Hebdomon smelled of fish, tar, and mud. The port was too small for the camp, and carts had been coming down all morning with planks, powder, and hides for mantlets. Aristos's soldiers kept one side of the quay clear by the sheds. Kyreneia came in first, with Katarina behind her. The rest of the fleet followed in line, and with it three captured Ottoman galleys under Roman banners.
Constantine rode down from the main camp with George beside him. The horses picked their way through crates and wet rope by the quay. Laskaris came ashore in a dark cloak over mail, salt dried white at the hem, and bowed.
"You struck them well, Laskaris," Constantine said. "I would have liked to see the Katarina fire."
Laskaris smiled. "It was worth seeing, Majesty. We held her until the range was close, then swung her broadside. After that, it was quick work."
Constantine looked past him to the ship. Men were moving powder tubs by sling between the decks. "And from Lampsacus?"
"No crossing," Laskaris said. "Not while we held there, and not on the way here. Only fishing boats and a few small traders along the coast. Gallipoli stayed quiet." He nodded toward the Ottoman galleys."These three were worth keeping."
"Anything moving from Anatolia that matters?" George said,
"Nothing solid. Talk in the villages of musters east of Bursa, but no horses we could see, no smoke. If they're gathering, they're keeping it well inland."
A sling creaked. One of the captured galleys thumped against the jetty, and men on the quay stepped back from the spray. Constantine looked at the blackened bow, then at his ships beyond it, and made his decision.
"I go to Galata tomorrow," he said. "We sail at first light."
George turned to him at once. "I can go."
"No." Constantine kept his eyes on the harbor. "You stay here. You and Andreas keep the works moving. I will speak to the Podestà myself."
"The risk is needless," George said. "Let me go instead. I'll take the ship and deliver the letter. If there is any trick in it, better it falls on me than on you."
"It isn't only the letter that takes me." Constantine pointed across the low ground toward the city. "I want to see the harbor with my own eyes — the tower, the quays, where the sea wall meets the water."
George started to answer. Constantine raised a hand.
"One tagma embarks at dawn. You stay with Andreas and keep the wall watchers seeing more dirt moved tomorrow than they saw today."
George held his gaze a moment longer, then looked away toward the carts on the road. "Then stay no longer than you must."
"I mean to," Constantine said. He called for an officer and ordered the embarkation before he could think longer on it. By the time he turned back, a clerk was scratching the order onto a board laid across a barrel, and the smell of hot wax mixed with the harbor tar.
Before sunrise the next morning, Constantine climbed Katarina's side ladder, the rungs wet with salt. The deck moved under him in a slow lift and settle. Men of the extra tagma were already aboard, crowded between mantlets, rope, quarrels, and water casks loaded in the night from Hebdomon. Laskaris stood by the rail and watched the shore boat cast off.
The fleet cleared the port and turned east along the city's southern wall. Dawn came up cold and flat. First the walls showed, then the towers, then the red roofs behind them. Constantine stood at the starboard rail with one gloved hand on the wet wood.
"What do you make of the Podestà?" he said.
Laskaris glanced at him. "You trust he will open?"
"He has agreed as far as a cautious man can before he sees the teeth clearly."
Constantine watched the sea slap white against a low stone outwork and break into streaks. "My army stands outside Constantinople. Your ships came back from Gallipoli with a great victory. He counted all of it. He wrote because he wants to keep what he can."
"And Thomas?" Laskaris asked.
"If Thomas still breathes inside those walls, I mean to get him out," Constantine said.
Laskaris let that sit a moment, then said, "You think we get their ships as well?"
"Let us secure Galata first," Constantine said.
Laskaris rubbed salt from his beard with his thumb. "If Halil has spoken with them, do we trust anything they promise? I do not trust the Genoese."
"We will know soon enough," Constantine said.
Laskaris gave a short laugh. "Merchants open gates in daylight and sell harbor lists by dark."
"No doubt," Constantine said. "But we take the city first. When the city is ours, we can decide how long the Genoese remain."
The wall turned and opened onto a broad inlet, with old moles jutting into darker water. Constantine pointed. "The harbor of Theodosius."
Laskaris followed his hand. "More silted than it was, but there is still room for a few small hulls."
"What do you think of storming from this side?"
The admiral took a moment before answering. He looked at the shore, the swell, the angle of the wall, and the current along the stones. "Bad water on this side," he said at last. "Cross-set and backwash both. You might bring ships in once. Holding them there while men climb is another matter. We should look at the Horn side."
Farther east the Kontoskalion came into view, smaller under the wall. Two small vessels rode there with bare masts, too far off to make out clearly. Constantine narrowed his eyes. "Trade?"
"So it looks," Laskaris said. "They're too far off to tell."
