Fallen Eagle

Chapter 94: Hyper Rhōmēs

Mangup’s church bell tolled for midday beneath a sky gone ugly and smothered with grey.Agape barely spared it a glance. Her mood had always had an ugly habit of following the weather, and she was sick of letting the damn thing drag her down with it.

Not that it was easy to do that. Her whole life felt like one big hollow stretch of waiting. Waiting and worrying and trying not to think about that damn idio-

No. None of that.

Sorry thoughts wouldn’t bring Christos back, and they wouldn’t help her look after the little pup she’d taken in either.

“Pack your things, Valeria. We’re going outside.” Agape gave the blanket one last hard shake, then pulled the wooden shutters shut on the miserable view beyond.

“Where are we going?” the girl asked. She stood by the basin, rinsing off the rough cutlery from their breakfast, little more than watered grain and cabbage.

“For water. Same as always,” Agape muttered.

She threw the blanket down on the lone table with more force than the thing deserved. The house they’d been given sat on the outskirts of the keep, in the worst bit of the place near that damned heap of rock, but it was still better than much of the town. One of the few perks of being wife to a lout off risking his neck in God knew where.

Really, after dragging her out of Kerasia and up this blasted mountain, he could at least have had the decency to show his face now and then.

He had promised it would be quick. Promised soldiering paid well. Promised it was his calling. And now she had not seen him for near a fortnight, and the whole place was under bloody siege.

“You look angry.”

The little voice came from right beside her, followed by a small tug on her skirt.

“Did I do something wrong?” Valeria looked up at her, enough sadness in her stare to match the beauty in those hazelnut, almost dirty-violet eyes.

The question hit her so sudden, and with such naked worry in it, that Agape just stared for a full breath’s span before she startled into motion.

“No. No, of course not, Val.” She dropped to her knees and cupped the girl’s face in both hands. “Why’d you think that?”

“You had that look,” Valeria said quietly. Her eyes slid down to the corner of the floor. Her cheeks puffed out in that way she had when she was trying very hard not to cry.

Agape’s heart gave a twist.

“No, girl, I’m not angry at you.” She pulled Valeria into a hug and held her tight. “I’m angry at someone else, that’s all.”

“The dunce?” Valeria asked, tentative as a mouse.

That drew a laugh out of Agape.

“Aye. The dunce.” She pinched the girl’s chubby cheek. “But I’m not angry anymore because you just cheered me up. So none of that now, you hear me? No worrying.” She mock chastised her.

Valeria brightened at once, like a little lamp being lit.

“Thinking about the dunce is bad,” she declared with sudden certainty. “You need to think about less sorry things.”

Agape huffed another laugh. “Oh, should I?”

“Yes. Like a full belly. Or clean clothes.” Valeria began counting them off with all the seriousness of a steward naming stores.

“Or sweets and games of tag,” Agape suggested.

That the girl’s mind went first to essentials like food and clean things made something ache low in her chest, a reminder of the hard life she had known before.

“That too!” Valeria nodded eagerly, bouncing in place.

“Come on then, you rascal,” Agape said, smiling despite herself. “Let’s go fetch water and think on better things.”

Leaving their boring, dark den at least once per day was something Agape followed almost religiously. She remembered the years spent cooped up in her village in Kerasia, huddling with her brothers to avoid meeting the tyrant that was Vasileos.

She didn’t want to remember that fear ever again.

One thing Agape couldn’t deny was the sense of wonder Mangup put in her. It was a city of white, built off the rock that lined the massive mountain they stood upon. On mornings where the mist clung low and the wind was soft, it looked as if the city floated above the world, hung somewhere between earth and cloud.

Which, of course, meant the water had to be hauled up from below.

Agape made for the broad stairway that split down through the heart of Mangup. People moved along it in a slow, steady stream, trudging up and down with baskets, jars, tools, and bundles tucked under their arms. Some faces she half-knew, folk she had passed before or traded nods with, but most were blank to her.

It was a strange thing. Back in Kerasia, she had thought a great city would be louder, livelier, warmer with all its people. Instead, Mangup often felt quieter than a village. People here nodded and went on. They greeted each other out of habit, not joy. Every motion had a weight to it, like they were all too tired to bother with more than the bare courtesy.

Agape had never felt lonelier than she did here, hemmed in by strangers.

