Night fell differently here.

  In Belgrade, darkness arrived like a warning. In Adrianople, it had come with order. In Constantinople, it descended like a veil, soft, heavy, inevitable, like settling over stone and sea until edges blurred and even the vastness of the city seemed momentarily contained.

  Remy and the Company had lodged in a merchant house not far from the western districts, Blachernae. It happened quickly. Moments after passing fully into the city, a young servant had appeared as if summoned by rumor rather than signal, bowing and gesturing for them to follow. He led them through narrow streets until they reached a tall timber building set upon a stone ground floor, its fa?ade sober, its inner courtyard paved with worn marble slabs polished smooth by centuries of passage.

  Remy recognized the arrangement at once. One of his contacts. He had sent word and coin in advance. He had half-expected the merchant to renege on their arrangement. They often did when there was enough time for them to consider so. But this one had not. He had no desire, apparently, to be removed by Remy from the quiet list of those to whom Remy whom he provided ‘elixirs’ to. Medicine, Remy had learned, was one of the few currencies that was too effective for these merchants, who travel often to ignore.

  The house was better than expected. More manor than a merchant dwelling, really. A fig tree rose from the center of the courtyard, its branches black and angular against the lantern light, with leaves long fallen. Somewhere above, from an unseen room, a woman sang softly in Greek. It might have been a lullaby. It might have been a prayer. In Constantinople, the difference, according to the merchant, was often academic.

  When the gates were closed for the night, the sound traveled through the city like a long exhale. Iron struck iron. Bolts slid home. Chains settled.

  The merchant had other guests that evening. It would have been rude to throw them out to the streets, so Remy allowed them to stay. They ate together in a long room open to the courtyard, lentils and bread soaked in oil, olives sharp enough to wake the tongue. The wine was thin but honest, the sort that was good enough for the night. Around the table sat men from many roads. An Armenian dyer whose hands were stained permanently blue, two Genoese brothers arguing about margins and cargo, a Greek ship’s clerk counting coins until his fingers cramped, stopping only to flex them before resuming.

  No one asked where they were going.

  In this city, the arrival itself was enough explanation.

  From the street came the softened clatter of hooves, the murmur of voices, the ringing of a distant bell. Then, gradually, silence. Remy slept with the window open, breathing in the scent of salt and old stone, the sea threading itself invisibly through the city’s breath.

  By morning, the quiet shattered.

  Sound rose early here, layered and purposeful. Remy, after dressing himself up, followed it uphill, drawn not by curiosity so much as inevitability, and found himself swept into the Grand Market of Constantinople. A world folded neatly inside another, larger one. Covered streets arched overhead in timber and stone, light falling through slats and openings like golden rain. The air was thick with spices and sweat, leather and incense, smoke and human closeness.

  Stalls pressed in on either side, each one a kingdom unto itself.

  Silk from Bursa gleamed like water caught mid-motion. Persian carpets lay piled like captured sunsets, reds and golds layered upon one another in quiet excess. Glassware from Venice caught the light and scattered it in trembling shards across the walls.

  Languages collided freely here. Greek bargaining rang sharp and practiced. Turkish flowed low and authoritatively. Armenian murmured in measured tones. Italian burst forth in curses whenever prices rose too high. The market absorbed it all without favor.

  A spice merchant let Remy smell saffron wrapped in oiled cloth, its scent deep and unmistakable. A goldsmith weighed a ring twice before nodding once, satisfied. Somewhere nearby a man shouted that his scales were honest, loudly enough that no one believed him.

  Byzantine Officials moved through the aisles calmly, their presence felt more than seen. Prices were posted. Disputes ended quickly. The market did not roar. It hummed, like a great engine that had been running too long to need an announcement.

  Remy moved with the flow, then turned a corner expecting another market street, and instead, the world opened.

  There it stood.

  Hagia Sophia itself.

  It rose so vast that the sky itself seemed to rest upon its dome. The structure defied sense, brick and stone suspended above space, buttressed by time and faith rather than logic. The dome caught the light and gave it back warmer, softer, as though the sun itself had been persuaded to temper its brilliance.

  Remy stopped walking.

  Others did too. Greeks crossed themselves. A Byzantine guard paused, head tilted back, respect undisguised. Pigeons wheeled around the dome like sparks cast upward and caught again.

