2nd Week of June, 1460
“Mind the corners,” Miss Dina sighed for what felt like the hundredth time. “You silly girl. I ought to throw you out.”
Cassandra bit down on the bitter reply that rose to the front of her thoughts and kept sweeping.
As always, her thoughts seemed to circle back to when she had crossed these floors draped in fine cloth, while servants lowered their eyes and hurried to clear her path. Now she stood bent over a broom, chasing dust from the corners like some clumsy kitchen drudge.
The thought made her grip tighten around the handle until the rough wood bit into her palm. Always the same worry, always the same thoughts.
She hated it. Hated this. Hated herself.
A sharp sting shot up her hand, and she dropped the broom with a humiliating yelp before she could stop herself.
Miss Dina sighed again and crossed the room in those measured little steps the servants had learned to dread.
“Is something the matter, Carissa?” she asked, pitching her voice into the falsest concern Cassandra had ever heard.
“It is nothing, Miss,” Cassandra said, each syllable clipped short.
She spoke as little as she could these days. When words were demanded of her, she made them plain and small. Invisible girls were struck less often by notice, although she had yet to see such offenses in the castle now that the Captain had taken over. Not for any lack of wish from Miss Dina, though.
“Really?” Miss Dina reached for Cassandra’s hand before she could hide it.
The sight of her palm told too much of the past weeks. The skin had reddened and split, rubbed open in thin angry lines, with a clear fluid seeping from the worst of them.
Her hands had once been praised for their softness. Now they looked like they were well on their way to belonging to someone who spent her life scraping dirt from other people’s floors.
“It is as if you have never picked up a broom before,” Miss Dina complained. “Did you not help your mother at whatever hovel you came from?”
From the side of the room, the other servants looked over with quiet satisfaction. Cassandra felt their judgment like grit under her tongue and clenched her teeth until her jaw ached.
That was because she hadn’t. A few months ago, she could have commanded half of them to bow, and they would have done it eagerly, hoping for the word from a Nomikos daughter.
“Something to say?” Miss Dina asked, one eyebrow arching.
Cassandra held the woman’s gaze for a moment, long enough that a wiser girl would have lowered her eyes. The words waited behind her teeth.
“No,” she settled on at last, swallowing them down until they burned in her throat.
Miss Dina’s mouth tightened into a thin line that said she didn’t believe Cassandra. “Go see the steward at the storehouse and ask whether he can spare something for your hand. There is no sense in worsening it.” She then turned as if Cassandra wasn’t there anymore, clearly done with Cassandra now that she had gotten her out of the way.
“Yes, Miss Dina.”
Cassandra left before the woman could change her mind,
“See everyone? There is no shame in injuring yourself while learning, so long as you are honest about it.” Miss Dina’s voice trailed after her, and it sounded like the headmistress did not truly believe what she was saying, only that she had been instructed to say it. “Even you are an utter dollop.” The jab prompted light, mocking laughter from the assembled girls.
Cassandra didn’t mind. She was grateful for any excuse to escape the broom and the watching eyes of the other servants. Even a walk to the storehouse felt like mercy after the grinding rhythm that had governed her first weeks.
At first, they had set her to laundering the castle’s seemingly inexhaustible supply of dirty clothing. She used to change gowns several times in a day, and had never thought about how much work silk, linen, and wool created once stripped from a noble body, nor how foul a servant’s tunic or a guardsman’s shirt could become after a day of hard labour.
She had scrubbed until her hands had gone beyond raw, and the new bizarre household measures had made the work endless. The Captain had ordered that all members of the household wear undergarments and change them daily, claiming the practice would reduce rashes and other skin diseases.
Despite herself, and against her will, Cassandra found herself learning by sheer volume of repetition - being made to scrub clean linen undergarments that could handle rougher handling. There was no grace in it, only dirty clothing thrown into her arms by the basketful, water gone cloudy from soap and sweat, and knuckles scraped against washboards.
