"…we cannot waste another week winding through mountains when Constantinople lies due east." The voice carried, strained rather than shrill, echoing off the stone walls of the Heptapyrgion's council chamber. Maps and parchments lay sprawled across a long oak table, their edges curling in the heavy summer air. The August heat pressed in; sweat dampened collars and tempers alike.
Prince Thomas stood with both hands braced on the table. He pressed one finger to the coastal line and held it there, as if anchoring himself as much as the argument.
"The coastal road, through Kavala, is our quickest path," he said. His cheeks were flushed, whether from heat or passion. "We could be at the walls of Constantinople in a month. Every day we delay, the enemy grows stronger. We must strike now, directly along the coast."
Across the table, General Andreas shook his head. Arms crossed over his chest, he kept his voice level. "A month, if nothing goes wrong," Andreas replied. "But that road is narrow in places, pinned between mountains and sea. One blocked pass, one stout Ottoman defense at a coastal fort, and our 'quick' route becomes a dead end. We'd be trapped on a thin strip of land."
Thomas held Andreas's gaze. He nodded once. "Yes," he said, and traced the coastline again, slower. "You're right about the choke points. That's why the sea matters. The fleet will supply us along the coast. Admiral Laskaris can shadow our march; the men won't starve, and half our guns can ride by sea. Speed is our ally now, Andreas. If we drag ourselves inland through Serres, we hand the Sultan exactly what he needs: time. Time to harden Constantinople, time to pull more men from Anatolia and seal the gates against us."
His finger pressed harder into the parchment. "Serres, Edirne, these are delays. The City is the heart of the war. While we argue over inland roads, the Turks tighten the noose. We should already be on the move for Constantinople."
Murmurs of contention rippled among the gathered officers. The long chamber was lit only by a few high windows where motes of dust swirled. At the head of the table stood an empty chair draped with a purple mantle. As Thomas's words faded, the heavy oak doors creaked open behind that chair.
Constantine entered quietly, his boots firm on the stones. The argument fell at once to a hush. He took in the scene with a calm, steady gaze, Thomas taut, jaw set, Andreas rigid as a drawn bow, and around them the council: George with quill in hand, Admiral Laskaris standing near a window for air, and a half dozen other officers shifting in the charged silence.
Constantine moved to the head of the table and sat. He didn't have to raise his voice; the slight smile and the measured tone were enough. "Gentlemen, let's have order," he said. "I could hear your debate from down the corridor." A faint note of dry humor underlay his words, and a few smiles flickered to life around the table. The tension eased as all took their seats.
The Emperor looked to Sphrantzes first. "Before we decide our route, give me the latest reports."
Sphrantzes nodded and adjusted a parchment. "From Serbia, Your Majesty: Despot Đurađ reports he has mustered some six thousand men, but he will need a month before he can campaign. He plans to advance from Niš toward Skopje, yet he lacks the cannon to take the city. He asks whether we can provide artillery—or, if he is to bypass Skopje entirely, he seeks assurance on where our armies intend to join his."
Constantine's lips tightened a moment, but he said nothing. Đurađ's caution and his conditions were no surprise.
"From the north," Sphrantzes continued, "Prince Fruzhin holds Tarnovo and Silistre, and continues to press for support, arms, above all. But no fresh courier has reached us."
"Still no word?" Constantine asked quietly.
"None, Majesty." Sphrantzes hesitated a heartbeat, then went on. "But there is movement elsewhere. From Albania, Skanderbeg sends his good wishes. He writes that he cannot reach us in time with troops, yet his riders will keep the Ottoman garrisons unsettled, raids even toward the approaches of Skopje. That said, other informants note that the Albanian clans are… uneven in their coordination at present. Whether this proves a minor inconvenience or something more, we cannot yet determine."
Thomas exhaled sharply. "So Skanderbeg has his own troubles, it seems," he said, frustration tightening his voice. Then he waved a hand, broader now. "And the rest of our 'allies', pinpricks and distractions, nothing more. They annoy the Turk, yes, but nothing decisive, while Constantinople still languishes under the enemy."
