Fallen Eagle

Chapter 95: Blood and Death

Damp stone and rust were fitting companions for despair, Panagiotis thought. Fitting, too, for the devil they had buried in these depths.Mangup’s dungeons twisted downward like something intent on boring into the castle’s foundations. It made escape all but impossible for the men cast inside, but it also turned the simple act of finding one prisoner into a tiresome business. Panagiotis disliked wasting time on labyrinths. Men should be kept where they could be accounted for, judged, and disposed of without ceremony. There was no virtue in needless complication.

The echo of filthy droplets striking stone filled the dark like the ticking of some miserable clock. Beneath it came the creak of leather, the scrape of hobnailed boots, and the measured tread of soldiers who had long since forgotten how to walk like ordinary men. War had a way of beating the softness out of even the most harmless motions.

It had been only a few days since Panagiotis had entered Mangup at the head of an army half-broken, bloodied, and victorious. Since then he had done everything except rest. Other men liked to imagine victory as a pause in labour, a reward of applause, wine, and easy smiles. Panagiotis had never understood that weakness. Victory was not an ending. It only changed the shape of the work that remained.

And there was much that remained to be done.

His future was to be a coin toss in the truest sense of the words, which meant he had to tighten his grip on every part still within reach. Panagiotis was no gambler. He had not survived this long by trusting fortune when discipline, foresight, and force could still tilt the scales.

That was why he had not come sooner. But he could not delay this visit any longer.

“It’s in the eastern corridor,” Gennadios rasped when they reached a fork in the passage.

Panagiotis said nothing. He merely turned and followed.

They went deeper into the prison’s bowels. Mangup was small by the standards of greater cities, and its crimes were usually small as well. Drunkenness. Theft. Street brawls. Rarely did its cells hold men whose actions had been large enough to shake a principality.

Now, however, the dungeon was close to overfull. Traitors. Captured mercenaries. Nobles waiting to be ransomed. High and gutter-born alike rotted behind bars, stripped down to the same stink, the same hunger, the same pleading. Their voices followed Panagiotis through the corridor like the muttering of the dead, and he gave them no more thought than he would have given rats in the walls.

“It’s here,” Gennadios said, and there was a small trace of tension in his voice.

The entourage halted.

“No one goes past this point,” Panagiotis ordered.

“Doux, there is no reason to risk your-”

Panagiotis raised a hand, and Gennadios fell silent, knowing the folly of pushing further. If a thing needed doing, Panagiotis preferred to set his own eyes upon it. Over the years he had found that delegated errands had a habit of arriving blunted and finishing half-done.

And this particular task no one could carry out for him.

He stepped forward alone into the dark, where the raucous of the rest of the dungeon seemed almost faint and faded.

The Prince had kept his word. The heads of the snake had been thrown into the deepest hole they could find, far from the world outside. Far from even other human beings.

As Panagiotis neared the cell, he heard the faint scuff of boots on stone, and a hushed conversation.

“It saddens me to see you like this, uncle.” The voice carried a cruel sort of delight, sharp and dark enough to be unmistakable.

“I told you once, did I not?” it went on. “That I would heap such misery upon you, such suffering, that it would finally break you.”

The whisper turned colder after that. From the other side came only the faint rasp of laboured breathing.

“And now look at you. Wallowing in filth. Broken, spent, cast aside by the Italians like some common whore.”

Panagiotis remained by the doorway, just out of sight of the exchange, and listened.

Across the hall, in another cell that looked half-ready to cave in on itself, with loose rubble and creeping moisture contesting the stone inch by inch, sat a motionless figure cross-legged on the floor.

The Principe looked a shadow of what he had once been.

As though sensing his gaze, he opened his eyes and flashed him a pearl-white smile, as if the whole business were some elaborate, private jest, before he closed them again, apparently untroubled.

Panagiotis felt only contempt for the bravado. There was no strength in treating reality as though it were one step removed from consequence. Its only use was for weak men who couldn't face them properly.

“I used to dream of a day like this,” the voice continued, its malice carrying strangely through the cavernous depths. “I will take all that is rightfully mine now, and you, my dear uncle-”

Panagiotis heard Philemon’s ragged breathing hitch and break into pained groans.

“Will. Die. In. Hell.”

Each word was forced out between pained gasps.

