Fallen Eagle

4th Week of April, 1460

“They still haven’t responded to our call for parley.” Silvanus burst through the tent flaps as if leading a cavalry charge, canvas snapping in his wake. Unlike the knight’s usual mild, jovial mannerisms, his steps were clipped and his tone brusque, gaze honed to a single edge.

“We are aware,” the Doux answered, not bothering to lift his eyes from the sprawl of documents men stood hunched over in the large pinewood table set up in the center of the space. For most of the day, and ever since they had reached the outskirts of Mangup, the nerve centre of the Crown’s army had been trapped in the stale, lamplit air of the command tent. Ink, sweat, and hot canvas had mixed into a single, sour atmosphere of drying ink and low curses.

And at the middle of it all stood the Doux, presiding over the general assembly like a prison warden looking over his inmates’ work.

“And we are to let them?” Silvanus demanded. “To sit here and wait meekly for their response?” His whole body was coiled as if he might at any moment throw himself out of the tent and straight at the enemy lines.

“Shut your damn mouth.” Poseidippus rose from his simple stool, knees unbending with a solid pop beneath the armour he had insisted on wearing despite the spring heat. He kept himself fully armed on the grounds that he must be ready for any advance or sudden charge by the enemy, even from behind a writing table. “Your impertinence has been duly noted, but it will not help us rid ourselves of this scourge.”

Naturally, rivulets of sweat were already trickling down his neck as he straightened. Worse still, he had pressed a good portion of the captains into following his example, so that the cramped tent now felt more like a bathhouse furnace than the command center where the future of an entire state was trying to be salvaged.

Silvanus did not flinch from the harsh words, not breaking eye contact or retreating a single step from Poseidippus’s stare. “Standing here writing pretty scripts won’t help either if they won’t talk.”

The officers of the Crown, as the most educated men in the host and in lieu of any proper diplomat, had taken it upon themselves to draft sketches of possible offers and counter-offers to present to the Genoese. The chaotic hurricane that seemed to have crossed through the command tent was the present result of that attempt.

Every available surface groaned under writing supplies scavenged and brought over from the baggage train: inkwells jostled with bundles of quills and sharpened reeds for every iota of space, and half-rolled scrolls were heaped upon and placed in between packets of clean parchment.

The army’s handful of scribes had been dragged into service for the menial work, to keep pace with the flood of dictated suggestions and to set in order the plans conceived here in secret. At a certain point, however, that handful had proved hopelessly inadequate for the buzzing multitude of opinions on how best to approach the coming negotiations.

Now, military captains found themselves fumbling with feathers instead of sword hilts, their calloused fingers and bulging forearms ill-suited to its delicate balance. Some even gripped spare charcoal like a dagger, stabbing it into the parchment with every word they spelled, frustration guiding their brusque movements. As if the paper might yield its answers more readily under a beating.

“An initial refusal does not mean they will not talk eventually,” Theodorus said at last. He craned his cramped neck and arched his back to relieve some of the stress, then dabbed at the sweat on his brow with a folded handkerchief. “It is a known tactic in negotiation to make the other side wait.”

“And what purpose would that serve?” Silvanus asked, clearly puzzled.

Like most officers, he knew the movements of troops and the weight of steel far better than the subtle pressures of patience and silence. Diplomacy was its own form of art, and here, in this suffocating tent, they were only just beginning to learn its strokes.

“For one, it tests our nerve,” There were only so many lines and letters a man could endure before they all blurred together, and he’d firmly crossed that limit - a break was in order. “If we take the bait and go begging for a second parley, we appear desperate to break the siege. That suggests that either our defences are weak, or our fighting strength is greatly diminished. And that is an invitation to be attacked.”

“But we are weaker.” One of the captains straightened from his work, charcoal-smudged fingers flexing around the stub in his hand. “We lost a good portion of the combat-worthy men we had in that ambush.”

Theodorus realised, as he felt the weight of eyes shifting toward him, that more were listening than he had thought. Even the Doux had stilled, and Poseidippus, arms folded across his breastplate, was watching him with a severity that barely masked expectation. Of everyone in the tent, aside from the Papadopoulos twins, he was perhaps the only one who had any sort of experience or knowledge about treaties.

