The shipyard gate shut behind them on a hinge, and the path toward the arsenal ran along the south wall, the yard's noise fading at every step. Theophilus kept pace at first, then a little less steadily. He did not fall behind. He simply shortened his stride.
Constantine slowed under the thin shade of a warehouse awning. A gull stood on a broken bollard and watched them from a few paces away, unbothered by the guards.
"The leg?" he said.
Theophilus let out a breath. "It speaks up in the damp. And on stone." He pressed the flat of his hand to his right thigh, then let it drop. "Old men and old horses."
"You are not old yet."
"Tell it to the knee." He did not smile, but a dryness moved at the corner of his mouth. "I was fifty when I stepped off the boat from Constantinople. I am neither lighter nor quicker for the years since."
They walked on at the slower pace. The guards at Constantine's back shortened their strides without being told.
"Eight years," Constantine said.
"March. The rain came in off the sea the day I stepped ashore. I could not find a cloth dry enough to wipe my face with."
"You arrived with two satchels and a ledger."
"And that proved insufficient," Theophilus said, allowing himself a smile. "I learned as much when I saw what passed for accounts in your treasury."
Constantine laughed. Further down the lane a cart went past with a dry axle, and the squeal bit through the morning.
"We have done well, cousin." Constantine looked ahead where a team of masons were coming the other way with pails of lime. "I could not have held this place without you. I praise Helena daily for sending you to me."
Theophilus inclined his head. "She is to be praised. I am to be thanked. A distinction I have grown to enjoy."
"I will write to her that you said so."
"I have not always been right. The books, for one. I took them for vanity at first. I was wrong, plainly. The book trade has brought in more gold than I ever thought it would."
"Despite my spending."
"Despite your spending." He tilted a hand from side to side. "Though at times I wonder where we would stand if you spent a little less of it."
"With less to show for it, cousin."
They came to the crossroads above the last big warehouses. The wind shifted, and under the tar smell from the yard came the first breath of charcoal and hot iron. Constantine stopped to let Theophilus catch up.
"How is she?" Theophilus asked.
"My mother?"
"Yes."
"Back at the monastery. She would not stay in the palace rooms. I asked her twice. She said she was not made to end her years in palace rooms, and went back to her cell the week after."
"And how does she bear it?"
"Not well. Quieter than I have ever known her. She speaks when there is something to say and otherwise she does not. She has lost weight she did not have to lose." Constantine looked down the lane. "What happened in the city was a deep wound. Thomas's killing Demetrios is not something she can wash clean by her own praying. Despite his treason, Demetrios was her son."
"So much grief in one family. It cannot have sat lightly on you either." Theophilus paused. "Did she not want to meet Zoe and Katarina?"
"I don't think she will ever leave the monastery again. She will meet them when we go to Constantinople. She asked after you by name, though, which she does not often do."
"She does not."
"You should go to her when matters ease a little." Constantine set a hand briefly on the older man's shoulder and let it fall. "A visit would mean something to her."
Theophilus inclined his head. "Yes. I should like that. And I expect Constantinople will have need of me soon enough."
They turned east along the arsenal road. As they came around the last corner of the cooper's yard, the new blast furnace chimney came into view behind the first, squatter and broader at the base, with a plume blacker than its neighbour's.
Constantine stopped.
"The new furnace."
"Lit in October," Theophilus said. "We spent through the autumn on brick and fireclay. It cost less than the first."
"It looks larger."
"A quarter larger in volume, so Luca says. I have the figures with me if you want them."
"Not yet."
They went on. Beyond the arsenal fence the ground fell away south of the forge complex, and here Constantine stopped a second time. What had been rough pasture when he marched out was now a field of small huts set down in no clear order, with low roofs of split reed and a scatter of goat-pens. Smoke rose from perhaps thirty of them. Women stood in the doorways beating wool against stone.
"That was not here."
