Fallen Eagle

3rd Week of August, 1460

Shadows followed every step Damianus took through Mangup’s dimmest alleys.

Even flanked by his personal bodyguards, men sworn first to God and only after to any earthly lord, Damianus could not keep himself from glancing toward shuttered windows, narrow stairways, and passages that vanished between leaning houses.

The old city seemed to hold its breath around him. And somewhere above, the fortress still kept its proud watch over the mountain, even down here where the streets were cramped and damp.

They reached a heavy, worn door in the lower portion of the town, scuffed by age and plain enough to belong to any cellar or storeroom. It bore no marked signs, only the faint smell of old wood.

Andronikus gripped the rusted iron handle and pulled softly. Even the slight rattle of metal against wood sounded far too loud to Damianus’s anxious heart, and he found himself murmuring a brief prayer.

After what felt like an eternity, the doorway scraped open. Beyond it waited a small room lit by a dozen scattered candles.

Their flames trembled in the stale air, throwing uneven light over paintings depicting religious figures that dominated the far wall. The chamber itself was dominated by a circular wooden table, cloaked men spread around it.

They were in fine clothing, long silk and wool tunics belted at the waist, and sat with straight-backed stillness, their faces half-hidden.

“Your Eminence,” the lead nobleman said.

He sat at the far end of the table, but rose carefully, seeing Damianus's entrance. The rest followed suit, bowing in unison to Damianus with the practiced grace of men who had been raised to understand rank.

“Please.” He gestured toward the empty seat opposite him.

Damianus noticed other empty spots around the table and felt a small weight settle in his chest.

“Thank you, Deukalion, and may God be with you.” Damianus crossed himself and blessed the room, his hand moving through the holy Trifecta with familiar care. “Not everyone could make it?” he asked as he settled into the chair Andronikus pulled back for him.

His bodyguard remained close, eyeing what had to be a modified cellar with open suspicion.

“Not everyone wanted to,” Deukalion corrected. “To even meet is a danger to us all.”

Damianus regarded each man still seated at the table. These were the remnants of the high nobility who had survived the great upheaval of the rebellion with their names intact, brought here by Damianus for an express purpose.

“It is a danger worth braving,” Damianus intoned. “You may already know why I have asked you to meet here.”

“To challenge the Crown,” Deukalion stated, hands steepled before him.

“Prince John has strayed too far from doctrine,” Damianus said, nodding gravely. “Do you know that he plans to steal from God’s own House? He has commanded me to melt down the Church’s divine idols, silver and gold, to fund his pride and this ridiculous project in Eski Kermen.”

The words landed faintly, because Damianus had no taste for shouting. The surprise they carried did not.

A few nobles shifted in their seats, meeting each other’s gaze with open worry.

“He has become heavy-handed,” one of the nobles, a minor offshoot of an older house, mumbled.

“It is more than that, my lords,” Damianus said, pressing the point now that he had them. “He has strayed from doctrine itself. He confessed to me in private that he believes God holds less sway over the Principality than he does.”

Damianus had seen the affliction many times before. When men were granted even a modest measure of power, they began to lift their eyes less often toward Heaven. A little authority became a cloak against humility. A throne, even a small one upon a mountain, could make a man forget that there was always a higher seat above him. Pride was a deadly curse because it did not merely bend a soul toward sin. It taught the sinner to stop looking upward at all.

“That is a grave sin,” Deukalion’s weathered face soured, deep wrinkles tightening around his mouth and eyes, yet Damianus heard the falseness in his tone clearly enough. “But I am not sure how that concerns us.”

Damianus wanted to answer that it should concern every living soul because they had a duty to spread the word of God and stand against evil wherever it rooted itself, but held back.

He would be the first to admit that calling noblemen to a hidden cellar under cover of darkness was not a duty any servant of God undertook lightly. There was no holy page that praised whispers behind locked doors. Yet Damianus had learned long ago that what was written on a sacred page could be read a thousand different ways by a thousand different men.

