3rd Week of March, 1460

  The mood in the high chamber was a blasphemy in and of itself.

  A sacrilege of such proportions that, had Christ walked the earth once more, Alexios was certain He would have wept to see it.

  “The Italians have formally condemned us for our transgressions and summarily demanded payment to offset the loss they have suffered at the hands of our activities,” Sir Kostis droned, the weary diplomat’s voice as colourless as the stone walls. He had been the sacrificial lamb sent to parley with the Italians on behalf of the Principality, as the heathens had demanded - yes, demanded - that they answer for their supposed crimes.

  “How much are we talking about?” his sacrilegious father asked, when he should be refusing outright. The casualness of it stoked a holy fire in Alexios’s chest every time he heard such talk, a heat that licked at his ribs and begged for release.

  “Two thousand hyperpera,” Sir Kostis reported, his tone as grim as an executioner delivering a sentence.

  “Preposterous.” Sir Silvanus - a Captain of the Household whose greatest virtue, and the only reason he was present, was that he was handsome - leaned forward. “The goods we took from them yielded at most five hundred hyperpera in profit. None of which even went into our pocket.” He sat beside the Megas Doux, who watched the proceedings with a sombre disposition, another stone in the growing militant faction gathered around the Prince, and thus directly opposing Alexios. The sight galled him so much he could not help but scoff.

  “That is what you are worried about?” Alexios asked, his voice dripping with irony. "Coin?"

  The other side of the table regarded him with weary resignation. They knew what was coming. A righteous speech.

  “Infidels, one and all. That is the cardinal sin of Greed,” Alexios began, each word a lash. “The Genoese harry us for decades, and then feign offense when we retribute upon them a fraction of what they have cost us. The Cardinal sin of Wrath. And you all sit here lamenting your lost profits and the financial burden instead of standing for God’s Kingdom. The Cardinal sin of Sloth.”

  He had delivered that sermon, in one form or another, many times in these council meetings, but it always seemed to fall upon deaf ears. “You are just as impious as they are,” he pressed on. “Do not delude yourselves into believing otherwise.”

  He felt like the prophet Jeremiah, preaching to Jerusalem’s populace and being stoned and beaten for daring to speak the truth. It was a test of his faith, he told himself, so Alexios would not give in to the temptation of silence.

  “And you think yourself wise enough to speak such things at our council meetings,” his father interrupted, gaze vacant and almost bored as it settled on his son. “The Cardinal sin of Pride, if I am not mistaken?” A slight smile tugged at the corners of his mouth, as if he took mild amusement in the jest.

  Alexios grit his teeth, struggling not to gnash them or imagine his hands closing around his father’s throat. A dark impulse, one he found harder and harder to master of late. “I am trying to call you to reason,” he said, forcing the words out evenly. He already knew it would fall on deaf ears, but duty compelled him to speak all the same.

  “Every meeting, all you do is moan about impiety and how we should charge headlong into the infidels’ waiting arms, killing ourselves upon their blades,” his father replied, the faint smile never quite leaving his face. “One would think you were working for them, so deep is your desire to destroy this Principality.”

  Alexios stared clear, blue daggers at him. Always seeking to undermine, always belittling him, always turning God into a cudgel with which to bludgeon his own son. And what Alexios hated most was that, in this at least, his father was not entirely wrong.

  Alexios had to speak against the motion to instil confusion in the council meetings, Philemon had said. Alexios felt like fraud, accomplishing a task for someone as far from God as him.

  That Makris snake pulled at his strings, and Alexios danced to his tune, leaning on the patronage of the despicable, vice-ridden demon. It galled him.

  If his father had only supported him instead of threatening him at every turn, if he had ever treated him as a son and not an undesirable burden, Alexios would never have needed Philemon at all.

  It was his father’s fault that he had been forced to stoop so low just to preserve God’s word. The shame of it burned in his chest, but he pressed it down beneath a hard, bitter resolve. If degradation was the price of defending the faith, then he would pay it. Pride was for men who could afford to keep their hands clean.

