A Conspiracy of Kings (7 page)

There were painted pillars to hold up the ceiling high overhead,
each one covered in its own design of interleaving foliage, people,
and animals. The figures repeated on the carved trim of the
shelves: a set of lions on one case, a set of foxes smiling on
another. They drew my touch like lodestones, and I ran my fingers
over them as I explored.

In my later dreams I wandered the shelves, selecting books and
scrolls and bringing them to the tables to pore over. There were
tablets of wax and clay impressed with tiny characters. There were
books I knew and had already read, books the magus had told me of
that I’d never seen, and even books I knew of only because
their titles had been listed in ancient times. Plax’s lost
plays, Dellari’s histories of the Peninsula’s War, the
poetry of Hern. They all were there.

And I had a guide as well. Still resenting Malatesta, I dreamed
myself a far better tutor, who could answer my questions on every
subject and never switched my hands. She was waiting for me one
night. Tall even for a man and much more so for a woman, she wore a
white peplos and looked just as if she had stepped from an ancient
vase painting. She was like the Goddess appearing as the mentor in
an epic, and I felt like a young Oenius. It was her library, I was
certain, and I a welcomed guest.

I’d dreamed the night before that I had held Poers’s
History of the Bructs
in my hands and read the
first part of it. The magus had once summarized the book for me,
from his notes. He had read it in a library in Ferria but had no
copy of his own. I had been thinking lately of my uncle and what
sort of king he was, and no doubt that is why the book had been on
my mind.

“What do you think of Poers, Bunny?” my tutor asked
me. “Was Komanare of the Bructs a bad king?”

She waved me to a chair and sat in one opposite.

I wasn’t sure how to begin.

“Do you trust Poers?” she asked.

“No.”

“Well, that was clear.” She smiled, and I relaxed.
“Tell me why?”

So I picked through Poers’s arguments, looking for the
places where one might suspect the author was concealing something,
without knowing exactly what. It was my first talk with my
imaginary tutor and the first of many times that she listened
patiently, as Malatesta never had, to everything I had to say and
then asked a gentle question or offered an observation. Poers makes
excuses for Komanare of the Bructs. The king was forever arriving
on the scene too late to do anything but patch up a mess his own
people had made, always trying to get them to work with, instead of
against, one another, and Poers offers one reason after another why
each attempt of the king’s failed to make a lasting peace.
Poers insists that none of it was the king’s fault, but Poers
shows signs of fudging his historical facts in order to get his
arguments to hold water, and I say that if a king can’t make
his people behave, then yes, he is a bad king.

“Well,” my tutor murmured, “at least he
stayed.”

I woke to the morning call to rise.

In subsequent dreams, we talked about the nature of man and my
uncle’s nature in particular. We did not always see eye to
eye. I sometimes disagreed with her but often talked myself around
to her position.

She was amused by my interest in the system of natural
categorization that the magus had taught me. I explained the
importance of understanding how things are connected.

She only smiled at my earnestness and said, “Everything is
connected, Bunny, to everything else. If a man tries to transcribe
each connection, thread by thread, he will only make a copy of the
world and be no closer to understanding it.”

It is a new idea, this categorizing of the world, and I suppose
it seems silly to some. They think a fig tree is a fig tree, and
what more do they need to know? Ambiades, who was the magus’s
apprentice far longer than I ever was, never could see the point in
it. The magus thought it important, though, and so did I.

I had missed the magus sorely in the time since we had been
separated. Terve was a kindhearted old drunk, and my mother and the
girls were always willing to listen to me natter, but I’d had
no one who was interested in the things I wondered about. Hyacinth
used to cover his ears. It was no wonder I defended the
magus’s work to the tutor I had replaced him with in my
dreams.