“But they do not know that,” he said. “What they have are reports of a disastrous battle in which our supposedly inferior force killed four times the men we lost. Do you truly believe the rebel survivors will be completely truthful about how much of a ‘ragtag’ army they fought?” His mouth twitched faintly. “Or will they, perhaps, raise us up a little in their telling, to make their own defeat seem less shameful?”

Pensive looks passed between the gathered officers. A few glanced down at the cluttered parchments, as if the ink there might confirm or deny his words.

“And the Italians are proud,” Theodorus pressed on. “They will not trust mere rumour. They will judge our strength by their own observations, by how we hold ourselves. Which is why we must show strength.”

“The armour,” Silvanus breathed, the words escaping him as if struck by a sudden blow of insight. Several men turned to him, brows furrowed, and he hurried to make himself clear. “You had the men wear armour at all times, even in this sweltering heat, so we’d look stronger than we are. So they look like men-at-arms.”

Murmurs of realisation rippled through the tent, a low susurrus of surprise and grudging admiration.

“When you are weak, appear strong,” Theodorus said quietly, almost to himself, quoting an old maxim none of these men had ever heard, from a general whose campaigns had taken place on the far side of the world.

The armour Silvanus referred to had been salvaged from the dead at the Kalamita Hills. The sheer number of high-quality troops - both amongst the mercenaries and their own fallen - had left a veritable treasure trove of mail, plate, and weapons scattered across the bloodied slopes. Theodorus had seen the opportunity at once.

He had ordered the levies - who had been poorly equipped in common gambesons, and armed with whatever spears and cudgels their villages had produced - to be fitted with those spoils. Now they carried proper, deadly weapons and wore full harnesses, or at least the half-armours the mercenaries had with them during the ambush. Their actual combat skill had not improved in the slightest; in fact, most would have been hard-pressed to draw a sword cleanly, let alone use the assortment of weapons now hanging at their belts.

But the enemy did not know that.

From their entrenched position and at a distance they saw only lines of well-armed figures and the gleam of foreign steel. From afar, appearance and reality were much the same.

“All to gain an upper hand in the negotiations,” Silvanus said slowly, tasting the thought as he spoke it. He had grasped, at last, the intrinsic meaning behind Theodorus’ words.

“More likely to bring us onto something close to even footing,” Theodorus corrected him, nodding. “And to keep them from simply hurling themselves at our position while we are still setting up our defences.”

He said it almost lightly, but the captains heard the edge beneath the words. They shifted, suddenly aware that they were not presently weathering a crushing assault only due to the enemy’s assumptions and their illusion of strength.

“Ensuring we fortify our position at a measured pace, unbothered by the superior army, feeds into the image that we do not fear a pitched battle,” the Doux said, his voice pitched for the benefit of the lower officers clustered near the tables. “And that is why you must ensure your own men are clear on their instructions and follow their orders to the letter.”

He let his gaze travel over them, steady and unblinking, making it plain that in this, at least, he would accept nothing less than excellence. “Our greatest weapon right now is the discipline we have managed to cultivate in our ranks in a very short span of time. Make sure your men behave orderly, as real soldiers would.”

They did not need to fight like veterans. For this type of warfare, it was enough that they looked as though they could.

“That still does not get around the fact that we have to speak with them for the whole plan to work,” Silvanus pressed, still uneasy. He needed something to sink his teeth into, something more tangible than digging ditches or building palisades while his city was under siege.

“But we cannot rush them,” Poseidippus said, stroking his chin thoughtfully. “And we do not know when they will make their move.”

“They are waiting for something,” Theodorus interrupted, drawing eyes to him. He looked from one to the other. “They are leisurely in setting up their camp, in mounting their cannons. It is not the urgency one expects from an army preparing for a months-long siege.”

The words settled over the tent like another layer of canvas. Scratching quills slowed. A few captains exchanged wary glances.

Theodorus met the Doux’s eyes across the clutter of maps and parchments. The look they shared was brief but sharp, two blades touching for an instant.

