A Conspiracy of Kings (24 page)

I escaped to the baths with just Nomenus, who had come with us
from Brimedius to attend me. I’d washed in my rooms in
Brimedius and hadn’t had a real bath since I’d left
Attolia. I hid in the steam room until I was too light-headed to
care anymore what the Elisians were going to make of me. After the
plunge, Nomenus was waiting with a robe.

“Your Majesty,” he said as he wrapped me in it,
“I believe you are most welcome here.”

I twisted to look him in the face, but he dropped his eyes.

“I did not mean to offend Your Majesty.”

“No, you didn’t,” I said, grateful for the
reassurance.

When I reached my rooms, everything was carefully arranged, all
my finery in the wardrobes and my luggage cases cleared away.
Sitting on a table by the window was the box from Attolia. I ran my
hand across the bowed top, and then flipped open the latch and
lifted the lid, to see if the gun was still inside. It lay
untouched within its velvet-covered bolster. One gun, against
Akretenesh and all my rebellious barons. Akretenesh knew how
insignificant it was. How insignificant I was. I wondered if my
sisters had been in Brimedius after all, watching me from a window
as I rode away. I wondered where the magus was. There had been no
sign of him, and I had had no word from my father.

I thanked the three or four servants in the rooms with me for
their work. They smiled, maybe not just in politeness, and I sent
them on their way. I sent Nomenus away as well and sat on a stool
in front of the table, staring at the gun for a long time.

In the morning I met with the first of my barons. It was their
right to speak to me before the vote, and they wouldn’t give
it up. There was a protocol—Xorcheus first, as his was the
oldest created barony, and then, after him, all the other barons in
the order of their creations. A baron could choose to bring another
baron, lower in seniority, with him. The more senior barons usually
make some money selling off the privilege, but Xorcheus came alone.
I think he would have skipped the entire process if he could have.
He had a small property of almost no significance, and I got the
impression that he wished we all would just go away and leave him
to it.

He grunted a greeting when he was ushered into the room and
didn’t know whether he would bow or not. I imagined asking
for a full obeisance face down on the floor, and just the vision I
produced in my own head helped me relax a little in my chair and
wave him to sit before he made a decision we both would have to
live with.

We were in a long, narrow room on the ground floor. I had asked
to have the chairs moved as far away as possible from the shuttered
window, but I had no way of knowing who was out on the terrace,
listening for any word he might catch. Akretenesh had chosen the
room. It had murals painted in panels between the timbers that
supported the upper floors. Winter, Spring, Summer, and Fall, four
beautiful women carrying baskets of fruit or flowers, or, in the
case of Winter, bundles of spindling branches. All of them with
their backs to me, which I didn’t take for a particularly
encouraging omen.

Akretenesh, as “mediator,” was with us. He would be
in every meeting as I tried to convince my barons not just to elect
me king but to make me king without a regent. He didn’t say
anything. He knew that the rebels weren’t likely to
cooperate. The whole object of their rebellion had been to seize
the king’s authority for themselves. That they had started an
all-out civil war by accident didn’t mean that they would
give up their prizes.

The loyalists wouldn’t be much more easily convinced. My
barons knew where I had been, that I had been abducted and had
hidden in Hanaktos’s fields, and that I had gone to Attolia
to negotiate a surrender. The Medes looked better and better to
them all the time.

So I talked myself hoarse. First to Xorcheus and then to the
rest of my barons, one at a time or in small groups. I went over,
again and again, my arrangements with Attolia, the loss of the
islands but the end of the war. I had practiced my arguments on the
magus as we rode from Attolia and polished them in the tent at
night. I had gone over them again while I was a prisoner in
Brimedius. I was determined to convince the barons to end their
revolt without bloodshed. So I explained the advantages of peace
and trade. I swore up and down that the Attolians would have no
hand in our governance, only a promise of our loyalty and our
support if they were ever attacked.