News of the outside world came to us, even in the baron’s
outbuildings. Gossip flowed down from the megaron as freely as
water, so it wasn’t just my own dreams that I had to think
about. By late summer we heard that my uncle had retaken most of
the hinterland. When he reached Mephia, we heard about the
massacre. There was debate, of course, in the barracks, about the
rights of the king and the punishment for rebelling. Mephia could
have turned on her baron and surrendered to my uncle, but I am not
sure any fewer Mephians would have died.

I alone heard the irony as loyal retainers of Baron Hanaktos
argued that the king’s rule is inviolable and that it was
only right that the people of a rebel baron must suffer the
consequences of his disloyalty. They didn’t seem to consider
that the fate of the Mephians could be their own.

There was less news about the islands, or rather, conflicting
news. We heard that all the navy had been sunk by Attolia or that
none of the navy had been sunk, that various islands had held off
attacks or that they had been sacked and burned. We heard that
Eddis had swept down from the area of the Irkes Forest and was
building fortifications at the base of the foothills. Better that
Sounis not be able to retake that property and never threaten Eddis
there again, I thought.

As the winter rains set in, the news changed. The king
controlled the countryside, and the rebels were walled up in their
megarons, but inside with them were the harvests they had brought
from their fields. The countryside was nearly bare, and the king
needed to feed his army. He chose to withdraw toward his allies
farther inland and north to resupply. As the king was driven back,
the conversations around me changed: a king who loses turns out not
to have been a king at all, but only a usurper, a misruler it is
right to overthrow. There was talk of the Eumen conspiracy and the
deaths of my uncle’s brothers.

The men in the barracks spoke very freely. I had never in my
life heard anyone but the magus speak so frankly about the Eumen
conspiracy. Talk had always been in whispers and half-finished
allusions, as if people feared their words might be reported to the
king and they, too, might end up condemned and executed. What I
knew I had overheard in bits and snatches until I was apprenticed
to the magus, who dismissed with contempt any fear of the
king’s anger. He told me that my uncle’s older brothers
were killed and that my uncle took the throne, arrested the
conspirators, and in the space of a single day executed them all,
leaving no one alive to accuse him of being involved.

No one cared what my workmates talked about among themselves,
and they blithely argued my uncle’s guilt with an openness
impossible in Sounis’s capital. Most believed my uncle
guilty. I had never had any doubts, nor that my father was involved
as well—in exchange for a promise that his son would
eventually inherit the throne. My father, a royal bastard who never
had any ambitions for himself, wanted his son to be king.

It was only when I proved to be a disappointment that my father
agreed that my uncle should marry and get an heir of his own.
Sounis’s choice was obvious, and I don’t think it ever
occurred to him that he might be declined. When the messenger
returned from Eddis with a definite “no” for an answer,
my uncle was mad with rage. I don’t know if it was thwarted
greed or pride, but I know that the magus played on both to get my
uncle’s financing for his expedition to steal
Hamiathes’s Gift. He was determined that the two countries
would be united, and insisted that Sounis could use the gift to
force an alliance and a marriage upon Eddis. We know how that
turned out.

Our jobs changed for the winter season. We worked on indoor
tasks more often, repairing tools, patching clothes, fetching in
loads of wood for the household. Helius spent hours carefully
carving spoons. There were many days we were out in the cold rain,
shaping the land and directing the flow of the water as it drained
off. There were dams to be repaired, and ditches dug. We came in
cold and wet and huddled around braziers set in a row down the
middle of the room. The eaves of the building were open at either
end, and the smoke rose to the ceiling and blew out downwind. It
was warmer inside than out, but never warm enough. The baron
provided blankets, which we wrapped around ourselves. Some of the
men pushed their pallets together and slept under shared coverings,
but I was not so close to any of the men to feel comfortable
joining them. There was jockeying to be closest to the braziers.
Ochto allowed no one to force anyone else out. Still, there was a
pecking order, and I was near the top, for my man-killer reputation
or maybe for the high value my workmates placed on my poetry
repertoire.