What were the Genoese waiting for?

The moon hung in its quarter like a long, ugly smile over Mangup, pale light washing the fortress stone and narrow alleys. A fitting sky, Zeno thought, for the night about to unfold in its shadowed corridors.

“Are the preparations complete?” Markos asked from the bedside, smoothing the last wrinkles from his tunic.

He was dressed in dark, as was Zeno. Both of them were covered from head to toe in plain, dusk-coloured garments that swallowed the light instead of catching it.

“Yes,” Zeno affirmed. He bent over the basin in the corner, rinsing his face in cool water, willing the chill to clear the last traces of sleep and doubt. “The agents are in place at the gate, ready to open it when the time comes. All is ready.”

Twin, lithe arms slid around him from behind, drawing him back from the basin. A sickly-sweet perfume rose around him, cloying at his senses.

“Are you?” Markos’s breath was warm against his ear.

Tonight’s work called for stealth and for daring in equal measure. Perhaps that was why Markos had insisted on claiming his time, and his body, one last time before they slipped out into the night.

Zeno understood that the question was not only about the mission.

“Yes.” He straightened and turned, nodding as he met Markos’s eyes.

A playful smile bloomed across Markos’s face, quick and sharp. “After the gates are open, we can vanish in the confusion,” he said softly. “Slip out with the fleeing crowds and leave this wretched place behind.”

He smiled again at the thought. In the pale moonlight it looked like a beautifully evil thing, all jagged teeth, dashing playfullness and hidden promise. A perfect encapsulation of who Markos was.

“As long as you know what you are doing.”

Zeno still was not sure what Markos’s grand plan was for slipping free of Philemon’s grasp, but the slave held an unshaken confidence in it. In his words, Philemon’s displeasure would be a minor inconvenience at most, a passing storm hardly worth remarking upon.

As they stalked through the shadowed corridors, Zeno nursed his own suspicion as to why that might be the case, and how it tied into the army now camped outside Mangup’s walls. The arrival of a massive Genoese host at the very gates had both astonished and terrified every Theodoran in the capital. The mood inside the castle had thickened into something one could almost touch - an anxiety hanging in the air like smoke.

Every turn they took, even at this hour, brought them past stern-faced guards pacing their routes, watching for any flicker of suspicious movement. Their eyes were strained, their shoulders tight beneath mismatched armour.

But there were far too few of them. The Crown’s army had taken most of the true men-at-arms afield to fight the rebels, stripping Mangup of its veteran Royal Guard and leaving behind only a token garrison. That remnant had been padded out with frightened, ill-equipped peasants and artisans, men dragged from the city’s militia and workshops and told they were soldiers now.

Against such a patchwork, slipping through was child’s play. It was ridiculously easy to thread their way between the thin patrols they had long since mapped, and to ghost down half-lit passages and stairwells with no one the wiser.

They reached the keep’s inner gate where a knot of armed men stood clustered around a single figure draped in white, as if she scorned even the idea of stealth. The soldiers had the hard stillness of men who had killed before and would do so again without blinking.

Hands rested lightly on sword hilts and axe hafts, eyes watchful and flat, weighing every shadow as a potential threat. At their centre, Arsinoe gleamed like some carved idol, pale skin framed by ink-dark hair, her eyes too bright, too intent, as if something inside her watched the world with a predator’s curiosity.

“I thought this was supposed to be an undercover mission,” Zeno said by way of greeting, offering his sister a customary barb. “You are practically shouting for attention in that outfit.”

“The way has been made clear,” Arsinoe replied, ignoring his tone as if it were beneath her notice. “And there is nothing to hide about what we are doing. It is a glorious event that will mark a turning point for us, for our Master, for everyone in this tiny Principality.”

The way she said it, it sounded as if they were ushering in a golden age, as though they were on some holy mission for her chosen messiah. How she spoke of Philemon never failed to sicken Zeno.

“Drape this over yourself,” Markos said, already moving. He tossed a dark cloak at her without ceremony.

