The strip of white linen was unmarked, knotted to a spear for parley. In the thin morning breeze, it moved with a dry, restrained sound.
Lieutenant Nikolas Kallergis sat his horse and let the quiet settle. Yesterday the guns had spoken; today he was riding close enough to be killed for words.
Behind him, an attendant held a rolled parchment sealed in imperial wax. Further back, Pyrveloi stood at a measured distance, positioned to answer sudden violence.
Nikolas glanced back once. The gun line sat mute on flattened ground—twenty-three Drakos, barrels angled down. Beyond the guns, the imperial standard hung slack between men and wagons. Nikolas breathed dust and pressed his heels in.
They rode out at a walk, slow enough that every movement could be read from above. The upper courses east of the gate were chipped and bruised, crenels broken, stone-dust streaking the slope where the shots had bitten and stone had fallen.
Nikolas kept his eyes on the gate. When he reached what felt like bowshot, he reined in. His horse twitched its ears. He lifted the spear with the white linen and called out, voice pitched to carry without shouting.
"Parley."
He waited. Sweat began under his collar despite the morning.
Movement along the parapet: dark heads, a brief flash of metal. Then nothing. The pause stretched long enough to become its own answer.
From somewhere above the gate, a voice answered in accented Greek.
"State your purpose."
Nikolas called back. "We bring terms. Send a man to hear them."
Another pause. Nikolas forced his fingers to loosen on the reins. He counted his breaths, measured his distance. If arrows came, the first would take him before he could turn.
At last, the gate creaked, not opening, only the small wicket set into it, made for one man at a time.
A figure stepped out. He did not run. That, Nikolas thought, was either discipline or resignation.
The man was compact and hard through the shoulders, turban wrapped tight, a short bow slung behind. His face was drawn with fatigue that made him look older than he likely was. He stopped a few paces from Nikolas and lifted his chin, refusing to show how exposed he was.
Nikolas took the sealed parchment from his attendant and held it out on his open palm.
"From the Emperor," he said, and then he read the terms aloud.
"Mercy, if you yield. You leave alive at dawn, garrison and dependents alike. You lay down arms and war stores: powder, shot, cannon, everything kept in the fort. You may keep your personal blades. You take what you can carry of your own goods. The gate opens by your own hand, and you walk out in order."
He let the last clause settle. "If you refuse, the guns speak again. Then we storm the wall."
The man's eyes stayed on the seal. He took the parchment, turned it once, then broke the wax with his thumb. He read quickly, lips moving without sound. When he finished, he looked up.
"I am not the commander," he said. "But I will carry this to him."
Nikolas nodded. "Then don't linger."
The man hesitated, then spoke more quietly. "If we accept… you swear by your Christ, your men will not fall on us as we file out."
A flicker of old bitterness rose in Nikolas.
"By the Emperor's word," Nikolas said. "By the cross he wears."
Behind him, one of the Pyrveloi shifted; leather creaked in the stillness. Nikolas did not look back.
The man held Nikolas's gaze a heartbeat longer, searching for weakness, for the lie that would let him refuse. Then he dipped his head, barely, and retreated through the wicket.
The little door shut. The fort went still again.
Nikolas held his position and watched the parapet above the gate. Minutes stretched. Heat pressed down. His horse stamped once, impatient.
Then, above the gate, a white cloth rose against stone.
Nikolas let out a breath he hadn't meant to hold. He lifted his spear in answer and turned his horse.
Dawn handover
Constantine stood with the gate in view. He wore the purple mantle over plain armor, and the weight of it was wrong in the heat, authority layered over sweat and salt.
George Sphrantzes stood to his left, folio tucked under one arm, the other hand resting at his belt. He watched the ground around the gate rather than the gate itself—the men, the distances, the points where order might fail.
Andreas waited on the other side, solid as a gatepost, his face unreadable.
The hill above them still held the last of the night's cool. Along the line, a mule brayed and was silenced. The men stood ready—not in frenzy, but in the tight posture of those trained not to waste motion.
The gate opened.
Iron complained. The two great leaves creaked outward, slow as a confession. A shape appeared in the gap: the commander, an Ottoman officer in a worn kaftan, beard shot with grey, eyes that had measured many masters and learned not to love any of them. He lifted his hands to show he carried no bow, no match, no hidden blade.
Then the garrison came out.
They did not rush. They moved in a controlled column, carrying what they could: rolled blankets, a cooking pot, a child's wooden toy wrapped in cloth. Most wore their personal blades at the belt—a knife, a short sabre.
Behind them came a handful of civilians—women with hair covered, a boy carrying a sack too heavy for his shoulders, an old man leaning on a stick whose tip had been reinforced with iron.