Constantine shot him a look, and Thomas fell silent, jaw clenched.
Sphrantzes cleared his throat and delivered the most crucial news. "As for the Sultan," he said, "the Karaman affair is, for now, quieted. A truce has been struck. In Edirne, the boy Ali sits on the cushion while Halil Pasha and the Divan rule in his name. Their forces are stretched thin across too many fronts: Anatolia, Albania, the Danube. They are not broken, Majesty, but they are weary."
A muted ripple passed through the council, weakness, not collapse, but weakness all the same. Thomas straightened at once, seizing on the opportunity like a flint catching spark.
"Exactly what I've been saying, this is our hour!" he burst out. "A child sits in Edirne and the viziers bicker like old hens. Their timariots limp home from Anatolia, their beys quarrel, and their garrisons from Albania to the Danube are patched together with whatever men they can scrape. Demetrios clings to Constantinople with a few hundred Turks and even less resolve."
He leaned forward, knuckles digging into the map.
"If we move straight and fast, down the coast, directly for the City, before Halil gathers breath or calls eastern beys to his banner, the false emperor will fold. We should march along the sea road and strike for Constantinople before they remember they are meant to resist."
Andreas interjected, respectful but firm. "If we march straight for Constantinople and ignore the Ottoman forces at Serres and Adrianople, we risk disaster. An enemy army left intact in our rear could cut off our supply or fall on us during a siege. We can't have a hostile fortress or field army at our backs when we stand before the Theodosian Walls."
Thomas shook his head, frustration evident. "There's risk either way. Yes, leaving enemies behind is dangerous, but so is crawling from siege to siege while the seasons turn against us. If we halt to batter down every fortress on this map, winter will catch us, and the moment will slip away. Bold strikes have brought us this far. If we slow to a plod now, we may lose the only window we have."
For a moment, the room felt tight with their opposing wills. Constantine lifted a hand, just enough to let the air settle, and the tension broke.
Conversation resumed, quieter now, the council easing into the necessary grind of detail. Laskaris stepped in first with the fleet's report.
"No Ottoman sails sighted in the northern Aegean, so far," he noted. "Their ships are either bottled in the straits or kept close to the Marmara. Also, Thasos and Lemnos each hold only token garrisons, thinly supplied. A swift strike could reclaim both islands before the enemy understands we have moved. Their fall would unsettle Demetrios from the very start."
The officers murmured assent.
George followed with tallies of powder, grain, wagons, and the hundred dull burdens that drag behind any army. Constantine listened, asked what he must, offered the occasional nod. Yet as numbers thickened and contingencies circled back on themselves, the talk began to loop in place, like hounds nosing the same worn patch of earth.
The heart of the matter had already shown itself. Everything else was orbit.
Only the decision remained.
Constantine let the room breathe for a moment longer. Heat made the ink shine on George's pages. He watched Thomas's fingers worry the edge of the map as if he could peel a road out of parchment by force of will. He watched Andreas sit still, too still, like a man holding a gate shut with his back. Laskaris had returned to his place near the window, the faintest thread of breeze lifting damp hair at his temple, his hands clasped behind him as though he stood on a quarterdeck rather than in a fortress chamber.
Constantine reached for his cup, found it warm, and did not drink. The smell of wax, sweat, and old stone pressed close. Under it, humming faintly through the high windows, came the sound of Thessaloniki preparing: hooves on cobbles, men shouting over wagon-axles, the metallic cough of a hammer at a farrier's anvil.
He set the cup down with care.
"I want the City back as much as any man here," he said at last.
The room tightened again, not with argument now, but with attention. Even the men who had been staring into their own calculations lifted their eyes.
Constantine went on, voice level, almost weary in its honesty. "I'll confess something, since we are among ourselves. When Orhan's news reached me, when I heard that the Queen of Cities had been taken without a siege, without even the dignity of a cannon, my first instinct was to ride straight for her like a madman. No Serres. No Edirne. No prudence. Only the road and the gates."
