Although no longer a fearsome sight, short or tall, Manzikert I lived out his remaining years in a state of perpetual happiness, his gap-toothed grin as prominent as his frown had been in previous years. It was common to see him, with the help of a walking stick, blindly leading his huge charges—sleek, well-fed, and increasingly tame—around the city he had named. At night, the rats all crowded into his new house, and to his son’s embarrassment, slept by his side, or even on his bed. Such reverence as he showed the rats, whether the result of insanity or genuine religious epiphany, greatly impressed many of the Aan, especially those who still worshipped the old icons and those who had participated in the slaughter of the gray caps. Soon, he had many helpers. One morning, eight years after the fires, these helpers found Manzikert in his bed, gnawed to death by his “saints and martyrs,” and yet, if Manzikert II is to be believed, “with a smile upon his eyeless face.”

Thus ended the oddly poignant life of Ambergris’s first ruler—a man who thoroughly deserved to be gnawed to death by rats, as a year had not gone by before his blinding when he had not personally murdered at least a dozen people. Brave but cruel, a tactical genius at war but a failure at peace, and an enigma in terms of his height, Manzikert I is today remembered less as the founder of Ambergris, than as the founder of a religion which still has its adherents today in the city’s Religious Quarter and which is still known as “Manziism.”

2

To Manzikert I’s son, Cappan Manzikert II, would fall the monumental task of converting a pirate/whaling fleet into a viable land-based culture that could supplement fishing with extensive farming and trade with other communities. Luckily, Manzikert II possessed virtues his father lacked, and although never the military leader his father had been, neither did he have the impulsive nature that had led to their exile in the first place. He also had the ghost of Samuel Tonsure at his disposal, for he had taken the monk’s teachings to heart.

Above all else, Manzikert II proved to be a builder—whether it was establishing a permanent town within the old city of Cinsorium or creating friendships with nearby tribes. When peace proved impossible—with, for example, the western tribe known as the Dogghe—Manzikert II showed no reluctance to use force. Twice in the first ten years, he abandoned his rebuilding efforts to battle the Dogghe, until, in a decisive encounter on the outskirts of Ambergris itself, he put to flight and decimated a large tribal army and, using his naval strength to its best effect, annihilated the rest as they took to their canoes. The chieftain of the Dogghe died of extreme gout during the fighting and with his death the Dogghe had no choice but to come to terms.