Children, though, were different. They had none of that heaviness in them. Off to one side of the stairs, where the rock flattened into a rough open patch, a knot of boys and girls were chasing one another with sticks, shrieking and laughing as though the siege, the shortages, and the grey sky belonged to some other world.

Agape nudged Valeria lightly toward them. “Go on.”

Valeria looked up at her, puzzled. “What?”

“Go play.” Agape jerked her chin toward the children.

The girl did not move. The bounce went out of her at once. Her little hands tightened around the empty vessel she carried, and her face pinched up with that wary look Agape knew too well by now.

Valeria did not move. Her fingers only curled more tightly around the side of Agape’s skirt. “Don’t you need help carrying the buckets?”

Agape snorted. “You’re about half the size of one full bucket.”

“I can help,” she pouted, glaring up at Agape’s jeer with an endearing stubborness.

“I know you can,” Agape put a hand between the girl’s shoulders and gave her a small nudge toward the other children. “But I don’t need it. So play a bit.”

The child was too clamped up around other folk. Always watching, always shrinking back, always looking to Agape first as though the whole world might turn and bite her. It tugged at Agape’s heart, and it made her mad as hell too. The girl couldn’t stay frightened of everyone forever. Not if she meant to live.

“Off with you.” Agape snapped.

Valeria looked like she wanted to protest again, but another nudge sent her stumbling a few steps forward. She went slow, against her own will, glancing back once before creeping toward the game.

Agape watched until she was near enough that the others noticed her, then turned and started down the stairs.

The steps dipped deeper into the mountain, the white stone giving way to shadow and cool damp air. Down below, tucked into the rock like some secret thing, lay one of Mangup’s springs. The place still felt strange to her no matter how many times she came. A cave, half darkness and half torchlight, and there in the middle of it water gathered in a carved basin, clear and steady. It came whispering through the stone itself, helped along by some channels cut into the rock by the old Romans, she’d heard said.

Agape wasn’t sure she believed it, but marveled at it all the same. Water on top of a mountain… witchcraft was what it was. But she wouldn’t complain.

A few others were there already, filling jars, muttering to each other, shifting aside to make room. Agape dipped her vessel in and hauled it up, feeling the drag in her shoulders. Then the second. By the time both were full, her arms were tight with effort and her palms damp against the handles.

She climbed back up with a grunt, leaning into the work. The light grew harsher as she neared the surface again. She reached it just in time to hear a stringy voice.

“-you mute?” a boy’s voice taunted. “Like talking to a stone wall, you are!”

Agape turned to see that a few boys had ringed around Valeria. Two boys were crowding her, shoving at her shoulders, emboldened by the other’s attention and support. Valeria had gone utterly still in that way she had when frightened too badly, her face blank and tight.

At the other edge of the square a little cluster of housewives stood there, gossiping away as if none of this had anything to do with them. Not one of them was even looking.

Heat rushed through Agape and she started forward, incensed, the heavy vases biting into her arms. Before she could reach them, however, one of the boys gave Valeria another shove.

The loudest boy reached out again, and Agape almost missed what happened next.

Valeria moved with sudden, startling violence. Her hand shot out, caught the boy by the wrist, and twisted.

The boy cried out, the sound high and sharp with pain.

Agape stopped in her tracks, utterly stunned.

Valeria held on to the wrist with both hands now, twisting the boy’s arm down with vicious force.

Agape rushed closer, and saw Valeria’s face clearly now. She didn’t look frightened or nervous, she looked furious. Her mouth was set, eyes wide and burning, and ugly with rage. It was so naked and savage that Agape felt a flicker of alarm for the boy.

“Val.” Agape caught her shoulder.

The girl startled and whipped her head around, wild-eyed, until she recognized Agape. Then her eyes widened, eyebrows shooting up as if she’d been caught misbehaving.

She let go of the boy who took the opportunity to stumble away from her with a sob, clutching his wrist to his chest. The other children scattered back, all laughter gone from them now.

Valeria buried her face in Agape’s skirt “Are you alright Val?” Agape asked, still a bit startled herself.

What was that face, was that really Val?

The girl sniffled on her dress. “I was so scared, Agape.” She whispered, and any other thoughts left Agape’s mind as she went to her knees holding her close.

“Hey there, you’re good now.” Valeria buried her face further.

