Alexios hoped that Kutaisi had at least one clean inn. Then they could sleep all night behind a locked door, and the stable boys would have the horses ready the next day.

  What could be better?

  That morning, the four travelers knew they were nearing a city because they began riding past irrigated fields along the riverside. Some houses here even had stone walls. Every peasant greeted them with the phrase “dideba Iesos,” which the travelers soon gathered meant “glory to Jesus.” In one cluster of wattle-and-daub houses, a big-bearded priest with a black robe and a wooden cross dangling around his neck greeted them and then asked, in broken Roman, where they had come from and where they were going.

  “From Trebizond to Sera,” Alexios answered.

  The priest nodded with understanding. “Many journeys. May God be with you, my son.”

  “And you, father,” Alexios said.

  Once they had left that village, Alexios looked at his companions. “Everyone warned us about this place. But so far it seems pretty easygoing.”

  “So far,” Isato said.

  “Alexios, maybe we shouldn’t tell anyone what we’re doing out here,” Basil said. “If they know we’re from Trebizond, they might try to kill us. These are feudal lands, and Trebizond is an anti-feudal republic. It’s dangerous.”

  “Not everyone is out to get you all the time, you know,” Kassia said.

  Basil rolled his eyes. “How can you say that? Whenever we leave Trebizond, people are trying to kill us practically every day!”

  “No, he’s right,” Alexios said. “We should agree on some sort of backstory.”

  “We come from Rome,” Isato said. “We go to Sera as traders, looking for new items, new luxuries. What else need be explained?”

  “Fair enough,” Alexios said. “But why bring children?”

  “I’m not a child,” Basil said. “I’m a youth.”

  “I’m not a child, either,” Kassia said.

  “I know people do things pretty young around here,” Alexios said, thinking of how many weddings he’d heard about where the bride was twelve or thirteen, the groom always being at least a few years—and sometimes decades—older. “But it still seems like you’re a little young to be traveling across the world.”

  “They are simply learning the family business,” Isato said.

  Because Mingrelia was flat and also dense with forest, the travelers were unable to see the city of Kutaisi until they were almost already inside. Built along winding riverbanks, Kutaisi was larger than Phasis, and featured some stone buildings, and even an impressive cathedral on a hill overlooking the city. Whenever people here looked at it, even by accident, they would cross themselves. From a distance Alexios saw that the church architecture had a more Caucasian flavoring to it than in Romanía. The structures and domes were taller and narrower. Yet it would have been difficult for anyone save an expert to tell the difference between these churches and the ones on the other side of the southern mountains in Armenia.

  Maybe it’s the domes, Alexios thought. The domes here are still kind of curvy. In Armenia, they’re a bit sharper, more like cones I guess?

  The travelers were unable to find a decent inn. Alexios and the others asked the city people walking around if there was anywhere to sleep—none understood Roman, so the question needed to be mimed—but they responded either by shrugging and walking away or pointing vaguely to the city center. A tavern was present there, but no inn. The tavern keeper, an old Jewish man, was also unable to understand Roman, but he shook his head when the travelers mimed the act of sleeping.

  “We could try asking someone if we could stay in their house,” Alexios said, once the travelers had gone back outside. “Maybe if we could find the governor’s mansion or something.”

  “Why would they want to lodge us?” Basil said.

  Alexios rubbed his pointer finger against his thumb. “Easy money, baby.”

  “We could also just keep going.” Kassia’s eyes were on the distant mountains, which had nonetheless drawn noticeably closer. “Pick up some food and sleep outside again.”

  Isato frowned. “That is easy for you to say. But I was looking forward to sleeping in a bed tonight…and I also do not wish to keep watch again. One such as I cannot dwell in such harsh environments for long. I will simply wither away.”

  “She’s allergic to everything that isn’t luxurious,” Alexios said.

  “Yes, exactly, that is exactly it,” Isato said. “This commoner has the gift of gab—a gifted tongue, as we say in my own language.”

  Alexios cleared his throat and blushed, but let the matter rest.

  They looked around for a little longer to see if they could find another tavern or inn. The city was small and unwalled, and most houses were no different in design from the ones in Phasis. It should have been easy to find a palace belonging to a noble, a prince, a duke, or a king—such a structure would have dominated the whole cityscape like that hill cathedral—but none seemed to be present.

  Eventually the travelers found a priest who told them in broken Roman that a palace belonging to a man named Duke David of Tao lay outside the city toward the east. The travelers thanked him.

