Side story: John IV Megas Komnenos POV

Trebizond early spring 1435

The wind came up the black water like a rumor. It pressed its damp palm to the shutters and tugged at the candle flame, and John steadied the page with two fingers so the script did not shiver into vagueness.

The book was no monk’s weary hand-copy, but a clean, sharp impression from the presses of Constantine in the Morea, one of the Plato Dialogues that had already found their way east, bound in simple calfskin, its margins even, its letters crisp.

He read the passage that always struck him like the bell of Panagia Soumela in still air: that no city can be well-ordered unless its ruler has first ordered his own soul. He did not hear it as a maxim, but as pressure in the ribs: order the soul, then the city.

A fist thudded on the bronze door ring. John closed the book with slow pressure. The candle wavered and held.

The boy who served upstairs, bare feet, a shirt too thin for early spring, poked his head through. “Basileus, Kapoulos waits.”

“Bring him.”

The office looked past the citadel wall and the town to the Black Sea, slate and restless. The desk was carved walnut, polished to a dull glow, its edges inlaid with ivory brought by Genoese ships. A piece fit for emperors, though the tax tally upon it spoke of narrower fortunes.

Kapoulos entered with the quick bow of a man who despised ceremony but honored it anyway. Damp clung to his cloak. He stayed a pace inside until John gestured.

“Come, brother.” John tapped the Plato. “Here again: no man fits a throne whose own house inside him is unruled. This book keeps me from lying to myself.”

Kapoulos’s mouth tilted. “I have liked those Philosophers since my youth. But David bites deeper. A man can weep in the psalms and not be ashamed. Plato makes me stand straighter. David lets me fall.”

“Then we are a pair.” John leaned back. “Tell me why the sea sends you up with wet sleeves at dawn.”

Kapoulos did not sit. “From the western marches. Riders from Hamsiköy and Santa. They’d been shadowed two days. Amasyans crossed the high paths. Gürz Necib Bey’s men. Fast. Light. Enough to drive cattle and women into the olives. Three villages burned their own grain to deny them. No heads taken on our side yet.”

John felt the old loosening in his belly, the body confessing it wanted warmth and wine. His mind stepped on its neck. He pressed his jaw till the muscle softened. “He has slipped his tether, then. When lions grow old, jackals forget they are jackals. Murad kept his beys like chessmen. Dead men give poor commands.”

“Dead, yes,” Kapoulos said. “And without tribute this year, our coffers breathe again. Tax-men sleep without knives under their pillows.”

“We may have to spend that reprieve at once.” John pushed the tally away. “If Gürz Necib grows bold, he will nose eastward. Men who break from sultans learn to love themselves too loudly.”

“We have men,” Kapoulos said, calm as a carpenter choosing a beam. “Woodcutters who can hold a shield, sailors with scars from worse than fields. Or we can court help. Uthman Beg of the White Sheep smiles our way.”

John cut him off with a shake of the head. “Uthman has no hands free. The Black Sheep worry him like wolves. He will send us words, not horses. As for Alexander( of Georgia)…” His jaw tightened: father-in-law, rival, kin. “He looks north and south at once. He is kin, and so cannot be relied upon.”

Kapoulos lifted an eyebrow, understood, and said nothing.

“Then we reach far.” John set his hand on the book. “To Constantine. Slayer of Murad. There is fire in him that does not go out.”

Kapoulos’s lids lowered in caution. “His sword is long. But Trapezous is not its point. And he refused Mary. He is not won by family.”

The memory stung, Mary’s brittle smile when the answer came. John folded it away. “Yes. Still. Have you read his manifesto, Ierós skopós? They mean to raise the old bones. To die walking rather than live kneeling. That hunger we can feed.”

“That hunger may eat us,” Kapoulos said gently. “If they rebuild the old shape, we are mortar in their wall.”