“Who did this to you?” One of housewives, a heavy set black haired woman asked the crying kid. The boy pointed a trembling finger to Valeria. “Oy, you.” She called at Agape, face twisted in displeasure. “What did your brat do to my son?”

“If you were properly looking at him maybe you’d know.” Agape shot back, and saw the woman’s mouth turn into a surprised ‘O’, as if she wasn’t accustomed to being answered in kind.

“Why you-” she began, ready to go on some stupid rant no doubt. Agape wasn’t having it.

“Why me nothing. Your son was tormenting my girl,” Agape stepped forward, easing away a sniveling Valeria. “Why don’t you teach him some manners.” She put a finger to the woman’s chest and pushed.

“What would you know about about manners, country girl?” The woman shot back derisively, fat finger wagging in her face. Agape saw the gaggle of midwives step up to back the black haired woman like any little flock scenting an outsider.

“More than you lot it seems,” Agape turned, putting up an unaffected front. She wasn’t about to be pushed around by cityfolk. “Come on Val, these idiots aren’t worth our time.”

“What did you say?” The woman seemed keen on not letting Agape go didn’t get to follow through on the thought.

A shrill sound cut through the courtyard so sharply that everyone froze.

It came from the western gates, loud and unmistakable. Were those the gate trumpets? Those didn’t blare for no reason. Were they under attack, had the army lost?

For one terrible moment, all Agape could think about was how Christos was likely dead out there somewhere.

Then the trumpet blared again and again. A sigh of relief went through the courtyard before everyone started running towards it. Agape and Valeria could only stand and watch in confusion as the trumpets continued playing in a matching rythm, as if playing some sort of festive song.

Agape held the sleeve of the black haired woman before she could get away. “What’s happening?” She demanded.

“It’s the song they blow at the start of the festivals!” The woman said, voice ecstatic, any enmity to Agape forgotten. “They must have won!” She grabbed at Agape, throwing her into an embrace. “They won, oh my child they won!”

Agape couldn’t help but be dragged along by the heavy set woman as they raced to the western gate, kids in tow.

They reached the main street to see it overpacked with people, far in the distance Agape saw it, and she couldn’t believe it. On the street, flanked by screaming, joyous people, came the battered remnants of an army, their backs held straight and proud. She craned her neck desperate to find his glaive pointing to the sky, the shape of his back, the sight of his face.

Please God, don’t take him from her.

It was then she saw him.

He moved through the blur of the crowd with the easy weight of a man hard to miss, broad shoulders and that tall frame setting him apart before she even properly saw his face. His glaive rested loose across one shoulder, as if the thing weighed nothing at all. Her first foolish thought was that he had stubble now, the lazy bastard. He knew how much she hated it.

He wore proper armour too. Not the patched, rough look of before, but the kit of a real soldier, and he carried it like it belonged on him. Even the way he walked had changed. Men gave him room without seeming to think about it. Beside him was a bald teenager with a face mean as a bothered cat, eyes scanning the crowd with hard intent.

Christos looked up and their eyes met, and Agape felt something in the world catch and hold.

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She shoved through the press as quickly as she could, through all those people spilling into the street to greet the ones returned to them.

Out of the corner of her eye she saw the heavy set woman throw herself onto a nearby soldier, openly crying. “Antonis! Thank God you’re alive!”

Agape hardly cared about it, there was only one thing on her mind. The flood of half slept nights, long droughts of worry and a deep seated fear, and the man who’d caused them all standing in front of her, alive. Alive!

They crashed into each other and the force of it nearly knocked her out of her feet.

He was warm. Solid. Real. But also different.

The weight of his hands when they came around her was different. The feel of his body was different. Harder somehow, more settled into itself. But most of all it was his gaze. When he pulled back just enough to cup her face and look at her properly, she saw something hollow in him that had not been there before, some small emptied place carved out by the things he had seen. Yet wrapped around it was such naked disbelief at finding her here that it hurt to look at.

As if he hadn’t thought he ever would again.

“Hey you,” Agape breathed, cursing her rapidly blurring vision. She wanted to look at face, to count the old scars and the new ones, to search for tell tale signs that she wasn’t wrong, to make sure she wasn’t dreaming.

“Hey you,” Christos said, and smiled.