A quick flurry of footsteps followed, and then Zeno emerged from the cell. For an instant, Panagiotis caught the naked smile spread across the young man’s face before Zeno noticed him standing there.

The expression vanished at once.

He schooled his features, but the damage had already been done. Men always believed they had time to gather themselves after indulging their uglier impulses. This time, Zeno had been careless.

The two men held each other’s gaze for a long moment. Neither needed words to understand what had just been seen.

Finally, Zeno bowed his head, as though nothing of consequence had passed.

“My Doux,” he said. “With your leave.”

Panagiotis gave a single nod.

He marked the moment and set it aside, where he kept all the others. A man’s truest instincts most often revealed themselves when he thought no one of consequence was watching, and Panagiotis had built much of his life on observing precisely those moments. On digging those truths out from even the most deceitful of liars. He had promised himself never to be fooled if he could help it.

Panagiotis watched Zeno go, his figure slipping down the corridor and into the deeper shadows at its far end.

He had always known there was darkness in the boy. But the boy was useful to his plans, and usefulness had a way of outweighing other concerns.

Besides, Panagiotis was not a man who recoiled from filth when the work before him required dirty hands. He had long since accepted that some bargains were ugly from the outset and no less necessary for it.

Panagiotis stepped into the cell and in it, one of the most powerful men in the Principality knelt amid refuse like a beggar abandoned in a gutter.

Philemon was deathly pale, blue veins standing out beneath skin so thin it seemed almost to catch what little light reached this place. A faint grey shaft leaked in throught a narrow slit hole - the only modicum of light in the room. It was barely enough to see his hand’s faint outline, but Panagiotis’s torch revealed the red blotch coloring Philemon’s midsection.

It was as if someone had prodded the open wound until it burst open.

He glanced up, and Panagiotis finally got a proper look at his face. Philemon’s eyes were half-bright with fever, his brow slick with sweat, but a smile slowly spread across his face when he saw who had come.

“Panagiotis.”

He sounded almost pleased.

“Philemon,” Panagiotis rumbled back.

They held one another’s gaze for a long moment, measuring, weighing. A lifetime seemed to pass between them in that silence. Betrayals. Old wounds. Things never said, and too many that had been.

“Have you come to gloat?” Philemon asked, his tone light, almost amused.

“Such things are beneath me,” Panagiotis said.

“Are they?” Philemon’s smile widened a fraction, making it plain he did not believe him. “I have had no shortage of visitors for that of late. It is remarkable how many men can smile to your face, call you an ally, and then rush to drive the knife deeper once fortune turns.”

“You reap what you sow.”

If the words had been meant to stir pity, they failed. Panagiotis felt none. The man before him drew from him only the old, hard hatred that years had never truly dulled.

“If you build your life on schemes and duplicitous men,” he said, “you should not be surprised to die with no man to call friend.”

Philemon gave a faint, dry laugh. “Do you have any such'friends', Panagiotis?” he asked, in the tone of a man who thought he already knew the answer and took pleasure in it. “Men like us do not have that luxury. Power is the only wife we are ever allowed.”

“Is that why you remained unwed?”

That landed cleanly. Philemon’s expression darkened, his eyes lifting sharply to meet Panagiotis’s. They both knew the reason why he hadn't.

Hatred flashed nakedly across Philemon’s face before he swallowed it. He knew very well that was what Panagiotis wanted.

“How is Anastasia?” he asked at last, and for the first time there was something almost cautious in his voice.

“She is disappointed.”

Nothing more.

Silence stretched again.

“I see,” Philemon said quietly.

He lowered his gaze to the flagstones, and Panagiotis watched him brood there in the filth, forced to sit with the wreck of his own making.

He hoped it hurt him.

“The Principality will move past your little games once and for all, Philemon,” Panagiotis said. He gave the words to him like a sentence. “You were a blight. One that will quickly be forgotten.”

Panagiotis stepped closer. The stink of sweat, blood, and rot rose thickly from the cell. He knew how deeply Philemon prized grace, beauty, refinement. There was a certain justice in seeing him brought this low, kneeling in refuse like a broken thing.

“I told you one day I would be rid of you,” Panagiotis said, his voice dropping near to a whisper by the man’s ear. “In the end, this is all you amounted to.”

Philemon chuckled.

“There you are,” he murmured, glancing up. There was no fear in his eyes. Only enjoyment. “The Panagiotis I remember. Always angry. Always hungry for more. Like a mad dog.” His smile turned ugly. “You have buried it beneath that cold little mask of yours, but I know better. You have not changed. You have only learned to hide your tracks.”