He paused, letting them see it: the Emperor as a man, not a seal on parchment. His own throat tightened with the remembered taste of that moment. ash, salt, helpless rage.
"But that urge," he said quietly, "is the sort of urge that gets empires killed."
Thomas's jaw hardened; he looked away for an instant, and Constantine saw the boy in him, the son still pleading for a mother he could not touch. Andreas remained still, but Constantine caught the brief flicker in his eyes, approval.
"This is not going to be a short war," Constantine continued. "Not in the way men whisper in taverns. We didn't come this far merely to throw ourselves against the Theodosian Walls and call it courage."
He stood. The chair scraped once against the stone. He moved to the table and laid his palm on the map where the blue smear of the Aegean met the inked bones of Macedonian roads. The paper was gritty with sand lodged in the fibers from a hundred fingers and a hundred councils.
"We do not win by taking the head while the body still thrashes," he said. "If we run for Constantinople while the Ottomans still hold the Balkans, we may even reach her. We may even lay siege. And then what?" His fingers spread, pinning the paper. "Then an army comes down from behind us, from Skopje, from Thrace, from Edirne itself, and our siege becomes a trap. We cannot feed a long siege while enemies sit on our supply roads."
He lifted his hand and pointed, not east toward the City, but up the map, northwest, along the Vardar.
"Skopje."
A small stir went through the council. Thomas's brows rose in instant irritation; Andreas's posture shifted, the first sign of movement from him in ten minutes.
Constantine's gaze slid to George. "Đurađ has men," he said, "but he will not commit them into a city he cannot take. He will not bleed his Serbs on Skopje's walls without cannon. That is sensible." A faint, almost cynical smile tugged at his mouth. "Men are always sensible when the cost is theirs."
He turned back to the map. "Skopje is the hinge. It blocks our union with Serbia. It anchors Ottoman control of the Macedonian interior. We take it, and we lock the Vardar road in our hands instead of theirs."
He looked around the table, meeting faces one by one. "And there is another reason." His finger tapped the city's name. "Skopje feeds their powder. Our reports say they have been drawing saltpeter and supplies there. If we take Skopje, we take their mouth away. And we feed our own."
Thomas inhaled once, steadying himself. His eyes followed Constantine's finger along the Vardar, his mouth tightening as he forced himself to see the map the way his older brother did.
"Skopje," he repeated, slower. "Then we take it quickly, but we don't let Demetrios settle."
Constantine's eyes stayed on him, calm, unflinching. "He won't," he said. "Not if we move with order."
He tapped the map once, near the Vardar line. "It's a few weeks' march from here, and it brings Serbia into the war with us in fact, not in letters. It gives us powder, a hard anchor, and a safer spine to march east from."
He turned slightly, meeting Thomas's gaze. "We keep the pace," Constantine said. "Sometimes the longer road is the quicker victory."
He let that hang. The brazier's coals ticked as they settled.
"We have near twenty thousand men under the eagle," Constantine went on, his voice steadier now, the Emperor returning to his posture as if slipping on armor. "We have firearms in numbers no army has ever marched with. Let Halil gather what he can. Let him scrape every tired timariot and every bickering bey into a line. Let him believe he can meet us." Constantine's mouth tightened. "We will smash whatever he brings, because our strength is not only men. It is discipline. It is powder. It is officers who count the barrels before the fighting begins."
Andreas's hand went to his chest in the quiet salute of a soldier hearing the language of his own mind spoken from the throne.
"This year," Constantine said, returning his finger to the map, "we take Skopje. We unite the Serbian host with ours, then move east, Serres, and the Macedonian crossings. We secure Macedonia properly. Not in speeches, on the ground."
He slid his finger toward Serres, then farther, stopping short of Edirne. "If fortune gives us more, if their weariness is deeper than we think, if their garrisons fold, if their beys refuse Halil's summons, then yes, we may press toward Edirne before winter shuts the roads. I won't reject the gift if God places it in our palms."
