Constantinople, 1008
Janus was a boy with a mysterious power: he could read and write. The mysterious part was that he did not remember ever learning how to do either. Then again, he did not remember a lot of things.
The largest gap in Janus's memory came just before he realized he was literate. He woke up in a field of mud in the north of Francia clutching a signet ring with no memory of the last year. The mud seemed to stretch out forever with no trees or fences interrupting it, like every feature had been wiped away with some cosmic eraser.
Without knowing why, he found himself drawing shapes in it with his finger. M-U-D. These were letters. And to his astonishment, he knew what they meant.
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The mud from that day two years had felt profound somehow, maybe even mystical, like it represented unlimited vitality or unlimited possibility. But the mud Janus was dealing with this morning was just normal, gross mud. The kind that slowed you down and tried to swallow your shoes. A puddle he hadn’t seen in the pre-dawn dark had nearly done just that to his sandal and now the mud he couldn’t scrape off squished unpleasantly beneath his toes.
He could have gotten it cleaner if he’d followed his first instinct and used his tunic as a rag, but he wanted to keep his clothes clean even if his shoe was a lost cause. Today, he needed to be taken seriously and looking like a filthy orphan (which, of course, he was) wouldn’t help the situation.
Setting out before first light had probably been a bad idea, but he was so focused on getting started that he hadn’t been able to fall asleep again once the first birdsong woke him. In the dark, he could nearly make out the outline of the Great City in the distance, Constantinople herself spread out in wreathes of torchlight against the dark blue sky.
Yet his destination wasn’t there: it was among the tents and shacks just outside the walls, a slum called the ante-City where refugees, orphans, and other undesirables congregated. It was a lively place, full of chatter and the clatter of merchants’ wagons, but the prevalent smell of excrement, human and otherwise, ruined any charm it might have had. The stench wafted from every walkway and ditch since there were no sewers or sweepers to get rid of it, and you could completely get away from it even indoors. Janus had heard wolves howling in the distance more than once in his camp in the surrounding countryside, but having wolves as neighbors was a small price to get away from that stench.
The last stretch of his walk before he reached the paved road would be the muddiest, so Janus elected to wait for more light under a dead olive tree. He picked up a fallen branch and began scratching the dirt..
J-A-N-U-S.
He could barely see them, but those were the letters that stood for him. His name. He only had the one—one was all unimportant people like him needed. He wasn’t even sure if the one he had was his real name, either. His parents had called him something like that, but he had to guess at the spelling. The language of Eirinn was not well suited for Roman letters.
Regardless, he was satisfied with being Janus, the name of the Roman God of Doors, and he didn’t mind if it wasn’t the one his father had given him. Considering the man sold him to the Northmen to pay off gambling debts, Janus didn’t especially care what he thought.
Looking up from his reflections, Janus noticed dawn beginning to creep up from behind the horizon like an anxious rabbit inching toward a lettuce patch. This was good—he didn’t have the luxury of waiting on first light much longer. He started off again using his erstwhile writing stick to feel ahead of him for mud he still couldn't see, letting his mind sink back into the past as he went.
For a while after he gained the magic of reading, Janus made good money working as an itinerant scribe. He had probably never eaten so well as during those months. But it didn't last long—questions about what had happened to him in the missing year made obtaining peace of mind impossible, no matter how well he was eating. There was also that other problem, but he couldn’t start thinking about that one right now. It would keep bothering him even after his mind got back to the present, and he couldn't have that, not today.
Janus had been pursuing the origin of the ring for over two years, and all the leads had pointed East, to the Queen of Cities, the Megalopolis, the Throne of the Romans, Constantinople.
The problem was, he couldn't get past the checkpoint at the Golden Gate, or any other gate for that matter. Apparently there was a war on, and through a series of hand gestures, the guards indicated that light-haired barbarian children like Janus were not allowed within the walls. Not on their own at least. He considered objecting that they weren’t even fighting light-haired barbarians, but it was no use.
If the truth about the ring was behind those walls, it wouldn't be easy to get to.
Janus was stuck in the ante-City—at least during the day—and it had proved a dry well of new information. All he had left were the vague leads from the Pilgrims' Road. The most useful one came from a huge Rus-lander who claimed to have fought for the Eastern Emperor and to know all about the City and its innumerable factions.