Then Philemon moved.

His hand shot out with startling speed for a half-dead man, seizing Panagiotis by the sleeve. The motion came quick and slick as a snake striking from grass. Something metallic flashed in his hand as he drove it upward toward Panagiotis’s armpit.

Panagiotis caught his wrist in mid-flight.

“And there is the Philemon I know,” Panagiotis ground out, tone calm.

He twisted Philemon’s wrist until the man’s fingers sprang open around the hidden blade. A hiss of pain escaped him.

“Always lying. Always scheming.” He ground every word out with a hatred he thought he had buried within him long ago. "Did one of your 'friends' smuggle this in for you? Were you waiting all this time just to have a small chance at taking my life?" The attempt indicated that Philemon had predicted that Panagiotis would come. That he had seen plainly through him. Like he always did.

Panagiotis struck him across the cheek, hard enough to turn his head, then rose in a single motion and stepped toward the door.

“Leaving already?” Philemon gasped. Blood glistened at the corner of his cracked lips, then spilled when he spat onto the stone.

Panagiotis stopped at the threshold. “I came only to say goodbye.”

Philemon let out a ragged laugh. “Now that is worth laughing at.”

Panagiotis said nothing.

“I seem to remember,” Philemon went on, voice thin with pain but still carrying that old venomous wit, “that you once promised never to lie to me, friend.”

The last word struck deeper than the knife had come close to doing. It pulled at something old and unwelcome inside Panagiotis, some buried remnant of a time when simpler days had still seemed possible. A time when he had been foolish enough to call the man behind him a friend.

“You cannot fool me, Panagiotis,” Philemon said, his eyes were fever-bright, but lucid. Starkly so. "Never could. And never will."

Panagiotis believed him.

That had always been what irked him the most. Philemon could read him when others could not. The same had never been true in return. Panagiotis had spent years trying to pin the man down, trying to ascertain plots and counterplots to no avail. Philemon had always remained slippery, a puzzle that refused to yield even after friendship curdled into hatred.

“Then you will know this is true, Philemon.”

Panagiotis turned back. For the first time, the stony mask he wore cracked, if only slightly. Anger flared in his eyes.

“I have never hated anyone as much as I have you.” His calloused hands tightened at his sides. “And I have never cherished any friend as I once cherished you. I...I am sorry for what happened.” The words came out low and hard, as though he had to force each one through iron, though not as forced and felt as the ones that came next.

Philemon’s head darted upwards, honing in on Panagioti’s face, looking for any hint of a lie.

He saw the set in Panagiotis’s jaw, the pain in his eyes, and he knew it to be true.

It would have been a prime moment for a cutting jest, but none came. No sneer, or sharp poison. Only a strange, quiet thoughtfulness that eventually gave way, and something in him seemed to sag.

“It does not matter now,” he said. “Those days are gone. Konstantinos is dead. Tomorrow I will be too. You are the only one left.” There was a bitterness to his tone. And a forlorn sense of nostalgia that even old grudges could not erase.

“I will make it mean something,” Panagiotis said, and the promise hung between them in the damp dark.

Philemon gave a faint, rueful smile. “I suppose you might as well.”

Panagiotis left without another word.

Outside the cell he stopped, standing motionless in the corridor while his thoughts churned beneath that iron stillness of his. Decades of toil, of patience, of blood, of hatred, had led to this moment. Yet there was no pride in it, not even a small relief.

In some grim fashion, Philemon had been an enemy he knew. The ones gathering on the horizon were not.

Still, he would endure them as that was what he had always done. What else was there for a man like him?

He would do it for himself, for his Principality.

“Anastasia,”

The name came as little more than a whisper, followed by the muffled sobs of a broken man who had never once allowed the world to see the cracks in him.

Panagiotis stood there and listened.

And he would do it for the dead. For the friends who still haunted him from the grave.

It was a resplendent day, so bright and clear that it clashed obscenely with the grim business of an execution. Theodorus found that contrast difficult to stomach.

There was something profoundly wrong in a sky so generous shining down upon a crowd so eager to watch men die. No one ought to feel at ease at an execution, let alone cheerful.

“Something the matter, my lord?” an aged voice asked at his side. “Are you unwell?” The familiar concern in it was unmistakable.

