A Conspiracy of Kings

by Megan Whalen Turner

  When I asked about Hanaktos, Brimedius assured me that there had been a misunderstanding. The rebels knew that my father had supported an alliance with the Mede, and an end to the war with Attolia, and they would never have condoned an attack on him. He suggested that Hanaktos’s breach of the laws of hospitality was an unhappy accident. “My King,” he said sadly, “Hanaktos tells us that your father’s men attacked first.”

  “Because Hanaktos meant to kill them all!” I said.

  “Perhaps, My King, it was all a mistake?” Brimedius said.

  I think my face must have made it clear what I thought of that. “And my abduction?” I asked pointedly.

  Brimedius nodded apologetically. “For that we must beg your forgiveness. It was not our intent to precipitate so destructive a conflict, nor to inflict such a grievous insult on the person of Your Majesty. We hoped to make a king of you a little early, that is all.”

  “Well, that at least you have accomplished,” I said.

  Brimedius was sadly disappointed in me. I looked mulishly back, as truculent as I had ever been when faced with someone’s disappointment.

  “I would like to see my mother and my sisters,” I said, but it seemed that was not to be permitted yet.

  “Perhaps in the morning,” Akretenesh said.

  Brimedius diverted my protest, asking hastily if my attendant pleased me, and I said he was well trained, but that I wanted my papers back. The baron deferred to Akretenesh, who said no. I sulked.

  At the end of the meal the Mede pulled out a folded and much-handled piece of vellum. I sat up. It was your letter.

  “You are a man of your word, Your Majesty?”

  “Enough that I am offended you ask, Ambassador,” I said angrily.

  He unfolded the parchment. “I have read this several times.” He smoothed it out on the table between us and looked up at me, watching my face. “It appears in every way to be a personal missive between you and…someone who cares for you.”

  “She is the queen of Eddis,” I said stiffly, annoyed at his dismissive tone.

  “I mean no offense,” he told me. “On the contrary. It goes against my grain to withhold something personal. I would no more deny you this than I would deny you any of your property. You have seen, I hope, that we make no attempt to remove from you your possessions. Even your weapons. I am sure that in time our mistakes will be behind us. We will start fresh. This is your property, and I would like to return it to you, if only I could.” He smiled disarmingly, and I gritted my teeth and wondered what he was going to demand of me in exchange for this piece of writing and wished he would get on with it. “…if I could have your word that there is no secret message here.”

  My surprise showed on my face. What possible message did he think could be secreted in a half-page love letter?

  “Ah,” he said, and was evidently satisfied because he slid the parchment across the table to me. I folded it and slid it inside my shirt.

  He inclined his head graciously.

  I tried to do the same.

  So I began my second captivity. This time with good food, and a soft bed, and regular bathwater, and companions infinitely more despised. Brimedius soon disappeared back to his army, which was penning in whatever was left of my uncle’s men near the pass into Melenze. Brimedius’s wife had greeted me formally when I first arrived, but I never saw her again. I saw only the Mede and various servants and a few members of Brimedius’s guard.

  My attendant had a name. Of all ridiculous things, it was Ion.

  “Is that a problem, Your Majesty?” he asked.

  “No, not at all,” I said. “What’s your family name?”

  “I am Ion Nomenus, Your Majesty.”

  “I will call you by the patronym, then, if you do not mind,” I said.

  “Anything that pleases you, Your Majesty.” He was the model of good manners, then and for the rest of our time together. He brought me my food and would have helped me dress and undress if I had let him.

  “I’ve grown more comfortable doing it myself,” I told him, and so he contented himself with unpacking and refolding my fancy clothes.