  Remy had seen great churches, in Venice, in Padua, in Florence, in Rome, in Toledo. They spoke of wealth, of pride, of craft. They announced human achievement.

  But this?

  This spoke of endurance.

  He stepped inside.

  The air changed at once. It grew cool, vast, echoing. Light filtered through high windows and fell in pale sheets upon the floor. Mosaics glimmered faintly above of Christ, the Virgin, and the saints gazing down from another age. Some were dimmed by time. Some were scared. None were erased.

  He felt very small.

  And, unexpectedly, safe.

  For a long moment, thought deserted him. There was no calculation, no comparison, no instinct to measure or assess. Only the sensation of standing inside something that had outlived certainty. If cities had souls, this one was ancient, wounded, and still breathing.

  He left quietly.

  Outside, life resumed without pause. Vendors shouted. The children laughed. Carts rattled over stone. Constantinople did not slow for awe.

  But Remy did.

  He returned to the merchant house later that day, his steps slow, his thoughts unhurried. Sir Gaston noted his expression and asked nothing. Some experiences did not require commentary.

  That night, lanterns bloomed across the city like grounded stars. Voices softened. Doors closed. Somewhere, water was poured into stone basins. Somewhere else, prayers were spoken in languages that had shaped the world and been shaped by it in return.

  Remy stood in the courtyard beneath the fig tree and listened to the sounds only found in these times. When he finally slept, his dreams were filled not with faces or voices, but with stone arches, walls, and domes that were layered endlessly, bearing weight without complaint.

  It was an honest dream.

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  The next morning found Remy midway through a simple meal when the interruption came.

  He had just torn a piece of bread and dipped it into oil when a clerk from the palace was announced. The man entered with the practiced confidence of someone accustomed to being obeyed, his posture upright, his expression faintly superior. He did not wait to be invited closer. He simply delivered his message.

  The Emperor of this city requested Remy’s presence.

  How that decision had been made, Remy did not know. He suspected it had less to do with coincidence than with accumulation. A name spoken here. A question was asked there and coins were exchanged without ostentation. Constantinople was a city that listened even when it appeared indifferent.

  The invitation unsettled him.

  Not because of fear, precisely, but because of what it represented. To be summoned was to be noticed. To be noticed was to be drawn into a web that did not easily release those who brushed against it.

  Emperor John VIII Palaiologos.

  Remy knew the name well. He would rule another six years yet, until 1438 from what he dimly recalled. One of the last emperors of the last Byzantine imperial house. History would remember him as educated, diplomatic, and relentlessly pragmatic, a man ruling a glorious city with almost no military power left to wield.

  “Empire,” by this point, was an inherited word rather than a functional reality. Constantinople itself was a scattering of territories and the Despotate of the Morea. Fragments held together by memory, ceremony, and the stubborn refusal to concede finality.

  John VIII would spend much of his reign pleading westward. Seeking aid. Negotiating unity with Rome. Traveling to Italy for councils that promised much and delivered little. In 1432, those efforts were already shaping the mood of the city. Remy had felt it in the streets, the bustle that masked anxiety, the urgency that dressed itself as normalcy.

  Constantinople was living on borrowed time.

  Ottoman lands pressed close on all sides. Their troops could appear at the walls within days. Tribute was paid to the Ottoman sultan as a matter of survival, not pride. Byzantine authority within the city remained absolute in theory, but it was thin as glass and just as brittle.

  The clerk, for his part, seemed to enjoy his role. There was a faint edge of arrogance in his tone, a suggestion that refusal would be ill-advised. He spoke of imperial interest as though it were a favor granted rather than a summons issued.

  Remy listened without reaction.

  When the clerk’s gaze flicked briefly to the pouch at Remy’s belt, heavy with coin, and the luxury of his attire, something shifted. Remy made no show of it. He did not need to. The implication alone spoke volumes. Enough, easily, to ransom a king or two in less desperate lands.

  Threats lost their edge when measured against such realities.

  Still, Remy excused himself politely. He spoke of fatigue. Of the Emperor’s many obligations. Of the imprudence of troubling him immediately. His tone was respectful, deferential enough to satisfy custom, but firm.

  The clerk bristled faintly, then masked it. He said he would return tomorrow.

  And with that, he left.

  The household resumed its quiet rhythm. Jehan, seated nearby, had watched the exchange closely.

  “Are you going?” she asked once the man was gone.

