios.
“We can’t be together anymore,” she whispered.
These words were like a sword plunged into his belly. Still, he asked why.
“If the doux finds out, all this ends.” She gestured to the people eating and serving food. “David—I mean Bagrationi—he’ll throw them out of here—at the very least. He might even turn them over to the Romans.”
“Doesn’t he need an army to do that? It seems like he only has a few guys.”
“He’ll leave the city and join up with our enemies.”
“Oh.” Alexios’s shoulders fell.
Forbidden love, he thought. Just what I need.
“There’s more important things than you and me,” Herakleia added.
“So you really were just using me,” Alexios mumbled.
Herakleia narrowed her eyebrows. “How can you think that?” She stepped closer to Alexis and whispered: “Do you think I care about the doux? He’s a piece of shit—not to mention our class enemy! He’s only doing this because he wants to screw me!”
“Guys will go through a lot for that.”
She stepped closer. “I know it might be hard to believe, but I’m not interested in that guy. I’m doing it for the peasants and the—”
“Jesus,” Alexios said. “Do you ever give it a rest? Take a break from politics once in awhile!”
“And get these people killed? I don’t think so. It isn’t actually possible to take a break from politics.”
“Maybe for you.”
“Look, if you’re so anxious to stick your dick somewhere, I’m sure you can find someone else around here who’s willing to take it.”
Alexios was unable to respond. Does she know about me and Tamar?
Herakleia walked away, deposited her dishes, thanked the workers for the wonderful food, and disappeared among the crowds in the dark streets, which were lit by the occasional oil lamp. Everyone stared as she passed, whispering that she was the strategos, and also the woman who dressed like a man. Alexios, however, knew her as the man who possessed the body of a woman and who now dressed like a man. It was a little confusing.
Alexios shook his head. He still couldn’t think of a retort to her last statement. Herakleia was right, of course—on multiple levels. Alexios was frustrated with her. This also made him realize new things about himself. He never would have considered himself gay in the old world. And on the most technical arbitrary biological level, Herakleia was female. But she still had a significant masculine element, one more prominent than in someone like Tamar.
It’s not an either/or thing, he thought. Everyone’s mixed.
Alexios went over their conversation in his mind. Had he said something wrong? Herakleia had told him she didn’t even like Bagrationi—she was stringing the doux along so all these refugees could eat and sleep and maybe survive a Roman invasion. This reminded Alexios of a Yeats play—was it called The Countess Cathleen? It was about some starving village in 19th century Ireland where a young woman decides to sell her soul to the devil so that everyone in the village can eat. It was an interesting idea, but why stop there? Why not sell your soul to end human suffering forever? But then of course the devil would just make all humans disappear or something. Having a good lawyer present was important when you sold your soul.
Herakleia needed the doux because he controlled Trebizond. She needed Alexios to train a new army and maybe also to counterbalance Bagrationi. But could Herakleia also be manipulating the uprising? What if she was just a disgruntled aristocrat who only wanted to use the masses to gain power?
It would make more sense for Alexios to give up on Herakleia—to treat her as a friend rather than as a romantic interest. Then maybe he could view her more objectively. Everything romantic which he needed, after all, Tamar possessed.
But you can’t want what you want, Alexios thought. The unconscious will is beyond your control. It’s like this massive monstrous beast, one beyond understanding. It speaks in a language of symbols all its own.
What would happen if Alexios abandoned Herakleia, and then she found out that he was involved with Tamar? The whole uprising might collapse because two teachers wanted to screw.
For want of a screw, the kingdom was lost, he thought.
Alexios needed to find Tamar. But where was she? Samonas would know. There wasn’t much he didn’t.
Alexios stood—wobbling a little, surprised by how dizzy he was—and brought his cup and plate to the dishwashers, thanking them as he wandered toward the palace in search of Trebizond’s queen.