“You dare?” Arsinoe rounded on him at once. She was the senior of Philemon’s agents in Mangup, and she clung to that sliver of authority as if it set her above the rest of them, as if rank could turn her devotion into something noble rather than feverish.

Markos did not so much as glance her way. He swung his own cloak about his shoulders and turned toward the gate. “We will be late,” he said simply.

The armed men hesitated for a heartbeat, torn between the woman who outranked them and the man who was already moving. Duty decided for them. One by one they fell in behind Markos. A mission was a mission, and it would not wait upon offended pride.

Zeno lingered only long enough to flash a row of pearl-white teeth in a mocking grin at his sister, then swung after the others. Arsinoe followed as well, the white of her robe swallowed now beneath the dark cloak, but from the rigid line of her shoulders and the sharp, clipped movements of her steps, it was plain she was fuming.

As they passed through unkempt alleyways and barren roads, Zeno mused that the city at night was a dark reflection of what it had become by day, something he found bitterly ironic.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from NovelFire; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

These days, even the bustle of morning life was muted. Silence reigned in the streets, shutters barred and doors bolted, people barely venturing beyond their thresholds as if flimsy wooden walls might somehow keep out steel and fire should armed men come marching in. It felt cruel that their present errand was to loose upon the city the very havoc its people cowered from.

Zeno was not blind to the carnage and wanton destruction that would follow if the gate were pried open and the Genoese allowed to march in unopposed. The Italian republics fought with mercenary companies, men who expected a share of plunder and the licence to pillage as part of their wages. Once the walls were breached, there would be little to restrain them.

They came at last to the northern gate of Mangup’s castle, the place chosen for their crime. Zeno, placed in charge of the guard rotations by the old veterans left behind in Mangup, had carefully arranged that the men manning this gate were those his uncle kept on his payroll as moles within the capital.

A fortress’s gates were usually wrapped in layers of precaution, for all knew they were both the heart of the defence and its most obvious wound. History had shown that saboteurs favoured gates above all else when seeking a way into a castle, and so over time the safeguards had grown increasingly elaborate.

Each of Mangup’s gates was overseen by a sergeant and a rotating group of men-at-arms or, levy militiamen pressed into their roles as was the case now. Crucially, the key to the gate and the horn that would sound the alarm were held by different members of the Royal Guard, independent of the sergeant on duty. Under normal circumstances, both key and horn were cycled daily between men and posts at regular intervals to prevent any predictable pairing or pattern of the men stationed at any given gate.

But these were anything but normal circumstances.

“The men at the gate are all loyalists?” Arsinoe asked brusquely. In her mouth, the word ‘loyalist’ meant loyal to her Master, which meant they were rebels in truth. “Opening the gate will take upwards of fifteen minutes, and we cannot have the alarm sounding before the columns of the Republic are safely through the city.”

“Yes. I have even replaced the men stationed along this stretch of wall with our own.” Zeno kept his voice low, barely carrying beyond the small knot of conspirators. “Everything will proceed without a hitch.”

“You must tell me afterwards how you managed to manipulate the rotations so thoroughly in our favour, my dear Zeno,” Markos said with a soft laugh. “I have to say, your work is… comprehensive.”

Zeno could not help the small, pleased curl of his mouth. “Only when we are nearing the end do you begin to notice the work I have put into this rebellion.”

“It is the bare minimum after the mistakes you have made in the past,” Arsinoe was quick to remind him, lips peeling back from her teeth, instantly killing the jovial mood.

They reached the gate a little before the appointed hour of midnight.

“Sir.” The sergeant on duty snapped to attention and saluted Zeno as they approached, paying the customary lip service as if this were any other inspection, any other night.

“Just a routine inspection,” Zeno said, repeating the agreed codewords to confirm that all was to proceed as planned and that no unforeseen trouble had arisen.

“At midnight?” the sergeant echoed, one brow twitching.

“Deep in the night is when soldiers are least wary, and when mistakes are most likely,” Zeno replied, following the script.

The man’s face remained stern as he studied Zeno’s eyes, weighing him for a long heartbeat. Then he gave a slow, decisive nod.