  “Duke David of Tao,” Alexios said. “That’s quite a name.”

  “We were going east anyway,” Kassia said. “If he lets us in, we’ll stay with him. If not, we’ll sleep outside again.”

  “I still don’t see what he could want from us,” Basil said. “Especially if he’s already rich.”

  “Maybe he wants to hear news from beyond these isolated lands,” Kassia said. “Who on Earth has even heard of Mingrelia?”

  “What news are you going to tell this duke?” Basil said. “Remember, we’re just traders. We don’t support the uprising. We have to pretend to believe that the uprising is bad.”

  “No problem,” Alexios said. Then he made his voice sound older. “‘The Romans, Latins, and criminals all keep fighting, and who can even say why? They keep costing us so much money, wrecking my investments, making it impossible to trade. It’s awful, just awful. I can never make any money.’”

  Basil laughed. “Sounds like a trader alright. That’s all they ever talk about, how they can’t make enough money. Nothing’s ever good enough. Even if they get rich, none of them know when to stop. There’s always someone richer, there’s always something more expensive to buy. And even if you’re the richest man in the world, there’s always someone else trying to nudge you out of the way.”

  “Thankfully, the world knows,” Alexios said. “You can only make so much money before the world begins to fight back. The whole universe starts conspiring against you.”

  “Oh, I am sure of it,” Isato said, speaking with a sarcastic tone.

  Paying for a barge across the River Rioni, the four travelers followed the dirt path—that was called a road—up into the countryside. They noticed that they were ascending, and that the land was changing from forest to scrub. After only a little riding, the road forked. Slightly to the left, one path led up into mountain valleys, where little clusters of mud dwellings could be seen in the distance. The other path, going to the right, led away from the scrub and into a dark forest.

  The travelers looked at each other.

  “Duke David of Tao,” Alexios said. “If my name was ‘Duke David of Tao,’ this is where I’d live.”

  “How does a name make a difference,” Isato said, “as to where one lives?”

  “Is anyone else named Isato of Zagwe living around here, do you think?” Alexios said.

  Isato frowned. “There is me.”

  “Do you live here?”

  “For the moment.”

  They followed the path to the right. Within minutes, the forest was replaced by wide fields worked by peasants. A castle lay in the distance.

  “See?” Alexios said to Isato. “A perfect medieval panorama. I know my guy.”

  “Why is it that you find his name so fascinating?” Isato said. “‘David of Tao.’ There is nothing special about such a name.”

  “Where I’m from, it means he’d probably be a more relaxed kind of guy,” Alexios said. “That he likes money, and just kind of going with the flow. But because we’re in ‘warlike Mingrelia,’ I bet he’s the opposite. Like he’s some sort of bloodthirsty lunatic.”

  “I think this place is actually called Imeretia.” Basil was consulting his map. “One of the people we talked to mentioned that Kutaisi’s the capital of Imeretia, not Mingrelia. At some point we must have moved from one into the other.”

  “If this place is so violent,” Kassia said, nodding to the castle ahead, “then why are we even going there?”

  “Because Alexios is often wrong,” Isato said. “And such a house doubtless possesses, in its bedrooms, pillows of softest down and silk.”

  “I wasn’t wrong about you,” Alexios said to Isato.

  “You are only ever right by accident, commoner.”

  “From the first moment I met you,” Alexios sang, improvising a tune. “I knew our love to be true!”

  Isato laughed. “What is the matter with you? Why has your mood changed so?”

  “You don’t know how good it feels to not be constantly seeing everyone you love either dead or in chains,” Alexios said. “That’s what I kept seeing in those visions I was having. It’s also good to be on the road. I can’t stand being cooped up in the same place for too long.”

  “You’ve certainly gotten your wish,” Basil said.

  The travelers rode slowly past the fields, where the peasants stopped to either stare or say “dideba Iesos.” The palace gate was open, with peasants riding carts pulled by donkeys coming and going. At first no one challenged the travelers when they entered the courtyard and dismounted. For a moment, the travelers were unsure of what to do. Almost everyone’s attention was drawn by a mock battle taking place on the courtyard’s opposite side, where the widest, tallest man Alexios had ever seen was, in full armor, sword-fighting a crowd of warriors which had surrounded him, and which was attacking from every direction. Yet this giant was fast, and not only parried the thrusts coming at him from ahead, behind, to the left and right—he also attacked his attackers with his gigantic sword and shield, knocking them down so hard that few of them got back up. Some castle servants had gathered nearby to watch and cheer. They were chanting the word “Bagrat.”