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“Nothing so dramatic, Demetrios,” Theodorus assured him, unable to stop the small smile that tugged at his mouth. He had missed the old servant more than he had expected, missed the steady comfort of his presence. Their reunion had nearly undone them both. Theodorus had felt embarrassingly close to tears, and Demetrios, for his part, had not been much better. “I was only musing on stray thoughts.”

“Some devilish scheme to put your life in danger, no doubt,” the old man said dryly.

“What is life without a little danger?” Theodorus replied in mock gravity, and that won him a brief chuckle from the servant. They stood on an elevated parapet from where they could clearly see the spectacle about to unfold.

“I am glad you’re back, my lord,” Demetrios said. His hand closed on Theodorus’s shoulder with more force than necessary, as if he needed to confirm that it was all real.

“I know, Demetrios. You have told me often enough these past few days.” For all the complaint in the words, Theodorus returned his own squeeze.

A sudden swell of noise below drew their attention toward Mangup’s main courtyard. A great mass of townsfolk had gathered there in anticipation, pressing close enough together to resemble a living tide. From the gates of the inner keep rose a burst of shouting, and beyond the sea of heads Theodorus could make out a knot of armed men forcing a path through the crowd.

Children cheered. Men hurled stones and cabbages, most of them rotten, at the slow-moving procession as it made its way from the castle toward the raised scaffold in the centre of the courtyard. Along the edges of the square, peddlers hawked food, drink, and, with astonishing shamelessness, even fresh ammunition to throw at the condemned. The whole thing had taken on the air of a fair.

It turned something sour in Theodorus’s stomach.

At the heart of the procession shuffled the two principal men responsible for the war that had torn through the Principality and cost thousands of lives. By every ordinary measure, he ought to have hated them.

He did not.

They had reached for power, certainly. They had schemed, wagered, and lost. They had been players in the same ugly game as he was, men reaching for power for different aims, though his own might have been nobler to him, surely his enemies thought the same as well.

Victors decided who became patriots and who became monsters. These men would be remembered as devils because they had failed, but failure and villainy were not always the same thing. More often than not, they were only two faces of the same coin, stamped by fortune on one side or the other.

And he was no better than any of them if judged on that alone.

The Doux led the front of the procession, climbing the wooden steps to the scaffold with the heavy certainty of a man performing necessary work.

The Prince followed a fair distance behind, as if to untie him from the ugliness of what unfolded ahead.

“Silence!”

The Doux’s roar cracked across the courtyard like a whip, and the feverish crowd recoiled from it. The jeers and laughter did not vanish entirely, but they shrank into a low, uneasy murmur.

“These men stand condemned as the principal perpetrators of the rebellion raised against the realm,” he declared. “The Prince’s justice shall now be carried out upon them.”

Then he stepped aside and bowed his head just enough to cede the centre to the Prince.

A hush settled over the square. From what Theodorus had gathered, the Prince rarely made himself so visible to the common people. That alone lent the moment an added weight. Men craned their necks. Women held children up to see. Even those who had come only for spectacle seemed to understand that this part demanded silence.

“Let all men know,” the Prince said, his voice carrying cleanly across the square, “that those who harm our people shall pay their due. By the sovereign authority granted to me by God, I order their punishment.”

The first prisoner dragged forward was a blindfolded, gagged Alexios. The Prince watched without visible emotion as his heir apparent was forced to the boards by four stout men while another heated an iron rod until it glowed a vicious orange.

The crowd watched in naked anticipation.

Alexios bucked and twisted, but there was nowhere for him to go. The sentence had already been pronounced. His struggle changed nothing.

The iron touched his right eye, and Alexios convulsed so violently that the men pinning him down nearly lost their grip. Even with the gag muffling him, the agony pouring out of him was unmistakable, raw and animal in a way that cut through the distance between scaffold and crowd. The courtyard answered with thunderous cheers. They drank in his suffering as though vengeance itself were being ladled out before them, hot and public.

When the blindfold was finally torn away, Theodorus could see thin threads of smoke curling upward from the Principe’s ruined socket. The cauterizing heat might spare him from bleeding to death, but that was a miserable sort of mercy. Alexios pitched forward and vomited where he knelt, his body rejecting what his mind could not endure, and the spectacle drew another ragged wave of delight from the onlookers. It was that, more than the punishment itself, that bothered him. The Principe was no longer a man to them, only a vessel into which they could pour all the fear and fury the war had left behind.