“Non ci sono stati problemi?” he asked, turning his attention to Markos and, to the surprise of those on the periphery, speaking fluent Italian.

“Nessuno, è pulito. L’operazione può procedere,” Markos answered smoothly, his tongue fitting the foreign words with practised ease.

The exchange all but confirmed what Zeno had already suspected in the quiet of his own thoughts: Markos was an agent of the Genoese Republic, not merely Philemon’s slave.

Arsinoe, however, was slower to grasp it. “What is happening?” she demanded, head snapping back and forth as she glared at the two Italian-speaking Greeks.

“Nothing your small mind would comprehend,” Markos said, dismissing her with an almost lazy, authoritative gesture. The mask slipped fully for the first time. “Open the gates.”

The sergeant barked an order over Arsinoe’s protests. The men on duty gathered, moving to their appointed positions along the winches and bars.

“Are you betraying us?” Arsinoe hissed as she gripped onto Markos’s forearm like a vice, unwilling to be ignored.

“Nothing of the sort.” Markos eyed her as he would a bug, smoothly disentangling himself by twisting his sister’s wrist, prompting a yelp. “The Principality will be Philemon’s to toy with, no need to worry your pretty little head.” He said daintily, uncaring for Arsinoe’s glare as she nursed her forearm.

The key-bearer stepped forward, slid the heavy key into the outer lock, and turned it through each of the deep-set latches that held the inner bars in place when the gate was barred for siege. Iron groaned within stone as old mechanisms shifted, links in a chain of security painstakingly undone.

“Finally,” Arsinoe breathed, momentarily forgetting her outrage at Markos’s unveiled allegiance.

The hinges answered with a long, grinding complaint as the first set of doors heaved inward under the men’s combined push. From beyond, in the darkness pressed tight to the base of the wall, came the soft, collective rustle of many bodies drawing breath - hundreds of Italian mercenaries crammed into the shadows, primed to burst through the moment the gap was wide enough to admit them.

The anticipation in the air hardened into something almost physical as the tension ratcheted up another notch. If they were discovered now, here at the gate with locks undone and the enemy at their threshold, they would all die like dogs. If they succeeded, the fate of the Principality would be altered forever.

Zeno could feel it in the quicker drum of his own heart. The moments unfolding now would decide everything. For him, and for Theodoro.

Markos moved to his side as if sensing his unease. Without a word, he reached for Zeno’s hand, his grip unexpectedly gentle yet firm. “Together, my love,” he murmured, the affectionate term coming out of nowhere; it was one he’d never used before.

Zeno turned to him, wide-eyed. The sickly sweet smile Markos wore seemed almost painted onto his face, bright in the moonlit dark. Zeno found himself transfixed by it, caught between the warmth of the touch and the coldness of what it concealed.

“After this we will run away,” Markos promised softly. Was he a dangerous spy, an abused slave, or Zeno’s lover? Was he playful and sadistic, or merely hiding his own fractures and traumas beneath layers of cultivated indifference? "I promise."

Zeno tightened his fingers around Markos’s hand and managed a small smile of his own. “Together,” he said. "My love."

He saw Markos’s expression soften, almost shine with sudden, unguarded happiness just before the first bolts fell among them.

“From above!” men shouted, voices breaking into panic as volley upon volley rained down on the traitors clustered at the gate. From the wall-walk high overhead the night split open with the twang of strings and the hiss of death in flight.

Rounds of dozens of crossbows loosed at once, the bolts angling down into the packed mass of agents trapped below the wall. Half their number fell in the opening salvo alone, the storm of projectiles easily outnumbering them three to one.

Their screams tore through the night in a sudden, jagged explosion of sound. Bolts punched through mail and leather and flesh alike, hurling men backward, pinning arms to ribs and bodies to the gate itself. One stumbled a few steps before collapsing, a shaft jutting clean through his throat, another dropped to his knees clutching at a bolt driven deep into his eye, blood darkening the stones beneath him in quick, uneven pools.

“What is happening?” his sister shrilled, her voice breaking into a high, ragged note of pure panic as she failed to make sense of the slaughter erupting around her.