She had burned her hands countless times making lye soap, tipping too much ash into the mixture, or leaning too close when the heat rose in a sour, caustic breath.
“Damn him,” she cursed the captain under her breath as she made her way into the storeroom.
“Ah, Carissa,” Stefanos said from the doorway, as though he had been waiting there for her, and her breath caught. “Do you require something from the storeroom?”
His gaze fixed on her with that now-familiar intensity, questioning and suspicious all at once. Cassandra’s fingers curled despite the sting in her palm. He was the reason she could not even breathe in this castle without feeling watched.
“I believe you should be with Miss Dina, handling the northern corridor leading to the Great Hall,” he added.
The Captain had set him over her like a minder, though jailor felt a more fitting term. Wherever she went, Stefanos seemed to appear. Whatever task she had been given, he knew it. It was suffocating.
“Miss Dina sent me to find something for my hand,” Cassandra said.
“You are wounded?” Stefanos’s gaze dropped sharply, and somehow grew harder. “Show me.”
There had been a time when Stefanos had seemed the gentlest of the Captain’s servants, soft-spoken and mild-mannered. That boy had vanished. Now he spoke curtly, with no softness left in him at all. It was his true face, now bare for her to see.
That was what happened when you fell from grace - people stopped pretending around you. Everyone used to be so kind to her. This callousness she saw all around her was just another thing she would have to get used to.
Cassandra held out her hand with more hesitation than she wished. Stefanos took it in his own, his grip careful but firm, and turned her palm toward the light. His eyes moved over the welts carefully.
“Come,” he said.
He turned, and Cassandra followed him into the storeroom.
“My lord,” Stefanos greeted.
Cassandra stopped short.
The Captain sat within the storeroom on a small chair and table ahead of the bundles of cloth and crates of goods behind him.
Paper and tablets surrounded his small table so heavily they looked like mismatched fortress walls, though he did not appear overtly troubled by the amount of work that awaited him. His servant, Demetrios, sat on the far side of the cluttered desk, bent over another stack of documents.
“What is it, Stefanos?” the Lord asked without looking up. “Another requisition?”
Cassandra stared despite herself.
Was the Captain truly managing the storeroom and the day-to-day requisitions himself with only two servants to assist him? What about the steward or the young nobles she had heard he had summoned to Suyren to serve as scribes?
“Not quite, my lord,” Stefanos said, stepping aside in a way that clearly invited Cassandra forward.
She smothered the hesitation in her step and forced herself to move. She would not show weakness in front of these demons again.
The Captain looked up and saw her.
His hand stilled over the page.
“Carissa,” he said, and there was nothing light in his tone.
Demetrios glanced up as well, surprise passing briefly across his lined face before he mastered it.
“Is there something you need from the storeroom?” the Captain asked.
“Linen and some ointment to ease the redness in her palms, my lord,” Stefanos answered when Cassandra found that her throat had closed around the words.
The Captain’s eyes followed the answer down to her hand, lingering on the split skin. Something moved in his eyes, and his expression felt controlled.
“One strip of linen, one foot in length, and two ounces of the cabbage and vinegar poultice,” the Captain dictated while Demetrios wrote it down, quill scratching neatly across the page.
Stefanos stepped deeper into the storeroom, and Cassandra saw the transformation it had undergone. Bundles of cloth sat separated by type and use. Clay jars had been marked with careful labels, some in ink, others with little carved tags tied around their necks. Everything now stood arranged with a soldier’s grim logic. It reminded her of the assault the Captain had made upon the armoury.
Stefanos returned carrying a tightly wrapped bundle of linen and a large vial of dark green poultice, thick enough to move sluggishly against the glass. Stefanos set a small clay container upon a brass scale at a side table that Cassandra hadn’t noticed, then added stamped weights to the opposite pan until it settled level. Only then did he pour the sharp-smelling poultice into the container, adding more weights until the correct measure had been scraped from the lip with a narrow wooden spatula so that no excess was wasted.