And my conversations all seemed to go awry. Was it true that I
would swear an oath of allegiance to Attolia? I said no, that I
would swear to Attolis, but that made little difference to them.
They didn’t like the Thief of Eddis any better as an
overlord. There was nothing impossible in what I was saying. My
arguments were good, but my barons would have to trust me, and they
wouldn’t. They looked from me to the Mede and back again.
Then they said polite things and excused themselves.

Akretenesh watched, amused.

There was no point in trying to tell the barons the things that
the magus had taught me, the way the Medes had dealt with their
“allies” in the past. They weren’t interested in
history lessons. I knew that my uncle who was Sounis had set his
barons against one another in order to keep them weak. I knew that
he had used his army to threaten anyone who dared disagree with
him. They hadn’t liked him, they had lived their lives
wondering when he would turn on them, but that was what they
expected a king to be. I wasn’t nearly intimidating
enough.

I told them how things work in Eddis and tried to show them that
there is a rule of law that is better than backbiting and
self-interest as a means to run a state. My idealistic words made
Xorcheus uncomfortable. They made the rest of the barons
contemptuous.

At the end of one day, when I had worked my way through almost
half the barons and was tripping over my tongue, so tired was I of
talking, Nomenus came to the door of the audience room.

“I thought that was the last for now, Nomenus,” I
said.

“It’s your father, Your Majesty. He has arrived from
the north, and he asks an audience.”

I stood up and went to greet my father at the door. He wrapped
me in a hug as fierce as the one he’d given me as I slid from
the back of his horse outside Hanaktos’s megaron. I
swallowed. So much depended on him. I had left him under attack by
Hanaktos and gone to surrender to Attolia, and I had no idea what
he thought of me.

“Won’t you come sit down?” I said, and we
crossed the room together.

“Ambassador,” my father said, and reached out to
take Akretenesh’s hand. “Won’t you join
us?” So the three of us settled into chairs facing one
another.

“This business of surrendering to Attolia. I am not at
ease,” my father said.

I shrugged. “You have heard all the arguments already from
the magus.”

My father nodded and rolled his eyes. “That man bent my
ear mercilessly. He never stopped for an instant.” He looked
at Akretenesh. “Your empire has a history of absorbing its
allies the way a tide overcomes a tide pool.”

Akretenesh smiled comfortably, and I felt like a child again,
watching from the corners while the adults talked. I couldn’t
tell from my father’s brief comment when he had last seen the
magus. I could only hope that the magus had made his way safely to
meet my father after the battle near Brimedius. I didn’t dare
ask.

Akretenesh was speaking. “I know how things can change
their appearance when seen from a distance. Our allies have become
part of our empire by their own choice because it was to their
advantage. But Sounis does not lie on our borders, the way they
did, and cannot be integrated so easily into our system of
provinces. Your case is quite different, I assure you.”

My father nodded and looked around the room. “At any
rate,” he said, “I can see that all goes well
here.” To me he said, “You need have no worries. You
will be king one way or another.” Then he patted me on the
knee and stood up, saying that he had to see to his men.

That evening I stood at the window looking at the amphitheater
in the moonlight. Nomenus was tidying the room behind me and laying
out my nightclothes. The night was cool. The armies waiting for
their barons’ return, on the inland side of the hills, would
be baking in the heat, but Elisa, high in the hills, caught the sea
breeze. I listened to the creak of the night insects and watched
the leaves flutter against the white marble of the amphitheater
that seemed to glow in the reflected light, and I wondered what my
father thought of me.

I had no chance to speak to him again except in impersonal
conversation at dinner. I had no privacy outside my own rooms.
Akretenesh accompanied me at all times or handed me off to
Brimedius or another obsequious rebel baron. It was Akretenesh who
was with me when I saw a familiar figure ahead in a passageway, a
figure just in the act of dodging down a flight of stairs.

“Basrus!” I shouted at the top of my lungs, and to
my everlasting surprise, Hanaktos’s slaver stopped in his
tracks.

Not so Akretenesh, who slid hastily to stand between the two of
us, one hand not quite touching my chest, as if to stop me from an
assault. It was unnecessary. I was unexpectedly pleased to see the
familiar, ugly face.