I was hungry all the time, I longed for a hot bath, and still, I
wouldn’t have changed my situation for the world. I loved the
evenings and the storytelling, even the idle talk among the men.
Better the honest and companionable chatter than all the patronoi
of my uncle’s court.

As a slave I thought I had a better understanding of why those
in the villa had turned on me but found I was not entirely correct.
Some of the slaves around me would have been happy to fight for
their baron. Others weren’t so sure. Their willingness to
fight was dependent on the certainty of winning, and they
wouldn’t take on a losing battle for their lord.

“I’m his slave, not his liegeman,” said
Pundis. “He bought me at market when I couldn’t pay my
gambling debts. He can sell me just the same. My body is for sale,
not my loyalty. I owe him nothing.”

“But you belong to your baron,” I said.
“Surely that means there is something more between the two of
you. If you were crippled tomorrow in an accident in his fields,
would your baron throw you out in the street to starve? I think
not. Not unless he wants to be shamed in front of the
patronoi.”

I knew that there was at least one blind slave in the kitchens
and any number of older slaves around the household who
didn’t do enough work to justify their keep, but they were
kept nonetheless. Hanaktos may have rebelled against his king, but
he was a man who honored his obligations to his people.

“Of course there are good masters and bad ones,” I
said. “There are some that would chuck their slaves out to
starve at the end of their lives, and I say, don’t fight for
them. But even as a slave you are part of your baron’s
household. It is his responsibility to support you.” I lifted
a fold of the warm wool blanket I was wrapped in, provided by the
baron we worked for. “And yours to support him,” I
said.

Luca, at the end of my row, laughed harshly, and we turned as
one to look at him. “You talk,” he said.
“It’s talk, and that’s the all of it.”

I shrugged, and Luca laughed again. “You keep saying
‘your baron,’ Man-killer. Isn’t he yours as well?
Are you going to rush up the hill to save him, or do you just
expect us to?” The other men saw me struck back and laughed.
My face reddened. I had no desire at all to defend their baron from
any passing murderers, and they could tell. I asked myself whom I
would
fight for, with the people I loved most
already dead.

“I’d save Berrone,” I muttered, thinking that
she’d been kind to me, that she held my debt, even if she was
too stupid to know it.

“Oh,” said Luca, taking my words in an unintended
fashion. “I’d save Berrone, too,” and they all
laughed. The conversation continued on in a different direction,
and I fell silent.

I thought of the servants in the villa at Letnos. Free and
slave, they had turned on me. They could have chosen to fight, and
they hadn’t, probably because they judged it a losing battle,
and I couldn’t blame them for that. They had seen me in
desultory practice with a sword or reading poetry. They’d
seen me whimpering after my tutor switched my hands. It was no
wonder they thought they would be asking for their own deaths by
following me. So they had made their choices and died of it
anyway.

I don’t know if we would have won the fight in the villa
if they had stood with me. I know that it was my fault that they
didn’t try. My entire life I had been no better than
Hyacinth, who chose to betray me and then stood wringing his hands
at the consequences. All my life I had been aggrieved to be the
prince of Sounis, wailing, “Why me? Why me?” and
looking for some way to deny my responsibilities.

Of course the servants had chosen not to follow me; I’d
failed them already by refusing to be a man they could believe in.
I was, in that sense, as responsible for their deaths as I was for
my mother’s and sisters’. I was sorry that I
hadn’t done better for them and glad that I would not fail
anyone else.

I
N one of my dreams, my tutor told me a story, and I
would like to tell it to you. I don’t know why I was dreaming
of it, but it has come to my mind often in recent days. It is the
story of Morpos’s choice.

T
here once was a young man named Morpos who lived in
a small village at the edge of a great forest and was known to all
his neighbors as a fine pipe player. The nearby forest was filled
with bandits, and hidden in the middle of it was a temple belonging
to Atrape, goddess of wise decisions. The temple was guarded by a
wolf, and stories told of an opisthodomos filled with treasures.
Any one of those treasures—a bag of gold, a necklace of
rubies, an enchanted shield or sword—the goddess would give
to any who got past the wolf at the door.