“Betrayal?” Markos snapped, eyes wide and white, disbelief warring with instinct. “But who-” He broke off mid-sentence, thoughts racing, and his gaze found Zeno.

The soft smile of their love promise was gone from Zeno’s face. What stared back at Markos now was bare, cold, and utterly resolved.

“You,” Markos breathed, as if he could not believe his own accusation, as if saying it aloud might yet make it untrue. His features twisted with a raw, stunned hurt that had nothing to do with the bolts falling around them.

Even as the chaos surged, Markos tried to wrench himself free, to twist away and back out of reach. Zeno did not allow it. He kept hold of the hand he had been so tenderly clasping only moments before, the same hand that had promised escape and a shared future, and turned it sharply, using the little trick Markos himself had used on his sister.

Bone and sinew protested, and Markos cried out as his wrist nearly tore.

Zeno stepped in, smooth and practised, slithering around Markos’ body. His other hand flashed to his belt and came up with a dagger, the blade kissing the side of Markos’s neck in one clean, unmistakable line of threat.

Arsinoe whirled, her head snapping toward them. Her terrified scream curdled mid-note into an animalistic roar of pure rage as her eyes landed on the image of her brother suddenly holding Markos at knife-point.

“YOU!” she bellowed, launching herself forward with a speed that belied her size and measured grace. Her strides flowed with the easy, lethal economy of someone trained to kill, and her eyes held the cold, flat light of one who already had.

If Zeno had thought he could not despise his uncle more, he had been wrong. The beatings and torments had not been enough; Philemon had also moulded his sister into a disposable blade, an assassin conditioned to throw away her life at a word.

“I WILL SLAUGHTER YOU!” Arsinoe screamed, drawing a dagger of her own. Spittle flew from her mouth as she gnashed her teeth, more beast than woman in that moment.

Zeno remained utterly unfazed. He only pursed his lips and blew a sharp, piercing whistle.

A second volley answered from above, this time with no care taken to spare his position. The bolts scythed down over the gate platform, striking the remaining traitors who had no proper cover left to duck behind. Those with shields had been singled out in the first rain of iron, what remained were the exposed bodies gathered at the back, running around in a blind panic.

The survivors stood no chance. Nor did his sister.

Of the myriads of bolts that rained down, three found Arsinoe’s back in quick succession. Her white toga beneath the cloak gleamed faintly even in the low light, an easy mark to aim at. Zeno actually had to repress a sigh at the sight of his sister’s idiocy.

As for Markos, two shafts slammed into his front, Zeno forcing him into the path of the incoming fire, using his body as a shield.

Markos exhaled sharply as the bolts punched through his abdomen, the breath leaving him in a wet, rattling sigh that marked the beginning of his end.

On the other side of the wall the mayhem was greater still. Screams erupted from the tight-packed formations of Genoese who had clustered around the gate, ready to surge into the city in force.

Zeno heard the heavy scrape of wood and stone, then the dull, sickening thuds as the defenders began heaving boulders and great chunks of masonry they had prepared over the parapet. The rocks plunged down into the massed ranks below with brutal finality. Plate armour that could turn blades and shrug off most bolts offered little protection when a man’s entire weight fell on top of him at the speed of a rampaging bull.

On the narrow stretch of flat ground that berthed the gate, men crumpled as their knees shattered under the impact, helmets caved in like eggshells, and ribs broke inward with a wet crunch. Large boulders fell, crushing entire clusters of men all at once, grinding their steel, flesh and bone into the earth. Those who survived the first hits were knocked sprawling, only to be trampled under their own comrades as the formation buckled and tried to recoil from a rain that no shield could truly ward off.

The sound of their struggle warmed Zeno’s heart.

It was the sound of revenge being repaid to his uncle, of his shackles cracking link by link. The final note in a month-long plot to seize his own destiny and rise from his lowly station.

“In the end… it was all a lie,” Markos whispered. His breath came in uneven rasps, struggling to form the words. “Our escape… our future.”

“Not all of it, my dear Markos.” Zeno’s reply was almost cheerful. For once he stood on the giving end of the teasing. He no longer had to play the obnoxious, slow, brooding simpleton, and he found that freedom delicious. “The nights we spent were mildly enjoyable.”