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  “Wonder if that’s David of Tao,” Alexios said. “Maybe ‘Bagrat’ is his nickname or title or something.”

  “Better stay on his good side, whoever he is,” Basil said.

  Alexios kept thinking about the word ‘Bagrat,’ which rang a bell for some reason, but he was unable to place it. Just then, a black-haired, black-bearded man with sharp facial features walked out of a dark doorway, clasped his hands together, and bowed to the four travelers. He was dressed in a belted tunic of vibrant red silk.

  “Dideba Iesos,” he said.

  “Dideba Iesos,” the travelers answered.

  The man—presumably a courtier, though a little too tall, muscular, and handsome to be one—then said something in what was probably Georgian. This language sounded like gibberish to Alexios, who was frustrated about being unable to make out a single word.

  As many cultures and languages and histories in this part of the world as there are mountain valleys.

  Alexios glanced at his companions, then cleared his throat. “Sorry, but do you speak Roman?”

  “Yes,” the man said, though his accent was strong. “I learned a long time ago when I was in Trebizond.”

  Uh oh. Alexios widened his eyes. “Really? We’ve heard of Trebizond, but we’ve really never been there.”

  “I was living there with my uncle only a few years ago,” the courtier continued. “The Kuropalates Duke David Bagrationi of Tao-Klarjeti. Have you heard of him?”

  David Bagrationi, Alexios thought. Doux of Trebizond. We drove him out of his own city and never heard from him again. I guess this is where he ended up. That giant Bagrat over there must be his nephew or something.

  Alexios cleared his throat. “I’m sorry to say that, uh, no I haven’t heard of him. What did you say his name was?”

  “Duke David Bagrationi of Tao is the more manageable version. He was doux of Trebizond during the uprising, and did what he could to help the wayward peasants who came to his home begging for aid. They repaid his generosity by stealing his city and trying to murder him.” The courtier’s pale face was flushing, his tone growing angrier.

  Alexios laughed nervously and glanced at his three companions. Isato was unconcerned, since David Bagrationi had ruled Trebizond long before she had ever gotten there. The children seemed not to remember him, and were hardly even listening. Their eyes were still following the battle on the other side of the courtyard.

  The courtier continued. “The merciless criminal scum stole his inheritance away and wasted it on a mob of uncouth illiterates. Can you believe it? But thankfully, we've just concluded an alliance with the new Roman emperor—a rather impressive fellow, I'm told, named Narses. Supposedly he's really cleaning things up in the capital. I hope he takes care of the criminals for good.” The courtier took a deep breath. The color on his cheeks faded, and he smiled. “But I apologize for making such unpleasant conversation. I should really invite you inside, rather than just leave you standing there like a bunch of peasants. As my uncle says, traveling merchants are always welcome in his home, for they always carry interesting news from—”

  “Your uncle,” Alexios said. “Duke David. Is he here now?”

  “Indeed, he is in his study at the moment,” the courtier said. “Planning improvements to the peasants’ agricultural practices, which for some reason they always have so little interest in implementing. He is quite an enlightened man, you know.”

  Why would they want to make you richer than you already are? Alexios thought, recalling a conversation he’d had on the same subject with Diaresso.

  “I have no doubt at all,” the courtier continued, “based on your appearances alone, that you’ll be able to entertain him with many interesting stories—”

  “You know what?” Alexios climbed back onto cinnamon-colored Rakhsh. “Now that I think about it, that’s really alright. We were just kind of passing through, so don’t worry about it.”

  “Alexios,” Isato growled. “What are you doing? Do you not recall the silken pillows, and the soft downy—”

  “Enough with the silk pillows!” Alexios said. He looked back at the courtier, then returned his gaze to Isato. “I mean, my darling, I really strongly think there’s no need to abuse our hosts’s hospitality like—”

  “But where else have we to go?” Isato said. “Do you intend to sleep rough in the countryside again, as though we are but a bevy of vagrants? That may be normal for commoners such as yourself, but for one such as I with—”

  “No, darling, it’s just—”

  “Then we have decided.” She nodded to the courtier. “I am Princess Isato of Zagwe. I have joined these Roman traders here on a journey to Sera. I apologize for my companion’s confusion. May I ask your name?”