“This is from the School for Singers, as they are called,” the man said with a portentous air after appraising the ring. “They have a knowledge-hoard in Mikalgathr full of tomes and scrolls, and even the Bearded Ones envy it.”
If the “School for Singers” held the answer, he just needed to have a chat with a singer, right? But that was why he needed to get into the City proper, as there were barely any singers who frequented the ante-City and the few that there were spoke nothing but Greek.
Or so he thought, until he found Felix.
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Janus had first seen the singer perching on a stone wall near a puffed-up merchant’s tent. He was chewing on a piece of straw—not in a casual way but really gnawing on it— and plucking at what Janus finally recognized as a lute, though it was strangely shaped. He looked a few years older than himself, probably 16 or 17 from his height. His features were Iberian, with shoulder-length dark hair and a tan complexion matched with blue eyes.
“Hey there!” Janus called in Iberian. “Are you a singer? I need to ask you someth—”
Janus wasn’t able to finish the sentence before the singer bolted without so much as meeting his gaze. He was stung—what was wrong with him that another kid would just run away from him at first sight? Surely he couldn't smell him from that far away…could he?
To be safe, Janus bathed in a stream every day as he looked for a lead on the Iberian singer. Eventually, he found a fat-faced Francian merchant who had seen him.
“I believe the lad’s name is Felix,” the merchant said. “Not a very fitting name, given the circumstances…”
It took a moment for Janus to process the man’s meaning. “Felix” just meant ‘lucky’ so…he had bad luck?
He did indeed. The second time Janus tried to talk to Felix, two men with instruments on their backs and incongruously broad shoulders got to him first. Felix was too engrossed in his lute to notice them, and by the time he did, they had already thrown him to the ground and commenced a beat-down.
Janus felt awkward just standing there watching the beating as if waiting his turn to have a moment of the other boy’s time—but really, what could he do?
When it was over, Janus carried Felix’s unconscious body back to his camp, which was no small feat given their difference in size. He cleaned the singer up and bandaged his cuts as well as he could, but his trouble was once again for nothing: the moment Felix regained consciousness and registered where he was, he bolted again.
All that bathing for nothing, Janus thought. He had no idea how the other boy even managed to run that fast considering the beating he’d taken.
Worst of all, Felix left his lute behind after Janus had taken the time to haul the extra weight.
He was in a predicament right then. As long as he was stuck in the ante-City, there was no other option for getting information on the “School for Singers”, assuming Felix had any in the first place. He obviously had some sort of relationship with the local singers, even if it was one that got him beaten up. He must know something.
The only other option was learning Greek and waiting to get old enough to be taken seriously by the general public, but Janus couldn't wait that long. It would be too boring. There were other reasons, of course, but avoiding the boredom of waiting was what cinched it.
"I’ve got to return the lute,” Janus said to himself out loud as he lay underneath the stars on his bedroll the night after losing Felix the second time. “I’m not a thief.”
As he fell asleep, a voice deep in his mind seemed to answer his own words.
Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.
"You have a funny notion of thievery, but do as you see fit."
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Janus had been reflecting so hard that he overshot his destination and nearly walked into the sea. He ran back and managed to reach the right place in time. No one had come out of the stable he was creeping toward since the night before, or there would have been footprints in the mud around it. After watching him from the shadows for a few days, Janus knew exactly where to find Felix and corner him, the third vacant stall on the right.
The sun was completely up now, and stray beams of light poking through the rafters revealed enough particles of dust and horse dander that he reflexively covered his nose to keep himself from sneezing. Felix was there just as expected, lying on his side in the hay in a dead sleep with bits of straw stuck in his hair. Janus stretched out his arms and legs to block escape on either side. This time there is no escape, he cackled inwardly. The fact that he was approaching this so much like a villain in a ballade was a little disconcerting, but after losing days tracking this guy down, he no longer cared.
“Hey! Wake up!” Janus shouted.
He expected Felix to leap out of the haystack and dash for the nearest exit, but the other boy groggily opened his eyes and got to his feet.
“Aha! Not this time! As you can see, I’ve got you completely—” but before Janus could finish, Felix used his superior size to bowl him over. He hadn’t expected that, but Janus wasn’t going to let his man get away again and he grabbed Felix by the leg and held tight.
"Stop! I need to ask you something! I reeeeeally need to ask you!”