His responsibilities stretched across every Orthodox soul on this peninsula. That was the task God placed upon him, and he would complete it to the best of his abilities, even if the road led through shameful methods and uneasy rooms lit by borrowed candles.

Whatever he did, he remained a servant of God above all else.

“It concerns us because he is gathering power unto himself,” Damianus said, allowing a narrow thread of the fervour he used in sermons to enter his voice. “He means to rule as if a God-King, answerable to no altar but his own. If he is allowed to act unchecked, we will all suffer in his wake.”

The men considered the matter with drawn faces. Firelight slid across tense hands resting near cups no one had touched.

Against a tyrant, an alliance between the clergy and the lesser nobility was one of the few forces that could still keep a prince’s power in check. It was an old balance, imperfect and worldly, but sometimes God worked through frail instruments because they were all men had to offer.

“We must force the Prince to rescind the order before it is too late,” Damianus said resolutely.

“Your words have merit, Father,” Deukalion replied, his speech more measured. “But it is a sizeable risk to take at this time.” Every syllable the man spoke was always given room to settle before the next arrived. Deukalion was not a man to waste words.

Damianus’s heart sank slightly, though he was not surprised.

Deukalion was one of the few men in the room who had not survived the rebellion by being too insignificant to tempt Philemon’s faction. He had survived because he had chosen his steps with care, backing the Principe and Damianus without ever showing enough of his hand to be struck for it. He was cautious, pragmatic, and disinclined toward any move that could not be undone.

Under his steady leadership, House Abatzis had risen to modest influence in Theodoran politics. It was now the only remaining noble house that could even distantly approximate the standing of the Papadopoulos and Gabras families, though the comparison was generous.

Damianus had to win him here.

“One that is necessary,” Damianus said. He looked from face to face, drawing upon the fear he knew lay in their hearts. “You understand that the Prince will not stop with the Church, my friends.” Being a priest meant recognizing that telltale sign in men, then turning it toward faith and goodness.

“We know,” Deukalion said flatly. “He has used the Genoese treaty to effectively sign away a sizeable portion of our coin.”

Damianus stilled. Was that the reason behind the agreement with the Genoese?

He looked around the table and saw the answer written plainly across pained faces. Many of these men had come to rely on the income of their wine estates to sustain their households and way of life. Now those revenues stood endangered by the immense quantity of goods promised away to the Italians.

“He means to curb the power of the nobility,” Deukalion said, his weary voice fitting the dark room far too well, “and consolidate his own.”

“Then that is all the more reason to retaliate,” Damianus urged, trying to draw the men out of their fearful stillness and into action. “If the Prince means to weaken us both, then we cannot greet the blow with bowed heads and folded hands.”

“The Abatzis family will do no such thing,” Deukalion remained firm, hands resting upon the table as though he had already weighed the matter before he had even presented it.

“Even if inaction means letting evil abide unchecked?” Damianus countered. “God does not look kindly upon aloof men who see wickedness and call their silence prudence.”

Deukalion’s eyes narrowed dangerously.

“To question my piety is to question my very sense of honour and being,” His voice’s rasp tilted onto more dangerous territory. “I hold no one higher than the Almighty Himself. But I begin to question whether you feel the same, Father. If you truly are the shepherd appointed by God over our small flock, why do you cling to silver and gold so readily? Does God not teach us to let go of material things?”

For a moment, Damianus almost could not believe what he had heard.

Was he being accused of impiety?

Heat climbed through him, sharp and humiliating, and his fingers tightened around the edge of the table before he mastered himself.

“They are but tools to carry out God’s will,” he said, regaining control of his voice. “I would gladly offer them up if I believed they would feed the hungry, shelter the poor, or strengthen the faithful. But I will not place holy vessels into the hands of a man like John Gabras merely so he may turn the Church’s wealth into his own.”

“Hmm, is that so?” Deukalion hummed, noncommittal and unreadable. “Because I hear the Prince plans to use the coin to strengthen the realm against infidel invaders. What better use could there be for wealth than that?”