There was a whole tale in that smile, but Agape did not let him say anything more. She dragged him down into a kiss that shut the rest of the world out. The noise of the street, the shouts, the laughter, the tears, all of it fell away. There were couples all around them, folk reunited in the open street, clinging to one another like shipwrecked souls hauled back to shore.

They were only one pair among many.

But for them, that was more than enough.

…

From the shadows at the edge of the crowd, Valeria watched Agape and Christos hold each other tight - tight as the fingers she curled at her waist.

She kept her face carefully still. A blank, dark canvas drawn into a cold mask that showed nothing at all.

“Your Majesty.”

Kostis dropped to one knee and held out the parchment with both hands.

The papyrus caught the coloured light pouring through the Sky Room and gleamed faintly purple where it touched it, the colour of royalty, the colour of his Principality.

“Thank you, Lord Kostis.” John smiled, and for the first time in many weeks it came without effort.

From the very edge of ruin, what had looked like certain defeat, his men had clawed out a victory so improbable it scarcely seemed fit for mortal hands. They had overcome not one stronger foe, but two.

Against the odds. Against all expectation. Against the cruel pull of fate itself, his Principality had endured.

It was a miracle.

And more than that, it was a summons.

He had been trapped in a sickness that went beyond the body. It had got into his thoughts, into his spirit, worn him down day by day. In his darkest hour he had even questioned God Himself.

This victory, impossible as it was, struck him like a hand across the face. A sign, plain and unmistakable. He could not cast himself aside. To do so would be to abandon the work of his lifetime.

Theodoro called for him, and now here in his hands lay the thing that might yet turn the fortunes of his Principality.

John took up the feathered quill and found, with a grim sort of satisfaction, that his grip no longer trembled as badly as it had a fortnight ago. Strength was returning to him by slow, stubborn steps. Not enough to make him whole, or to make him forget the weeks spent rotting in weakness, but enough all the same.

He bent over the parchment and scratched his name across it. The dry whisper of quill on paper carried through the chamber, seeming louder than it ought to in the hush that had fallen over everyone present. He signed a copy of the the same document with the same measured care, then reached for his signet ring.

It was an old piece, exquisitely wrought in silver, heavy with the dignity of his house. A servant brought the wax close. John pressed the ring into it with a firm, deliberate hand, sealing both documents beneath the weight of his authority.

“It is done,” His voice carried the worn steadiness of a man who had seen too many treaties dressed up as salvation, but with a tinge of hope that this one might be different.

He had been scandalized at the contents at first, but Panagiotis had convinced him of its worth in the end. There were powerful daggers written on its lines, and ones whose edge was well hidden from its targets.

“By this accord, the strife between the Principality and Genoa is brought to its end,” John proclaimed, giving the room the polished words it expected of him. “May the peace sealed here today endure, and may it mark the beginning of a more temperate understanding between our peoples.”

Beside him, the consul of Genoese Ghazaria, rotund and oily in equal measure, inclined his head with the easy grace of a practiced liar.

“The Republic receives that wish in the same spirit in which it is offered,” the Italian said smoothly. “May this settlement be the foundation of a long, prosperous, and fruitful friendship between Genoa and Theodoro.” John smiled geniously at the kind words, seemingly almost humbled by the speech.

He did not, in fact, believe a syllable uttered.

Those blasted merchants would swallow his realm whole if they ever found the opening for it, and now he had granted them one. He knew well enough what danger sat on the deal. It was the sort of recklessness a younger John would have balked at.

But now he was too tired of cautiousness, of bending the knee to foreign jackals, and too old to play long games. He needed to win, and he needed to do it now.

In the end, he saw with bitter clarity that he had spent years trying to convince himself men respected anything more than strength. He had bartered in courtesies, concessions, and careful words, and all he got for his trouble was raids and invasions. He knew the worth of honeyed phrases and sealed agreements now. They lasted only so long as they remained convenient. Once they ceased to be, men broke them without shame. And if convenience did not provide an excuse, his Italian friends had proven that one could always be manufactured.

So be it.

Let them all go to hell. He was done pretending otherwise.

“Let the prisoners of war now be brought before the Prince,” his crier, Czcibor, called out in a voice that struck the chamber walls like a hammer. “Let judgment be meted out.”

The great iron doors groaned open.

Through them came a young man in soiled finery, his hair disheveled, his hands bound, a gag fixed cruelly in his mouth. He fought the guards, straining against them with the wild, useless fury of someone who still believed rage could undo what had already been decided.

