The younger boy’s name was Michael, and it turned out that he was from Samos and had been taken in a slave raid some months ago, being bought and sold in one slave market after another halfway across the world before he found himself working here in Darband. People called him by his first name, or they referred to him as Samianos, or just the Samian. Michael Samianos had learned basic Persian in the steaming kitchens of Naryn-Kala, yet he still remembered his Roman, and even came from educated parents who had taught him what they could of the classics before raiders destroyed everything they knew.

  “This farr,” Prince Ifridun said through Michael. “I have heard it spoken of in old stories and histories. There is even a long poem, The Book of Kings, newly written, that speaks of the divine farr, the royal farr—of what it could do in the past. Will you not teach it to me?”

  They were in the prince’s private quarters, which were no less beautiful than the Shirvanshahzadeh’s throne room, with striped arches and marble pillars overlooking balconies and the ocean. There were also beds, carpets, tables, and cushions, as well as a bookcase stuffed with worn books: a possible sign that Prince Ifridun was no fool. He was sitting on cushions on a wooden platform with Alexios, while Michael the Samian stood nearby with his head bowed. The prince had also ordered his serving girl, who had not been introduced to Alexios, to lock the doors.

  Alexios cleared his throat. “I would be happy to teach you, as as you command, padshah, but—”

  “Address him as ‘shahzadeh,’” Michael instructed. “That is the word for ‘prince.’ He is not the padshah yet.”

  Alexios looked at the dirty, sweaty, pudgy boy. Cuts and bruises were on his upper arms and on his chest inside the v-shaped collar formed by his dull linen tunic, which was marked with stains and burns. Yet the boy was still bold enough to challenge an adult. The beatings in the kitchen had yet to break him. His spirit lived on, though he was downcast and rigid—hardened from losing his family, from being betrayed by so many adults, from being unable to trust anyone for month after month. To open himself only meant inviting further disaster. Basil and Kassia had been like this after Narses murdered their mother Anna.

  How can people enslave children? Alexios wondered. How can anyone do this?

  Living in Trebizond and among the Trapezuntines, he had gotten used to the idea that children—like all people—should be free to do as they pleased so long as they harmed no one else. He had almost forgotten the stories refugees told about the outside world, where hierarchy was king, and men with weapons, books, and money dictated terms to everyone else. These thoughts brought him back to Basil, Kassia, and Isato, whom he then forced himself to forget. Otherwise he would lose control.

  Shahzadeh Ifridun cleared his throat.

  Taking a deep breath, Alexios looked at him. “Sorry. I’m just not interested in losing my head, shahzadeh, if you’ll forgive me for saying so. That’s why I can’t teach you, at least not in private like this. Everything we do needs to be in the sight of your royal tutor.”

  “He is like an old maid,” Ifridun scoffed. “The mere sight of him makes me retch as though I have the flux. All he knows is his old books and how to please my father—nothing more.”

  “In a place like this, that counts for a lot,” Alexios said.

  “All he does is stare at his old books,” Ifridun said. “As if staring at tree stumps, ignorant of the world changing around him.”

  Alexios glanced at the shelf full of books. “I was under the impression, shahzadeh, that you were a literary person yourself.”

  “Books are life,” Ifridun said.

  Sounds like Methodios, Alexios thought. Maybe it’s a common saying around here.

  Ifridun continued. “Books are also an escape from life. But there is so much more to life than mere escape. We must grip life the way a wrestler does, and never let go, else it will change before us like Proteos, and ensnare us with its tentacles before we know it.”

  “You know about Proteos?” Alexios said.

  “You think just because I’m a Muslim, I don’t know the old stories?” Ifridun nodded to the bookshelf. “We have a copy of Ovid there somewhere.”

  Faint and quiet as a shadow, the serving girl brought two Seran cups and a Seran teapot on a tray, and poured Seran cha for Alexios and Shahzadeh Ifridun before bowing and disappearing back into whatever side room she had come from. She moved almost too quickly to see, but looked and dressed like Amina the Acrobat—who was a Domari from Sindh and Hind—complete with colorful sari, bangles around her wrists, and a ring in her nostril linked with a chain to a ring in her ear, this last detail signifying that she was married.

  Alexios also caught Michael glancing for an instant at the serving woman, then at the steaming cha. Shahzadeh Ifridun was saying something, but Alexios interrupted.

  “I’m sorry, shahzadeh,” he said. “Allow Michael to join us here. The boy wants some cha. Let him have some, or I won’t continue.”