  He would cast away his pride, no matter how low he sank.

  “And you offer no solutions. You certainly will not pay the amount demanded,” Alexios scoffed, the derision in his voice earning a fleeting grimace from the Prince. “What will you do, then, Father? Ignore the Italians and hope they forget?”

  “Can we deny it?” The Prince turned away from his son, searching instead for reassurance along his own section of the council table.

  “They have proof of our involvement. " Sir Kostis shook his head. "The sea captains are mercenaries, they will have divulged everything just to keep their heads.” His voice was flat and resigned.

  “How much remains in the treasury?” the Prince asked at last. He directed the question toward the elderly Trifon, nominal Steward of the realm, who looked more ready for the next life than this one. That such a relic was trusted with the realm’s finances was, to Alexios’s mind, yet another sign that the Principality was in dire need of new blood at the helm.

  Trifon shook his head, very slowly. The weight of that small, feeble movement said enough.

  “A diplomatic ploy, then,” the Prince looked around the table as if an answer might be written on the councillors’ faces. “We still pay tribute to the Khanate. Perhaps they can protect us,” he tried.

  Alexios could not help himself. Laughter burst from him before he could rein it in. The Sunni horse barbarians? His father’s camp eyed him darkly, but did not interject on his rudeness. They understood well enough that he did not even need to explain himself. The Crimeans had raided their lands barely a season ago. The thought of buying their friendship now was so desperate and so useless that even the timidest councillors shifted in their seats.

  The mood in the chamber grew heavier, a still, suffocating quiet settling over the assembled men. They all knew, whether they admitted it or not, how dire the situation had become.

  “The Ottomans,” the Prince said at last.

  A stunned silence followed the mere suggestion.

  “My liege, that is-” Sir Kostis began, desperation and exasperation colouring his tone, but Alexios did not let him finish.

  “High treason,” Alexios bellowed, surging to his feet with as much righteous anger as he could muster. His chair scraped back against the stone floor with a shriek. “To speak the name of our invaders. Of the infidels who burned the Sacred City and defiled its holy places, who sit upon their stolen throne and wait to butcher us.”

  Father Damianus’s hand closed around his sleeve, urging caution, but Alexios hardly felt the restraining grip. The words came in a torrent he could no longer hold back.

  “They have raped our women, enslaved our Patriarch, they are the blight that has scourged Orthodoxy, the shadow that plagues us all.” All around him he saw reactions ripple through the hall, weariness from the opposite side, anger from his own, but for once all were united in their revulsion at the thought of courting the Turks. “To ally ourselves with them would be the greatest sin of all, Father. The fact that we already pay them tribute is your greatest sin of all.” He spat the last words like venom, his chest heaving as the echo of his outburst faded.

  “Are you finished?” the Prince asked. His expression stayed fixed in bored composure, his tone as flat as worn stone. He regarded his son as if the furious oration had been nothing more than a child’s tantrum.

  Alexios snatched up his coat and, without another word, turned on his heel and strode from the chamber. Behind him, chairs scraped and boots thudded as the entire line of his side of the table rose in near unison and followed him out.

  Alexios was so incensed that, for a moment, he found his own face would not move. His features felt carved in stone, a hard fa?ade that hid the storm inside him.

  As they exited the council chamber, Philemon’s right-hand man, Lustinianos, fell into step beside him as if they were leaving a feast rather than a battle of wills.

  “You did well, my lord,” Lustinianos whispered in a soothing tone, pleased with the chaos the speech had wrought. “I saw it in their faces. They are worried. You have stoked their fears well.”

  Alexios had to fight the urge to backhand him. Lustinianos was the walking image of many of the sins Alexios despised, all easy smiles and concealed vice. It felt almost deliberate, as though Philemon had sent the man to test his restraint. Lustinianos cared nothing for the meaning of the speech, only that it had thrown the council into disarray and blocked any easy consensus between the factions. Philemon wanted the state paralysed for the looming rebellion. Alexios played along only because that paralysis would also serve his own designs.