John’s mouth tightened at the sight. He made no effort to hide his disgust.

“Alexios Gabras, Principe of Theodoro,” Czcibor declared, “stands accused of treason against the Crown and of plotting a revolt meant to depose his own father.”

Even gagged, his son managed to make a spectacle of himself, twisting and snarling through muffled sounds that only deepened the humiliation. John watched him for a long moment and felt something colder and more exhausted than grief.

Disappointment, worn down to the bone.

“Your crimes are many, and the truth of them stands plain before God and men alike,” John said. “For pride and ambition, you brought death upon your countrymen, and placed the very survival of this Principality in jeopardy.”

He leaned back slightly in his chair, looking at this feral thing he was meant to call son.

“I will grant you the mercy of having final words to defend yourself before I pronounce your sentence.” And even that was too much.

His son couldn’t rush himself faster to disgrace himself if he tried. The moment the gag was torn from his mouth, his words came out jumbled and rushed.

“The Lord is great!” Alexios shouted, voice cracked and ragged from thirst and confinement. “This is but His test of my faith, and He will lead me and the true faithful into the Promised Land, free of the tyranny of my heathen father!”

He cut a miserable, half-mad figure. Grime streaked what had once been fine clothes until they looked little better than rags, and the siege on the relief army had wasted him badly. His face had gone pale and hollow, his cheeks sunken. Yet for all that ruin, there was still a feverish conviction burning in him, the kind that had long since stopped resembling piety.

John openly rolled his eyes and motioned two fingers towards the guards who forced the gag back into place. Alexios still tried to shout through it, his muffled fury filling the chamber with animal noise.

John let out a slow sigh. He had named his firstborn Alexios with hope once - a foolish thing to remember now. He had thought, in one of those softer moments men later learn to be ashamed of, that the boy might bear some faint likeness to his great-uncle.

Alexios the First had been the greatest prince his realm had ever produced. The man who had rebuilt Mangup after the Mongol devastation and gathered strength again in these mountains when lesser rulers would have yielded to dust and memory. His son meanwhile…

John rose from his seat slowly, arcing up to his full height, and stood over him. He towered not only above Alexios but above the watching nobles too, who sat in taut silence, waiting to see what sentence a father would pass upon his own blood.

“As Prince of Theodoro and rightful steward of these lands, I find you guilty of all charges,” John said. His voice carried clearly through the hall, worn but firm. “You will spend the remainder of your life in the dungeons below, and there you will remain until death sees fit to claim what is left of you.”

The words settled over the chamber.

“I spare you from death only because you are my son, and I will not stain my hands with the blood of my firstborn, however richly you have earned it.”

Alexios glared up at him then.

Even now, bound and gagged and broken down to a starved shadow, he still had his mother’s eyes. Bright blue, clear as winter ice. John hated them so much. There was too much of her in them.

This monster didn’t deserve to wear them.

“You claim to follow the light of God, but you, my son, are a devil,” John proclaimed, and Alexio’s snarl deepened, “you follow only darkness. And I will consign you to it.”

A murmur stirred at the edge of the hall, quickly smothered.

“This is the last time you shall look upon me,” John said. “So look well, son.”

Alexios did. He stared without blinking, straining so hard against his restraints that his whole body shook with it. His eyes had gone bloodshot with fury. John found that even this last defiance stirred little in him now. Once it might have angered him. Now it only tired him.

“You are my life’s greatest disappointment,” John said.

Then he turned to the guards. “Take his eyes,” He did not raise his voice. He had no need to. The hall went heavy with horror at the proclamation. Even his son looked stunned.

Such a punishment hadn’t been seen since the Roman Empire actually meant something. John felt it fitting that his son, who always liked to remind him that Rome was dead, should suffer a truly Roman punishment.

“Lock him away,” John said, flicking his hand in dismissal. “And put him in the darkest cell we have.”

The guards hauled Alexios upright, waking him up from his shock. He fought like a starving dog, twisting and wrenching with such unreal force that it almost looked as though he might actually free himself. But then two more guards stepped in. One struck him hard across the side of the head and the other seized him as his knees buckled.

They dragged him from the Sky Room half-stunned, like some filthy vagrant hauled out from a church porch.

Silence followed in his wake.

