CHAPTER 49: THE EMPEROR’S PEACE

The peace forged on the bloody field of Mardia was a grim, pragmatic affair. The treaty was signed amidst the dead. As Constantine watched Licinius’s battered legions begin their slow withdrawal eastward, he felt no triumph. He had won vast new lands, but the cost had been staggering. His rival, though diminished, remained an Augustus, his power in the East still formidable. This was not the decisive end he had envisioned. It was a pause, bought with the blood of his best soldiers.

He did not return west to the comforts of Trier or Rome to celebrate his gains. The work was too urgent. He marched his weary army into the newly won province of Pannonia and established his forward court in the strategic city of Sirmium, on the very edge of his new frontier. From here, he could oversee the integration of his new provinces and keep a close, watchful eye on his rival.

The task was immense. The Danubian provinces, having borne the brunt of the war, were in disarray. Constantine moved with cold speed. He met with the local nobility, offering them a place in his new order in exchange for their absolute loyalty. He saw their wariness, their quiet respect for their defeated master, Licinius, but they were pragmatists. They saw Constantine’s strength, his discipline, and the sheer force of his will, and they bent the knee. He immediately began rebuilding the forts along the Danube, no longer a frontier against Licinius, but his frontier against the Goths and Sarmatians. He began recruiting heavily from the hardy Illyrian and Pannonian stock that had fought him so fiercely, replenishing his depleted legions with his former enemies. He respected their toughness, and he would make their strength his own.

The peace treaty with Licinius, for all its bitterness, required a public display of unity and a plan for the future. The solution was a traditional one: the appointment of new Caesars, heirs to secure the dynasty and the new balance of power. This forced Constantine to bring a figure from the shadows of his past into the full glare of the imperial court. Crispus, his firstborn son, born years before his marriage to Fausta from a youthful relationship with a woman named Minervina, was summoned to Sirmium. He was a young man now, nearly a man grown, possessing a sharp mind and a natural aptitude for military affairs that Constantine recognized with a dispassionate, analytical eye. He was a capable, useful tool.

Fausta, now the mother of Constantine’s second son and infant heir, Constantine II, watched the arrival of this handsome, competent stepson with a cold, calculating stillness. She saw him not as family, but as a direct rival to the future supremacy of her own child. The intricate, deadly game of dynastic succession, which had plagued Rome for centuries, had now come to Constantine’s own household. In a coordinated ceremony in the late winter of 317 AD, the new order was proclaimed to the world. In Sirmium, Constantine elevated his eldest son, Crispus, to the rank of Caesar. In the East, Licinius did the same for his own infant son, Licinius II. It was a declaration that the two Augusti were building a shared future, founding dynasties meant to rule side-by-side. It was a carefully constructed lie, and every man of influence in the Empire knew it.

With the peace holding and his dynasty seemingly established, Constantine’s mind turned to a far grander, more secret project, a thought that had been a fleeting whisper but was now growing into a concrete strategic imperative. He summoned Valerius to his private study, the great map of the Empire spread between them. His finger traced the border with Licinius’s domain, past Thrace, to the narrow straits separating Europe and Asia. He tapped a single point. The ancient Greek city of Byzantium.

"Valerius," Constantine began, his voice low. "My campaign against Licinius, and his against Daia, has proven that the Danube frontier is where the Empire’s true military strength lies. The grain of Egypt and the wealth of Asia are vital, but they are vulnerable. The master of the Bosphorus and the Hellespont can sever the East from the West." Valerius nodded, following his master’s logic.

"Rome is a glorious relic," Constantine continued, his single eye glinting with a strange, distant light. "It is a symbol, but it is a strategic liability. It is too far from the frontiers where the true threats lie. The future of the Empire, a truly defensible, enduring Empire, requires a new center of power. A new Rome." He looked at Valerius, his expression intense. "The sign I saw before the battle for Rome... it was a strange thing. An anomaly. Like the force that brought me to this world, it defies simple explanation. There are forces at play I do not yet understand. Some might call them divine. I call them variables that require analysis." He leaned closer to the map. "That peninsula, where Byzantium sits. I want it understood completely. Not just its military defenses. Everything. Its geology, its harbors, its freshwater sources, the prevailing winds and currents. I want to know if it can support a city ten times its current size. I want to know if its foundations are solid."

"Augustus?" Valerius asked, confused by the strange, sweeping nature of the request.

"Send a team," Constantine commanded, his voice a low, secret order. "Architects, engineers, surveyors. Disguise them as a merchant guild seeking new trade depots. I want a full, detailed survey of the entire peninsula, from the Golden Horn to the Propontis. This is to be your most confidential undertaking. No one is to know the true purpose of this mission. No one."

Valerius, though bewildered by the request, bowed his head. "It will be done, Augustus." He left the chamber realizing that while his emperor had just made peace and settled the succession for the current generation, he was already playing a much longer game, laying the secret foundations for a project that would change the shape of the world, a project aimed at a future far beyond the bloody rivalries of the present.