  “Are the preparations finished for my departure?” Alexios asked, his voice still edged with the cold fury of the council chamber, boots echoing along the narrow stone corridor.

  “Everything is ready, my Principe. The carriage waits to take you to the base camp tonight,” Lustinianos replied. He showed no sign of being stung by Alexios’s curtness, smiling as if they were discussing a hunting trip.

  “Good.” Alexios gave no outward reaction, yet a thread of grim satisfaction coiled through him. Soon he would be free of his father’s suffocating presence, even if temporarily. When he returned, it would be to ensure it permanently.

  Their steps led them to the small personal chapel of the Mangup fortress, tucked behind a thick wall of stone, where the noise of the fortress faded to a dull murmur and only the soft crackle of candles remained.

  “I would ask that you leave me to my prayers,” Alexios said, turning to Lustinianos and the attendants at his back.

  “Of course, my liege.” Lustinianos bowed and withdrew without question. It was common enough for the Principe to shut himself inside the chapel.

  Only Father Damianus remained, a quiet, familiar figure near the door.

  “What ails you, my child?” he asked, beginning their confession with the same tired line he used every time.

  Alexios did not answer. His breath was already coming heavy and uneven. He gritted his teeth as a wave of pain and fury rolled through him, and his knees buckled. He dropped to one knee on the cold stone floor.

  “Alexios!” Father Damianus hurried to his side.

  Alexios’s breathing turned guttural. The dark urge inside him surged up, a beast clawing at its cage, hungry for violence.

  “Stay. Away. Father,” Alexios forced out, each word pushed past clenched teeth as he wrestled with the invisible weight pressing down on his chest.

  “Pray, my child. You must pray,” Father Damianus said softly. He set his hands on Alexios’s shoulders with a steady touch and began to chant, voice low and even. “Lord Jesus Christ, only-begotten Son of the Father, look upon your servant who is tormented. Drive far from him the snares of the evil one-” The familiar cadence of the prayer filled the chapel, mingling with the faint scent of wax and incense.

  Slowly, the words worked their way into Alexios’s mind. The roaring in his ears softened, the beast within him snarling one last time before retreating into the dark. His breath eased from ragged gasps into strained but steady pulls. By the time Father Damianus crossed himself at the end of the prayer, Alexios’s shaking had lessened.

  “The episodes have been growing more frequent, my child,” Father Damianus said, his lined face thrown half into shadow by the candle between them, eyes searching Alexios’s as if trying to read his soul.

  “I will be strong, Father,” Alexios wheezed. Sweat clung to his skin, and his body felt hollow and spent.

  “But what do you think has stirred these episodes?” Father Damianus asked gently.

  Alexios considered deflecting the question, but he had never been able to lie to the one man who had seen his darker side and accepted it.

  “The road ahead,” he said at last. “It is draining, Father.”

  “But it will end in a better place for all of us, in the Kingdom of God,” Father Damianus replied, steadying Alexios with a hand under his arm. “I thought this was what you wanted. To rule.”

  Stolen novel; please report.

  “I do not,” Alexios admitted. “I am afraid.” His breathing quickened again, and he forced it down. “I am afraid of what will happen if I take the reins of the Principality and cannot hold back my Satan. But I fear even more what will happen if we are dragged further down the path my father leads us on.”

  “What do you mean, my son?”

  “God has shown me the future,” Alexios whispered. The words left his lips in a hush. Father Damianus’s expression tightened at once. He knew Alexios would not invoke God’s name lightly. “Destruction awaits us all, brought by fire and wreckage, by thunder wielded from metal,” Alexios said, giving voice to the visions that haunted his sleep.

  “Cannons?” Father Damianus asked, connecting the pieces.