The linen was measured separately on a dark wooden table Cassandra had never seen in the storeroom before. Its edges were notched at regular intervals, the marks cut cleanly into the polished wood. Stefanos handed the cloth to Demetrios, who drew it across the table, counted the span with practiced care, then cut a neat foot-long strip with shears before handing both items to Theodorus.
Theodorus did more than hand out the supplies. He took Cassandra’s hand into his own, and she almost snatched it back as if she had touched hot iron. His fingers were warm around hers, steady and impersonal.
“Rub this in twice each day,” Theodorus said, dipping two fingers into the poultice and spreading it gently across the reddened skin. The smell of cabbage and vinegar rose sour and medicinal between them. “Cover it with the full strip of linen, wrapping as much of the palm as you can without stiffening the fingers.”
He did exactly as he instructed, moving with the same calm precision he brought to everything else. The ointment was cool at first, then stinging, then strangely soothing as it settled over the split skin.
Cassandra felt like a trapped animal.
The Captain had her exactly where he wanted her - trapped in the palm of his hand.
“Is this everything, Carissa?” he asked as he let her go.
It did not escape Cassandra how faintly ridiculous the whole performance was. He knew who she was. She knew who he was. Stefanos and Demetrios, too. Yet they all stood there pretending she was merely Carissa, some unfortunate servant girl.
“Yes,” Cassandra answered, her eyes finding the floor before her hatred could show too plainly.
She felt Stefanos’s gaze press into her back.
“My lord,” she added through her teeth, and felt the pressure behind her relieve.
She would not show weakness. She had learned that much. And she was beginning to learn that showing hatred was equally foolish. Hatred was a weapon best left concealed until one had the strength to use it.
“Good,” Theodorus said.
He did not believe her from the measured way his eyes held on her for a heartbeat too long, but he also did not seem overly bothered by the lie. He simply turned back to his papers, and Cassandra took the dismissal for what it was, happy to be able to leave.
She did not manage to leave the storeroom unaccosted.
Stefanos caught her by the arm just beyond the threshold, his grip firm enough to stop her without looking rough enough to invite complaint.
“If you have any injuries or concerns in the future, you can speak to me,” The way he said it did not make it sound like kindness. “I can bring the matter to the Lord, if it is necessary. Or take care of it myself.” He said with utter seriousness.
Cassandra almost wanted to laugh. She realized it probably reflected poorly on him that the woman placed under his charge had appeared before the Lord injured and unattended.
Cassandra shook him off sharply. “Thank you for the kindness, Stefanos,” she said, offering him a mocking smile.
His expression tightened. “Careful,” he whispered. Then, as if remembering he was meant to soften the threat, added. “That is all I want you to be.”
Cassandra left him behind without another glance, though she could feel the same was not true for him. His scrutiny followed her down the corridor like a hand at the back of her neck.
She quickened her pace, wanting distance from the storeroom, from Theodorus’s controlled eyes, from Stefanos’s watchfulness, and from the shameful relief of the poultice cooling her palm. Around the next corner, she collided hard with another body.
“Ow!” Cassandra yelped, stumbling back, only to realize who she had struck.
Madame Zeta had taken the worse of it. The old lady fell to the floor in a rustle of dark cloth and startled breath, and Cassandra rushed forward at once to help her.
“Are you alright?” Cassandra asked, remembering only at the last moment to lower her voice into the flatter, duller pitch of Carissa. Madame Zeta knew who she was, after all, and might recognize her.
“Oh, yes, yes. I am fine, not to worry.” Thankfully, the old woman’s eyes saw little beyond the blur immediately before her, and her hearing had grown poor enough that Cassandra wondered whether half the world reached her as little more than muffled weather.
Cassandra steadied her carefully, helping her rise. An unexpected bout of sadness moved through Cassandra as she straightened the woman’s sleeve and brushed dust from the dark fabric.
Those sewing lessons with the Madame seemed like something from another life.
And they reminded her of Hilda.