“Your Majesty has made an error,” Akretenesh said in
warning. “This is, ah—” He paused, apparently at
a loss for a good lie. “This is the rat catcher,” he
said firmly. To my delight, he still couldn’t come up with a
name.

“Bruto,” said Basrus, with a straight face.

“Yes, that’s it. Your Majesty, Bruto.”
Akretenesh, being a Mede, didn’t recognize the name from the
nursery rhyme of Bruto and the rats. It didn’t help that
Basrus was winking at me over his shoulder.

“We have a vermin problem, and Bruto has been clearing the
compound,” Akretenesh said, perhaps revealing more than he
meant. I wondered if the rats were of a human kind and if the
quarry was in the compound itself or farther afield.

“I wish you success in your endeavors on my behalf,
Ba–Bruto,” I said. There was little point in contesting
the Mede’s story. If anyone standing there in the passage
with me knew who Basrus was, he knew that I knew as well, and would
understand the irony in my emphasis on “my behalf.”

“It is an honor to work for Your Majesty.” Basrus
bowed. He straightened and looked me in the eye. “If I may
say so, I was delighted to hear of the safe arrival of your mother
and sisters in Brimedius.” He bowed again.

“Thank you, Basrus,” I said.

“Bruto,” he said.

“Yes, of course.”

Akretenesh was starting to give both of us the evil eye. He
dismissed Basrus sharply, and the slaver turned back to the stairs.
I went on to my rooms.

There were more meetings. Each day I thought with envy of
Polystrictes. I would have preferred his goats to my barons. Every
one of them seemed to come to me with questions, and I had to lay
every concern to rest before I had any hope that they would listen
to what I had to say. I wanted to hold my head in my hands and
scream.

Instead I explained over and over that no, we wouldn’t
change our oligarchy, we had always had barons elevated above
patronoi and patronoi above the okloi. My father himself was one of
the four dukes created by my grandfather in imitation of the courts
on the Continent. I would hardly disempower him. I only meant that
we would have a rule of law for everyone, king, baron, patronoi,
and okloi. That I would not constantly set the barons against one
another, as my uncle had, and that no man needed to fear that he
must be a favorite with the king to be safe from his neighbors.

But rumor was a hydra that regrew as often as I chopped it down.
I came to rely on Nomenus, who would come with my breakfast every
morning and tell me what fresh crop of misdirection had grown up in
the night. He passed on to me the stories that he heard passing
from one servant to the next, and I used the information to brace
my arguments with the next baron in the order of precedence. I was
sure Akretenesh was feeding the confusion, but there was nothing I
could do about it other than try to convince my barons that they
could believe in me. I continued to meet with as many as I could
every day, in spite of Nomenus’s asking me if I would like to
have rest in the afternoons. I was battle hardened after all the
meetings in Attolia.

The night before I was to meet with Baron Comeneus, Nomenus came
to my rooms with a late meal. He had an amphora in his hand and
another servant to bring in a tray with bread and cheese. He was
usually able to manage this on his own, and I looked at the extra
man curiously. Hesitantly, Nomenus introduced him as a friend from
Tas-Elisa. He emphasized
friend
significantly.
My hopes rising like birds on the wing, I thought at first that the
magus had sent him. I asked if he brought news, but he knew nothing
of the magus nor of the Eddisians and Attolians. “They say
the goat-feet went back to the mountains and the Attolians with
them,” he said.

I sighed, not knowing if this was good news or bad, and even
though I had grown to trust Nomenus more than was warranted, I was
still too wary to ask more.

“What of Comeneus?” I said. “Does he really
lead these barons?” I still couldn’t imagine Comeneus
in charge of anything larger than a hunting party.

“The other barons all yield to him,” Nomenus said.
“They say he will be regent for you.”

“Does anyone mention Hanaktos? His army is blocking the
King’s Road. Does anyone say what he will get out of his part
in this?”

Nomenus and the other man shook their heads. “We’ve
heard nothing of him,” the man said. “We only hear of
Comeneus.”