A Conspiracy of Kings

by Megan Whalen Turner

  Alas, when we reached the barracks, I discovered an unanticipated difficulty. Ochto had pulled my shirt off before using the cane on my back. In the morning, moving very carefully, I’d managed to get it on. Now I didn’t think I could get it off. Not only was it much too painful to lift my arms over my head, but the stupid thing had gotten stuck to me in places. I was at a standstill, staring wistfully at the well, and noticed that several of the other men were looking daggers at Dirnes.

  Reluctantly, he came to help, but he was still angry, and his ministrations were not gentle. He pulled on my shirt, and I swore at him. He was more careful then, but his scowl was no less black. I cared little for that once he was tipping the bucket at my neck. It felt divine. He patted me dry with my own shirt, then handed it to me and walked away without a word. I shrugged cautiously and went to lie down for an afternoon rest.

  That night he appeared, to my utter amazement, with an iced cake. He could only have gotten it from his friend the cook, and the cook could only have provided it at some significant risk. Yet Dirnes was still clearly angry with me, and I couldn’t think why he was asking for favors on my behalf.

  “Dirnes,” I said, “I don’t want your cake.”

  I did, actually. I wanted it a lot.

  The men in the barracks were watching us.

  “I didn’t ask you to do me any favors!” Dirnes said, very nearly shouting, not just angry, upset. His distress touched me when his anger hadn’t, and I suddenly understood what I had failed to see before: that Dirnes was a slave, like me. He had nothing, or anyway, very, very little. I had saved him a beating from the soldier and taken a beating from Ochto that might have been his. He couldn’t pay me back. An iced cake, a trivial thing, had no doubt cost him all his credit and more with the cook, and he was still obliged to me, would be obliged until he could somehow sacrifice to do a favor in return, with no end for that obligation in sight. This was a principle of indenture of which I had been unaware. Slaves don’t do favors for other slaves.

  “Dirnes, I am sorry,” I said, reaching out to grab his hand and squeezing it hard. “It was nothing, really.” I lifted my arm to show him how much more easily it moved. “By rest day it will be healed. Ochto won’t even have left marks.”

  Dirnes stared at me as if I’d said I was going to grow a pair of wings and fly up to visit the gods. I was uncomfortably aware that everyone else was staring at me, too. Ochto in particular. Hastily I broke the iced cake in half.

  “Here, share with me,” I said.

  My previous life just seemed to slip away. My dreams of the library grew more rare and less vivid. I was more cautious passing soldiers. I knew my place. I enjoyed an occasional tidbit from the kitchen, shared in friendship with Dirnes, and hardly thought about the dinners at the Sounis megaron that lasted until dawn. My uncle was losing more ground, but I was less and less interested in the news of the outside world. Dirnes’s pursuit of the cook’s goodwill was more important to day-to-day life. Our progress in terracing the baron’s landscape and digging the ditches to carry the runoff of the heavy winter rains was what mattered, not battles that took place miles away. When my uncle’s army was defeated at Thylos, it hardly seemed to have anything to do with me.

  As the rains lessened and the days grew warmer again, I was promoted to wall building and found I had a gift for it. Something about the careful choosing and positioning of stones, something about the way something so durable grew out of an accumulation of small decisions, filled me with satisfaction.

  On a day hotter than usual for so early in the year, we had been working on the landward side of a low hill, cut off from the sea breeze. Dirnes had asked for permission to go down to the shore for a quick swim before returning to the barracks to eat. It wasn’t unusual for the men to take a quick break in the middle of the day, and Ochto had agreed, so four of us had hurried down to the shore. We’d stayed overlong and were hurrying back, busily undoing all the good of our swim, but unwilling to risk missing our meal entirely. There were plenty of men ready to eat whatever was left in the pot if Ochto thought we were away too long. We were on the road when we heard horsemen behind us and moved off to avoid the dust they would kick into the air. I looked up as they passed and saw my father.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  HE was mounted on a bay horse, surrounded by ten or fifteen of his men. I stood stock-still and watched them go by. My father never looked anywhere but ahead.