Cassandra wondered what her cousin was doing now. She remembered the way Hilda had cried when Cassandra told her she was staying behind for Apostolos, and that Hilda had to move forward for her own brother, Michail. She had tried to sound strong then, because Hilda had needed strength from someone, but the memory now felt like a knife pressed under her ribs.
She missed her little cousin dearly. She missed her brother, her papa, her family. She missed being surrounded by people who knew her name, who loved her. She missed what she had been, even if some bitter, newly awakened part of her now saw how fragile and foolish much of it had always been.
“Are you alright, miss?” Madame Zeta asked.
Cassandra realized with a start that tears had slipped down her cheeks.
“Ah, y-yes. Thank you.” She wiped them away hurriedly with the back of her uninjured hand, angry at herself.
Madame Zeta did not prod or scold, her clouded gaze resting somewhere near Cassandra’s shoulder, patient.
“I am just going through a great deal of change,” Cassandra confessed. “This is all too much. I feel… lost.”
She had never spoken to the old woman like this, but in a way, the old seamstress felt like one of the last living pieces of her old life still around. An embodiment of the castle that had outlived the family that once filled it.
“I understand that,” Madame Zeta said, and hacked out a dry little laugh. “Suddenly far away from your family, serving as a servant.”
For a moment Cassandra’s heart seized, fearing she had been found out.
“I am sure it is outside anything you knew before, these old stones, so many nobles, so many rules a peasant child has no need to know.” Madame Zeta chuckled sofly and Cassandra relaxed; she was still just a servant girl to the old lady.
“It is a most impressive castle,” Cassandra said with awe, knowing the old woman liked when people complimented Suyren.
“Aye, it is.” Madame Zeta accepted the compliment almost as though it had been paid to her own person. “I have seen much change in these last years, child, and one thing I know is that things come and go, no matter how tightly we cling to them.”
Cassandra knew too well how true that was now.
“I know loneliness,” the old seamstress continued, speaking with the slow care of someone who knew to choose her words. “And there is only one thread I know that can mend a broken heart.”
Cassandra felt the weight of experience in her words. Like she had lived through them a dozen times over.
“Love,” Madame Zeta said, her voice cracking slightly. “And family.”
The break in her voice struck Cassandra. She realized that she was not the only one wounded by her family’s fall.
Madame Zeta had served them, taught them, scolded them, and watched them grow. The Nomikos had been part of her life too, and their ruin had left its own empty places in her.
Strangely, painfully, that warmed Cassandra.
She was not alone in missing them.
A determined gleam entered her eyes as the thought took root.
Family.
She did not want to remain alone forever. And no one could save her but herself.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
“Aiaiai,” Demetrios complained with a sigh.
Demetrios’s sighs were a practiced thing, shaped by years of use into something far more expressive than any simple exhale had a right to be.
They had texture. Meaning. Whole histories tucked into the small movement of breath leaving an old man’s chest. Some meant exasperation, others disappointment, and a few rare ones carried the quiet warmth of contentment beneath their weariness.
Truly, Theodorus was bored out of his mind. So much so that he was focusing more on Demetrios’s sighs than his own ledgers.
He looked down at the columns of requisitions, additions, losses, and adjustments until the numbers began to blur into one another. Any excuse to look away from them felt like mercy.
It was time for a break.
“What is it, Demetrios?” Theodorus asked, pinching the bridge of his nose.
“The calculations, my lord,” Demetrios said. “No matter how many times I work through them, they say the same thing. We will barely break even in the best-case scenario.”
He shook the offending papers as though the numbers might change if properly chastised.
“Let me see.”
Theodorus set aside his own parchment, the one detailing the annual obligations and lands owed to Suyren. Theophylact had been immensely useful in the last few weeks, catching him up on the amounts and kinds of tribute owed by the northern lands. Whether it be grain, coin, livestock, service obligations or disputed exemptions. It was precisely the kind of information he would need for the coming meeting, so he had felt the need to double-check the documents.