“Did you ever love me?” Markos asked. His voice, for a heartbeat, sounded fragile - like a small candle guttering in a sea of dark.

“You can drop the act,” Zeno snorted, rolling his eyes. “And you were shot in the stomach, not the lung. You do not need to rasp like a dying old man.”

“Worth a try,” Markos said after a moment. His tone smoothed out, slipping back into the light, amused cadence Zeno knew too well, not bearing the slightest trace of strain despite being skewered by two heavy bolts. His life had molded him past pain. “Humour me then, since I am curious. What do you hope to accomplish by this?” His tone wasn’t spiteful or angry, merely curious.

“Besides a higher station?” Zeno arched a brow. “To avoid dying ignominiously when your patron, my uncle, or both decide to tie up loose ends.”

Markos made a ‘hmm’ sound that showed he understood. “My master will not take kindly to your assassination of me,” Markos warned, switching tactics.

“Because you are a prized investment?” Zeno very nearly laughed. “You are a slave.”

“He invested quite a lot in me,” Markos said quietly, tone amused, as if sharing some intimate secret Zeno had somehow missed. "The skills I know, the things I've accomplished...if only you knew."

“Well, then it is fortunate he will have no way to trace this back to me.” Zeno pressed the dagger a fraction deeper against Markos’s neck, just enough to draw a thin line of warmth.

“Wait.”

The word came sharp, stripped of any lingering mirth.

“I have information,” Markos said, his composure unshakeable despite the threat of death. “Valuable information on the Republic your Prince would most certainly want to hear.”

He offered to sell out his master without a flicker of shame, even as his blood began to seep, red and steady, down the edge of Zeno’s blade.

Another volley of crossbows cracked from the wall, the bolts hammering into the retreating Genoese. At this range, their bodkin points would punch through even plate with brutal ease, and the sharp incline and narrow northern road would make escape slow and painful. Zeno had devised the ambush to inflict as much damage on the Italians as possible.

“As if I would believe a word that comes out of your mouth. Besides,” Zeno said, almost lazily, his tone utterly at odds with the carnage around them. “I can’t have you reporting on how exactly I earned your trust.”

“Is that what you call it? Earning trust?” Markos laughed, mouth twisting. “Was it an act from the start?”

“Essentially.” Zeno shrugged, unfazed. “Once I made up my mind, it was a simple matter of leading you along. I had to play an utterly detestable role, mind you, so I really can’t commend you on your taste in romance.”

“You think that was romance?” Markos barked, a dry, incredulous sound. “How naive, Zeno. I was playing you as well. Who do you think they hired to slit your throat once your part was done?” He spoke the words with genuine glee, baring his true face for all to see, finally.

For a heartbeat there was silence, then both burst out laughing. Men moaned around them, praying to God or mumbling incoherently in their death throes as screams echoed in the distance.

It was a rough sort of laughter, but genuinely mirthful and oddly in tune. It was, perhaps, the closest thing to a real moment people like them had ever shared, and ever would. Two broken men, laughing at the absurdity of the duplicity of their relationship. Playing each other from the very start.

Despite everything, Zeno felt a faint… something at the thought of killing Markos. He would not dignify it with the name of regret, but it brushed close enough to be uncomfortable.

Then the moment ebbed, and his mind cleared once more. Zeno was no sentimental fop to hesitate at this junction.

“Goodbye, Markos,” Zeno said at last, his voice turning to ice.

“Ta-ta-ta, my dear Zeno.” Markos tutted softly, his tone light again. “We’ve been in this exact position before,” he added, a sensual lilt to the words. “You should have known I'd make sure to drag you along with me.”

A thin point of steel suddenly pressed into Zeno’s abdomen as Markos slashed upward with all the strength he had left. The blade bit cloth, then stopped dead against the hidden jack of plates Zeno wore beneath his garments, the force dispersing harmlessly over the quilted metal.

“And you should know I never make the same mistake twice,” Zeno whispered coldly.