Galata stood ahead on the opposite bank, its tower dark in the morning and its walls running down toward the water. Men stood on the parapets. At the mouth of the Horn the great chain was not drawn tight. It hung slack near the Galata side, with guards over it.
"Good sign," Constantine said as Laskaris brought the fleet in.
Genoese guards stood along the quay in iron caps. Clerks waited under an awning with boards and ink. The entrance had been left open, but watched. Boats had been cleared from the landing, and armed men stood at the gate breaks. No crowd was allowed near the quay except stevedores and a few boys who slipped through when no one stopped them. Constantine made Laskaris hold off until fifty men of the tagma had gone ashore in two boats, shields slung and spears upright, and taken their place where the Genoese officer directed them.
Only then did he step into the shore boat.
The Podestà met him on the quay with his chain of office over his chest. He bowed with care. Behind him stood a clerk with a satchel, Four guards, and a priest.
"Majesty," the Podestà said. "Galata receives you under the peace of the Commune."
Constantine stepped up from the boat and felt the quay timbers answer under his weight. "Then let us keep it orderly."
They walked only a short distance from the water, but Constantine took more men than courtesy required and fewer than fear suggested. The building chosen for the meeting had a counting room below and offices above. Inside, the smell of the harbor gave way to ink and wax. The Podestà led him into a room with shuttered light, a table, three benches, and a map of the Horn on the wall.
Once the doors were shut, the Podestà put both hands on the table and let some of the stiffness go out of his shoulders.
"I have read your letter with care," he said. "On behalf of the Commune, I accept the terms it offers, provided they are entered as written and renewed under your seal. The Commune asks only to keep what it lawfully holds, to trade in peace, and to remain under Christian protection."
Constantine drew out the folded paper and laid it on the boards. "Here it is. The treaty of 1352 stands renewed. Your statutes stand. Your warehouses stand. Your courts stand in their own matters."
The Podestà read enough of the paper to be satisfied it was what Constantine said it was.
"And Demetrios?" the Podestà asked.
"Demetrios does not appear in any paper." Constantine said.
The Podestà lowered his eyes once. "That is wise."
"You dealt with that matter discreetly," Constantine said. "I am not ungrateful."
The Podestà gave a dry little shrug. "He was dead one way or another. I had no wish to keep a falling man in my rooms when the Turks crossed." He touched the edge of the paper. "Halil has sent to Galata. Requests first, then warnings, then offers. I answered him with delays. Your fleet has made delay easier. Without ships, he cannot force us quickly."
He asked then, more sharply, "What guarantees beyond parchment?"
"My guarantees are the army outside the city and the fleet in your harbor. Beyond that, your safety depends on choosing the right side."
The Podestà took that in, then said, "And what are your intentions for the siege?"
"I have locked the city from the land," Constantine said. "Now I mean to lock it from the sea as well. You have ships in harbor. How many can work?"
"Two galleys under the Commune's direct hand," the Podestà said at once. "A few merchant hulls besides, if their masters are paid. They lose money by sitting at the quay. They lose more by not supplying the city. Halil pays well for flour and oil."
"They will be paid in full," Constantine said. "We will settle numbers and rates before dusk. For now, I want to see the sea walls with my own eyes."
The Podestà hesitated only at the size of the request, not at its shape. "You shall," he said. "I will have the harbor master sent for, and word passed to the merchants."
An hour later Katarina moved again, this time under Galata's wall and into the Horn.
Inside, the water changed. It darkened and ran more smoothly along the hull. Roman soldiers stood on the quay behind them, with Genoese guards keeping watch a short distance off and townsmen farther back. Laskaris kept the ship slow while a harbor pilot at his elbow pointed out shoals, moles, and old anchors that could catch a careless keel.
Across the water the city's sea wall ran close and lower than the landward line, broken by towers and posterns. Near Petrion the stone came almost straight down to the water. Constantine leaned on the rail and studied the distance while the pilot gave depths to a scribe.
"There," he said.
Laskaris followed his gaze. "Petrion gate."
"The water comes right up under it." Constantine kept his hand on the wet rail. "Could you put ships in close to ladder it? Or bring up small towers from the decks, as the Latins did?"
Laskaris squinted across the chop, then down at the current sliding black along Katarina's side. "Perhaps," he said. "The wall is lower there, but we would risk hulls under arrow fire and stone, and men would die by the score before the first hooks caught.
"We could bring Katarina and Kyreneia in to batter the parapet," Constantine said. "While the ladders go up, Pyrveloi cover from the decks and from boats astern."
Laskaris looked from the wall to the sideports, then back to the narrow strip of water between them. "That is bold, Majesty."
"Yes," Constantine said.
Below them, the current caught the stern and shoved the hull a hand's breadth sideways before the helmsman corrected.