Damianus had no ready answer. The Prince had played his part masterfully in that regard. There was no reproach possible from a theological sense in what the Crown was doing, even if the method itself was radical.

“Well, I believe this meeting has served its purpose,” Deukalion said, pushing himself back from the table. “I do not think our Prince to be the man you make him out to be.”

“You are making a mistake,” Damianus could not help the frustration that bubbled within him. Without Deukalion’s support, there was no means to oppose Prince John in any meaningful fashion. These men did not know how apocalyptic the Principality's future was. Did not know that they were dooming them all.

“Careful, Father,” Deukalion warned. “None here would want this meeting to reach the Prince’s ear, would they?”

The warning settled over the room like a drawn blade. No one spoke.

Damianus felt something wrong in the statement. He had expected caution from Deukalion, even resistance, but not for the man to threaten him so boldly.

There was something else at play.

Damianus’s breath hitched as the realization came upon him.

“Has the Prince exempted your own fields from the Genoese treaty?” he asked, realizing Deukalion had sided with the Prince.

For the first time that evening, Deukalion’s restraint cracked into the faintest smile.

“I sincerely hope that God is with you, Father,” was all he said as he turned and left, “Because I believe you will need it.” His voice trailed behind him as he climbed the narrow steps.

The others followed soon after, muttering their blessings and excuses while avoiding Damianus’s eyes. Soon the cellar emptied around him, leaving only the candles and painted saints.

Damianus remained seated for a while, seeing the true scope of the bargain with the Italians only now. The Prince had used the grandest concession the Principality had ever handed out as a weapon. With one treaty, he had struck at his enemies, strengthened his own hand, and bribed the last remaining opposition into stillness.

It was an act of tremendous foresight, one Damianus would not have attributed to John Gabras.

So who on earth had thought it up?

In the end, it did not matter.

Damianus rose slowly, feeling his age in the stiffness of his knees. Andronikus moved to his side without a word, his hand already near the hilt at his belt, and together they left the cellar behind.

The door opened onto the cool August night, and the air outside felt almost clean after the closeness below. Mangup lay quiet around them, as if in wait.

Damianus drew his cloak tighter against the chill and looked toward the heights where the Prince’s power sat above them all.

The Prince was clearing obstacles from his path.

It only remained to be seen what exactly waited at the end of it.

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

4th Week of August, 1460

It was a clear, cloudless blue sky that hung over Kalamita’s portside. One Poseidippus had come to hate the sight of almost as much as the cursed Italians.

The sun beat down mercilessly onto him, and sweat poured down his scalp and nape, winding smoothly over his bald head before gathering at his collar. It irked his skin, ran into his eyes, and left salt burning at the corners, but physical discomfort was something he had long trained his body to ignore.

The idiocy of others was something he had not been able to yet.

“You promised at least one wooden pier would be ready before August was out,” Poseidippus snarled in the thin Italian’s face, pointing to the half-driven piles jutting from Kalamita’s shallows like rotten teeth.

The man shrank back as the translator stuttered an approximation of his words.

“It has been more than two months,” Poseidippus continued, not bothering to wait for the babbling fellow to catch up, “and all your men have managed is to drive stakes across half the beach and gather stones as if building a saint’s cairn. The Principality was very clear in its demands of the Republic.”

The translator rattled through the sentence in quick, uneven bursts. Poseidippus cared little whether every word survived the crossing. He was sure his meaning was carried well by his towering presence as he loomed over the thin, frail accountant.

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The Italian’s terrified expression at least suggested as much.

“We understand, my lord,” the man said, his voice high enough to grate. “But the ground here is soft. We have to firm the head of the beach before we can set the stone quay properly. That is what the rock is for.”

“And by your own reckoning, that stone quay will not be done for another year at least,” Poseidippus did not relent, lashing the idiot with each word. “We need the wooden pier now, not when your masons have finished admiring their own lines.”

Wine would begin moving soon. Grapes were cut and pressed through September and often into October, and once the vintage started coming down from the estates, casks would have to be brought by cart, rolled to the water, lightered out if need be, and loaded before the weather worsened. No one with a functioning head planned a harbour improvement without first assuring the immediate needs were met.