"Then get off my leg!” Felix shouted, still struggling.
"You’ll just run away again! I just need to know, where the school for singers is.”
“The what?”
“The mysterious group of scholars or maybe singers that’s supposed to be in this city?”
"Do you mean the Guild?” Felix asked, stopping his struggle against Janus’s grip. “I thought you were with them.”
"What? No! I've been trying to ask you about them for the past week, but you keep running away!”
Felix gave him a look of exasperation. “If I knew anything about that, those guys with the fiddles wouldn't have beaten the piss out of me.”
Janus let him go and stood up. “You must know something about this Guild if they are beating you up. Minstrels don't just go around throttling people at random…I think.”
Felix walked past Janus and laid back in the hay face down.
“If I had known about them, I wouldn't have tried playing on the streets without their permission. And I wouldn't be blacklisted, which I am. There’s nothing I can do for you,” he said, his voice muffled comically by the hay. “You might as well leave.”
"Since you were on the lookout for them when I called for you the first time, that obviously wasn't the first beating you got the other day,” said Janus, scratching his head as he did when he was thinking. “Did they tell you to get out of the ante-City altogether? That seems pretty harsh for just playing in the wrong place.”
Silence.
"Don’t you at least want your lute back?” Janus asked. Returning the lute wouldn’t get him any closer to the school for singers, or Bards’ Guild, or whatever it was, but he got the feeling Felix was holding something back. He just needed to keep the other boy talking for now.
“Oh, you’re that kid. No. You can burn it for firewood for all I care.”
"You’re a singer, right? Won’t you starve without your lute?”
"Possibly.”
“You don’t care if you starve?”
“Kid, you just don’t get it.” Felix sat upright on the hay-bed and looked Janus in the eye for the first time. “I came all the way across the world hoping to be a singer in this town, right? It was my ‘dream’ or something. It’s embarrassing to say, but there it is."
But when I managed to get here, I made a very bad decision. Made the wrong people very mad. So now that dream is not going to happen, right?”
“If you say so.”
"So in short, I’ve come all this way, but it was all for nothing.”
"So, you’re giving up?”
"It’s not ‘giving up’, kid. It’s facing reality,” Felix growled. “I had the bad luck to have an uncle, the same one who gave me that lute, and by way of that uncle, I got ‘learning’ and knowledge’. I learned about the world. And began to have dreams. And all of that was bad luck, because it brought me here, to this hopeless situation. So I’m done with it.”
Felix paused, seemingly waiting for Janus’s response, but none came. In fact, despite all his efforts, Janus didn’t feel like talking to this boy anymore.
"I don’t get it,” Janus said, “That sounds dumb.”
"Look, what I mean is—”
"Learning things isn’t bad luck. You’re weird.”
Felix stood up from the bed, looking indignant for the first time “What the hell do you know? I didn’t used to sleep in a stable. I had a bed—a very bad bed, but still, a bed.”
"This is boring. I’m leaving,” said Janus, and he started off in a semi-huff for the exit, his best hope now apparently dashed.
"Wait!” said Felix. All the fight seemed to drain out of him, but some of the self-pity went with it. “If—if you have my lute, I’ll take that back at least.”
Janus led Felix back toward his campsite outside the ante-City with the cries of cicadas ringing in his ears. He was in a bad mood. How could anyone wish they could go back to not knowing things? Knowing how to read and write was the one thing that let him survive on his own. His knowledge usually made singers come to him because he had another ability on top of reading: he had a perfect memory for words. He could remember conversations perfectly and if he heard a song once, he could copy the lyrics. Many singers were willing to pay a fair amount of coin for transcripts of popular ballads from neighboring regions, especially if they could pass them off their own work. But maybe that was a bad example of the benefits of knowledge, since on a few occasions he had met the authors of songs he had copied and they would usually try to beat him for infringing on their…
"Oh, wait, is that what happened to you?” asked Janus, turning his head halfway back as he neared the point where he would need to turn off the road.
"What?” Felix responded.
“Did you write down songs, and sell them? I've done that before but the singers don’t like it…”
Before Janus could continue, Felix grabbed him by the shoulder, “Wait, you can write? Can you read as well?”
"Oh, yeah, I guess, but…”
“You can read Latin, right? Not just Greek…right?” Felix’s disposition had completely changed. He seemed to vibrate with excitement.