  “The infidels are coming to heaven’s gate, and my father cannot stop them all.” The statement seemed to settle over the chapel. The coloured light from the narrow windows shifted across the icons, trembling.

  Father Damianus tightened his grip on Alexios’s arm, and there was a new urgency in it.

  “Then you must move past your fear, my child,” he said, his voice suddenly stern, leaving no room for objection.

  Alexios looked up at him in surprise.

  “And become the man who stops those terrible visions from becoming reality,” Father Damianus said.

  “I will,” Alexios answered. He bowed his head in prayer. He had never asked for this burden, had never desired the crown, but the path before him was becoming clearer. Whether he wished it or not, he might be the last remaining shield before paradise’s gate.

  He would not fail God.

  “The Principe was… harsh in his words, but he is not wrong, my liege,” Sir Kostis said cautiously after Alexios’s dramatic exit. His voice sounded small in the vaulted council chamber, swallowed by the aged stone and hung tapestries of past glories. Panagiotis almost felt them mocking, given their current predicament. “The Ottomans are a poisoned chalice. They will ask for much.”

  “At least we will maintain our sovereignty from invasion,” the Prince answered tiredly. Panagiotis noticed how the lines in his face seemed to deepen with each passing year, but today they looked carved into him, as if he had aged years in the last few months alone, watching his Principality fray at the edges.

  “Is it really sovereignty if we are shackled so tightly we cannot stand up?” Panagiotis said quietly. The room stilled. Even the faint rustle of fabrics and creak of chairs faded.

  The Prince turned to him with flinty eyes. Panagiotis wondered if his interruption had been too blunt for the moment. Then again, the crisis at hand left little room for softness, and he had never been one to wrap hard truths in honey.

  “Do you have a better idea you would like to suggest?” the Prince asked, the sarcasm thinly veiled.

  “No. Only that the Ottomans are not the way,” Panagiotis replied, his tone calm, almost conversational, as if they were discussing the weather instead of the fate of their realm.

  “Even you seek to shoot down my every idea,” the Prince snapped, his voice rising. “There is no way forward! Those foolish nobles play at their little games, tearing the Principality apart, while we near destruction!”

  The members of the council exchanged wide, uneasy stares at the outburst, panic flickering at the edges of their eyes. Panagiotis simply regarded the Prince, expression unreadable, and let him vent. The Prince was nearing his own breaking point, so Panagiotis sat still and waited, then spoke in a measured tone when the silence returned. He also felt like damning the high heavens, but he could not afford that luxury. He had to be the measured voice of reason, no matter how he felt, such was his toil.

  “If the people learn that Rome’s destroyers, the infidels who burned the great Hagia Sophia and turned the Theodosian walls to rubble, are the ones who must come fight with us against fellow Christians, what do you think they will feel?” Panagiotis asked. His voice did not rise, yet it carried to every corner of the hall.

  “Do you still think you will be a suzerain in their eyes?”The Prince eased back into his chair as if something inside him had been cut loose.

  “Then there is nothing left.” He whispered. The old wood creaked under his weight. He stared at the table rather than his councillors, shoulders sagging, hands limp on the armrests. The mask of princely authority slipped, and for a heartbeat he looked simply like a tired man who knew he was beaten.

  “Leave me,” he said at last. His tone was quiet and apathetic, stripped of all anger. “All of you. Leave me.”

  Panagiotis rose at a measured pace, armour and cloth whispering in the sudden hush.

  “As you wish, Your Highness.”

  The rest of the nobles followed suit with scraping chairs and awkward bows. One by one they filed out, until the Prince was left alone amid the long shadows of the council chamber.

  As Panagiotis headed down the corridor toward his office, boots striking the flagstones in a steady rhythm, his aide Zeno moved in beside him. “If the Ottomans are not the answer, then what is, Doux?” he asked. The question lingered in the dim passage, where narrow windows threw pale bars of light across the floor.

  Panagiotis stopped and turned to him. “A miracle." He said solemnly, as if offering a prayer. "What we need is a miracle.”