"Not in September either. They came in over the autumn. Work at the forge, work at the yard, work at the paper mills. Mostly Albanians, many from Arcadia. We put a clerk on it last month, a young man named Akakios. He has a count of about nine hundred souls on the slope, but he says the figure changes every week."
"A new quarter."
"A quarter that did not ask our leave to become one."
Constantine watched the huts a moment, then turned to Theophilus.
"How many in the city now?"
"Fourteen thousand, if you count the fifteen hundred recruits in the new tagmata. The increase has come steadily these past two years, and faster this past one."
"Good for the forges."
"Good for the forges. Bad for the water, bad for the drains, and very bad if a fire catches in reed roofs that stand that close together. We have had two small fires since Christmas. Neither got beyond the first line of roofs. We were lucky the wind went the other way."
"A regulation, then. Street widths. Wells."
"And inspectors with the authority to knock down a house whose owner ignores them. Yes. I have been writing a draft, but it needs your hand on it."
"Put it on the city council list. With the tagmata marching out soon, some of the crowding will ease. But that is only a temporary easing. Glarentza needs proper building."
"It does."
They went on. Near the forge fence a man with flour on his apron came out of a baker's doorway, saw Constantine, and dropped a tray. He began to bow, then began to gather the bread, and gave up halfway and stood there with a loaf in each hand. Constantine nodded to him and kept walking.
Inside the arsenal yard, the sound was as Constantine remembered: the sigh of the great bellows, the ring of hammer on anvil, and beneath it all the deep throb of the waterwheel running the bore-line. Charcoal dust lay grey on every shoulder.
Luca Ardemani stood with his sleeves rolled at the door of the finishing shed. Beside him, Elias held a musket barrel across both his palms the way a priest held a censer.
"Majesty," Luca said. The Italian vowels in his Greek had softened, but not disappeared.
"Master Luca. Master Elias." Constantine set a hand to the barrel. "This is the new pattern?"
"Finished last week," Elias said. "Bored, proofed, stocked yesterday."
"Smoother on the bore than before."
Luca gave a short nod. "Show him."
Elias led them into the shed. Rack after rack stood along the inside wall, each holding fifty completed muskets. The far wall held crates of finished cuirasses stacked breast to back and sewn into oiled canvas for the march.
"How many standing here?"
"Nine hundred and twenty, ready for issue this week," Elias said. "Another two hundred and forty in the proof room. Armor: seven hundred sets in the shed at the back, another forty helms in the plate shop."
"And the year's rate?"
Luca stepped in.
"Two thousand a year on the muskets. Boring is still the slow step, but with the second water-drop running two shifts we have doubled where we stood last spring."
"Twice," Constantine said.
"Twice."
"Good work, both of you."
Luca inclined his head. Elias bowed lower, then straightened too fast. The boy at the nearest rack had turned to the wall and was pretending to check a strap that did not need checking.
Constantine walked the length of the rack, set his hand on one of the stocks, and came back.
"I want a second line," he said. "In Constantinople. Next year, if we can."
Luca's chin lifted slightly. Theophilus, who had come in behind them, set both hands behind his back.
Luca rubbed the back of his hand. "Majesty, Theophilus said we were at the limit of what the treasury can bear."
"Theophilus is right," Constantine said. "The treasury as it stands cannot carry a second line. So the second line will have to carry itself."
Luca waited.
"Two things change. We will expand production and begin selling weapons. The presses made profit from the first day. I see no reason the musket should behave differently."
Elias tilted his head. "To whom, Majesty?"
"To selected allies, at first."
"The second thing," Constantine said. "I mean to set this up as a chartered company under the Logarion seal. A company with shares. Most of them the crown's. I would want each of you to hold a portion."
Elias looked at Luca, then back at Constantine. "A chartered — ?"
"A fixed company, in law. Like the houses the Genoese and Venetians use for their colonies. A charter under my seal, setting out who may deal for it, what it may sell, what share of profit returns to each holder, and what returns to the crown. You would each have a signed share. A voice in the running. A cut of what is sold each year. Profit."
Luca let out a breath through his nose. "I understand the thing. I have seen such a company before."