  “I had a number of books,” I said, and he apologized that they would not be available to me. I observed that the written word in all its forms was forbidden, but he said no, he could bring me books from the megaron’s collection, if I would like. I said that I would, and asked him to look for a copy of Mepiles’s Lamentations. I thought it might give me some perspective.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  AKRETENESH dined with me every day, chatted about this and that, presented himself to me as a reasonable man, a potential ally, a resource. Every day I asked about my mother and sisters. After the first few days he didn’t even offer excuses, just smiled sadly and turned away. If I lost my temper and swore at him, I got nothing. If I was polite, he gave me a tidbit about their health or their activities of the day before: They had gone into the garden, or they had walked by the riverside, Ina had said this or that. Unspoken was the understanding that my behavior affected their freedom as well as my own. On the contrary, I was assured over and over again that I was no prisoner but an honored guest.

  The first time I was told this I stood up and said briskly I was leaving, and my family with me. Akretenesh just looked disappointed. “You would never, I am sure, very sure, Your Majesty, be so rude to your host,” he said. He used that phrase often, I am sure, very sure, always followed by something I desired but would not be allowed. I grew to hate it as much as I hated him.

  After some weeks of this, I was well practiced in controlling my frustration. I never thought I would have any reason to be grateful to my Ferrian tutor, Malatesta, but as it turned out, he had been good practice for dealing with the Mede. I did not swear or shout. I nodded politely when spoken to and let the most outrageous comments pass by. Of course we were as children to the more mature race of the Mede. Of course they knew better than we did how to regulate ourselves.

  I kept myself busier than I had been out on the island of Letnos. I woke in the morning and occupied myself with martial arts. I had a practice sword and any number of helpful partners waiting on me in the training yard. I rode regularly and tried to improve my sword work on horseback. Akretenesh seemed to look with approval on these activities. I practiced firing Attolia’s gun, and he didn’t object. On the contrary, Brimedius’s armory was most helpful about providing lead and powder. The lead was pulled back out of targets to be reused, but my consumption of powder was not inconsequential. If I could have cost Brimedius ten times as much to maintain, I would have.

  In the afternoon I read whatever Nomenus brought me from Brimedius’s library. Mepiles’s Lamentations did help me put my own discomforts in context, and I read a little from it every day. I paced in my room, talking to myself, and rehearsing for future speeches. I worried daily about the fate of the magus and the men in my army. Akretenesh of course gave me no news. I didn’t know even if the magus had lived or died, though I thought the Mede would probably have told me if my friend and advisor was dead. I worried about him, and wondered if he had safely reached my father.

  I was free to move about as I pleased in the gardens and could ride out on one of Brimedius’s horses so long as I had someone from his guard with me. In the megaron I could roam through the public rooms and in the corridors on the way to my apartments. I walked those corridors, usually with Nomenus at my side, listening for any hint of my mother and sisters. Eurydice could be heard, if she chose to exert herself, across several fields and a small river. I never heard a sound and never caught even a hint of their whereabouts.

  I spent my afternoons walking in gardens surrounding the megaron in search of some sign they might have left, a footprint in the flower beds, a plant stripped of its blossoms, twigs in a pattern, an arrangement of stones. I found nothing. I had faith that Ina was a cunning prisoner, but there was no sign that she had even once outwitted Akretenesh’s desire that she and Eurydice and my mother be kept from me.<
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  I attempted to think charitable thoughts about Nomenus, who had taken on the role of my personal attendant, and the other people in the megaron, the servants and Brimedius’s guardsmen. I couldn’t blame them for my captivity. It was my own doing, after all, that had brought me to Brimedius. I tried to thank them honestly for their services. They were wary at first, but if they held me in contempt, they concealed it well. If the captain of the guard was a little stiff with me when we sparred in the mornings, he was never anything but polite.

  I know that it may be wishful thinking or arrogance on my part to think so, but over time they seemed genuinely well disposed to me. Nomenus even scoured up a few more books of poetry for me to read from Lady Brimedius’s private collection, which was considerate of him. He never spoke to me of anything but my personal needs, making it clear that the business of kings was not his business. It was a fine line between sympathy and pity that he walked, and I was gradually won over by his kindnesses.

