The Katarina smelled of something newly made and not yet forgiven by the sea: pitch, raw oak sweating sap, iron still sharp in the sun. Thessaloniki dwindled behind in pale walls and glittering water, and the meltemi pressed from the north like a steady hand, calm, steady, insistent.
Laskaris stood on the quarterdeck, fingers hooked around the rail, feeling the ship's slow, serious weight answer the wind. The Kyreneia held station off their starboard quarter, smaller and quicker, her sail bent like a practiced bow. She had been his home once, years of salt and watch-nights and cramped orders, but Constantine's new flagship carried its own gravity, and Laskaris knew to let sentiment rot where it couldn't trip a man.
Ahead, three smaller hulls worked the breeze like obedient dogs, keeping the line tight. Constantine had made him admiral to turn ships into habit and habit into power.
Footsteps came up the ladder. They kept time with the roll—one beat, a pause, then another—as if the man climbing refused to be hurried by the ship.
"Admiral," said a voice behind him.
Laskaris did not turn at once. He watched a gull cut across the wind, held there like a scrap of cloth pinned to the sky. Then he glanced back.
Nestor Gregoras stood with a bundle of papers held tight to his chest, a wax tablet under his thumb, stylus cord at his wrist. Salt traced his hairline; sweat marked the collar where leather rubbed. He braced his stance without touching the rail.
"Our course?" Laskaris asked.
Nestor unfolded a sheet, pinning it against the wind. "Holding along the peninsula," he said. His finger brushed a smudged line of ink. "The wind stays true. The helm holds steady. If it lasts, we'll reach the Athos roadstead before nightfall."
"Good."
Nestor hesitated, only long enough to wet his lips. "The other ships—"
"I have eyes." Laskaris's gaze flicked past him, brief as a knife-glint, to the small fleet's spacing and the glitter of oars where a lighter craft corrected position. "They'll follow."
Nestor nodded. His grip tightened on the papers until the corners bent.
Laskaris watched that hand a moment. "You're carrying them like orders," he said.
"They are orders."
Laskaris's mouth moved once, almost a smile. "Ink. Always ink with you."
Nestor looked out toward the land. The coastline was close enough to show goat-paths cut into brown slopes, and a white chapel perched above a cove. He stood very straight, the way men stand when they would rather be elsewhere but will not give the ship the satisfaction.
Laskaris said, "The army will have dust in their teeth by now."
Nestor's eyes stayed on the shore. "They'll have songs, too."
"Songs don't keep men alive," Laskaris replied. He turned back to the sea, voice level. "And a man doesn't choose where he's useful. He's put there."
Nestor's throat worked as if he had swallowed a stone. "Yes, Admiral."
The ship rose on a longer swell as they cleared a headland; her new planks groaned once, settling. Nestor adjusted his stance, one heel set back, and squared his papers again.
Laskaris reached into the leather case at his side and drew out a single folded parchment, thicker than Nestor's reports, sealed in purple wax stamped with the double-headed eagle and a blunt cross. The seal looked fresh, its edges still sharp.
"This goes ashore with you," he said.
Nestor blinked once. "With me?"
"With you." Laskaris held it out, not quite offering, more placing a weight in the air. "Thasos."
Nestor took the parchment with both hands. The wax pressed into his palm; he did not shift his fingers to avoid it.
"You will land at the small port," Laskaris said. "You will take all forty Pyrvelos and forty more to keep your line straight. You will read that seal aloud, take their oaths, and leave them no reason to fear you or room to pretend they didn't hear."
Nestor's throat worked. He opened his mouth, closed it, then tried again. "If the Gattilusio men contest it—"
"Do not start a quarrel you can't finish," Laskaris said. "And do not wave steel just to quiet your own nerves." He nodded once toward the sea, where sunlight broke on the swell like hammered bronze. "A ship can be lost in one careless moment. So can an island."
Nestor's knuckles went pale around the parchment.
Laskaris's gaze held him a breath longer, then softened by a fraction—not warmth, but something like recognition. "The sea has its own work," he said. "It doesn't shout when it takes a thing. It takes it all the same."