It was a useful silence. John could feel his courtiers sitting in it, measuring the sentence, measuring him. Let them. Let the vipers who had thrived in the softness of his court understand that the old indulgences were over. Still, John knew this would not be enough.

Fear faded, warnings were forgotten, and men remembered mercy as weakness the moment it suited them.

He had ruled too gently for too long, but no longer. They would learn to respect him, his lords and his neighbours. He would see to it himself.

“Philemon Makris, Lord Commander of Funa and the eastern vineyards,” Czcibor called and another pair of guards brought Philemon in and forced him to his knees, “stands accused of orchestrating attacks on Genoese merchant vessels so as to drive the two states into war, and of aiding the Principe in his rebellion against the realm.”

Philemon looked half dead already. His face had been drained of all colour, his skin waxy with fever, his body barely holding itself upright even with the guards propping him there. John had heard the man had nearly been disemboweled by a rat, his wound fouled by filth and his own waste though his bowels were pierced. He would stillc die within days if nothing was done.

John had no intention of granting him even that much time.

“Philemon Makris. Look upon me.”

At the command, the man stirred and slowly lifted his head. His eyes were glassy with fever, but there was still thought in them. Still defiance.

John knew very well what future Philemon had envisioned for himself had the rebellion succeeded.

It was always the same with men like him. They lusted after the throne as though it were some wondrous thing in itself. The seat was only stone, hard and plain, carved from the same earth men trod underfoot every day. It held no beauty worth envying, no comfort worth coveting. Its value lay only in what men placed upon it, in the power it represented, in the simple fact that only one man in all the room had the right to sit there.

And so lesser men yearned for it until the wanting hollowed them out.

John found a bitter pleasure in knowing that Philemon, even now, must feel the sting of looking upon the seat that would never be his.

“You are the symbol of the cause of the rot in this Principality,” John said, his voice low and carrying, “one I now see more clearly. Ambition dressed as loyalty, greed dressed as counsel, and treason festering beneath it all.” The nobles listened to the words in rigid silence.

John let his gaze pass over the gathered court before returning it to Philemon.

“You have committed the highest crime a subject can commit. And you, along with every noble who lent himself to this cursed enterprise, will pay for it.” John gathered himself. “I condemn you to death by beheading.”

No one looked surprised, least of all Philemon, but John saw what the sentence did to the hall - it painted it in carefully blank faces and stiff shoulders. These were the men who had stood aside, men prudent or weak enough not to commit themselves openly to revolt. More than a few of them were surely thanking God they had lacked the courage or clout to join it and John relished in their fear.

Philemon’s voice came out calm - thin and weak, but with a steadiness only a man facing the end could summon.

“You will never rule anything more than rock and ash.” His fevered eyes held on John with quiet contempt. “You may call yourself Prince, but you rule over ruins.”

Then he looked beyond the throne, to the nobles, the guards, the courtiers packed into the Sky Room.

“If this is all that remains of Rome,” he said, “then Rome is dead.”

“Remove him,” John said, unwilling to hear more from the vermin.

He had no wish to admit the words had touched a chord.

The guards hauled Philemon back to his feet. Even then, sick and failing as he was, the man tried to keep some last shred of dignity about him, straining to hold himself straight as they dragged him away.

As the doors of the Sky Chamber shut once more, John felt the weight of history pressing down upon him. Something had shifted here today. Not merely in the court, but in the Principality itself.

“Change is coming, my fellow subjects,” John said, and there was more life in his voice than most in the chamber had heard from him in years. “Our neighbours will see and learn to respect our strength,” He looked to the Genoese vipers, the steel in his gaze unmistakable. “The church will see and learn to aid us in our piety.”

At that, he caught the slight frowns gathering among Father Damianus and the more prominent clergy. Good. Let them wonder. Let them understand that old habits, too, were subject to change.

“And you, my good subjects will see it in the power of the Crown,” John’s tone hardened, “as treasonous and poisonous weeds are torn up by the root.”

He looked upon the noble assembly before him, that polished brood of flatterers, opportunists, and cowards who had nested for too long in the warm cracks of his court.

“Like the Royal Phoenix,” he said, his voice swelling at last into something grander, “we will rise from the ashes and begin our great flight.”

He placed a hand upon his chest.

“”

The answer came back from the room in an eager chorus.