Then let us be the stone no mason discards. We acknowledge him as the true emperor of the Romans, not that pitiful Demetrios, who cannot hold water in a cup without spilling it. We bow in words, keep our crown in practice. The monks will thunder about heresy and Latin kisses. Let them. I have no stomach left for quarrels. Constantine turned west and was right. See what the crusaders’ iron gave him.”

Kapoulos made a small sound at “Latin.” Not disgust, not assent, the sound of a man stepping on a half-sunk stone. “The abbot wrote: ‘We are not a people to sell our Mother’s milk for foreign wine.’”

John’s smile held no mirth. “Our monks forget that wheat is wheat, whether rain fell on Rome or Argyropolis.

And write to Constantine. Use the word he loves. Tell him Trapezous shares the Ierós skopós, and that in our liturgy we will acknowledge him as emperor in Constantinople.”

Kapoulos sat at last, hands folded on his knee. “A fine gesture. But Constantine sits far away, and Gürz Necib rides close. How does a line in a letter stop hooves on our soil?”

“By buying us time and steel,” John said. “If we acknowledge him, he will savor it. And then we can ask for his new thunder, bombards, the fire-sticks that scatter cavalry. Ten such mouths of iron on our walls, and Gürz Necib will turn his horse before he reaches them.”

Kapoulos’s brow furrowed, though his eyes were alert. “So we barter reverence for powder and iron.”

“Yes, but in the meantime we are not empty-handed.” John rose, palm to the casement stone, smoothed by centuries. Below, copper roofs ran to the harbor like scales to the sea. “We pull men from the coast watch, send them west in twos and threes. No banners. We put iron caps on heads that have not worn one since last winter. One galley along the coast as far as Kerasous, just to be seen. And summon the petty lords from the valleys. They do not leave without a son as surety.”

Kapoulos nodded, pleased at the teeth of small measures. “And Genoa? If we write to Constantine, Caffa will hear the rasp of the pen.”

“Genoa hears every coin’s rattle.” John’s mouth thinned. “They will whisper to my brother, swear Alexander is softer than I. Let them. We owe them too much already; my dreams reek of their warehouses. If Constantine sends iron, we can hate Genoa openly. If not, we fold our hatred neat. But I will not kiss the hand that robs me.”

The wind pressed at the stone. The candle straightened. For an instant, the room leaned with the sea. John felt the weight of the fathers who had stood here before him. He had not chosen the knot; he chose to keep it from fraying.

Kapoulos watched with the impertinence only he could risk. “You speak as if it were already done. Shall I write in my own hand? He answers men he knows.”

“Write. Begin with the sea. Tell him we have taken its salt into our mouths and it agrees with Ierós. He will hear it.”

John lifted the ledger, numbers clicking like stones in a pouch. “We make a show without vanity. And quietly, we reach for Necib's household. Two of his captains bargained barley from us last autumn, I remember their names. We send them gifts, style them prôtophylakes, promise their mothers warm chambers here if ever they flee. We buy their favor. And if even a few in his tent lean toward us, the bey himself will have to bridle.”

“A softer war.”

“The only one we can afford before the iron comes.” John let a private smile show. “Kapoulos, I will not die for haystacks. Let the bey burn straw. When our walls speak with thunder, we will answer.”

Kapoulos’s blunt face opened like a hand. “Very well. I’ll wake the scribes, send men to count granaries, find the two Amasyans, and pray God smiles at our timing.”

John felt the weight of the book in his hand. The phrase waited there: order the soul, then the city. He looked once more at the sea. Its light was shifting, silver stirring under the skin.

“Go,” he said. “And write the word that turns men’s hearts.”

Kapoulos was nearly at the door when John called him back. “Brother,” he said, and the word was clean. He laughed once, low, sharp. “Ierós skopós, brother. Ierós skopós.”

Author’s Note:
John of Trebizond is a fascinating figure! If you’re curious, I recommend looking him up; His story is as dramatic as any fiction. One small clarification: the marriage offer to Constantine is poetic license on my part. Maybe a niece? the records are frustratingly vague to add a proper one.