  “Bunny?” Dirnes asked.

  I shook myself. “Nothing,” I said. “A former master of mine.”

  “Good one?” he asked.

  I shrugged.

  Hanaktos was an enemy of the king. Was my father perhaps changing sides? That was a laughable idea; my father is the opposite of changeable. It was far more likely that my uncle had sent my father under a flag of truce to woo Hanaktos back to his side.

  I was thoughtful as we continued back to the field house. Should I have called out to my father? I was a failure as a man, a prince, and a son, and I doubted very much that he would care that I was still alive.

  Ochto was waiting for us, and there was little I could do but eat my meal and sit on my pallet with my back against the plastered wall while the other men lay down to rest. Was I of any use to my father at all? Would it make any difference to anyone but me if I stayed right where I was?

  “There is no wolf to eat you, Bunny,” my tutor reminded me. “Stay where you are, and no man will know and no god will be displeased.” She pointed to a space in the air where I could see nothing. She pursed her lips and exhaled, and a tiny mote appeared, moved by her breath into the broad beam of light. “What do you want, Zecush?” she asked.

  My chin dropped to my chest, and I woke, lifting my head abruptly and slamming it into the wall behind me. Eyes watering, I realized that I had been asleep. My tutor had not in fact appeared in the field house of Baron Hanaktos.

  The others were still at rest. The room was full of indirect light, though the sun came in none of its doorways and there were no dust motes shining in any sunbeams. It was warm, and I was sweating. I thought of another swim with longing, but I wasn’t a free man, to swim when I pleased. I swam, as I rested and as I ate, when I had permission. I was a slave, owned by the baron, waiting for the call to rise and go with the others to work in the fields. When it came, I pulled myself to my feet and followed Ochto out the door.

  Out among the olives, as I began to fit stones into place in the wall I was building, I thought, as if it were the first time, about what I wanted. All of my life people had chosen for me. My father or the king of Sounis, his magus, or the king’s other advisors. All my life they had made choices for me, and I had resented it. Now the choice was mine, and once it was made, I would have no right to blame anyone else for the consequences. Loss of that privilege, to blame others, unexpectedly stung.

  I didn’t want a choice; I wanted to stay right where I was and build walls and share poetry with an avid audience and enjoy a swim with friends, but I didn’t want it to be my choice.

  Goaded by self-disgust, I worked faster, picking the largest rocks and throwing them into place and then watching in rage when they landed awry. Ochto sent Runeus to give me a hand, but Runeus collided with my glare and backed away. Shrugging helplessly at Ochto, he went to work elsewhere. Only when I caught the tip of one finger between two rocks and stood cursing and swearing like, well, just like a field hand, did I stop. I wiped tears of frustration out of my eyes and faced the truth.

  I had been happy. And I could stay if I wanted to. I could spend my life contemplating olives and reciting old plays to a friendly audience and building excellent walls that would outlast my lifetime. I could save the occasional coin that came to me by way of the baron’s feast day generosities and in time buy a book or two, a blank scroll, ink. In thirty years I might be the poet Leuka. He wasn’t a field hand, but he had been a slave, and his poetry has survived him by four hundred years. No one would know but me and the gods, and I was sure the gods
didn’t care. All I had to do was hold my peace, and I knew that I couldn’t do it.

  What would I choose if I could have anything? Well, I wouldn’t be useless. I would be the statesman my father wanted and the prince my country needed. But that wasn’t what I was offered. I was still the same poor excuse for a prince that I had always been. Quite likely I would fail to be of any use at all—to my father or anyone. When the rebelling barons were put down, I would see my uncle marry and produce an heir far superior to me, and I would be despised as useless and unwelcome even in my own home. That was what I was choosing.

  I wonder if people always choose what will make them unhappy.