  Zeno frowned, studying him with a strange look, as if that was the last answer he expected from the pragmatic Doux. Yet the truth was that there was no easy solution. In Panagiotis’s eyes, they were leaving on borrowed time. They were fighting tooth and nail to survive a rebellion that threatened to tear the Principality apart. And the only prize they would get for the trouble would be to fall to the Italians a few months later.

  “I must take care of the sentry rotations,” Zeno excused himself. Panagiotis had already begun, quietly and without fanfare, to double the sentries around the castle, in case Philemon had any more indirect and nefarious ideas than open war.

  Panagiotis lifted a hand to stop him.

  “Zeno.”

  Zeno turned, eyes alert.

  “When I accepted your commission, do you remember what I said?” Panagiotis asked.

  Zeno nodded once, his gaze sharpening with unnerving intensity.

  “Today I will make good on my promise.”

  Zeno’s eyes widened, the implication striking home.

  “Arrange for the agents to move,” Panagiotis commanded.

  Zeno saluted sharply and hurried off down the corridor. Panagiotis watched him go, feeling the weight of the choice settle over him like a cloak. This was their only hope now.

  …

  Panagiotis reached his office on the upper floor of the castle, the kind of narrow, austere chamber that looked out over the ragged Theodoran valleys. By his door stood a soldier in a dust-caked travel cloak, shoulders tight, a frantic look about him as if he had been pacing there for some time.

  “Doux,” Gennadios began, his ruined throat rasping the word into something rough and broken. “A message for you.”

  “I’ll read it afterwards. There is something urgent I must attend to.” Panagiotis brushed past, his mind already on the only clean way he knew to erase this rebellion in one stroke. He would have to send out his best agents and make contingency plans.

  “It is very important. You must read it now,” the messenger insisted, the words coming out in a strained rush. His eyes were fixed and unblinking, and Panagiotis stopped, taking a fuller measure of the man. He wore full body armour that still bore dust and mud from the road, and by the bloodshot cast of his eyes he had likely galloped through the night. The metal was scratched and dented in several places. There were signs of fighting.

  Now what message, Panagiotis wondered, was important enough to need a soldier to bear it, and had drawn blades along the way?

  Gennadios laid a calming hand on the man’s arm, a silent reminder of whom he was addressing. Not that the Doux minded such breaches of decorum in moments like this.

  “It is from Suyren,” Gennadios said.

  That name snapped all of Panagiotis’s attention into sharp focus.

  “Inside,” he commanded.

  The three of them stepped into the spartan study. The room held little beyond a map-strewn table, shelves crowded with scrolls and ledgers, and a single high-backed chair of pure hardwood which Panagiotis had made his throne. He sat now, the stark wood creaking under his weight.

  “Speak,” Panagiotis rumbled.

  “I am Charilaos, my Doux,” the man said, drawing himself straight. “A veteran of the militia company loyal to Captain Theodorus.” Tight black curls fell whichever way around a bearded, rugged face, his deep brown eyes ringed with red from exhaustion.

  “I bring with me a letter that the Captain assured me contained sensitive information. I do not know its contents, nor the nature of it,” Charilaos continued. “All I know is that the original messenger was attacked for carrying it, with orders to kill.”

  His face looked stark in the dying light that filtered through the narrow window. Gennadios moved to the wall and lit a sconce, bathing the room in unsteady firelight that chased the shadows back.

  “The one-armed boy?” the Doux asked. So that was why the messenger was different, and the scuff marks along his armour. He had likely fought off the ambushers himself to see the letter safely through.

  Panagiotis extended his hand in silent command. Charilaos reached into his cloak and produced a folded letter. Panagiotis saw the creased edges, the smear of dried blood along one corner, the broken travel dirt ground into the fibers of the parchment.

  He carefully broke the seal and read.