  Both the shahzadeh and the slave looked at him.

  “I can say that you kidnapped me,” Ifridun told Alexios. “I can cut myself with my dagger, then tell them you brought me to harm. You’ll lose your head before you know it.”

  “I don’t care. You should know by now that Trebizond does not tolerate slavery, and destroys all slaveowners on sight.”

  “Would that mean destroying me?”

  “Yes.”

  “That is not what I have heard. They tell us that all the Trabzon criminals do is trick the slaves and peasantry and rape and murder them for fun—that you roast children on spits even when you are not hungry, feed wayward wives to pits full of starving dogs, blow up traitors using your exploding pomegranates, and even forbid people to wear their hair in a manner that is different from your tyrannical leaders.”

  “No lie is too bold when it comes to Trebizond,” Alexios said. “Do you believe any of it, looking at me? I am the first Trapezuntine you have met, am I not?”

  Ifridun watched him. “Perhaps you are different from the others.”

  “We’re all like this,” Alexios said. “Now let the boy join us.”

  “It is not your place, as a gholam, to command a shahzadeh,” Ifridun said. “Besides, he is a slave, not a boy—and you are a slave, too, and therefore less than an animal.”

  “You’ll never learn the farr if you excuse slavery,” Alexios said. “You’ll always be stuck doing petty things, always be trapped in a mental prison of your own making.”

  Ifridun shook his head and smiled. “You are most peculiar, Eskandar-jan.”

  The shahzadeh nodded to Michael and spoke Persian to him, and the slave boy hesitantly joined them on the platform, though he reeked of sweat and old food. At Ifridun’s command, the servant woman returned with an extra cup and poured Michael some tea.

  “Will you have this woman here join us also?” Ifridun said. “Shall we have the dogs on the street sup with us, too?”

  “The servant joins us if she wants,” Alexios said. “Liberating animals comes later.”

  Ifridun sighed, then spoke Persian to the serving woman. She stopped, bowed, and must have made some excuse, but Ifridun then spoke with her in a sterner tone. She left for a moment to get another cup, then joined them on the wooden platform just as hesitantly as Michael had, keeping her eyes down as she poured herself some cha. Ifridun told Alexios her name—Gowri. Alexios said it was nice to meet her, and asked where she was from.

  “Aryavarta,” she said, keeping her eyes down.

  “Never heard of it,” Alexios said.

  “It lies beyond the Valley of Khyber,” she said in a low voice.

  Alexios raised his eyebrows. “Are you Domari, by any chance?”

  Gowri nodded.

  “A number of Domari live in Trebizond, where I’m from,” Alexios said. “They helped me a great deal in my travels.”

  Gowri nodded again in the same modest way as before.

  Though these two servants were wary of both Shahzadeh Ifridun and Alexios, and would have preferred to keep away from their masters rather than dine with them, Alexios felt the farr pulse in his chest. This act of solidarity—this risky effort made to break the exploitative status quo—had granted him energy for the first time in so long, he felt almost euphoric.

  Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

  “Well.” Ifridun looked at his three slaves. “We’re all just one big happy family now, aren’t we?”

  Alexios opened his hand, and his porcelain cup moved across the table—seemingly by itself—and into his grip. He had moved the cup so quickly that a few drops of hot cha spilled onto his skin, forcing him to yank his hand away and swear.

  Everyone else at the table watched Alexios’s cup, then looked at Alexios.

  “How did you do that?” Michael said, without waiting for Shahzadeh Ifridun to ask the same question. The shahzadeh looked under the table, then picked up Alexios’s cup to examine it.

  “Was that a magic trick?” the shahzadeh said. “Like the Domari performers who sometimes pass through the town in their caravans and entertain us?”

  Alexios shook his head. “No trick. The point of understanding the world is to change it. And that’s what the farr does—it changes the world.”

  “How can such things be?” Shahzadeh Ifridun said.

  “Free more slaves, women, and children,” Alexios said. “Do it for the sake of freeing them, and you’ll see. Remember that everything in the world is connected, and that the dialectical whole is moving toward its inevitable conclusion.”

  “I don’t know this word you’re using,” Michael said. “‘Dialectical.’”

  “It’s related to the word ‘dialogue,’” Alexios said. “All it means is that everything is in dialogue with everything else, along with itself, and that internal and external contradiction drives change. An oak tree is an acorn and a vast trunk at the same time. An animal changes its environment—like a beaver—but the environment also changes the animals that live in it. One thing changes another, but that other also changes the first. Always.”