  In the evening we walked back to the barracks. We ate our late meal as the light began to fade from the sky. Up in the megaron, guests would be gathering to dine. As the other men were settling down, tired from a day of hard work, I picked through the small collection of shells and rocks that I had found while at the shore and selected my favorites. Then I wrapped them in a rag I was using as a pocket and tucked them into the waist of my pants. Curious, the other men grew still and watched. Standing, I turned to Ochto and said, “I’m going.”

  Ochto started to give a puzzled assent, then realized I wasn’t stepping out to relieve myself before bed.

  “You can’t get far, Zecush,” he said.

  “I’m not going far.”

  He looked up toward the megaron and over at Dirnes. He must have heard of my comment on the road earlier in the day. “We don’t get to choose our masters.”

  “I do,” I said.

  “And why would I let you go?”

  I swallowed. “We all have to make choices, Ochto. I’m sorry.”

  He stared at me. With a word, or just the wave of his hand, he could stop me. The men in the barracks would jump up and seize me. The chain for the bracelet that was still on my wrist was right by his hand. His cane of office hung by the door.

  He also knew that I could have walked away without saying anything, as if on my way to the latrine, and he wouldn’t have had any hint that I was gone until it was far too late.

  He shook his head slowly. “You were never a slave,” he said.

  “Berrone bought me for gold,” I said honestly, but Ochto shook his head again.

  “Gold doesn’t make a slave, and it doesn’t always buy one. You stop work every time a woodcock sings. I’ve watched you move the mother scorpion out of the way when you should be setting stones in a wall and waste half a morning watching a grasshopper. You have no sense. What will you do out there in the world, Bunny?”

  “Whatever the gods and the king ask of me,” I said.

  “Ah,” said Ochto. “He is our baron, but he never was yours, was he?”

  “Indeed, he is not,” I said. “You still have to choose.”

  “I know nothing of the business of gods and kings,” said Ochto, and he looked away. I waited for him to turn back, then realized that he had made his decision.

  There had been no sound in the barracks. I turned to nod farewell to the men who had been my companions and found them also looking away. Swallowing a rock in my throat, I turned back to the door.

  “Should we come?” Luca’s voice rose sardonically. He sat at the far end of the room, with one knee pulled up and caught in the circle of his arms. He spoke, but he still didn’t look in my direction.

  My own eyes dropped toward the floor. “Believe me, that if I were you, Luca,” I said, “I would stay right here.”

  In the twilight I headed up the path to the stables and from there to the kitchens. They were a bustle of activity, and I had no trouble slipping in unnoticed. I sidled up to one of the houseboys and followed him until an opportune moment when he was alone in the corridor between the kitchens and the main rooms of the megaron.

  “Lend me your shirt for a minute,” I said.

  “Why?” He recognized me. I was familiar enough that he wasn’t frightened, just puzzled.

  “Because if you don’t, I’m going to hit you really hard and take it anyway.”

  He looked around for help, but we were alone.

  “Better make up your mind quick,” I said, and lifted my fist. He loosened his laces and pulled the shirt over his head.

  Wearing only his undershirt, he said, “I’ll tell.”

  I pulled the overshirt out of his hand. “You do that,” I said as I hurried back toward the kitchen. He ran off in the opposite direction, and I stopped. I’d headed toward the kitchen only so that he would head the other way. It would take him longer to find someone to listen to his story, and by the time he came back I would be gone. I reversed direction and headed farther into the megaron. I pulled the shirt on as I went, and pushed up the sleeves of my rough work shirt underneath it. The overshirt was tight, but it covered enough of the dirty cloth underneath that I could pass for a few moments unnoticed as I found a stairway and hurried up to the residence above.

  I’d been in the Hanaktos megaron several times. Berrone’s room was where I expected it to be, and the door was open, making it easy to confirm that I was in the right place. I knocked on the frame, and when I heard her voice, I rushed inside.

  “Mistress,” I cried out, dropping to my knees in the sitting room, where she was, thank the gods, instead of visiting some household pet somewhere. “Like a goddess, you have aided me, and I beg your aid again.”