  My Doux, I write this letter in haste to inform you I have obtained access to Lord Adanis’s personal correspondence with Lord Philemon Makris, and I have invaluable intel. In it, Philemon stated the rebellion’s first military target of the campaign. They mean to fake an advance on Mangup, but their true target is Kalamita.

  Panagiotis’s very blood went still. Kalamita? What?

  Philemon mentioned you in particular. They mean to cut off support from your family, as they lack the men to mount an assault on Mangup.

  Additionally, I have a rough timeline of events. They plan to meet and join their combined forces somewhere south-east of Mangup in a week and a half from this letter. Adanis has amassed close to five hundred men of his own and the supplies to feed them. Not only militia, my Lord, but hardened mercenaries.

  The veracity of the information is not in question. I read the letter myself, and I used the forgery kit to break the seal and leave them none the wiser. They do not suspect I possess the information. My cover, however, may not remain intact for long. I have made plans to leave Suyren at the earliest opportunity today. I will meet you in Mangup with the full strength of my company. My hope is that even if they suspect my knowledge of the rebellion, they will not guess that I know of their concrete plans.

  Your Loyal Agent,

  Theodorus Sideris

  Panagiotis went utterly still. No, more than still - he felt himself held in place, as if the stone of the castle had grown around him. For a long moment he could not move, his eyes fixed on the ink, his mind racing through the implications.

  “A miracle,” he breathed at last, the word barely more than a whisper in the firelit room, unable quite to believe what he was reading.

  Panagiotis read and reread the letter, making sure it truly lay before him and was not some cruel trick of the mind. For a bare instant, he felt as if he were living inside a dream. This was what he had prayed for in the quiet hours when no one watched. He had needed a miracle, and the Sideris boy had provided it.

  He allowed himself exactly five breaths to savour it, a small, satisfied smile tugging at his mouth. They had been given a lifeline.

  The moment passed, and his expression hardened, the lines of his face drawing into something sharp and dangerous. Gennadios recognised the look at once. It was time for action.

  “Muster the fastest horse and messenger we can find. Get me the steward and the smugglers we have under our employ. I want them here in twenty minutes at most,” Panagiotis said. His tone cracked through the room, a brutal whip of rapid orders, as his hand moved across parchment in short, decisive strokes.

  Gennadios did not hesitate. He saluted and headed for the doorway, a faint grin ghosting his features at being brusquely ordered about again. Panagiotis had not felt like himself in a long while, always reacting to one crisis or another, never breathing. Now, suddenly, he felt as if the clock had turned back ten years.

  Panagiotis was left in the office with Charilaos, who watched the proceedings with a soldier’s careful eye, helmet tucked under one arm.

  “Go back to your lord with a message,” Panagiotis said, not pausing in his writing as he pulled supply manuscripts toward him, correlating food stores and ammunition in his mind. He would need to redistribute provisions between the cities with lightning speed, to strengthen Kalamita’s defences if the worst came to pass.

  “What do I tell him?” the man asked.

  Panagiotis stopped, lifted his gaze to the messenger, and answered in a quiet voice that held more weight than any shout.

  “Tell him to come home.”

  “The Doux plans to assassinate Philemon,” Zeno whispered, his voice scarcely louder than the faint drip of moisture in the cellar.

  “Truly?” Lustinianos asked. He sounded almost amused, as if someone had told him a clever joke.

  “He has agents near the Makris estate he has spent years cultivating,” Zeno explained from his cramped place between the barrels of wine, speaking through the tight gap between the casks. The smell of old oak and sour dregs clung to the air. “At a word from him they will lace his food, his drink, or whatever method the Doux has devised over the years.” That he had played a crucial part in developing these methods and in selecting the right people to cultivate, Zeno chose to leave out. It boiled him to reveal the plans so carefully woven over the years since his exile, but he had to win Philemon’s trust.

  “Ohoho, we are well aware of such happenings, worry not,” Lustinianos laughed, the sound soft and oily in the darkness. “This will be a mere distraction for my lord.” He waved the notion away with an unseen hand. “Although the Doux must be getting desperate to resort to such methods.” His smile was audible, thick with satisfaction.