They dragged him bodily from the wooden stage, his boots scraping uselessly against the planks, but the carnage was far from finished.

Next came Philemon Makris.

“You have this final chance to repent and admit your mistakes,” the Doux intoned, his voice carrying cleanly over the courtyard.

Philemon said nothing. He stood with a strange, austere composure, looking out upon the crowd not like a condemned man, but almost like a prince receiving petitioners. Whatever fear he felt, he buried it well enough that no one below was permitted the satisfaction of seeing it.

“So be it.”

At a gesture from the Doux, two men forced him down onto his knees and pressed his neck against a rough chopping block set in plain sight of the gathered city. A burly executioner stepped forward clad in black mourning clothes, a massive greataxe resting across his shoulder. He looked to the Doux for the signal.

The Doux did not give one.

Instead, he stood for a long moment with his gaze fixed on the disgraced noble, and then, to the evident shock of everyone present, he extended a hand for the axe.

The jeers faltered. The shouting thinned, then died altogether, until an eerie hush spread across the courtyard. Even the Prince seemed caught off guard by the turn. Theodorus, however, felt a cold flicker of recognition.

It reminded him of the same ruthless sense of personal intimacy he’d felt when the Doux had gripped the sword from Leonida’s grip when he first sought entry into the Prince’s army nearly a year ago now. There were some acts the Doux would not delegate.

He wrapped both hands around the oversized weapon and strode toward Philemon with grim purpose. For a brief instant the two men met each other’s eyes, and something passed between them, some private acknowledgement no one else in the courtyard could read. Then, on a signal known only to them, the Doux raised the great axe and brought it down in a single brutal stroke that severed Philemon’s neck clean through.

The crowd erupted.

The traitor was dead. The rebellion was broken. The Principality, bloodied and staggering, had survived the slaughter.

Across the distance, the Doux found Theodorus’s gaze, and Theodorus understood the grimness in his expression. Whatever triumph the crowd believed it was witnessing, both of them knew this was no true ending. It was only the prelude to the far greater slaughter still waiting to unfold.

Stefanos could understand why they called it the Sky Room. It was not only because of the great winged dragon painted across the domed ceiling, not only for the deep blue and violet colours that worked their way through its tinted windows and spread across the hall, casting an ethereal glow.

It was because of the sky beyond it.

Blue stretched on every side of them, open and distant, as though the throne hall had been set above the whole world. There was no higher place in the Principality, and none of the lower Theodoran peaks could be seen from here. Standing in that chamber felt like standing above the clouds themselves. It was meant to make a man feel small before the power gathered there.

Stefanos hardly cared.

Once, a sight like this would have filled him with awe so grand it might have stolen his breath. He would have stood staring like some village boy dragged into a saint’s vision. Now it all felt almost ordinary to him, and strangely hollow.

The splendour had not changed, it was he who had. He had seen too much of what lay beneath, too much of the smiling falsehood and polished cruelty. It was a world of lies, deceit, and backstabbing dressed up in silk and ceremony. That was all it was.

And at the centre of it all knelt his Lord.

Theodorus was cast in the chamber’s purple light, the colours from the windows and painted ceiling settling over him in rich shades that made the black and grey livery of House Sideris seem even sharper. His dark cape framed his back neatly as he knelt before the throne, every line of him composed just so.

To Stefanos’s eye he looked gallant, every inch the noble champion these people wanted to see. And a year ago he might have believed the scene for what it was. Now he could see the careful theatre behind it. He did not resent his Lord for playing his part in it.

If a man wanted to carve change into the world, this was the price.

“Announcing the grand victors and most notable personages that have guided the Principality to victory on this most august of days!”

The herald’s voice rang through the hall with all the swelling force the occasion demanded. Stefanos heard the pride in it, heard the delight these people took in making victory sound clean and shining.

“Christos, of Kerasia,” the Prince intoned, his voice measured and lofty, as if he were naming some hero from an old tale. “For your honour and bravery, facing dozens of foes in single battle, you are awarded the title of Captain of our Principality’s army.”

A scattering of applause followed. Christos bowed low, looking deeply uncomfortable in the fine, custom-made brigandine that had been prepared for him. For all his size, he seemed swallowed by the formality of it, as though someone had dragged a good plough ox into a church and told it to behave like a courtier. Stefanos almost wanted to scoff.