  Michael nodded. “What’s a beaver?”

  “It’s like a kind of rodent,” Alexios said. “Like a big mouse with a flat tail and buck teeth. It dams up rivers to make lakes and also builds homes called lodges out of wood. They live north of here.”

  “Interesting,” Michael said.

  “Yet the question is,” Alexios continued, “how did beavers gain this ability? What came first, the chicken or the egg?”

  Michael stared at him. Shahzadeh Ifridun told him to translate, and this jarred him back into speaking Persian.

  “The answer is: they both did,” Alexios said. “One cannot exist without the other. So they both came into existence at the same time.”

  “How is that possible?” Michael said.

  “Eggs are a product of sexual reproduction,” Alexios said. “You guys don’t know this yet, but for most of the time life has existed on Earth, it’s just been microscopic and asexual—basically just cells dividing on their own in order to reproduce. One day, for reasons we don’t fully understand—since this took place like a billion years ago, when there wasn’t much oxygen on Earth, and the oceans were black with algae that breathed hydrogen sulfide, a poison gas—one of these cells produced offspring with another cell, thus beginning sexual reproduction. These two cells are the ancestors of all animals, plants, and mushrooms. In short, neither the chicken nor the egg came first. Both came at the same time. Each was contained within the other. Each defines the other.”

  “What’s a cell?” Michael said. “You mean like a monastic cell?”

  “In this context, the word ‘cell’ means a form of life that’s too small to see without a microscope,” Alexios said. “A thousand of them could fit on a pinhead. But that’s what we’re made of. All kinds of different cells. And more than you could ever count. Cells are made of atoms, which are much smaller. And atoms are made of subatomic particles, which are even smaller. And subatomic particles are probably made of even smaller things that we haven’t detected yet, since blowing money on weapons and oil is more important than learning how the world works.”

  “I feel like I’m listening to a holy fool raving in the street,” Michael said.

  “You’re not the first one to tell me that,” Alexios said. “It might all sound difficult to believe, but it’s true. If the world was as simple as it seemed at first glance, what need would there be for science? Science also teaches us that the universe is not only stranger than we imagine—it’s stranger than we can imagine.”

  “I don’t understand,” Shahzadeh Ifridun said. “How does any of what you are saying allow us to move a cup across a table without touching it?”

  “For that, we need to go outside,” Alexios said. “Outside Naryn-Kala. You need to take me to where the slaves work the worst jobs—to the lowest of the low.”

  “Wage laborers, you mean,” Shahzadeh Ifridun said. “Day laborers in the bitumen springs and pitch fountains of Bakuya, some distance south of here. It is terrible work. Most succumb within months—they plunge into the bubbling tar, and are never seen again. Only the very worst criminals and murderers are sent there. Much of the rock oil is used to boil seawater in order to produce salt. The rock oil is also used for caulking ships. We send much of it to Rūm, as a matter of fact. They told us to stop selling to Trabzon, but a coin is sweet no matter who grips it in his fingers. Baghdad also uses the rock oil to pave their streets thick and black and smooth as a beautiful woman’s hand.” He took Gowri’s hand in his own. She gasped.

  “Hands off,” Alexios said.

  “Again you think it wise for a gholam to command a shahzadeh.” Ifridun was still holding Gowri’s hand. “It is as though the cushion I sit upon has ordered me to stand.”

  Alexios had heard Isato speak like this—it seemed to be just the way medieval royals talked—but there was more menace in Ifridun’s words.

  “I won’t teach you anything,” Alexios added. “Not if you keep mistreating the people around you.”

  “I merely take that which is mine.” Ifridun gestured with his free hand to the flat blue misty Hyrkanian Sea outside the white marble balcony. “And by that I mean: the world entire.”

  Alexios lifted his own hand, then pushed it forward, opening his fingers. Ifridun was shoved back against the railing of the wooden platform, though Alexios never touched him. The shahzadeh stared at Alexios, then released Gowri.

  “Never touch a woman without her permission,” Alexios said.

  “She gave me her permission!” Ifridun said. “Did you see her resist?”

  “How can she resist when she is your slave?” Alexios said. “If the relationship is unequal, if one is richer than the other?”

  “What, do you want me to pay her?”

  “Your unequal relationship would still remain unchanged. Touch her—or anyone—without permission, and I will never teach you.”