“Yeah, I can read all sorts of languages if you let go of me…”
"Oh, sorry,” said Felix, doing just that. “Hey, I don’t think I introduced myself, but I’m Felix. From Castilla. You know, maybe we can find the school for singers after all. But I need your help to do it.” Felix peered at him stretching out his hand to shake, a look of renewed hope coming into his bright eyes.
“I’m Janus!” he said, smiling stupidly as he took the other boy’s hand. Janus had a naturally cheerful temper, and Felix’s sudden change of humor him immediately.
They decided to hold off on long-term discussions until they reached Janus’s camp since standing in the road made them easy targets for mosquitos. Felix must have thought he remembered the way to the campsite from when he had run away from it the other day, since he now ran ahead until he was nearly out of sight. He didn’t.
“Are you sure this is the right way?” Felix asked, coming back to Janus. “I don’t remember coming down this path."
“I think you ran the other way when you left.”
“Oh yeah. Ah, sorry about that, I guess,” Felix said sheepishly. “I really should have thanked you, instead of running away. I honestly thought you were working for the Guild the whole time. I thought they had taken me out here to finish me off, so there was nothing I could do but run. All I can do is run away, most of the time…”
Felix’s tone was sad again. Janus was walking in front now, and when he looked back, he saw the other boy had his head down.
“You run really fast,” Janus said, trying to keep the mood light. “Way faster than me. Oh, we’re almost there—it’s just through those trees.”
Janus pointed, and there was the little campsite by a stream with a quenched bonfire at the center surrounded by a little canvas tent, stacks of thin woodblocks and feathers for writing, a few dark blue blankets, a short pile of tinder next to some flints in a little leather satchel, and a dozen other little necessities. All in all, it was neat and comfortable-looking, or Janus thought so. He was rather proud of his camping skills, which he had cultivated from an early age thanks to a father who had frequent need of getting away quickly from wherever his family happened to settle for longer than a month.
As Felix’s eyes roved the scene for his lute, Janus went into the tent where he had been keeping it in case of rain.
“Is that thing very old?” Janus asked Felix when he had handed it back. It definitely looked different than the lutes he had seen before, having a longer neck and a strangely curved body with the pegbox angled only slightly inward instead of off to the side.
“No, it’s just a piece of crap,” Felix answered as he sat down by the fire-pit, tuning the taut strings with his longish, nimble fingers. “A hand-me-down, from my uncle. He made the thing himself and I don’t think he knew what he was doing. It doesn’t even sound like a proper lute.”
“Your uncle was a singer?” Janus asked, sitting down at the opposite side of the pit. “But I thought he was a teacher. Oh, wait, or was it a different uncle?”
“No, same uncle.” Felix still hadn’t looked up from the strings. “He was a teacher, in a way. You seem to have learning from the Church, but the singers know about things too, in their way. My uncle taught me about Rome and Theodoric and Charles and Taric the Moor. He is half Saracen by blood, so he can wander from Castile to Granada and fit in whatever he pleases. He made me realize how small my world really was, and I couldn’t be satisfied with it…or something.”
Felix began to play a tune in earnest. The way his fingers moved nimbly from chord to chord was so impressive that, for a moment, Janus completely forgot he hadn’t brought the other boy to his camp for an impromptu recital. But Felix hadn’t forgotten, and in a moment he set the instrument down, folded his legs, and looked Janus in the eye.
“What I’m going to propose here will help both of us.” Felix began, apparently trying to appear serious. “Well, at least if you’re looking for a way into the Bard’s Guild, which I think is your ‘school for singers’.”
“That sounds really great,” said Janus. “And I want to do it. But I need you to do something first.”
“What?”
“What you said about ‘knowledge’. I want you to take it back, first.”
Felix stared at him, genuinely confused. “Why? What does that have to do with you?”
“I can’t work with someone who really thinks learning is bad. I’m all about learning, you know? If you were just saying that because you were mad, I could let it go, but not if you really believe it.”
Felix set down his lute and looked up. “I don’t know what I believe,” he said. “But I probably didn’t mean what I said. It’s too early to decide one way or another.” He looked Janus in the eye now. “So I’ll take it back. Are you going willing to work with me?”
Felix extended his hand and Janus shook it, trying to look grown up.