A Conspiracy of Kings (25 page)

“We will tell you if we learn anything more, My
King,” Nomenus said, and I was touched that he addressed me
as his King and not just as Your Majesty.

In the morning I didn’t so much meet with Comeneus as sit
to be lectured by him. Relative to Xorcheus, his was a newly
created barony, only a few generations old, so he was very near to
the last of the barons. I had wondered why he hadn’t ridden
in on an earlier baron’s back, but when he came into the
room, I understood much better. He wanted me all to himself. What
he lacked in precedence, he made up in bluster. He was just as I
remembered him, a large man with a thick jaw, a heavy mat of hair,
and narrow-set eyes. He looked down his nose at me and declined to
bow. He sat without being invited and as much as dared me to
comment on it. He looked over my shoulder at Akretenesh and back at
me with some satisfaction.

“Thank you for meeting with me, Baron.”

“Glad to,” he said gruffly. “No point in
beating about the bush. Your uncle commanded people, made ’em
hop. That’s what we want in a king, but you can’t do
that yet, can you? A yearling needs to grow a little more before he
carries any weight. A young hawk needs to be seasoned. You must
give an olive tree years before it bears fruit.”

Muse of poetry, come to his aid, I thought. Could the man
produce one more metaphor of husbandry? He seemed to be trying.

“Green wood,” I suggested, but even he sensed that
there was something unfortunate about a metaphor for a king in
which you dry out your royalty before you set fire to it.

“You see my point, Your Majesty.” He went on, poking
his finger at me with every point he made, to explain that my
harebrained scheme of surrendering to Attolia was the result of my
unseasoned youth. Like my uncle, I hadn’t listened to wiser
heads. He’d let his temper get the better of him. He’d
been mercurial and unreliable. He’d been selfish and
hadn’t had the best interests of Sounis at heart, and that
was the real problem. That was why the barons had oh-so-reluctantly
risen against him.

I sneaked glances at Akretenesh, trying to see how Hanaktos
fitted into his plans, because I could not believe that Comeneus
was a partner in his schemes.

A pawn, perhaps. Akretenesh’s bland expression of approval
never altered, and I wished I had his diplomatic skills. It was all
I could do to keep myself from grabbing Comeneus’s finger and
biting it.

Finally I interrupted him to say that I was grateful for his
instruction, and even if he were not to be my regent, I would
certainly consider his advice in the future with the attention it
deserved. Before he could say anything else, I added that he had
served Sounis as he had thought best, and he would certainly be
rewarded for it. He nodded vigorously, like a big ox. He appeared
to expect a very substantial reward, but he wasn’t looking at
me. He was looking at the Mede ambassador.

After I had listened to Comeneus tell me the mistakes of my
uncle, I quit for the day and returned to my rooms. The servants
stripped off my sweaty clothes and brought me a cup of iced wine.
When the others were gone, I quizzed Nomenus for all he knew. Was
there any more news from Tas-Elisa? Were Hanaktos’s men still
on the road to the capital? Were they moving on Elisa? Nomenus said
that he’d heard nothing of the kind.

The day of the meet I dressed in my most elaborate clothes,
thinking of Gen. The coat he had had made for me with the
ridiculous pockets and the embroidery on top of embroidery on the
outside so that I could look like a king and act like one was as
stiff as a board. I felt like a box with legs. The night before, I
had finally opened the lower compartment of Attolia’s pistol
case, dreading what I might discover. Whatever alternative
Eugenides had urged me to find, I had not, and I had waited to look
until it was too late to change course. When I saw what lay under
Attolia’s gun, I put my head down on the table and cried.

Dressed in my best, I went to the meet. I couldn’t slouch
without putting obvious dents in the lines of my elegant coat, so I
kept my shoulders well back and bobbed my head at my court like a
demented hen. The barons and their supporters had been gathering
since dawn.

Each baron was entitled to bring two men, usually choosing an
heir and one other. The amphitheater was full, from the prestigious
seats in the first rows all the way up to the benches across the
top, where people had to lean to see past the branches of the
bushes that grew on the slopes behind them and hung down to block
their view.