Honour. Goodness. Chivalry. Once, those words might have meant something to him. Now they sounded like the sort of stories told to peasant boys so they would behave. He had believed in such things before. He had been a peasant fool, happy and content to see the world through that beautiful tinted glass.

But now he was just a cripple who could barely stand upright.

“To Stathis of Suyren, the title of Captain.” The ceremony went on, Stefanos barely heard it.

He could not run more than a few minutes before his body gave out beneath him. His urine came red and brown, ugly colours that told him something inside him remained broken, and no one could say when that might mend, or if it ever truly would.

“For Nikos, of Clan Manghit, the title of Captain.” That drew stronger reaction. Murmurs passed through the chamber in low ripple. A half-Tatar sergeant rising so high in the Principality’s army was no small thing.

He blamed himself more than anyone else ever could.

To end up like this, half-broken and unfit for proper service, felt almost fitting after the choices he had made. He had been a fool, and worse, he had been vain. When Lord Theodorus had first taken him, Stefanos had secretly taken it for proof that there was something rare in him, something worth seeing. That it had been that something that had brought him back from the brink of death time and time again.

He had imagined glory, becoming something like the knights from old stories, one of those hard-faced men who rode through songs and lived in people’s memory.

And because he had believed such nonsense, he had begun to act as if it might be true.

That he’d wondered it there might be something possible between him and Lady Cassandra…he had been a servant’s son reaching upward toward what he had no business touching. A child playing at greatness because he had stood too close to a sun and started to imagine some of that light belonged to him as well.

It did not.

His calling, if he had one, was to protect the enigmatic lord who had plucked him from obscurity and given his life direction. Theodorus was the one marked for greatness, not him. Stefanos could see that now with a harsh certainty.

So Stefanos would do whatever it took to see him succeed. Not because he had saved his life, but because it might be the last chance he got to be something special in a tale told by everyone.

Even if only as a minor character and never the main lead.

“These new captains will bolster our ranks and fill the places left by those brave souls who gave everything to secure our victory. Yet greater honours still remain to be bestowed.”

Theodorus held his posture and kept his face suitably composed, though lofty ceremonies had never suited him. Remaining perfectly motionless for long stretches felt both awkward and faintly humiliating, especially beneath the weight of so many watchful eyes.

He was certain there was something at least a little ridiculous in his posture - standing there so solemnly, arranged like a decorative piece in someone else’s pageant. Still, he could feel the ceremony nearing its true conclusion now, and that made the discomfort easier to endure.

“Now we turn to those of even greater distinction. Sir Silvanus, step forward.”

“My liege.” Silvanus shared none of Theodorus’s concerns. He moved at once, dropping to one knee with a fluid grace that bordered on theatrical. His white cape billowed behind him in a carefully controlled sweep, as if even his submission had been rehearsed to make the strongest possible impression.

“You have shown exceptional courage,” the Prince declared, “personally slaying Adanis Nomikos in battle. The lands of House Makris now stand bereft of governorship, their former masters having been put to the sword for treason.”

The hall seemed to draw tight with anticipation. The noblemen present understood that this was no minor title about to be handed out, and Theodorus could almost feel their collective attention sharpening.

“You shall be granted military governorship over the eastern lands.”

A wave of applause rolled through the chamber, though it carried as much surprise as approval. Silvanus himself looked momentarily stunned beneath the poise, he had not expected quite so grand a reward. It was a tremendous honour, and no small burden.

The eastern province was among the most important in the Principality, rich in wine, and soon-to-be trade with the Italians. The Prince intended to have the most distrustful of the Genoese to monitor their actions carefully. With the appointment, Silvanus had just turned from a respected officer into a player of real political consequence.

“But the folly of this rebellion has shown that power resting too fully in the hands of one man is a fragile thing.” The Prince let his gaze travel across the hall with open challenge, as though daring anyone present to dispute him. “Therefore, the system of co-governorship shall be more firmly instituted. To serve as your Hypostrategos, and to share your burden, I appoint Captain Athanasios, who has shown leadership and loyalty to the Principality in equal measure.” That announcement stirred the chamber again.

The Principality still claimed the military governorship system inherited from Byzantium, a model once more centralized and disciplined than the looser feudal arrangements common across much of Europe. In practice, however, time and corruption following the decline of the Empire had worn it down.