  Remembering Gen’s suggestion that it is better if you believe what you want other people to believe, I tried to think charitable thoughts about Akretenesh as well. Except for the very essence of the matter—my captivity and his refusal to let me see my sisters and my mother—he was very accommodating. I still didn’t like him. His narrow, inflexible mind, his unshakable faith that the Mede way was the best way, and his unwitting condescension in offering it to me made my hackles rise, even without the added offense of his blatant intention to appropriate my country. Also, I hated the scent of his hair oil, which is a stupid thing to care about, and I am not surprised that it makes you laugh.

  Fortunately, I did not have to pretend that I liked him. He was content once he could see that I was willing to submit to him because I had no other choice.

  One day after weeks of uninterrupted quiet and sick frustration, there was a visitor to Brimedius’s megaron. Nomenus was arranging my meal on a tray when I asked him outright who had arrived.

  “It’s Baron Hanaktos,” he said pleasantly, as if it were nothing that a man who’d tried to kill me was nearby. “The Mede ambassador has asked for an appointment this evening before dinner if that will suit Your Majesty.”

  This is how they maintained the polite fiction that I was not a prisoner. It was “Your Majesty, this,” and “Your Majesty, that,” and “if it would suit Your Majesty.” Listening to Akretenesh say the words made me want to bite something, but Nomenus spoke them with a gentle amusement that made it bearable, as if it were an irony shared between us.

  That evening Akretenesh brought me another letter.

  “Your friend has sent greetings,” he said. “Were you expecting them?”

  I had no idea whom he meant. My first thought was of Hyacinth, and I had no interest in any news from him. Seeing my confusion, he held up the letter, and I recognized the seals.

  “Her Majesty the queen of Eddis?” I said rigidly, and Akretenesh promptly reconsidered his wording.

  “Her Majesty, yes,” he said more respectfully.

  I understood better how the queen of Attolia could have led her own ambassador by the nose. The Medes seem to be very conventional thinkers, so certain of themselves that they never even entertain anyone else’s opinions. I do believe that Akretenesh saw no differences between a woman who was a queen and one who was a seamstress, though he would recognize all the differences in the world between a prince and a farmer.

  I said that yes, the letter was unexpected, and no, I had made no plans for communications in case I was separated from the magus and the troops. No, I didn’t think it likely that there was a secret message, but of course I couldn’t say for certain. Akretenesh again laid the parchment out on the table between us and smoothed it with his hand while he considered. Finally, with a little sigh, he folded it again.

  “I am sorry,” he said. “It’s too risky.”

  I looked away while I fantasized about throwing myself across the top of the spindly table and seizing Akretenesh by the throat to choke the life out of him, surrounded by the sound of crashing crockery.

  After a deep breath, I said, “I understand.”

  “I am relieved Your Majesty comprehends the difficulties of my position,” said Akretenesh.

  “You have my sympathy, Ambassador. What are your thoughts of Her Majesty?” I asked.

  “I regret I have never had the pleasure of meeting the queen of Eddis.”

  “But your brother ambassador in Attolia has, and I know you have communicated.” He’d certainly made it clear that Melheret had conveyed the news that I was heading for Brimedius. Akretenesh pretended to have heard only the most flattering things about my intelligence and maturity from the same source.

  “Indeed,” said Akretenesh, “I have heard much of Her Majesty. She is by all accounts most admirable, demonstrating that character in a woman is far more important than the superficial beauty or excessive pretensions to intelligence of her counterpart in Attolia.”

  I stared at him for a moment, thinking that the historian Talis once said that to be underestimated by an enemy is the greatest advantage a man can have. Presumably it is true for women as well. One part of me couldn’t let the comment pass, while another part of me knew that I must, and I stood paralyzed as they warred their way to a mutually agreed-upon truth.

  “The queen of Eddis is as beautiful as the day and as brilliant as the sun in the sky,” I said.

  He was a fool if he didn’t believe me, but I wouldn’t tell him so. He chuckled and quoted Praximeles about beauty being in the heart and not in the eye.

  “You could retell some of what she said in her letter,” I said.