I climbed up onto the stage and waited patiently through the
long protocol of the ceremony, sitting in one of a row of chairs
with Akretenesh and members of my late uncle’s council. The
chairs, significantly, were all the same size.

It was late in the morning, and I was soaked in sweat by the
time Baron Xorcheus proposed a regency. I stood up and stepped to
the front of the stage. Xorcheus hesitated, unsure of what I was
doing, and that gave me time to walk down the stair to the open
ground in front of my barons. By the time I reached the center, the
murmuring had faded away.

I can’t really remember what I said. It was idealistic and
it was naive. I reminded them that we shared one peninsula with
Eddis and Attolia, that we shared a language, and that the gods of
our fathers were the same. I said it was stupid to think that we
could ever be anything but subjects to the Mede, that my barons
needed to see beyond their own self-interests to the interests of
all Sounis and to the interests of Eddis and Attolia as well.
United, we would all benefit. I said exactly what I had wanted to
say all along, because I knew that nothing I said was going to make
any difference anyway.

Xorcheus called for the vote, and one by one my barons answered
my idealism. They stood and called out “regency” or
“king,” and I waited in the center of the amphitheater
for their judgment. A regent for even a short time would cement
Akretenesh’s power and make me no more than a puppet king for
the rest of my reign. Once he had installed his own allies in every
position in court, once he had complete control of the army, I
would have lost forever.

There were a few “kings”, but one after another, the
votes for a regent came in. I looked each baron in the eye, and
they were defiant, contemptuous, regretful, and in rare cases
ashamed of themselves, but they voted for Comeneus and the Mede.
That was the meet. When all the deal making was done, you had to
cast your vote aloud for everyone to hear.

When the vote came around to my father, I held my breath. He
stood and looked down at me for so long, I thought the sun had
stopped in the sky. When he said “king,” he said it so
firmly that the people nearby him winced. I swallowed a lump in my
throat and looked to the next man.

I watched Baron Comeneus as the voting drew near him. The barons
voted in the same order of precedence in which they had come to
meet with me. By the time Comeneus voted it was already clear what
the outcome would be, and he called “regent” with
radiating self-importance. He never looked anywhere except at me,
but at his right hand sat his heir, a much-younger brother. He
never looked at me at all.

When the vote was over, the amphitheater was silent. I heard
Akretenesh speak just behind me. He must have come down the steps
without my realizing it.

“Did you think they would make you king?” he said,
contemptuously. His voice was quiet, but he’d forgotten, or
perhaps never knew about, the acoustics. His every word was audible
even to the men in the highest seats and I watched them, as a
single organism, recoil.

“No,” I said, turning. “Not on the first
vote.”

I put my left hand into the open front of my coat to the pockets
sewn inside. Narrow and three times as deep as they were wide, they
were almost useless; anything you put into them would slip to the
bottom and be out of reach, anything except the long-barreled
handgun that Attolia had given me. It fit perfectly. I lifted it
out of the pocket, directed it almost without looking, fixed my
eyes on Akretenesh, and shot Hanaktos dead.

If Akretenesh’s voice had been audible to the back row,
the report of the gun was deafening.

In the shocked, silent aftermath, I said, “We’ll
give them a second chance.”

With my right hand, I reached to the other pocket. I had known
as soon as I lifted the false bottom in the gun case and looked
underneath what it meant. I had tried without ceasing to find some
alternative to Attolia’s ruthless advice, and I had failed.
Gen’s gift reassured me that I had not failed for lack of
trying. He had seen no other solution himself.

I lifted out the matching gun and read its archaic inscription.
Realisa onum.
Not “The queen made
me,” but “I make the king.”

Looking at Akretenesh’s startled face down the long barrel
of the handgun, I smiled until I felt the scar tissue tighten. That
one expression, I’d never showed him. My face gave away my
humiliation, my rage, my surprise, and my embarrassment, but I had
never let him see what I looked like when I smiled: my uncle.

His diplomatic mask dissolved, and he backed away.