  “I am Prince Adarnase of Tao.” The courtier extended his hand to Isato. “If you’ll follow me, I can show you to our guest rooms. We have running water here, if you’d like to freshen up. It’s one of the eristavi’s—excuse me, it’s been some time since I’ve spoken Roman, eristavi, roughly translated, means duke in your tongue. As I was saying, running water is one of the many engineering innovations the eristavi, the duke brought back from Trebizond.”

  “Thank you, prince, I am dying for a bath.” Isato took his hand. “You are like a gift given to us by heaven.”

  “Ah, but you are too kind, princess.” Adarnase bowed.

  As they walked away, Alexios glared at Isato, trying to catch her eye, but she refused to look at him. Basil and Kassia shrugged at Alexios, then followed Isato and Adarnase, as stable boys took their horses. Alexios dismounted and snatched their four sacks of money. Feeling full of dread, he followed his companions inside the castle, hoping that he could warn them before it was too late.

  The interior was like most of the large stone buildings Alexios had encountered during his sojourn in the eleventh century—cool, dark, damp, with moisture clinging to the walls of stone, the air heavy with earth smell. But this was a relief from the courtyard, which always stank of piss and manure no matter how thoroughly it was cleaned. Gaudy, colorful paintings and tapestries decorated the rooms the travelers passed as they walked the hallways and ascended the stairs, their dirty shoes scraping the stone, the echoes of the soles on the steps reverberating.

  We have to get out of here, Alexios thought.

  But Isato seemed taken with Adarnase and eager to escape the elements and return to her luxurious natural environment, while the children were excited to explore the first new castle they had seen in months. These buildings always had secret passageways, endless rooms, excellent libraries filled with weird unknown books and maps and artifacts, kitchens where warm pies made with meat or fruit were always lying around unguarded, storage areas packed with armor centuries old. Castles were hard to dislike, so long as you weren’t besieging them.

  Adarnase brought them to their rooms, and showed them how to operate the pump in the bathroom. Here the walls, floor, and ceiling were lined with mosaics and porcelain tiles, like this room had been torn out of the imperial palace in Konstantinopolis, picked up, and then thrown down here in the Kutaisi outskirts. The water was cold when it rushed into the tub, but rocks could be heated in the fireplace and then, with a pair of tongs, dropped inside the bath. As soon as Isato heard this, she pushed everyone out of the bathroom and locked the door. Before the others had stepped away, they heard her clothes fall to the floor, then heard her bashing her fire strikers together, then heard her pumping water into the tub.

  Such a strange person in so many ways, Alexios thought. A princess who’s been living outside her palace so long, she knows how to serve herself.

  Servants brought up the rest of their saddlebags and left them in the guest rooms, then brought steaming cha. Adarnase announced that they were welcome to join the eristavi in the evening for dinner, after they were all freshened up. Alexios thanked Adarnase, who bowed and left.

  Basil and Kassia had thrown themselves on their beds, in the mean time. Once Adarnase was gone, Alexios shut the door.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” he whispered. “We have to get out of here!”

  Kassia looked at him. “Why?”

  “Duke David of Tao,” Alexios said. “Don’t you remember him?”

  The kids shook their heads.

  “Doux David Bagrationi, does that ring a bell?” Alexios said.

  “The old leader of Trebizond,” Basil said. “The guy you and Herakleia kicked out. You practically stole his entire kingdom from him.”

  “I always wondered what happened to that guy,” Kassia said.

  “Well, now you know,” Alexios said. “He’s here, and he’s going to kill us as soon as he figures out who we are.”

  “I’d like to see him try,” Basil said.

  Alexios shook his head. “You should never seek out violence. People who are looking for fights never last long.”

  Basil crossed his arms. “Alexios, he doesn’t know the farr, so what’s the worst that could happen?”

  “Just because you know the farr doesn’t make you immortal,” Alexios said. “You of all people should know that. Or did you already forget about what happened in that graveyard in Harran?”

  Basil threw himself back on his bed and sighed. “I could never forget.”

  “Why?” Kassia said. “What happened?”

  “When the ghoul got him,” Alexios said. “Or almost got him. It almost killed him. It would have killed him if it hadn’t been for me and Miriai.”

  “Gelu showed me everything,” Basil said. “It was like nothing I had ever seen before. I was king of the universe…I could do anything I could imagine. It was like one of those dreams, where you can control what happens, but it was so real!”

  “It was just a fantasy,” Alexios said. “Just a spiderweb meant to ensnare human flies.”

  “Did you just call me a human fly?” Basil said.