He took Demetrios’s work and pored over it carefully.
After combing through the countryside estates once held by the Nomikos, they had discovered a few more possessions of value, most of which Zeno had already managed to sell. Between plate, jewelry, and useless trinkets the family had kept tucked away, they had raised one hundred hyperpera and could likely raise another fifty more.
By the standards of the Principality, and especially after the wealth that had been stripped away during the exile, it was a decent amount and Theodorus could not deny Zeno had done tremendous work. More than that, he had bought them time.
All in all, it was far more than Theodorus had received when selling his own estate to Iohannes, and it just went to show the scale of wealth handled at the county level was far beyond anything a small northern estate could hope to touch.
Despite all of this, it was barely enough to remain solvent.
Between the servants and the students now being paid half wages, Suyren was already set to bleed thirty hyperpera a month on salaries alone. That would likely rise to sixty once the first batch of students and servants graduated fully into paid service, and to one hundred if Theodorus intended to fully staff the castle properly with reliable and well-paid personnel.
Food, tools, livestock feed, charcoal, parchment, and all the dull little necessities a castle devoured brought the figure close to one hundred and sixty hyperpera per month for now, and two hundred later. That was before accounting for the small levy they were mandated to maintain, a minimum force of one hundred men, which for this first month, they would neglect to do, to avoid taking out a loan while taxation dues were sorted out and obligations solidified.
Ironically enough, their greatest advantage right now came from Nomikos greed. The family had held Suyren for roughly three generations, and during that time they had methodically rooted out many of the small landowners and pronoia holders who once possessed land in the north. Roughly eighty percent of the northern Principality’s lands had belonged to the Nomikos. Now, by confiscation, that land belonged directly to the Crown.
While that had helped create the administrative nightmare they were living through, it was also an undeniable boon.
According to Demetrios’s accounts, once all the disparate dues from the northern lands were compiled, Suyren could expect close to three hundred hyperpera per month in taxation if they used the existing taxation framework and under the slimmer rates Theodorus wanted to prioritize. Lower rates would give the population room to recover, which mattered more than squeezing peasants until they had nothing left to plant next season. On paper, that income almost matched the castle’s base expenditures with the levy present, but it assumed they were frugal, disciplined, and efficient with every coin.
The problem was that it left them with no margin at all.
No treasury to build. No reserve against failed harvests, bandits, disease, or incompetence. No funds for the myriad reforms and innovations Theodorus wanted to implement. They could survive, perhaps, but survival alone was too slow. At that pace, it might take close to a decade for the north to reach any competent productive capacity and produce a meaningful surplus.
By then, the Ottomans might already be on their shore.
In short, they needed cash, and they needed it badly.
Which was why Theodorus intended to cheat.
“Do not worry, Demetrios,” he said, tossing the parchment aside as though it were no more troubling than an old shopping list. “We do not need any of this.”
Demetrios’s face pinched at the sight of his calculations being dismissed so casually. A year ago, the old servant had barely known numbers beyond the first fifty and basic calculations, which had been serviceable enough to serve as quartermaster at the Probatoufrorio, but Theodorus had made certain to teach his people skills which he knew would be useful to have down the line. There were few things more dangerous than bad accounting, and few things more powerful than a household that knew exactly what it owned, owed, and bled away.
“My lord.”
A deferential knock preceded Stefanos’s entrance, though he did not step fully into the room until Theodorus glanced his way. “The pronoia have all arrived and await your presence.”
“See?” Theodorus said, seizing on the timing to crack a joke. “When in doubt, God delivers.”
“You believe the meeting with the landowners will be that fruitful?” Demetrios’s tone made it plain he did not share the sentiment.
“Not at all, Demetrios,” Theodorus said, rising from his chair and straightening his sleeves. “I know it.”
He winked at the old servant, flashing a confident smirk as he made for the door.
“You are always so certain everything will work out,” Demetrios said, his misgivings written plainly across his weathered face. “Need I remind you that, had you not been appointed ruler of Suyren, you would be penniless now?”