His voice cooled, the cynicism surfacing beneath the piety like stone beneath soil. "But Constantinople…" he said, and the name itself seemed to change the air, "…Constantinople cannot happen in a month. Not if we intend to hold her. Not if we intend to keep what we seize. The City taken too soon becomes a lure. We do this right, and we do it once."
Thomas's hands tightened on the table edge. He had yielded the argument, but not the ache beneath it. "And our mother?" he asked, sudden and raw, the polished argument dropping away. "Helena sits under guard while we count powder and speak of another season. I understand, roads, wagons, rear threats. But every month matters to her. Every month—"
Constantine's eyes softened for a heartbeat, then the softness went away, set aside like a cup he could not afford to hold.
"I have not passed a day since the City fell without thinking of her," he said quietly. "I want to run to her too."
Thomas took an unsteady breath, the muscles in his throat working as he forced the emotion back under control.
Constantine's voice stayed low, controlled. "But running to Constantinople tomorrow changes nothing," he said. "It only trades her chains for our army's—because they will close the roads behind us and starve us where we stand."
He leaned forward, weight in his hands. "If we take the City and lose the countryside, we will not free her. We will only give them two prisons instead of one."
The words were blunt, ugly, truth in a soldier's mouth rather than a priest's.
Thomas lowered his gaze to the map and did not speak.
Constantine straightened, and the room felt it: the shift from family to empire, from grief to policy.
"We must be focused on one thing above all," he said. "Ieros Skopos. The Holy Purpose is not a banner for tavern songs. It is the work of doing what must be done, when it must be done, regardless of what we want."
His hand closed gently over the map, knuckles whitening on the inked outline of Thrace.
"We will drive the Ottomans from Europe," Constantine said, voice lowering into something almost solemn. "Not for a season, not for a generation, for good. One campaign, one purpose, one road. Ieros Skopos."
He lifted his hand and traced the sign of the cross over his brow, chest, and shoulders. For a heartbeat the chamber felt carved from stone, breath held, heat forgotten.
Around the table the council rose, not by order, but by instinct and each man mirrored the gesture. Leather creaked, armor shifted, and voices, low but resolute, answered him as one:
"Ieros Skopos."
He turned to George, and his tone gentled again. "Draft to Đurađ," he said. "Tonight. Tell him we move on Skopje at dawn. Tell him to ready his host to advance. Tell him plainly where we will meet him."
George's quill already hovered in his mind. He nodded once, small and precise. "As you command, Majesty."
Constantine's gaze shifted to Laskaris. "Admiral. You heard your own counsel spoken aloud in this room." A faint smile, slight, approving. "Take it."
Laskaris straightened as if the wind had snapped through him. "Majesty?"
"Lemnos first," Constantine said, tapping the map near the mouth of the straits. "Then Thasos. Take them cleanly and quickly. If their garrisons are as thin as you believe, do not waste powder. Use surprise and a generous offer to any who open gates. I want the straits watched, and Demetrios made to feel the sea closing on him."
Laskaris bowed, the gesture sharp with confidence. "By nightfall, the Katarina will be under sail," he said. "And by God's grace, Lemnos will not wait long behind her."
A murmur spread around the table, the sound of men feeling a plan become movement.
Chairs scraped. Maps were gathered with quick hands. Outside, the noise of preparation seemed suddenly closer, as if Thessaloniki itself had been listening at the keyhole and taken the Emperor's decision as permission to breathe.
Constantine stayed a moment longer as the others filed out.
His fingertips rested on the road toward Skopje, the parchment warm under his hand. The heat of the room clung to it, dust and sweat, the weight of miles yet to come. He could almost feel the drag of cannon wheels, the long pull of supply wagons, the first rough earthworks rising under tired hands.
Not the City. Not yet.
But the work that made the City possible.
He let his hand fall away. The map lay flat again, its roads waiting.
"Tomorrow," he said, and stepped into the corridor where the air smelled of dust, iron, and the beginning of the march.