"Good. Then you know what it may bring."
"Profit to us, on arms we make for you."
"On arms we make and sell beyond the army's order. The Empire's muskets come first, and at cost. Everything beyond that is the company's to sell, within the charter."
"I will hear the terms," Luca said.
"I will hear them too," Elias said. Then, more carefully: "Is it wise, Majesty? To sell the weapons. Even to friends."
"Probably not," Constantine said. "But Sforza already has some of our earlier pieces. His smiths will have them apart on a bench by now. In five years someone in Milan or Augsburg sells a copy whether we like it or not. I would rather we sell the original first and have the gold for it."
Elias looked at the barrel in the rack beside him and said nothing.
"We will discuss this again soon. Theophilus will give you the details. Now," he said to Elias, "show me the cannons."
The cannon warehouse ran along the far side of the arsenal yard. The doors were tall enough for a gun on its carriage to be run out straight.
Two gun-crews at the far end were rigging a traversing cradle. They straightened when they saw Constantine, then went back to work at Elias's gesture.
"The four-pounder," Elias said.
He led Constantine to a piece on a low carriage, smaller than any field gun in the park. The barrel was neat and short, the carriage wheels shod with bands of new iron. Elias set a hand on the breech.
"Drakos pattern, scaled down. She throws a solid shot a thousand paces. Two mules on the trail or one good horse." He gave the breech a small pat. "You asked in the winter for something for mountain work and narrow streets. This is our answer."
"How many."
"Six finished. Four more in the cast-shop. We can bring the year's figure to thirty if you want them at that number."
"I want them at that number." Constantine ran his hand along the barrel. The metal was smooth under his palm, with the eagle struck clean at the breech and a serial stamped beneath it in small, even characters. "The first six onto the Skopje road with the tagma that marches there."
"Yes, Majesty."
Further down, six pieces stood shrouded in oiled canvas: the longer-barrelled guns for the new ships. Constantine lifted a corner, saw what he expected, and let it fall.
"Diogo will want to see them this week."
"They are his by the end of the month."
After an hour at the arsenal, Constantine and Theophilus went on to the barracks. A company was out on the drill-yard when he came through the gate, standing in two ranks at volley drill.
The young officer at the gate saw the party, barked a command to his sergeant, and crossed the yard to meet them.
"Majesty."
"Arethas." Constantine remembered the face from a fort above the Vardar and the obsessive order of a cramped office. The man had filled out a little, but he was still young. "The rib has held?"
"It has, Majesty. It does not ache except on horseback."
"Good." Constantine looked past him to the ranks. "Now show me what you have."
They walked the lines. Arethas had the grace to keep one half pace behind and to speak only when spoken to. Constantine went slowly down the front of the first rank, stopping at perhaps one man in four. He asked a recruit with a pocked face how many rounds he had fired in the past week. "Twenty, Majesty," the recruit answered, white-knuckled on his piece. He asked a second, longer, plainer man what the drill was for when he heard the cry brace. "Butts to the ground and pikes over our heads, Majesty. Cavalry." Constantine set a hand briefly to the man's shoulder and moved on.
The men were well equipped. Each musket had an oiled rag tied to it, and each cuirass had been cleaned and blacked. The line held straight, and when Arethas called a loading drill, the ranks stepped through the count without the hesitation Constantine had seen in raw men in Thessaloniki years before.
"They look ready," Constantine said quietly enough that only Arethas heard. "Walk with me."
They stepped into the shade of the officers' building. Arethas set his wax tablet on the window-ledge and straightened.
"General Andreas sent down the timetable last week, Majesty. The three tagmata march out on the sixth day from today. One to Thessaloniki, under Captain Leontios. One to Skopje, and the third to Constantinople."
"The route?"
"Corinth, then by water to Thessaloniki. The quartermaster has the counts and loads on a separate sheet, I can bring it."
"No need." Constantine looked out at the yard. The company had come to parade rest, and the corporals were walking behind them again.