“You will never forgive that wager at the card table, will you?” Theodorus asked, unable to keep a touch of exasperation from his voice.
He had been cavalier with his coin in the past, yes, but it had not been youthful gambles. Every coin spent had been part of a calculation, risky certainly, but directed toward concrete advantage. Those risks had borne fruit into what he had accomplished so far. “My results speak for themselves.”
“Yes,” Demetrios replied dryly. “You were near penniless before, and now the whole north is. I merely wish we might hover somewhere in the financially frugal range for once. You must account for failure, my Lord.”
“Frugality is precisely what I am off to arrange, so there is no need to worry.”
Theodorus declared, putting a stop to the conversation, and exited the room, Stefanos falling into step close behind him.
The corridors of Suyren were cooler than the study, their stone walls holding the morning chill long after the sun had risen.
Theodorus lowered his voice as they walked.
“How has Cassandra been doing?”
Stefanos waited a beat to compose his thoughts. “The head servants report that she sometimes speaks out of turn and is of poor temperament,” he said. “But I do not have reason to believe she is presently rebellious, and so far she has not been discovered by any of the servants.”
He reported the matter with the detached precision of a man describing a horse’s limp or a broken hinge.
The manner in which Stefanos gave the answer upset Theodorus more than he wished to show. He knew Stefanos had once been smitten with Cassandra, and Theodorus had chosen him precisely because he trusted the boy to care for her, to protect her from the uglier edges of her new circumstances while still keeping her hidden.
But the Stefanos who had returned from near death was not the same boy he once was.
“I meant emotionally…” Theodorus said, judgment in his tone.
The silence that followed lasted just long enough to feel wrong. Stefanos looked ahead as if a machine that had caught on an unexpected obstruction and needed time to correct itself.
“She is having difficulty acclimating to the tasks of a servant,” he said at last, each word chosen carefully. “I believe she will come around in time. For she has no other choice.”
Theodorus stopped, forcing Stefanos to halt with him.
He placed a hand on Stefanos’s shoulder and turned him gently but firmly until they faced one another. For a moment, Theodorus looked not at the dutiful servant standing before him, but at the boy who had nearly died in his service and had returned with some vital softness scoured away.
“Help her,” Theodorus said.
It was not an order, but a request, and he needed Stefanos to hear the difference.
Stefanos looked taken aback, and then conflicted, as if the request had reached some place in him he had deliberately left untouched. In the end, he nodded, the motion small but firm, and a measure of determination returned to his eyes.
“Good,” Theodorus said.
He continued onward.
They had nearly reached the entrance to the Great Hall when Zeno approached from the opposite side of the corridor, walking with the unhurried assurance of a man who disliked wasting motion. Both men exchanged nods, each acknowledging the other’s punctuality and competence without needing to dress the matter in excessive courtesy.
“Strategos,” Zeno greeted.
“Hypostrategos,” Theodorus returned.
Their relationship had remained surprisingly amicable so far. For any differences they might potentially have, both men prized competence and results above almost everything else, and that shared instinct had smoothed over many sharper edges. They were careful with one another, too, avoiding needling one another needlessly.
Yet neither had truly come to know the other. There remained a deliberate stretch of distance between them, maintained while each gathered knowledge, tested habits, and measured the man standing across from him.
Theodorus knew Zeno would not keep to that forever.
“Ready?” Zeno asked.
“As much as I'll ever be,” Theodorus answered.
He and Zeno entered the great hall together.
Inside, a dozen noblemen stood arrayed along the long table, their fine livery and carefully arranged postures lending the chamber a certain stiffness colored with pomp.
Some were older men with grey at their temples, others younger sons elevated by circumstance and war, but all wore the guarded expressions of landowners summoned to hear what their new masters intended for them. Near the far side stood Iohannes, Theodorus’s brother, dressed with modest care and watching him closely. Their eyes met for a moment, and a meaningful gleam passed between them, brief enough that most in the room would miss it, but clear enough to say that both understood the game about to be played.