The Romans lined the path in two files, shields down, weapons visible but not raised. There were no insults, no stones. A few men spat into the dust and wiped their mouths, and that was the extent of it.
When the Ottoman commander reached the point Constantine had marked, he stopped and bowed, not deep, not humiliating. Constantine answered with a nod. He did not offer his hand.
"Your men will be escorted," Constantine said. "You will keep order in your line. If anyone breaks it, I will not answer for what my men do."
The commander's lips pressed thin. "We will keep order."
He unhooked the keys from his belt and held them out. Constantine took them. They were heavier than he expected, iron worn smooth by hands that had opened and closed gates for years. He felt the cool bite of them against his palm and thought of other keys: Thessaloniki's, taken under bells; Arta's, handed over under olive branches; and of the city that had none yet.
"Take the gate tower," Andreas said sharply, and the occupation began at once.
Roman troops moved through the open mouth of the fort in disciplined bursts, first the men for the gatehouse and wall-walk, then those for the main courtyard. They did not scatter or run. They took their positions and held them.
On the parapet, a Roman standard rose, purple and gold, the double-headed eagle catching the first real light of day. The cloth snapped once in the breeze, a small sound that carried farther than a cheer.
Constantine watched the Ottoman column file down the slope. The fort had been taken cleanly.
George stood beside him a moment, then let out a quiet breath through his nose.
"I keep telling myself it shouldn't surprise me anymore," he said. "And then it does."
Constantine glanced at him, brief.
"How long that wall would have held us back," George went on. "Ten years ago. Even five." He shook his head once. "You blink, and it's decided."
"It's a different war," Constantine said.
"I know." George allowed himself a thin smile. "I just haven't trained my instincts to catch up. My head still expects weeks. The guns give me a day."
Constantine looked back to the fort. "And if we give them time, they'll learn to answer in kind."
"They'll adapt," he continued. "Thicken walls. Lower profiles. Earth behind stone." His mouth tightened slightly. "Every enemy learns, if given time."
George nodded. "Not soon enough."
They stood in silence, watching the line descend and the fort empty.
"Constantinople won't be the same when its turn comes," George said.
Constantine didn't answer at once. When he did, his voice was even.
"No. But neither will we."
By mid-morning, the fort's interior had been secured. No hidden men, no delayed sabotage, no last shots from a corner. What remained was the infrastructure of endurance: wells, storerooms, cramped quarters darkened by smoke and age.
The entrance to the powder room sat beneath the inner wall, a low stone door set back in shadow. Niketas ducked through first. He moved like a craftsman returning to his work, eyes already sorting what mattered from what did not. George and Constantine followed, two guards at the rear.
The air changed at once, cooler, carrying the sour bite of earth and the sharper tang of powder. The ceiling was low enough that Constantine bent without thinking.
Rope seals crossed the inner door, knotted tight and left undisturbed.
Niketas drew a knife.
He looked to Constantine. "Majesty?"
Constantine nodded. "Cut it."
Niketas sliced through the rope. The fibers snapped with a dry sound.
"It will fire. They didn't let it spoil."
Stacks of sacks rose in the corners, some wrapped in oiled cloth, others in plain burlap. Small barrels sat beneath a low bench, hoops tight, lids stamped with marks Constantine could not read from where he stood. Everything was arranged with the dull care of men who knew one spark could turn them into smoke.
Niketas crossed to the nearest pile and knelt. He pinched the mouth of a sack, opened it just enough to look inside, then dipped two fingers in.
The grains were coarse and dirty, grey-beige clumps already beginning to cake, powder that would fire, but not cleanly, and not for long if left as it was.
"Raw," he said. He rubbed it between thumb and forefinger, listened to the faint grit. He lifted his hand and smelled it, a short inhale. "Not cleaned well. But serviceable."
Constantine noted it without comment.
Niketas crossed to the far side of the room, where smaller sacks were stacked cleaner and tighter, some sealed with waxed cord. He opened one. The powder inside was paler, finer, almost white.
"This," Niketas said, and the word carried something like respect despite him. "Refined. Better leached. Better boiled. They've had hands here that knew their work."
He pressed the grains between his fingers again, then nodded once—small, decisive. "This will take corning well. It can be worked again if we keep it dry."
"How much?" Constantine asked.
George did not look up. "We'll count," he said. "Not guess."
Niketas glanced at the stacks again, eyes doing their own arithmetic. "Definitely more than we spent yesterday," he said.
Constantine followed his look to the knots.
"We took your old ground back," he said.
Niketas looked up at him. For a moment he said nothing. Then his mouth moved, not quite a smile.
"Yes," he said. "This place..."
He looked around the room.
"Not much changed, Murad talked about making more of it here. Said the soil was good. Said the valley could carry it." A brief shrug. "Talk stayed talk."