Governorships had hardened into near-hereditary possessions, powerful families entrenching themselves in local rule until office and bloodline had begun to seem almost the same thing. The rebellion had given the Prince the perfect excuse to reverse some of that drift, at least where rebellious provinces were concerned, and to wrap that reversal in the language of reform rather than punishment.

“Theodorus Sideris, step forward.”

The command rang through the Sky Room, and Theodorus obeyed, taking the measured steps expected of him. Every noble gaze seemed to settle on him as he moved.

“You have distinguished yourself many times over,” the Prince said. “You won us a great victory against the Crimean Khanate at the beginning of your young career. You reorganized the conduct of our northern signalment. You acquired information crucial to uncovering the plans of the rebellion. And you served as a subcommander of the Crown army and played an integral role in the victory we now celebrate.”

The speech was well rehearsed, each achievement laid out with deliberate care, not merely to praise him but to justify what was coming next. Theodorus knew the Prince was building the case before the audience so that the reward would appear reasoned rather than reckless.

“I say all this only to preface the unprecedented gift I now bestow upon him at so tender an age,” the Prince continued, his voice rising with practiced gravity. “Let all here understand that this is not a decision I make lightly, but one founded upon the extraordinary work you have already done. It is based solely upon his capability, and upon the principle that valour, no matter whence it comes, shall be recognised so long as I am Prince.”

Prince John swept one arm outward in a grand gesture.

Despite himself, Theodorus felt a pulse of eagerness run through him. This was it. Another hard-won step toward shaping his own fate rather than being dragged by it. More than that, it was another step toward saving the Principality and averting Fate itself.

“I grant you governorship over the northern stretch of territory, and stewardship of Suyren Castle.”

The reaction was immediate. Audible gasps ran through the chamber, followed by a sharp burst of whispers that could not quite be suppressed.

For the son of a minor noble house to rise from near-obscurity to rule one of the Principality’s four castle fortifications was no ordinary promotion, and to do so in one year? It was the sort of ascent men described as meteoric, the kind that bred admiration in some and resentment in many more. And yet to Theodorus, who knew how much still remained to be done, the climb felt maddeningly slow. He had bled and schemed and gambled for every inch of it, and the summit seemed as high as ever.

“To aid you in ruling those lands, to provide counsel and share in the burden of governance, and in recognition of the crucial role he played in stopping this rebellion despite his blood, Zeno Makris shall serve as Hypostrategos. Together, you will govern our northern frontier.”

Theodorus’s eyes widened despite his efforts to remain composed. He had known of his own appointment well in advance, but not this. No one had informed him who would co-rule with him.

Zeno stepped forward and cut a dashing figure as he did so, all measured dignity and pious self-command, a faint smile resting on his lips as if the honour sat upon him as naturally as sunlight on polished stone.

To anyone watching from afar, he looked every inch the ideal young noble: devout, handsome, composed. Theodorus knew better. He had seen too much of the sharp intelligence and careful ambition hidden beneath that pleasant exterior to mistake the man for harmless.

The hall was practically alive with speculation now. That the Prince would entrust the northern frontier, the most volatile and dangerous stretch of the realm, to two such young men was seen by many as a gamble bordering on recklessness. The north was a wound that had only half-scabbed over. Anyone with sense knew the appointment was as much a test as it was a reward.

Theodorus and Zeno exchanged a cool, measured look.

There was no warmth in it, but there was understanding.

The plans Theodorus had so painstakingly woven through blood, deception, and opportunity were now moving into their next stage. He would return north, back to the land where he had lost a friend, back to the frontier where old debts still waited and unfinished business remained.

The ceremony, for all its grandeur, was only the dressing placed over that harder truth.

He would transform the North into something unrecognizable.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The air stank of swamp water, flies, and smoke-blackened wood.

It was the smell of hovels burning, of wet mud churned by too many boots and hooves, of pale men dragged squealing through filth that stained them brown.

It was the smell of pain and misery - Nur knew it as well as he knew the shape of the sabre in his hand, and he took comfort in them.

Everywhere he looked, there was nothing worth taking anymore. That was only because his riders had already stripped the place bare.

The fort that had once guarded the frontier between Lithuania and Crimea now burned like a dying torch against the marshland, its timber walls splitting and cracking as flames licked through them.