  I knelt there with my hands clasped in front of me, praying, not to her but to the old god of deception, Eugenides, that she wouldn’t recognize me. She didn’t. Not at all. I’d been worried that she would see the prince of Sounis. It hadn’t occurred to me that I wouldn’t strike some chord. That she would look at me without any glint of recognition.

  Hastily, I explained that I had been a poor lost soul when she had rescued me from certain death in the galleys.

  “Oh,” she said, “you’re that slave that I bought.”

  “Please help me,” I said. “You are my only hope in a dark, dark world.”

  I told her a tale of woe and horror that could have come straight from the stage. I was the son of a minor landowner. At the untimely death of my father, his partner, an evil okloi, had made off with all the money in the business. My sister and I had been sold into slavery to pay debts.

  “They took her away from me, though I tried to stop them. I was sold to an overseer of a farm on Letnos. Your father, of blessed renown, mistress, was the farm owner. He was a good master, and I was not unhappy, but you must believe that I ached and grieved for my sister.” I thought of Eurydice then, though I hadn’t meant to, and suddenly the tears I faked for my imaginary sister were all too real. “But she was not lost, mistress. In a chance that could only have been decreed by the gods, she was sold to the owner of a villa nearby. He was a brutal man, mistress, and his overseer worse. Not like the honorable man who runs your father’s farm.”

  I looked up to see if I was laying it on too thick, but Berrone was watching with fascinated horror. Her servant woman, however, was skeptical. She was eyeing me from the doorway.

  “He attacked her, mistress. What could I do but defend her? And so”—I hung my head—“you see me now, a man-killer, despised and despairing.”

  “What can I do?” Berrone asked breathlessly.

  Success, I thought. “I have seen, just today, a man coming to dinner with your father. He was a friend of my father’s. He will vouch for me, and I know he will help me recover the money that was stolen. My sister and I can be free again. I can pay a blood debt to the owner of the man I killed.”

  “He doesn’t deserve it,” cried Berrone. “The beast.”

  “I do not care,” I cried. “I will pay anything to free my sister. Mistress, can you help me?”

  The steward summoned by Berrone stared at the mess of broken crockery on the carpeted floor.

  Berrone hadn’t understood the first time I explained my plan, so I had explained it again more slowly. Hiding behind the curtain to her bedroom, I could only hope she would remember her part.r />
  “Who was it?” the steward asked.

  “I don’t know which one, but you’ll know him when you see him. He has wine down his shirt.”

  “He spilled some on his shirt, you say? I understand now, mistress, and I will deal with him.” The steward went off to chase down the houseboy, whose story of being assaulted by a scarred slave would be dismissed as a lie concocted to explain the absence of his shirt with its incriminating stain.

  “What now?” asked Berrone, turning to me as I stepped out from behind the curtain.

  I looked at her, sitting on an upholstered stool with her knees together and her ankles apart like a little girl, her hands clutching her skirts, and my conscience was suddenly painfully wrung. I was returning a bitter payment for her kindnesses, even if they were stupid kindnesses.

  “Are—are you sure you want to do this?” I stammered.

  “Oh, yes,” said Berrone.

  Over Berrone’s head, I saw her maid, and from her expression, I knew that she hadn’t been fooled by my theatrics. Pinned by her gaze, I froze.

  She stood, arms crossed and unmoving. At last even Berrone realized that some decision still hung in the balance, and she swung around on her stool and clutched her maid around the waist.

  “Oh, Sylvie, don’t be a spoilsport. Don’t, please?” And I still waited, because there was no point in lying to Sylvie. The maid looked at Berrone, and her face softened. She nodded.

  Freed from my momentary paralysis, I stifled my remorse and began to explain the next step. A new shirt to go under my houseboy overshirt. Then I would go down to dinner. The houseboy would be in his dormitory, probably nursing his bruises, and not nearby, ready to denounce me. I would wait on the men as they dined and seize my chance to speak to “my father’s friend.”

  The maid fetched a clean shirt for me, and under cover of helping me with it, she said, “You are no slave; that much of your story is true.”