“How do you plan to load all the wine that will be coming in if you have no pier standing?” Poseidippus demanded. “We have handed you the wine already, and you behave as though receiving it is some burden laid upon you by God.”

He had fought his brother every step of the way when he decided to offer Theodoran wine to the Genoese, because it had always been his duty to oppose utter foolishness. Now that the decision had been made, however, Poseidippus would not permit the Principality to carry out even a foolish bargain badly.

“Apologies, Sigñore,” the Italian bowed, “but the master craftsmen took time to arrive.”

Poseidippus recognized an underling trying to weasel his way out of taking responsibility the moment he heard one. There were plenty of them around if you knew where to look.

“I do not care for excuses.” He placed a thick finger squarely before the man’s face, close enough that the Italian’s eyes crossed toward it. “Have the pier ready by next week, or I will throw a feast for every labourer and beggar in Kalamita, and you will have to explain to your superior why all the wine was spent before the first Genoese ship nosed its way into my harbour.”

The man nodded so quickly Poseidippus half expected his skull to come loose, then bolted across the sand toward the work crews.

Poseidippus remained where he was, steaming beneath the sun, watching him go with narrowed eyes. Men always moved faster when consequences were made plain. It was one of the few reliable principles left in the world.

“It would be best if you took off your armour, my lord,” Nicander said beside him. “You will not see things clearly if you cannot open your eyes through the sweat.”

Poseidippus wheeled on him with enough force to make the nearest guards stiffen, searching Nicander’s face for the fleeing edge of a grin.

The obnoxious boy had a talent for throwing out senseless comments that hovered somewhere between a jest and poor judgment. Poseidippus had not yet decided which failing deserved correction first.

“Shut your mouth and return to your duty, Stratiotes,” he said.

It did not matter that the boy was his nephew. A Papadopoulos had standards to maintain, and coddling children had never produced a capable soldier. Softness was an insidious disease he did not intend to let run its course.

“Where to next?” Poseidippus demanded of his cupbearer.

He kept the brat close only because he meant to catch him openly jesting while on duty and dismiss him with proper cause. So far, Nicander had denied him the satisfaction by staying just on the safe side of insolence.

“The Italian Customs House, I believe, my lord,” Nicander said, eyes fixed toward the horizon as if he were some fool trapped inside a bard’s tale.

“You believe?” Poseidippus pounced, seizing on the uncertainty.

“It is customary to hedge one’s bets, my lord,” Nicander replied, straightfaced. “And I believe in following our proud House’s customs.”

Poseidippus bored his gaze into the soft-skinned lad, looking for the slightest crack in his expression. Any small betrayal of amusement.

The boy remained stone-faced beneath the heat.

“Fine,” Poseidippus harrumphed.

They made their way toward a shiny new building raised on the eastern outskirts of Kalamita itself.

Unlike the failure being performed down by the stone quay, the Genoese had been prompt when it came to establishing their own counting house. Naturally, their own needs moved faster than any obligation owed to Theodoro. The structure was built of stone, three floors high, and shaped more like a small manor than a proper merchant office.

The earth around it had been churned flat and cleared of scrub, likely in preparation for some little paved garden where Italians could sip Theodoran wine, laughing at their robbery all the while.

Already, workmen were plastering the walls in clean white and marking them with red, the enemy’s cross spreading across the fresh surface with offensive confidence.

To Poseidippus, it was a hideous structure. It stood one step removed from an insult against Theodoran sovereignty, dressed up in limewash and trade privileges.

A low wall was being erected around the counting house as well, a miniature version of the greater enclosure planned for the entire Genoese quarter. Warehouses would follow, a handful at first, then more if the Italians had their way, all arranged with direct access to Kalamita’s beachhead.

For now, the complex faced the opposite side of the bay from where Poseidippus had ordered the wooden pier built, which was part of why he suspected the Genoese were being difficult with its completion.

Poseidippus had not budged on that matter, and he would not.