“My lords,” the nobles said, bowing their heads one after another.
Only now did it sink in that these men were his vassals now.
Having grown men in fine clothing lower their heads to him was a novel experience, to say the least.
“Be seated,” Zeno said, moving past the moment faster than Theodorus did.
The nobles obeyed, though not without exchanging wary glances.
“Why have we been called here, my lords?” one of them asked once the rustle of chairs had settled.
“Because, Master Joakimides,” Zeno began, “we have come with a proposition. One we believe presents you with a unique opportunity.”
He strode to the center of the table, placing himself where every man could see him clearly.
“One must spend money to make money,” Zeno said, letting the phrase sit among them. “Yet taking on risk is something any sensible man is wary of doing. Is that not so?”
The nobles exchanged confused looks. Several frowned outright.
Why was their lord speaking like a merchant?
“The north is devastated,” Zeno continued. “The civil war has left it spent. Fields are neglected, households disrupted, stores exhausted, and coin scarce. The economy hovers close to collapse, and each of us acting alone will recover slowly, if at all. So I ask you: is it not wiser to pool our resources and reverse this together?”
“I am not sure what you wish us to do,” Joakimides said carefully.
Theodorus stepped in then, taking the thread before suspicion had time to harden. “We are offering you the opportunity to purchase bonds from the northern administration.”
“Bonds?” another noble repeated.
“Contractual obligations,” Theodorus said. “In exchange for an upfront payment, the administration commits to providing long-term installments at a fixed return.”
“A loan?” Joakimides asked, the word leaving him with a strange mixture of disbelief and fascination.
“A structured one,” Theodorus replied. “Backed by the revenues of Suyren and guaranteed, in part, by our Genoese friends.”
He gestured toward the Genoese merchant they had invited to attend the meeting, a neatly dressed man with watchful eyes and a smile polished smooth by years of trade. The merchant inclined his head, standing there as both witness and bait.
“This is faintly ridiculous,” one of the noblemen said.
“Is it?” Zeno asked. “If you have coin sitting idle in chests, why should it not be put to work? Gold shut away in darkness does nothing but wait to be stolen, debased, or spent by frightened heirs.”
“And what, precisely, do you propose we fund?” Joakimides challenged.
Theodorus and Zeno’s eyes met. It was time.
“Cement,” Theodorus answered.
Every eye turned toward him.
“Cement?” someone echoed, as though he had announced they were investing in mud.
“At its core, cement is only a mixture rubble and lime, and barely useful for more than mortar,” Theodorus said, acknowledging their skepticism. “But Roman cement was not built from those materials alone.”
That stirred something. The nobles had heard of Roman cement, of course. Some had even seen examples of it in the older sections of Mangup, where ancient construction still clung stubbornly to stone as if time itself had failed to pry it loose. Among peasants, and more than a few nobles, it was spoken of with the hush usually reserved for holy relics or half-forgotten magic.
“The secret, my friends, is this.”
Theodorus lifted a small cloth pouch and tipped a measure of red earth into his palm.
“Clay?” one of the nobles asked, incredulous. “To make cement?”
“Burnt clay,” Theodorus said. “Pounded pottery, old ceramics, kiln waste, anything of the sort, provided it is crushed fine enough and mixed properly. It is this simple material that grants the cement its most valuable properties, especially against water.”
The skepticism had not vanished, but curiosity had begun to eat into it.
“This is not a craft we have used properly in the Principality for close to a century,” Theodorus continued. “Yet the need for it is everywhere. We need cisterns that do not leak, wells that do not collapse, granaries kept dry, drains that do not poison their own streets, and walls that can be raised faster and maintained better. And crucially, I have it on good information that the Crown plans to undergo major rebuilding endeavours in the near future to its fortification structures.”
