“All right. It will have to be the River, then, but I don’t like it,” Isaac said.
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Alexios laughed. “Here you are, Kaisar to my Basileus; if I fail, you become Emperor. And yet you caution me. What kind of brother are you?” He knew the answer to that: a loyal one. A loyal brother, especially among the treacherous Rhomaioi, was more precious than rubies. Alexios knew that, too. He clapped Isaac on the back with real affection. “Besides, I have an idea—”
The storm blew over not long before dawn. The River rode high and choppy in its banks. Debris drifted downstream—tree trunks, bamboo stalks, part of what had been a hut or a raft.
Isaac Komnenos chuckled. “If the Muslims were out watching for you last night, brother of mine, some of them will have drowned—so many the fewer to face when the time comes.”
“True enough,” Alexios answered. “I—” The morning roar of the grailstones interrupted him. Lambent blue fire shot into the air, to three times the height of a man. When it faded, the people of New Constantinople crowded forward to see what their grails contained today. Alexios took his with as much curiosity as anyone else.
He opened the hinged lid, smiled as savory steam tickled his nose. Black bread, honey, porridge with big bits of tuna and squid, a soft jar of wine, and a packet of the smokesticks his folk mostly traded to those who enjoyed sucking on them. And— “A firestarter!” he said happily. His grail had produced only a handful of them since his resurrection.
“A good omen,” Isaac agreed.
“More than that,” Alexios said. “A good weapon, too. I’ll carry it along with my knife tonight. If a Bornu spots me, I’ll burn out his tongue before he can shout the
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warning.” That was bravado, and he knew it. Still, the new tool gave him one more string to his bow; without its appearance, he might not have thought to take one.
He spent the rest of the day going over his plans till he was sick of it and Isaac sicker. Most of what they talked about had to do with things that were unlikely to happen. Alexios had seen enough unlikely things in his life back on Earth to be sure some, at least, would come true: generally the ones that hadn’t been planned for. He was a man who left as little as possible to chance.
The sun set in splendor over the mountains to the west. As dusk darkened toward true night, Alexios walked down to the River. A crew bossed by his brother waited for him there. When they started to prostrate themselves, he waved to show the gesture was unnecessary. “We have work to do here tonight, my friends.”
He stripped off the reddish-purple kilt whose color was reserved for him alone in New Constantinople (any pieces of that hue that appeared on the grailstone were either saved for his use or traded away outside his little empire). To replace it, he covered himself with several dark-blue lengths of cloth, until only his head, hands, and feet remained bare.
Grunting and cursing, the work crew manhandled a yew into the River. They kept one last grassfiber line attached to it so it would not drift away downstream. Isaac Komnenos slapped Alexios on the back. “God go with you and bring you home again safe.”
“You just say that because you don’t want the work of ruling,” Alexios said.
Isaac laughed. “Too right I don’t, brother of mine. Do you have your reed?”
“Here.” Alexios held up the yard-long piece of plant.
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It wasn’t actually a reed, as it would have been back on earth; it was a thin length of bamboo, with all the pith hollowed out. But it would serve.
Alexios slipped into the water. It was cool but not cold. The Basileus took hold of a root that trailed from the yew. At Isaac’s shouted direction, one of the men cut the last rope with a sharp piece of flint. The yew began to drift down the River.
The land slid slowly past. Settlements in New Constantinople centered on the grailstones. Once the one from which he’d left dropped away behind him, darkness prevailed for most of the next mile. Alexios glanced over to the far side of the River. Lights there were even fewer; a broad stretch of that bank was inhabited by hunters and gatherers even more primitive than the nomadic Patzinaks. They weren’t even fierce enough to make decent allies against Bornu; had they been so, Alexios would have tried to recruit them.