  “Point being,” Alexios said, “even if we know the farr, there’s all kinds of people and things we need to watch out for. And don’t forget—the farr isn’t infinite. Especially in a place like this, where everyone’s just out for themselves or their own friends and family, it’s easy to run out of farr quickly. And then you’re just some schmuck all over again.”

  “What’s a schmuck?” Kassia said.

  “Sorry,” Alexios said. “It’s a bad word.”

  “Schmuck,” she repeated.

  Alexios left the kids and knocked on the bathroom door. He could hear water rushing on the other side.

  “Darling,” he said. “Sweetheart. I need to talk to you—”

  Isato opened the door, pulled him inside, and locked the door behind him. The room was so full of hot steam, he could barely see anything. Yet he could see that Isato was naked, and covered in soap and water.

  She gazed into his eyes, and pressed herself close. “What were you babbling about this time, commoner?”

  “It can wait,” Alexios said.

  They emerged some time later looking radiant, and wearing a change of silk clothes brought to them by the servants, who took their dirty clothes away, saying they would wash them. Recalling how difficult it was to wash clothing without washing machines—you needed to spend hours scrubbing them by the river—Alexios briefly felt tempted.

  I could get used to this.

  Even the servants were no more than shadows playing over the light of his consciousness. In Trebizond, such people occupied center stage, but what were they in a place like this except extensions of their lords’ minds and bodies, no more conscious or independent than your own limbs?

  To never have to worry, Alexios thought. To never have to work.

  He was so caught up in relaxing and enjoying himself that he forgot dinner time. The servants had brought bread and cheese, so he’d even lacked an appetite. Yet when they announced, with some consternation, that His Excellency the Eristavi was waiting—speaking only a few Roman words which Adarnase might have just taught them—Alexios’s heart plunged so deeply into his chest, it almost fell out of his body.

  “Oh, Christ,” he groaned.

  The servants pretended they hadn’t noticed, before offering to guide him and his companions to the dining hall. He tried to weasel out of his responsibility to his host, but the servants were firm, and his companions asked what was wrong with him, without listening to his answers. Thus did they leave the guest rooms to join their host. Alexios told them it was too dangerous, but they wouldn’t listen.

  Along endless corridors, stepping up and down onto different levels—showing that the castle had been expanded many times over the centuries—and up and down winding stairs, they finally came to the dining hall. This place was different from the usual Roman design in that the floor was lined with gorgeous Azeri carpets depicting hunting scenes with colors so rich Alexios felt he had never seen them before. Guests were forbidden to wear shoes around such artwork; the servants had told the travelers, in fact, to leave their shoes in their rooms. There was still a long dining table surrounded by elegant chairs, however, while David Bagrationi—whom Alexios had hoped he would never see again—was sitting at the table’s head. Beside him was Sophronios the Metropolitan, still clad in black with his bejeweled cross necklace glittering in the evening sun. This was the annoying cleric who had never stopped whining about compromise, civility, and dialogue, even when Narses was trying to burst through the gates of Trebizond and kill every last person hiding inside.

  The doux and the metropolitan had both been conversing when the guests arrived. When they saw Alexios, they stopped speaking and stared. Then Bagrationi stood and growled something in Georgian.

  Alexios had yet to notice the two guards flanking the dining room entrance. They were so heavily armed, they looked like armor suits which had been propped up as decorations. But these armored suits were alive. Like machines, they clanked forward when Bagrationi spoke, and reached for Alexios. But—summoning the farr—he darted aside too fast for eyes to follow, then elbowed both guards’ stomachs so hard that they fell to the floor, the wind knocked from their lungs. This action sliced blood from Alexios’s elbows, however—the guards’ bellies were protected with steel cuirasses—and it was shockingly painful, as he had accidentally struck his humerus.

  By then Basil and Kassia had drawn their standard Trapezuntine factory-made swords—which they were never without—and pointed them at the two guards, who were struggling to get up from the floor. Isato pulled the guards’ swords from their scabbards and wielded them herself, though both were long heavy scimitars. Her veins and muscles bulged.

  “Is this how you treat your guests?” Alexios asked Bagrationi. “I don’t think Jesus would approve.”

  Bagrationi and Sophronios retreated to the opposite wall, huddling by the gorgeous hanging tapestries. Glancing back and forth, Sophronios rushed to the nearest window of leaded glass, threw it open, cupped his hands over his mouth, and shouted something in Georgian outside.

  Calling for reinforcements, Alexios thought.