  Zeno did not much enjoy hearing the Doux spoken of like that by a man such as this, so he pushed the conversation forward, eager to be done. The shadows of his hood hid his face, but his jaw was clenched tight.

  “You wanted to see me?” Zeno asked, keeping his voice low.

  “I did,” Lustinianos answered, jowls quivering in a way Zeno couldn’t help but find disgust in, “I am on my way out of the capital, and I wished to convey a key task to you before I leave.” The air in the cellar was damp and cool, the only light a thin shaft from a grate above, the perfect place for the kind of talk that could never see the sun.

  “What is it?” Zeno asked. Both his voice and his body were tense. He was sick and tired of the risks that came with meetings like this, one wrong word away from a rope.

  “Calm yourself, young Zeno,” Lustinianos said, his tone light, almost playful. It always angered Zeno how utterly unconcerned he seemed about being discovered, as if the guards above their heads did not exist. Did his uncle truly have no one better than this to send his way? “This is the most important task you will ever receive, so you would do well to heed my every word, and to take it to heart.”

  “What do you mean?” That certainly piqued Zeno’s interest. Until now his only task had been to drip information back to Philemon about the Doux’s movements, a slow, steady treachery he could almost pretend did not exist when he looked his master in the eye.

  “The army poises itself to strike in a few weeks’ time. As we speak, the Principe is being escorted out of this city to raise the banners of the rebellion,” Lustinianos confided. The words drifted between the stacked barrels and hanging cobwebs like smoke. Zeno took in the message with a quiet intensity. So it was finally happening. The puppet was on his way to reunite with the puppet master.

  “You have done your duty admirably, young Zeno,” Lustinianos went on, smiling in the dim light. “Feeding us information about your master, betraying your friends and colleagues, sending it all to the uncle you so despise.”

  “Did you come here to mock me?” Zeno almost wanted to laugh at the attempt. If this was meant to unsettle him, it was a paltry attempt. His escapades with Markos had seen him grow a surprisingly thick skin when it came to being goaded.

  “No, I came to praise you,” Lustinianos said, drawing out the word as if it tasted fine on his tongue. “And to tell you my master has been pleased with you. You are to play a pivotal role in the rebellion.”

  Zeno waited in the space between Lustinianos's breaths, listening to the distant muffled thud of feet above. This was big. He could feel it in the tightness of his chest.

  “The rebellion will target Mangup,” Lustinianos revealed. His voice had lost all humour now, all artifice. “And you will open the gates for us.”

  Zeno sucked in a sharp breath. “Open the gates? Are you outside of your mind?” He could not help the question as his gaze swept the cellar once more, searching for any hint of an eavesdropper.

  “I am quite inside of it, thank you very much,” Lustinianos quipped.

  “This is no laughing matter. What you are asking is extremely perilous and likely to get me killed, not to mention the sheer difficulty of the task,” Zeno said. His voice had gained an edge he could not smooth away.

  “Need I remind you we hold your sister in custody,” Lustinianos answered, matching his tone, “and more than enough evidence to expose you to the Prince and the Doux and see you summarily executed?”

  Zeno swallowed his retort, feeling it burn all the way down.

  “You will accomplish this, Zeno, because you have no other choice,” Lustinianos said. “When we march our army to the walls of the capital, you will open the gates and help to usher in the brilliant start of our new regime.” His tone was wondrous, as if he were imagining the sight right before his eyes.

  Zeno fell silent, the weight of the command pressing down on him like stone. If he obeyed, he would damn himself as the traitor who delivered Mangup to its enemies. If he refused, his sister would pay the price, and his own neck would follow. For the first time he truly understood how deeply he had been drawn into this game, not as a mere watcher on the edges, but as a key piece moved across this game of thrones.

  None seemed to realize he only played for himself.

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