If the pier were established on the Genoese side of the bay, their incentive to finish the stone quay would wither the moment their first ships could be loaded comfortably.

As things stood, the sooner they completed the quay, the sooner they could move their own operation without having to lean on Theodoran arrangements. It was a crude pressure, but crude pressures often worked best in his experience.

Poseidippus crossed through a sea of white and red mercenaries, their foreign colours scattered among masons, carpenters, and labourers working at a pace the harbour crews had somehow failed to discover.

Inside, the counting house remained sparsely decorated, though the well-groomed man waiting within seemed determined to change that as quickly as possible. A long table had already been placed near the centre, with account books stacked neatly atop it and a pair of clerks scratching away at them.

“Ulrico,” Poseidippus acknowledged, and this time he contained himself. This was not some small-time foreman he could loom close and speak loudly to. Ulrico had the look of a man who could turn an offense into three months of diplomatic nuisance.

“Ah, Poseidippus,” the man said, bowing with easy grace.

His black hair was slicked back, save for a single streak of grey running through it like a deliberate piece of decoration. Even his smile seemed measured, charming enough to be polite and smug enough to be Italian.

“Here to check on our progress?”

Poseidippus nodded. He made a point of showing his face here every week, if only to remind these men whose backyard they were building their little republic inside of.

“Have the materials arrived for the road works and the warehouses you are to build in Kalamita?” he asked.

“Ah, they are close,” Ulrico said. “We are waiting on a particular delivery before construction can begin in earnest.”

Poseidippus disliked the glint in the man’s eye. “What delivery?”

“Cement,” Ulrico said, and the amusement in his voice showed through just enough to become noticeable. “A most interesting shipment, from what I am told.”

Poseidippus held his stare. “Is there something special about it?”

“Ah, you don’t know?” Ulrico’s smile turned almost boyish. Poseidippus could consider himself officially annoyed now. “It is your own Theodoran cement.”

Poseidippus went still.

What?

…

Damn that Sideris whelp.

Of course the boy had his fingers in this somehow. Poseidippus would wager good steel that he had been the one whispering into Panagiotis’s ear, dressing up that ludicrous bargain with the Genoese as strategy rather than a defeat. His brother would have never thought that scheme up on his own.

And now he was profiting from it too.

He would have to keep a close eye on Theodorus moving forward, and if the boy proved troublesome…well, Poseidippus always preferred to nip problems in the bud than let them take root.

He moved on from the Genoese House with his escort falling into place around him, boots striking the uneven cobbles of Kalamita proper. The town rose low and squat above the water, its wooden buildings pressed close together as if trying to endure the wind by huddling.

Narrow lanes wound between them with little elegance and less grandeur, broken only by glimpses of blue water flashing between buildings. A salty breeze moved through the streets, as seagulls bayed overhead like hungry litigants, circling above the harbour and screaming at anything that moved.

By richer standards, Kalamita was a small, plain portside town with little to recommend it beyond its sunsets and the stubborn beauty of the sea. To Theodoro, it was far more than that. It was their only real window to the wider world.

Poseidippus had learned long ago that small things mattered most when a realm had little to spare.

The streets were quiet now, clean of vagrants and layabouts. That had been one of the first things he had scoured from the town after taking charge. Since childhood, he had watched useless men gather in corners and beneath awnings, begging with one hand and stealing with the other when pity grew thin.

His mother, for all her kindness and piety, had been soft. Too many had come to rely on her goodwill to carry them from one day to the next, and charity without discipline had swollen into dependency. The streets had been clogged with filth, drunkards, knife-men, and idle mouths waiting for others to fill them.

Now the lanes were clear. Men worked, moved on, or were made to move.

That was order.

A movement broke from the nearest alleyway.

Poseidippus saw thin, robed figures detaching themselves from the shadows and lunging into the street at a dead sprint. There were six of them, perhaps seven, though it was hard to call them men in any useful sense.