His dagger moved in the same breath, carving a long, jagged line across Markos’s throat, opening it from side to side. Blood spilled through his fingers and down his chest in a hot, pulsing rush, pouring from him like water through a sieve.

Markos collapsed to the stones, pale eyes blown wide, staring up at Zeno as if the answer to some last riddle might still be found there.

“Surprised, since you watched me dress?” Zeno asked lightly, the question more mockery than curiosity. “That was on purpose, mind you. This particular armour is quite inconspicuous. I wanted you to think your little sneak attack might actually work, or you might try something else. A predictable enemy is the best kind.”

He bared his teeth in a cruel smile, placing a single orange lily on the fallen slave as if in homage, looking into his eyes for a still moment, watching the life drain out of them.

Then he stepped over Markos without another glance, ignoring the slave as he bled out on the cold, grey stones.

His sister, however, still hovered on the edge of consciousness.

“You… traitor…” she rasped, blood bubbling at the corner of her lips as she forced the words out.

“No,” Zeno said. His voice was utterly flat. “You betrayed me, sister.”

He knelt beside her, expression carved in stone. “I never thought you had survived the fire. But even less could I have imagined, not even in my darkest nightmares, that you would side with our parents’ murderer. That you would love him more than your own brother.” A faint thread of anger crept into his tone despite himself, tightening at the last word.

“You abandoned… me… to the flames,” Arsinoe choked. Her once-beautiful singing voice, the clear melody he remembered from childhood, was drowned beneath the wet rattle in her lungs. Each word came muffled under the weight of the blood filling them, the music muted beneath crimson as she gasped for air that would not come. “To stay in… in that house…” tears began slowly blooming at the corner of Arsinoe’s eyes, as if all the suffering and pain she’d endured in her years of bondage were pouring out of her in her final moments.

Zeno ran his thumb through her cheeks, gently wiping them off her face.

“I would have come back for you had I known you were in the fire,” Zeno said, the harsh line of his mouth softening for a heartbeat. “I would have dragged you out myself, if I had known you were taken as a slave and made to suffer.”

Despite everything that had followed, that truth lodged in him like a splinter. It was a regret he could never undo.

“But you didn’t…” Arsinoe’s lips curled into a strangely beautiful smile, a vivid streak of red trickling down her pale, almost translucent skin. For an instant she looked like some fallen angel, dying beneath the quarter moon with death and misery spread around her like a cloak. “And now you… will burn in hell… for killing your sister.”

She tried to lift her head but could not, her neck muscles giving out, arms jerking in small, helpless spasms.

Zeno took hold of her chin, almost gently, and tilted her face up to his. He smiled down at her, a small, sad curve of the mouth that did not reach his eyes.

“No, I will not,” he whispered. “My sister died in that fire, no matter what anyone says. You are not her. You never were.”

He might have done many things differently had it been otherwise. But from the moment they had met again, from the first instant he had seen what Philemon had made of her, Zeno had known that the girl he remembered was long dead. Whatever lay before him now was something else wearing her face.

Arsinoe’s smile only widened. More tears spilled from the corners of her eyes, tracing clean lines through the grime and blood as if she were weeping in ecstasy rather than agony. Relieved that her life, her torment, was finally over.

She breathed a soft, haunting melody from the music she used to sing to him in their youth, the symphony gradually dying out. A moment later, her chest stilled, and she went slack in his hands.

Zeno lingered over her body for a few heartbeats, staring down at the features that still faintly echoed a simpler time. A time of warm sun and the sting of a salty breeze as his little sister showed them the first arrangement she’d learned on the harp, fingers fumbling with the delicate chords, voice cracking with every note, and eyes alight with pride at their applause and praise.

Then he let her chin slip from his fingers and stepped past her, his face once more unmoved.

His path did not lie in the past, but in what came next.

Zeno climbed the battlements and set his hands upon the cold stone, gazing out over the sprawling camp at the base of the plateau. The army of the Republic lay coiled around Mangup like a great, dark serpent, tightening its grip with every passing hour.

With this choice, he had set himself against them, against his uncle, and against the life fate had written out for him.

With this move, Zeno had chosen his side.