Few people took up the offer. Not only was there the wolf to
consider, but also the bandits who would catch those who survived a
visit to the temple and strip them of anything of value. And those
who didn’t have gifts of value were stripped of their lives.
One wise supplicant had survived to ask the goddess for the gift of
prophecy and been given it, only to be captured immediately
thereafter. He shouted, “I am going to die, I am going to
die,” and he did.

Another man asked for a magical sword. He left the temple and
became king of the bandits for a time, until he was stabbed in his
sleep. The sword rusted away soon after.

One night, as he was sleeping, the young man in our story
dreamed of the wolf. In his dream, the wolf revealed that he had
once been a king who had offended the gods and been transformed
into a beast. He had been sent to guard the temple but was
forbidden to attack anyone who came in peace. All that was
necessary to enter the temple was to bow to the wolf and offer your
throat.

The young man had no desire to go to the temple and gave little
thought to his dream. His own wish was to travel far from the
forest, to see the world and play his pipes. In the night the wolf
came to him again. And again. Finally, late one winter afternoon,
the young man was walking at the edge of the forest when rain began
to fall. He moved under the trees for shelter but continued to get
wet. He moved deeper into the woods, and the rain came down more
and more heavily. Ahead he saw a small hut made from branches left
by a woodcutter. He ducked through the low opening on one side and
came face to face with the largest wolf he had ever seen in his
life. It was as high as his chest, with teeth like awls in a row,
and there was no hope of escape. Remembering his dream, he offered
the wolf his throat. Perhaps if the animal was not hungry, the two
might share the shelter awhile.

He was much astonished when he heard the wolf say, “Your
grandfather’s brother was welcome here once.”

Lifting his head, the young man looked around and found himself
in a temple with marble floors and pillars and a roof high
overhead, not the crossing branches of the hut he had seen from the
outside.

“He asked for a sword,” said the wolf over his
shoulder as he padded away toward the fire in front of the
altar.

The young man looked out the open doors of the temple at the
rain.

“The bandits will expect you to have gold, and will kill
you if you don’t,” the wolf said. “Though, if you
have offended the goddess by leaving without her gift, your
problems with the bandits will be inconsequential.”

Sighing, the young man moved to the fire. He could at least be
warm and dry. He found a tray of food waiting and made himself at
home. The wolf was surprisingly good company, telling stories of
the people who had come to the temple in the past. Some had taken
the gold, hoping to sneak past the bandits. Some had taken weapons
and then spent the rest of their lives fighting. The young man
played his pipes for the wolf and eventually lay down to sleep as
the rain fell outside. In the morning the goddess appeared to ask
him what gift from the temple he would choose.

“Does anyone who takes the gold get to keep it?” he
asked. “Does everyone who takes the sword end up a
bandit?”

The goddess smiled. “Everyone thinks he will be the
exception.”

Morpos asked if he could have another day to think about it.

“Tomorrow at dawn,” said the goddess, “you
must choose.”

The young man talked things over with the wolf all day and slept
well that night. In the morning, when the goddess came and asked if
he had made a decision, he said he had.

“Goddess, I must choose a gift from your
temple.”

“There is no must,” said the goddess. “I offer
you a gift of your choice, and you may choose to
decline.”

Morpos knew it was a foolish man who declined the gifts of the
gods.

Morpos said, “Then I will take the wolf, if you
please.”

The goddess smiled. She said, “You may take him with my
goodwill, but once he leaves the temple he will not be under my
power or yours. He may eat you.”

“He may, but he may not. I cannot like my other choices,
and indeed, I believe he will not.”

The goddess freed the wolf, and he did not eat Morpos. They
walked together out of the forest, the wolf warning the bandits
away with a wolfish grin and Morpos playing his pipes.