  Akretenesh considered, now that he’d had his chance to condescend. “I could. She writes about the fulfillment of a dream: to marry you in the Great Temple of Sounis and to wake in a marriage bed…which she describes in some detail”—he flipped the page over and read it closely—“‘It will have the finest Eddisian linen and a carving of the silhouette of the Sacred Mountain on the footboard.’” He looked up from the page to see my face as I flushed deeper and deeper red. His voice grew more cloying still. “She sends her love from beneath the ripening apricots of the tree where she sits and says the dream is complete but for your presence. Is this a lover’s missive,” he asked, “or might some information be encoded there?” He watched me closely, his eyes narrow.

  I said through my gritted teeth, “Perhaps it is just what women do.”

  Sighing, he refolded the parchment. “That may be it. My wife would write just such a description.” He became brisk. “I am sorry I cannot allow you to return the message, but your queen is too much under the influence of her ambitious former Thief. He has stolen Attolia’s throne and has tried to steal yours. She is very foolish if she does not realize how vulnerable she is, but fortunate that she may have you to protect her from her folly, eh?”

  He was still watching me, looking for some sign that there might be a message in the text, but I am an idiot, and all that showed on my face, I am sure, was that I wanted to kill him.

  We were interrupted then by Baron Hanaktos, who was immediately unhappy to see the letter from Eddis in the Mede’s hand.

  “I didn’t bring that here so that you could deliver it,” he said gruffly.

  “Oh, why did you bring it?” I asked harshly, and the baron flushed. I almost smiled at his discomfort. No doubt I looked like a clod, putting on pretensions to cover my impotence, but the baron bowed and apologized. He insisted that his only concern was for treachery on the part of Attolia. I said that I understood completely. He said that he hoped that the sad rupture in our relationship would heal, and I pretended that I hadn’t been attacked in my own home, listened as my servants were killed, and served as a slave on his estates. In short, I acted as if my family were just then being held as hostage for my good behavior.

  We all mouthed our parts in the play; then we went in to dinner.

  If the baron and I were bad actors, there was an inexplicable tension between
Akretenesh and the baron as well. I wondered if the baron was beginning to change his estimation of his allies. He was unhappy about something, and all through the dinner there was a conversation I couldn’t follow in obscure references and dark looks.

  Hanaktos only stayed for the one night. He left again in the morning, and an exchange I overheard from an open hallway above the pronaos made me think the issue, whatever it was, was still unresolved. Akretenesh and Hanaktos were standing in the open doorway of the megaron. Their voices carried clearly.

  “You will not put me aside,” said Hanaktos.

  “I assure you that nothing has changed,” said Akretenesh.

  He might have said more, but Nomenus was with me. I could not ask him to quiet his footsteps so that I might eavesdrop. Akretenesh and Hanaktos heard him and fell silent.

  When he was gone, Akretenesh came inside to compliment me on my company manners. I suspected that the visit had been his own personal test of his control over me and that I had passed. I excused myself and spent the morning practicing with Attolia’s handgun.

  That afternoon I had nothing new to read and no patience for rereading. Idly I picked over a plate of food. I paced. I hummed the chorus’s opening song from Prolemeleus’s City of Reason and stood looking out the window for a long time. As I considered the landscape, it finally occurred to me that it would be an odd apricot tree that would be producing fruit in Eddis so far out of season.

  I was lucky to be alone as I subsequently recalled the time when Eugenides, the magus, and I were escaping Attolia. Eugenides had been growing more and more distant as the blood leaked through his bandages, staining the shirt I had loaned him. I had been desperate to hold his attention, afraid he would fade away altogether.

  I remembered asking him if he could be anywhere at that moment where it would be and he’d predictably said in his own bed. He had described with longing the soft linens and the carved image of the Sacred Mountain on the footboard with such loving detail that it came to mind easily. The magus had wished to see the king of Sounis marry the queen of Eddis, and I, not unlike Gen, had longed to be home, under a ripening apricot tree, with my sisters.