Droves of captives were driven out from their homes and storehouses, shoved into the mud with kicks and curses, while warriors counted through stolen trinkets, bolts of cloth, silver cups, and whatever else had not already been hidden too well. Women cried, children stumbled, and old men fell when they could not keep pace. Those too slow to rise were left where they lay. Slaves were worth coin, but not every body was worth the trouble of hauling.

A grime-streaked family was dragged before Nur Devlet, their fine clothes dirtied into rags, their faces smeared with soot and terror. One of his men approached first.

“My Bey.”

Nur turned in the saddle, and the warrior nearly faltered beneath the weight of his gaze. “What?”

“The noble family,” the man said, swallowing. “We have brought them.”

Nur looked them over. The father still held himself stiffly despite the ropes biting into his wrists, and that alone disgusted Nur. There was too much pride left in him for a defeated man.

“So you are the one who refused surrender when I offered it,” Nur said.

The nobleman said nothing. He only stared back with the hollow defiance of a man who had finally understood how little his walls and prayers had been worth.

“You wasted my time,” Nur said coldly. “You wasted my men. Now you will pay for both.”

He turned to his soldiers. “Kill them.”

The man’s face dropped, and the woman pleaded with sudden tears in her eyes.

One of the younger warriors hesitated, his eyes flicking toward the women and children. “All of them, my Bey?”

Nur fixed him with a stare until the boy dropped his gaze. That was answer enough.

Steel flashed. The nobleman died first, then the rest of them after, cut down in the mud beside the smoking ruin they had thought would protect them. Nur did not bother watching long. Screaming always sounded the same in the end.

“My Kalga.”

The voice came from behind him, mounted and breathless with urgency. Nur recognized Adel before he turned.

“I told you not to call me that anymore,” he said, though the rebuke slid off the boy as easily as rain off felt.

“I bring news from Chufut-Kale.”

That captured his attention, he had not been there for many months. Not since being disgraced in front of an audience, and swearing a blood oath amidst cloying incense.

He had not forgotten the promise he’d made his father. He had tempered his steel, and honed its edge. Waiting for the chance to make ammends. To heap his revenge.

“What does the Khan want?” he asked.

“To come home.”

Finally.

It was time to make use of the blade he’d carved, and use it to bring about that which he had promised himself so long ago.

Pain and Misery for them all.

The climb up the hill was rough this far north, the path broken into stony patches where the earth had long since given up pretending to be kind.

On any other day, Theodorus might have noticed the stark beauty of it, the wind moving through the grass, the lonely quiet of the high country, the little ridges and slopes folding into one another beneath a darkening sky.

He could not bring himself to care now. The burden that had brought him here pressed too heavily on his chest for beauty to find any place in him.

At the top of the rise, a thin wisp of smoke curled above the hidden hamlet, barely visible until one was nearly upon it. It looked small and fragile, almost tucked away from the world.

It was Theodorus’s charge to bring the world to it. To shatter the peaceful illusion.

Theodorus guided Boudicca to the hitchpost near the entrance and tied her there with slow, deliberate hands, hands slick with the pouring rain.

It was hard and cold, just as the last time he was here, drumming against the roof and soaking through his cloak in waves. A woman stepped out from the doorway, wiping her hands on her apron before the sight of him made her pause.

“Theodorus,” she said, recognition settling over her face. “What brings you here?” Her eyes moved past him, searching the yard for something, someone.

“Is Kyriakos not here with you?”

Theodorus dismounted and walked toward her through the rain without answering. By the time he reached the doorstep, she had already seen enough in his face to understand that something was wrong.

“What is it?” she asked, her voice tightening. “Where is he?”

He could only shake his head.

Standing there in the pouring rain, he took out a heavy pouch and placed it in her hands - it held fifty hyperpera, and a single deck of cards.

“I... oh no. My baby boy.”

The sound that left her then was worse than weeping. She folded into him as her knees gave way, collapsing against his chest while the rain fell around them in heavy sheets. Theodorus could do nothing except hold her upright and let her grieve.

The coin should have been enough to pull him out of this hard place, enough to buy him years away from all of this.

Instead, he had died with arrows meant for him.

In some corner of himself, Theodorus knew he would carry this as his own doing. Kyriakos had died because he had stood too close to Theodorus’s path, and that truth would not soften with time. This was his burden to bear.

And the only way he knew how was to see his path through to the end.

No matter how much blood and death marred the way through.