Nestor lowered his eyes to the seal. When he looked up again, his face was set, the muscles under the cheekbones tight.
"Understood," he said.
"Good." Laskaris turned back to the wind. "Go. And when you speak the Emperor's name, speak it like you mean to be heard over surf."
Nestor inclined his head and stepped away.
The ladder's rungs were warm under his palm. Below deck, the air thickened with rope, sweat, wet oak, and powder. The ship pressed at him more closely here. Near the guns, two Pyrvelos men sat on a coil of line cleaning their pans with oil-dark rags. Their muskets lay across their knees with the ease of habit. Nestor watched the practiced movements, then forced his eyes away. He slid the parchment back into his papers, tucking it beneath the tablet so the seal would not crack.
That night, Athos lay dark and massive, the slope of it swallowing starlight.
From the deck of the Katarina, Nestor smelled smoke from distant kitchens, resin from pine, and the sea's constant metallic bite. Lanterns moved on the beach below in a measured line. Casks rolled down on skids, crates passed hand to hand. A monk stood with a tablet, calling counts that matched what came aboard.
The monks spoke little, not from hostility but from habit. Each cask was chalked before it crossed the gangplank.
Nestor sat near the rail with his own tablet on his knees, checking figures already settled. The numbers were clean. His stomach was not.
Behind him, the sailors kept their voices low. Even laughter thinned, as if the mountain itself were listening.
Laskaris passed without stopping… Nestor watched him with a sour kind of awe. Some men ruled by speech. Laskaris ruled by outcomes. The Admiral moved as if he belonged to the sea. Nestor still moved as if he were allowed aboard on terms he had not been shown.
Later, when the ship settled, and the men rolled into sleep, he found himself thinking of the proclamation folded in his satchel—paper, ink, seal. It weighed almost nothing. Yet he felt it like a stone against his ribs.
By dawn, they were underway again. Thasos rose out of the sea mid-morning, green and ridged, its slopes patched with olive and scrub, as if the island had been stitched together in haste.
They went in on the west side. Kallirachi was little more than a plain stone quay and a scatter of fishing boats, but the water lay quiet under the hills, and even the Katarina rode easily. Laskaris preferred places like that: sheltered approaches, landings that did not announce themselves as challenges.
The landing was all practiced economy. Boats down, men in, muskets kept dry. Forty Pyrveloi and forty more troops, their boots thudding onto the stones of a modest quay. Nestor's mouth went dry the moment his feet touched land, as if the earth itself demanded he speak.
A few villagers gathered. Not a crowd, just faces: lined men with sunburned noses, women watching from doorways, boys curious enough to edge closer until a mother's voice snapped them back. There was no fear in it, only watchfulness. A priest stood among them, his cross catching the sun, and beside him an old man with a staff who did not step aside when the soldiers came. The proestos, Nestor guessed.
He unfolded the paper. His fingers shook so slightly he hated himself for noticing.
He cleared his throat. The words were formal, heavier than his voice.
"By authority of His Imperial Majesty Constantine Palaiologos—" He stumbled on the full weight of titles and forced himself through them. Basileus. Autokrator. The Emperor the islands had not seen with their own eyes.
"…this island is restored to the Empire and to lawful Roman protection. Taxes imposed without imperial warrant are ended. Any man who keeps the peace keeps his home."
He finished. Silence held for a heartbeat. Then the old man with the staff said, "You're welcome here."
A woman near the back wiped at her eyes and looked away. Someone laughed, one sharp bark of relief, then others murmured. Not celebration, but recognition.
The priest stepped forward. "We prayed for him," he said. "Not loudly. But we prayed."
The proestos's eyes were bright and hard. "We pay the Gattilusio," he said. "And we pay Demetrios' collectors when they remember us. Two hands in the same pocket." He glanced at the soldiers, then back to the seal. "If that ends, we'll be grateful. And careful."
Nestor swallowed. He had expected relief. What unsettled him was how quickly it hardened into hope, and how much weight people were willing to place on a handful of words and a seal still warm from the sun.