"Truly?" the most skeptical nobleman, Joakimides, asked. If such information were true, it would pave the way for this endeavour to be immensely profitable. In a theoretical world where they managed to establish a production center of a superior grade of cement in the north, they could reap a tidy benefit. "How can you be sure?"
It was Zeno who answered. "Commander Theodorus was an integral part of the peace negotiations with Genoa, and holds the ear of the Megas Doux, as do I." The statement left a stunned quiet in its wake.
The gathered noblemen exchanged wide glances throughout the table. They were just now coming to the realization of the extraordinary breed of young men that now ruled over them.
While in the past any investment from the Crown would be viewed with suspicion, their reputation had vastly increased following the crushing victory over the rebels, and the favorable peace deal struck with Genoa. More than that, it was now public knowledge to those informed that as part of the peace deal, the Genoese had paid a tidy sum to the Crown, so for once, their treasury sat with a respectable cushion. Suddenly, trading with their suzerain did not seem so far-fetched for Theodoran nobles.
“How do you hold this knowledge of cement?” one noble asked before he could stop himself. “Such a recipe was lost to us during the Black Death.” The mention of the ghastly disease cast a pall over the room. A few men crossed themselves. The plague had come into Europe through Caffa, ravaging through Crimea before anything like the Quarantine had been known, after all.
“Because the recipe was kept alive elsewhere,” Theodorus said, gesturing toward the Genoese merchant. “In Rome itself, and in the hands of those who still build docks, warehouses, granaries, and harbour works across the sea.”
“With the regularization of relations between our states and the new treaties in place,” the Genoese merchant said smoothly, “Genoa is prepared to share its cement recipe for this endeavour.”
The man smiled as though generosity had brought him here.
Theodorus knew better. He had been forced to bargain for the privilege, and not cheaply. He knew that the Romans of old used pozzolanic cement extensively in their construction, and that volcanic ash was often at the heart of it, but he had not known the exact proportions, the recipe, or that crushed pottery could serve as a workable substitute. The Genoese did.
Technically, they could purchase such material from Genoese kilns on the Crimean mainland. But it would be cheaper, steadier, and far safer for Theodoro to build its own production. The Theodoran heartland was rich in limestone, and old Byzantine construction had more than enough broken pottery. Added to the fact that Theodoro already possessed a respectable system of kilns and desperate, cheap labour, they could begin production in the near future.
By being first to exploit the Genoese relationship, Theodorus could catapult the north into meaningful profit before anyone else in the Principality understood what opportunity had been placed before them. They did not need to be richer in resources than everyone else. They only needed to move first, establish the manufacturing facilities, secure the trade routes, and become the source others turned to before rivals even realized there was a market to seize.
As for why the Genoese would share the knowledge, that was simple enough. This was their first real foray into financial ventures inside Theodoro, and first breaches into new markets always came dressed in favourable terms. Genoa would no doubt use tempting deals, guarantees, and commercial expertise to sink its institutions into Theodoran soil.
Theodorus intended to let them try.
Then he intended to use their own game against them spectacularly.
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Author's notes: Apologies if the ending felt abrupt or the last part rushed. I couldn't find a way to separate events for the usual chapter length, so I decided to just put as much of the scene as I could so the chapter had as many developments as possible. Lately, the chapters have been especially long, and it has taken a bit of a toll on me, so I will try to keep to around 6k words for the most part where possible.
The meeting so far has been sparse in descriptions because I wanted to get as much information out as possible and didn't want descriptions bogging it down. I also tried to make the rehash of Cassandra's emotions and the bond explanation quicker, as I was worried there was a bit too much repetition of things already established. I think I did a poor job of that in this chapter, so apologies for that.
In reality, the bond explanation would have been much more in-depth for the nobles, with a lot more pushback and needing the Genoese merchant to back the plan with the guarantee of the Republic, but since the readers already knew how Theodorus planned to convince them and the structure of the agreement, I felt it unnecessary to go too in-depth and just get more content out.
Let me know what your thoughts are on this, not sure if you felt like enough happened this chapter.