In Attolia, I had been in front of a mirror at last, and I had
understood what made Oreus back in Hanaktos ask me if my expression
was a happy one or not. The smile rumpled the scar tissue under my
skin, and dragged my face askew, giving me the leer of a man
who’d never had a moment of self-doubt, who’d never
regretted a life lost. I’d worried that I wouldn’t have
the nerve to carry this off, but in the moment, it was easy. Seeing
Akretenesh recoil, I laughed out loud.

I’d fired on Hanaktos with my left hand. I had known
exactly where he was, and I’d had all morning to prepare my
shot. My aim was more reliable with my right, and Akretenesh was
much closer than Hanaktos had been.

I had wanted to find a better way than shooting an unarmed man.
I had wanted my barons to choose me as king because they believed
in me and because they believed in my ideals as I did. But that
wasn’t the choice I had before me, and I had already decided
that I would make them follow me any way I could. I would not stand
by and let them be lost to the Mede or to Melenze or to an endless
civil war where they would never be free of bloodshed until the
whole country was stripped to the bare bones. If I couldn’t
be Eddis, I would be Attolia. If they needed to see my uncle in me,
then I would show him to them. And I would take Attolia’s
advice, because if I identified my enemy and destroyed him, Sounis
would be safe.

My enemy wasn’t Comeneus, though I was fairly certain he
didn’t know it. His brother did. As one baron after another
had voted for a regent, Comeneus had watched me, but his brother
had looked to Hanaktos, and Hanaktos had looked to the Mede.

Staring at me over the barrel of my gun, Akretenesh said,
“Did you not just days ago lecture
me
about the sacred truce?”

With my finger still through the trigger guard of the spent
pistol, I lifted my left palm upward to the sky to see if lightning
struck me down.

When none did, I smiled again. “We will have to assume
that the gods are on my side.”

“I am an ambassador,” Akretenesh warned me, anger
bringing his confidence back. “You cannot shoot.”

“I don’t mean to,” I reassured him, still
smiling. I adopted his soothing tones. “Indeed, you are the
only man I won’t shoot. But if I aimed at anyone else, it
might give others a dangerously mistaken sense of their own
safety.” I raised my voice a trifle, though it wasn’t
really necessary. “We will have another vote,
Xorcheus.”

They elected me Sounis. It was unanimous.

When the voting was done, I told Akretenesh to collect his men
and get out of my country. “You can get back on a boat at
Tas-Elisa,” I said.

He smiled his superior smile, his composure much restored during
the slow process of casting votes. “How will you make
me?”

“I don’t have to,” I said. “Your emperor
isn’t prepared for war with the Continent, or he would be
attacking already. You are trying to sneak a foothold here in
Sounis to steal my country by sleight of hand. The Continental
Powers dither, but they won’t stand for an unprovoked
assault, and your emperor is not yet ready for one. The Continent
would come to my aid before he was ready for war and spoil all his
plans.”

“You think so? You bank on that?” Akretenesh asked.
He’d been backing away and almost reached the double doors
that led under the stage.

“I do.”

“Well,” said the ambassador, “we will see,
then, won’t we?” He threw open the doors, revealing
soldiers armed with crossbows.

He turned back to me, shouting, “Ki—”

I shot him, too.

Had he been aware, Akretenesh would have been disappointed to
see his assassins spitted with quarrels fired from behind me,
before they themselves could get off a single shot. It seemed there
was no end of people breaking sacred truces at Elisa that day.

I whirled around, but the arbalests must have been hidden in the
bushes on the slopes above the amphitheater. I saw no one.

Someone shouted from the terraced seats, “Long live the
Lion of Sounis,” and the amphitheater roared with approval.
There was a great deal of backslapping and shouting, as if it were
just what my barons had planned on all along.

I wasn’t cheering. I was considering the ambassador. Dead
ambassadors are a very bad business, and I approached his body with
some trepidation.

Thank the gods, though I do aim better with my right than my
left, the new gun threw to one side. I’d never practiced with
it, and I’d only winged Akretenesh. His eyes were already
open. I leaned down to look at him closely. I didn’t think
I’d even hit the bone in his upper arm, but there was no way
to be sure. There was a crowd forming around me, my father and his
men and other barons drawing close.