Constantine heard the judgment beneath the words. Opportunity noticed, then left to rot.
"Then we'll do what he didn't," Constantine said. "We didn't come to Skopje just for its keys. We came for its ground."
Niketas held his gaze a beat.
George's stylus paused, then scratched again.
Constantine stepped closer and nudged one of the sacks with his boot. The fabric was damp at the base.
"That's why you'll stay here," Constantine said. "Not as a kept man this time. As the man in charge."
Niketas blinked once, surprise, then caution.
"Over the next days, go out," Constantine continued. "Survey the villages you told me about. Speak to the ones already boiling. Find who can work. Then start production."
Niketas's mouth tightened. "They're working now," he said. "Small. Family pots. Little yield."
He looked back at the sacks, measuring the gap. "It can be expanded," he said.
Constantine nodded. "Good. Then start."
He turned to George. "Secure what's here. Dry rooms. Pallets. Our seals." His voice sharpened. "Names on everything."
George answered without looking up. "As you command."
Constantine faced Niketas again. "You'll have gold. Guards. Authority that doesn't end when I ride out." He gestured toward George. "What he writes carries my seal. If you requisition wood, you do it in my name."
Niketas swallowed.
"And I want reports," Constantine said. "Simple. What you found. What you started. What you need next. Kettles, wagons, hands—ask. If you take a man for the work, you take him properly: paid, watched, accounted for."
Niketas hesitated, then said it. "My family is in Glarentza."
Constantine did not hesitate in return.
"Before the first report," he said, "they'll be brought here."
Niketas looked at him, weighing the words. The room stayed quiet.
"It won't be quick," Niketas said at last. "But it will work."
"That's what I want to hear," Constantine said. "As far as this campaign allows, I'll back it."
He set his hand on a sealed barrel, cool wood under dust.
"Our powder should not be something we drag across half the map or beg others to sell us, It should be made here," he said. "Central, controlled, and feeding everything else we do.
Niketas nodded once.
"Then I'll begin tomorrow," he said. "I'll see the villages. Choose one place to start—small, controlled. Then expand."
Three days later, dust rose on the north road.
Scouts came in at a trot, faces tight with energy they hadn't bothered to hide.
"The Serbs," one said. "Four thousand, maybe more. Branković's banner."
Constantine stepped out of the war tent into the hard afternoon light. The fort rose behind him, the eagle flying over stone that had been Ottoman days before. Below, the camp lay in its ordered grid—men still digging, still building, the thin smell of cooking meat carried on dry air.
He rode out with a small escort, Andreas at his right, George just behind.
The Serbian column advanced in order, unadorned. They were not polished in the Latin manner: mail and leather worn to dullness, shields scuffed, spears straight. Men shaped by border war, eyes narrowed against the sun.
Their banner carried the cross. Beneath it rode a young man on a dark horse, back straight, expression set.
Grgur Branković reined in before Constantine, swung down from the saddle in one clean motion, and bowed, deep enough to respect the purple, not deep enough to abase himself.
"Basileus," he said. His Greek was formal, trained. "I come in my father's name."
Constantine dismounted as well. Up close, the resemblance surprised him, not in the face exactly, but in the bone: the same stubborn line under the cheek, the same refusal in the eyes Katarina tried to soften with laughter.
"Grgur," He said, and let the name carry kinship without softness.
"You made good time."
Grgur inclined his head a fraction. "My father wished to come," he said. "But he is no longer a young man. A late campaign takes a different price from him now."
There was no contempt in the line, only the bitter honesty of blood watching blood age.
"He sends you instead," Constantine said.
"Yes." Grgur lifted his chin slightly, and Constantine saw the thing beneath the pride: fear that being "instead" meant being lesser. "He sends his greetings. And my mother's."
Constantine nodded. "I receive them with honor."
Grgur's gaze flicked, just once, to Constantine's face as if searching for something he could use to understand this brother-in-law who had become emperor.
"And…" Grgur began, then stopped. The word that followed was not easy for him.
"My sister," he said at last. "Katarina."
The name landed in Constantine's chest like a hand. Impossibly, he caught the faint ghost of mint, memory intruding where it had no right to be, on a Macedonian plain.
"She is well," Constantine said. He did not embellish. Embellishment was how men invited fate to mock them. "She is in Glarentza, raising our daughter, Zoe."
At the mention of the child, Grgur's expression shifted—a crack so small it might have been imagined. Not joy, not tenderness. Something like relief he refused to own.
"My sister writes that you keep your word," Grgur said, quickly, as if embarrassed to quote praise. "She also writes that you… do not waste men when you can avoid it."
"I try," Constantine said. "When I fail, men die for my failure. I remember that."
Grgur's jaw set. "My father taught me the same," he said. "You spend men only when there's no other coin."