  Remy wiped his fingers on a cloth and nodded. “I will have to,” he said. “But in secret. And in confidence.”

  She studied him over the rim of her cup. “You avoid lords frequently.”

  He shrugged. “Because to speak is to involve oneself in the affairs of the city,” he said evenly. “And I am a pilgrim. Nothing more. Nothing less.”

  Jehan’s expression tightened slightly. “But you have the voice, the wealth, and the power, Sir Remy,” she said. There was no accusation in her tone, only insistence. “With your abilities—”

  He raised a hand, stopping her gently.

  “Do not confuse my meager skills for competence,” he said. “I know much because I had time and means. Just knowing a great deal does not mean I know enough to interfere in the affairs of others.”

  She studied his face, searching for something, conviction, perhaps, or evasion. Finding neither, she returned to her meal without another word.

  Remy watched her for a moment longer than necessary.

  He had come to realize, as of late, that Jehan had been quietly observing him. Not with suspicion, but with dubious intent. She was a strange woman by the standards of this era. Thoughtful in ways that unsettled those around her. Unwilling to accept inherited answers simply because they were inherited.

  He did not understand her thoughts. Even if he had, he doubted he would have tried to alter them. Minds, he knew, did not change easily. And whatever conflicts Jehan carried were hers to resolve. Her opinion was of little interest to him, despite how cold that sounded.

  He was an observer.

  Some might mistake that for passivity. Others for cowardice. But Remy’s desire to keep history as it was, unaltered by his hand, remained unchanged. He had seen what happened when men convinced themselves they knew better than time itself.

  That afternoon passed quietly. Preparations were made discreetly. Sir Gaston was informed only that Remy had private business. The Company accepted it without protest. They had learned when to ask and when not to.

  By the next morning, Remy was escorted through streets that changed subtly as they approached the imperial quarter. The crowds thinned. The buildings grew more formal, more deliberate. Guards appeared at measured intervals, their presence calm but unmistakable.

  The palace itself was not as grand as legend suggested. Or perhaps legend had simply grown careless over centuries. It was old. Worn. Maintained with discipline rather than indulgence. Marble patched with stone. Frescoes faded but intact. A seat of authority that survived by restraint, not excess.

  Remy was led through corridors where sound softened and footsteps echoed faintly. Servants moved quietly with heads bowed. Officials murmured in alcoves. The machinery of a state that refused to admit how small it had become continued to turn.

  When he was finally ushered into the Emperor’s presence, Remy bowed with the appropriate measure of respect. No more. No less.

  John VIII Palaiologos sat at a table strewn with documents, his posture upright but tired. He was not an imposing man physically. His strength lay elsewhere. In the sharpness of his gaze. In the economy of his movements. In the way he listened before he spoke.

  “So,” the Emperor said after a moment, studying him. “You are Sir Remy.”

  “Many years to you, Most august Emperor,” Remy inclined his head. “I come from France, in peace and for faith.”

  “You travel as a pilgrim,” John continued. “Yet you leave impressions where you pass.”

  “Pilgrims in armor often do,” Remy replied. “We move through places without claiming them.”

  The Emperor smiled faintly. “A careful answer.”

  They spoke for some time. Of medicine. Of roads. Of the conditions beyond the city walls. John asked questions that revealed more than they sought. He did not press where resistance appeared. He circled instead, testing boundaries.

  Remy answered honestly where honesty cost nothing. He deflected where truth would bind him. He offered observations without conclusions. The Emperor listened closely.

  At last, John leaned back, fingers steepled.

  “You know,” he said, “that this city survives by balancing forces far greater than itself.”

  “I do,” Remy said.

  “And yet you claim no desire to influence those forces.”

  “I claim only the desire to pass through without tipping the scales,” Remy replied.

  The Emperor regarded him for a long moment.

  “A rare wish,” he said softly. “You may go, Sir Valois.”

  When Remy departed the palace, the city felt no different. The streets were the same. The noise unchanged. And yet something had shifted, imperceptibly.

  He had been seen.

  As he returned to the merchant house, Remy reflected on the encounter without satisfaction or regret. He had not altered the course of the city. He had not offered counsel that would echo through years.

  He had observed. Spoken when required. Withheld where necessary.

  History would proceed as it must.

  And Remy would continue walking its edges, watching carefully, ensuring that his shadow did not fall too heavily across its pages.