He asked, "Is there a garrison on the island?"
The proestos nodded toward the island's interior. "Kastro. A few men. Not many. Italians and hired swords. They keep a small fort and pretend it is a kingdom."
"And the Turk?"
The villagers shifted at that word, as if a draft had slipped under a door.
"Sometimes," the priest said, voice low. "Once a year, sometimes less. Fustas. Light raiders." He glanced toward the hills. "Most times, we stay up there when the season turns. This year, we came down."
"They won't come now," the proestos added. "Not with the winds as they are."
The priest nodded. "They take goats. Burn a shed. Sometimes worse, if God looks away. Then they go."
Heat rose in Nestor's face before he could stop it, a sudden flush. He hated their eyes on him, hated that the seal in his hand had made him the answer to things he did not know how to fix.
"Show us the road to Kastro," he said.
They marched, the island's dust rising to coat their tongues. The Pyrveloi walked with muskets at the shoulder, sweating under leather straps, their faces set in the careful blankness of trained men.
By nightfall, Kastro showed itself at last, not the kind of fortress men sing about, but a stubborn knot of stone: a village clinging to a low hill, and above it a small wall and a square tower, crowning the whole like a clenched fist.
A few armed men waited at the gate, spears grounded, faces turned outward with the tired vigilance of men who had done this too often for too little. A torch burned in an iron basket, its smoke crawling along the lintel. The smell was pitch and goat dung and woodsmoke.
A man in his forties came out alone. He wore mail that had seen better oiling, and his beard was cut in the Italian fashion, trimmed close at the jaw. Yet his Greek was smooth.
"I am Matteo," he said, and inclined his head, courtesy held tight with calculation. "A servant of the Gattilusio house. You come with the Emperor's banner."
Nestor felt eyes on his back, his men behind him, villagers gathered in the dark like pale faces at windows, and the mercenaries on the wall watching for a mistake they could live off. He drew the proclamation from his satchel; the parchment crackled in the wind.
"This island stands for Basileus Constantine," he said, holding it outward. "Lay down your arms. Swear."
Matteo's gaze went to the wax, cross and eagle, then to the line of men behind Nestor. He spread his hands, low.
"This island was given to my lords by the emperors," he said evenly. "Charters and seals. Not rumors."
Nestor's mouth went dry. He drew breath, misjudged it, and lifted his voice too quickly. "Pyrveloi—raise."
Forty muskets came up, the sound of leather, wood, and metal. Barrels pointed into torchlight like black fingers. On the wall, men stiffened; a hand slid toward a hilt.
Matteo did not move. He glanced once toward his own men—not a plea, a measure—then back to Nestor.
"Captain," he said softly. "There is no need."
Nestor kept the proclamation up. His knuckles whitened on the parchment.
Matteo spoke on, careful as if placing stones across a stream. "The fort is yours. My men will stand down."
A low murmur moved through the villagers. Someone crossed himself.
"No ship has come from Lesbos since spring," Matteo said, almost as if remarking on weather. "No silver. No word. And I won't spend men for a lord who can't be bothered to remember us."
His eyes returned to the seal. "The Gattilusio hold Thasos by imperial grant. If the Emperor recalls it, we obey. We don't contest."
Nestor's men held their aim. Shoulders began to tremble with strain.
"I'll send word to Lesbos," Matteo said. "My lord can come to terms with His Majesty directly. That is above my purse and my bones."
He lowered his hands further. "Let this be a restoration, not a taking. No blood. No scandal. The island changes hands as it has before—by ink."
Nestor swallowed. "Lower," he said, and hated the thinness in his own voice.
The muskets dipped. Breathing returned to the world.
Matteo held Nestor's gaze a moment longer, then turned his head. "Open."
Wood scraped. Iron complained. The gate shifted inward.
Matteo stepped aside.
Nestor walked through first, proclamation in hand, the seal cold where it had bitten him. His boots rang on stone.
Behind him his men followed, quiet and tight. On the wall, mercenaries began—slowly, grudgingly—to unbuckle swords and lay them down.