  “I can have you hung upside down until you die. I can have my father’s torturers pull the teeth from your jaw.”

  “Kill me, and you kill my knowledge of the farr.”

  “There are others who know.”

  “Do you think they’ll behave differently?”

  “I wonder if it might be easier,” Ifridun said. “Easier to kill you and forget this, all of this. What is it that you intend to do with the laborers in the bitumen fountains?”

  “I intend to free them,” Alexios said. “To help them free themselves.”

  Ifridun laughed. “You cannot. It is a royal monopoly. Half of Darband was built with the money earned from selling the pitch of Bakuya to the Romans and Arabs. If you free the laborers, who will extract the bitumen?”

  Alexios thought of how, back in the old world, civilization was on the brink of collapse for many reasons, one of them being the pollution produced from burning ‘rock oil.’

  “It might be better to just leave it,” Alexios said.

  Ifridun’s laughter was angrier now. “This gift of the Earth that grants us enough gold to buy whatever we please—fortresses, nations, armies, servants, plus harems with hundreds of beautiful maidens hailing from every corner of the world—you would have us simply leave this boon granted us by God?”

  “Every treasure is also a disaster,” Alexios said. “Every positive has a negative, every negative a positive.”

  “So if I were to kill you right now, what would the positive be for you?”

  I wouldn’t have to think about losing my family anymore. “Insects would eat my body, birds would eat the insects, and perhaps people who would one day avenge me would gain strength from eating those birds.”

  “Then again, perhaps not.”

  Alexios was unsure of how to respond. Michael was out of breath, having translated so much. Gowri had refrained from touching her cha, which was no longer steaming.

  “So are we leaving or aren’t we?” Alexios said. “The world is our classroom. The next lesson is in Bakuya.”

  “What is it I will be able to do, if I gain an understanding of how to utilize the farr?” Ifridun said.

  “There isn’t much you won’t be able to do,” Alexios said. “My teacher once told me that with enough practice, my old sword would be able to cut through reality itself.”

  “Your old sword?” Ifridun said. “What happened to it?”

  “It was taken from me by Adarnase of Tao.”

  “Adarnase.” Ifridun shook his head. “I never liked that infidel. But he is our vassal, and always pays his tribute on time and in full, so what can I do? Now that he has this sword of yours, can he, too, ‘cut through reality,’ as you put it?”

  “I doubt it. I was never able to, and he doesn’t know anything about the farr.”

  “How then could he defeat you in battle and take this sword of yours?”

  “There’s a lot I don’t know,” Alexios said. “I don’t know what I don’t know, I don’t know what I don’t know what I don’t know. I’m a Zhayedan, but I’m not a god.”

  “That would be blasphemy if you said that you were, and an affront to the almighty, for there is no god but God.”

  Alexios sipped his cha, and thought back to Hermes Trismegistos. More in Heaven and Earth.

  He looked at Ifridun. “So are we going or aren’t we?”

  “Even if I were to commit an act as foolish as freeing the criminals mining the gummy pitch, my father would simply replace them.”

  “Not if we teach the criminals the farr, too.”

  “They are murderers. Violators of women.”

  Then they’re in good company, Alexios thought, looking at Ifridun and recalling what he had done to Gowri and what he had said about harems.

  “Everyone deserves a second chance,” Alexios said. “Besides, what right does a criminal society have to render judgment? Isn’t God himself the only one who can judge?”

  “This unbeliever speaks of God,” Ifridun said to himself, waving his hand. “He tells me to do that which will only incur my father’s wrath—and confirm the accusations of my despised tutor.”

  “Only if we lose,” Alexios said. “Even the Great Flood began with a single raindrop.”

  “Then we must rest,” Ifridun said. “We cannot leave during the day, or else we will be seen. We must leave for Bakuya at nightfall.”

  “Traveling at night is nothing new for me, shahzadeh. Only make sure to bring our friends here along.” He nodded to Michael and the silent Gowri. “Assuming they want to go.”

  “I want to go,” Michael said.

  Gowri was silent for a moment as everyone watched her. Then she said: “I will do as the shahzadeh commands.”

  “Then come!” Ifridun turned to Alexios. “As for you, you must rest, Eskandar-jan. When the sun has set, and the stars—which you say are also suns—have risen, then we will ride fast horses to Bakuya.” He laughed. “And free my father’s day laborers from their rightful judgment.”