“”

John let the cry wash over him, bathed himself in the fakeness of it, and smiled. He would cull all these traitors and carve a new, stronger Princedom from their graves. And it would be glorious.

Unbeknownst to all, in the great fresco of Saint George that dominated the Sky Room, a crack spread across the crystalline tiles, carving yet another gouge into the dragon’s heart.

…

John departed the Sky Room to a smattering of applause, fanfare, and pledges of loyalty. Praise for his coming reforms followed him down the corridors like perfume, cloying and insincere.

He almost laughed.

The fools did not seem to understand that many among them were the dry grass to be burned away, that the ashes from which the Principality was to rise would be made from the corpse of their comforts and power.

Serafeim waited in the shadow of a side corridor, composed as ever. The chamberlain slipped into step beside John and his personal guard with that uncanny smoothness of his, bowing mid-stride so neatly it barely seemed to interrupt his pace.

“They are waiting for you in your study, my Prince.”

“Very well,” John said. “This should prove an interesting distraction.”

They reached his study without ceremony. On his orders, the men he was to receive had already been brought in quietly, away from prying eyes and courtly ears. This was not a conversation meant for stray ears. Too much in the Principality was in motion for carelessness now.

Panagiotis stood waiting inside, back straight, posture formal.

“Panagiotis,” John said with a curt nod.

His tone was guarded despite himself. The Doux had played no small role in preserving the Principality from ruin, and in so doing had gathered a formidable measure of influence. John was lucid enough to recognize what that meant. John could admit, at least to himself, that in Theodoro’s darkest hour he had not been the strongest of rulers. Others had stepped into the weakness he left. That was a debt he could acknowledge.

But that sleep had ended, and it was time for the reins of power to sit firmly in his own hands once more.

“My Prince.” Panagiotis bowed.

John let the silence linger, measuring the man’s manner, the depth of the gesture, the ease with which he made it. Then his attention shifted to the other figure in the room.

He looked scarcely past adolescence, but there was nothing soft about him. Those pale silver eyes gave away his lineage. So this was Konstantinos’s whelp.

“My Lord,” the youth said, bowing low. John noticed the movement was crisp and proper, but controlled in a way that showed no nervousness.

A young man who did not fold in the intimate presence of a Prince was either dangerous or useful. At times, both.

“So,” John said, easing himself into his chair, “you are Theodorus Sideris.”

The name sat oddly in the room. He remembered the boy only because he had won them a victory recently. The number of up coming nobles he’d seen over the years was too high to count.

“I am told that you requested a meeting with me.” John’s gaze flicking briefly toward Panagiotis, who had plainly acted as patron to this audience.

“Theodorus has distinguished himself in every role he has been given thus far.” Panagiotis rumbled in that usual dour manner of his. “He won us a victory against the Crimeans in the north, brought word of the coming rebellion, and played a crucial part in curtailing both the revolt and the Genoese invasion.”

That drew John’s attention back to the boy more sharply.

He studied him with greater care now. So young. Too young, surely. Sixteen, perhaps, or near enough to it. Yet Panagiotis spoke of him not as one praises a promising child, but as one presents a weapon already tested in war.

“He has in fact been serving as a subcommander to the army,” Panagiotis continued, “and was instrumental in winning us this war.”

John turned to the Doux with undisguised surprise. That Panagiotis would state such a thing so plainly was startling enough. That the subject of such praise was a boy not yet fully grown made it seem almost absurd. But Panagiotis was anything but a man who indulged in exaggeration.

“It is no stretch to call him a genius,” Panagiotis said, his tone absolute. “I say all this as preface, because what is to be discussed here may prove the most important conversation of our lives, John.”

John’s eyes returned to Theodorus and stayed there.

There was something beneath the young face and grey eyes, something coldly self-possessed. It showed in the stillness with which he held himself, in the strange absence of any need to prove his worth after hearing such praise spoken aloud. Most men, let alone boys, would have straightened with pride, or at least betrayed some flicker of discomfort under so direct a scrutiny from their Prince.

He merely waited.

And that, more than rank or achievement, was what sent a faint chill through John.

“And what did you wish to speak to me about?” John asked at last.

The boy leaned forward slightly.

The pale afternoon light from the study windows touched the sharp planes of his face and caught in his eyes, turning them into silver-bright steel. The study felt strangely hushed, as though the air itself were drawing taut around him.

“About the future of our Principality.”