They were gaunt, hollow-eyed creatures, wrapped in stained cloth that flapped around their limbs as they ran. Their faces held the frantic courage of starving dogs driven toward a spear because they no longer knew what else to bite.

“Die, tyrant!” the lead figure cried through yellow teeth, a rusted dagger raised high in his shaking hand. “We won’t suffer you any longer!”

Poseidippus did not feel the need to shout uselessly like his adversary or even to step back for that matter. His men similarly took up their positions, unsurprised by the attempt.

The first attacker did not make it halfway across the cobbles before a guard cut him down with a clean stroke to the throat. Another stumbled over the falling body and took a lunge through the ribs.

Amateurs. Even in the heat of battle, Poseidippus felt nothing but disgust.

Poseidippus stepped forward as the leader came close, drawing his blade in one smooth motion. The man’s dagger wavered, his arm too weak to give the strike proper force. Poseidippus turned the blow aside with contemptuous ease and drove his own sword into the man’s belly.

The attacker screamed and sagged onto the blade, almost hugging it.

“Useless,” Poseidippus muttered.

This was why he had banned the public presence of such scum. They offended the eye, tempted crime, and frightened merchants. Even their hatred lacked discipline. If a man meant to kill, he should at least have the decency to come up with a better plan than this.

Poseidippus tore the blade free and let the would-be murderer collapse onto the stones. Blood spread darkly beneath him, running along the shallow gaps between cobbles. One of Poseidippus’s attendants had already produced a folded handkerchief, and he took it without looking, cleaning the blade with brisk, practiced motions. Such incidents had become tediously common since his reforms. Men who had been allowed to rot in public rarely accepted removal with gratitude.

“My sister…” the leader wheezed.

Poseidippus looked down at him.

The man’s face had gone grey beneath its grime. Dark blood welled from his mouth and spilled down his chin, but his eyes still burned.

“Sher died because of you,” he rasped.

Poseidippus had endured his fair share of critics, but could not say he was sorry for taxing useless layabouts. Men who contributed nothing still consumed bread, and dragged honest labour down by the weight of their example. His mother had paid for her softness, and his brother suffered from the same affliction, though in more muted colours.

Poseidippus’s judgment was blessedly unclouded.

He had cleaned Kalamita as they never could. It had required a harsher tax, a ban on vagrancy, and enough guardsmen to make both more than pretty words nailed to a door. That was all order ever needed in the end. A rule, a punishment, and men willing to carry it out.

“Good for her,” Poseidippus answered, turning and already walking past the dying man when the voice followed him, thin and wet.

“You’ll burn in hell. The Shadow will make sure of that.”

Poseidippus stopped.

He turned in an instant and seized the scum by the throat, hauling him up just enough for his heels to scrape uselessly against the blood-slick cobbles.

“Did he send you?” Poseidippus asked, his voice glacial. “What do you know of him?”

The vermin smiled.

It was a bloody, brown thing, broken by missing teeth and leaking life with every breath.

“Answer me,” Poseidippus demanded.

The man opened his mouth as if to speak, only to spit bloody phlegm across Poseidippus’s face.

For a moment, Poseidippus went utterly still.

Without thinking, his hand clenched around the vermin’s windpipe.

It caved in beneath his grip like a dry twig. The boy, barely a man, scratched at his wrist with weak fingers, his face twisting as breath failed him. Poseidippus watched until the struggle lost force, then released him and let the body drop beside the others.

Then he walked away.

His guards looked at one another for a moment, the usual certainty in them unsettled by the suddenness of it.

“What do we do with the bodies?” Nicander asked, hand clenched around the handle of his sword, a corpse at his feet.

“Leave them,” Poseidippus said, not looking back. “Let it serve as a warning.”

He kept walking through the streets of Kalamita as the afternoon blaze began to give way to dusk. The town looked almost peaceful in that light. A pretty lie to tell children.

There was still rot under the boards, in the alleys, and in the hearts of men. It seemed there was still plenty of cleaning to do.

Poseidippus would not stop until he had scoured this town, and then the entire Principality, of the decay simmering beneath it.

No matter what it took to get there.

…

“Sir Silvanus and Captain Athanasios have reported that the Genoese fondaci have finally been built along the eastern vinicultures,” Lord Kostis said, his voice carrying clearly through the royal chamber. “Genoese men-at-arms have moved into the enclosures as well. Dialogue with the local landowners is being closely monitored by both captains, but so far no incidents worth mentioning have arisen.”

The council listened with apt attention which, at least, was an improvement over the previous farces the Principe and Philemon had brought to such discussions. Under them, council had been a pit of factionalities winding disputes.

“It is only a matter of time,” Prince John stretched languidly at the head of the table, one hand supporting his chin as though the matter bored him more than it troubled him. Yet it didn’t escape Panagiotis’s notice that his eyes remained sharp.

“They will try to consort with the Genoese directly despite our stipulations soon enough,” John said. “Men of such a breed cannot help themselves. It is in their blood. Command the captains to keep a close eye on them. Use deadly means to rid themselves of the proble should it prove necessary.” His voice seemed to drop an octave towards the end.

The council went silent for a short stretch.

“As you will it, my lord,” Lord Kostis said, bowing low. He did not use to feel the need to scrape himself quite so deeply before. “On other matters, Lord Theodorus reports that the bandit threat has been mostly mitigated following the punitive campaign,” Kostis continued, lifting a wax tablet and glancing down at the neat lines written there.

Panagiotis listened with keen interest.

“He has placed the captured bandits under employ,” Kostis reported, “and executed the ones convicted of the more heinous crimes against Your Majesty.”

“Good,” John said, approval entering his voice. “Criminals have forgotten the hand that rules over them. It is time they remember.”

“He has also sent the first batch of the Roman concrete,” Kostis went on. “It is on the road to Mangup now, to be used on our cisterns and the poorer sections of the walls.”

Eski Kermen remained the standout project, but the site was still being cleared and assessed by a veritable army of craftsmen and labourers. Until the foundations were marked there was little point in wasting the new material there.

“Good, good,” the Prince muttered, satisfied. “The north should be well in hand now. We can focus on more important matters.”

Panagiotis sensed an opening in the Prince’s satisfaction.

Theodorus had staked his claim in the north well, despite early difficulties. And it was in Panagiotis’s best interest to help him.

“My Prince,” Panagiotis said.

John turned his hazel eyes toward him, looking him over.

“The report mentions an anticipated lower agricultural yield in the north,” Panagiotis kept his voice measured. “Between the depletion of manpower and the disruption caused by these bandits, it may be wise to supplement the supplies we send there further.”

John regarded him, something hidden moving behind his eyes.

“It makes sense, my lord,” Elder Trifon said, lending his support. The old steward folded his hands over his stomach, barely able to remain upright in his chair. “Especially if we are relying on the north for the building materials behind this entire rebuilding effort. It will strain us, certainly, but it may prevent any disruption in supply.”

The Prince looked around the table and saw the majority of his cabinet in support of the idea.

It was no surprise given Panagiotis had arranged for it beforehand.

John’s gaze landed on him last of all, and it stayed there.

“No,” he said.

Panagiotis forced himself to show no emotion even as surprise made its way through him.

“The supplies are necessary in the capital. Theodorus and Zeno have proven capable officers so far, and they have been acting with unparalleled autonomy.” He looked at Panagiotis pointedly. It was Panagiotis who had pushed to allow the radical reforms being used in the north to exist unchallenged. “They can handle themselves.”

And so the matter ended there. The council moved through lesser reports afterward, and Panagiotis paid them attention only because it was his duty.

When the meeting finally came to an end, he rose with the others, bowed with the proper depth, and left the chamber without haste. He did not hurry through the corridors, eventually arriving at the quiet wing where his study waited.

Panagiotis closed the door behind him, crossed to his desk, and lit the nearest lamp.

He sat, drew a clean sheet of parchment toward him, and dipped his pen.

For a moment, he held still, considering how many moves were one too many.

Then he began to write.

It was time to guide his Principality onto the right path.