A Conspiracy of Kings (9 page)

“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.

“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.”

“I will get her in terrible trouble if anyone finds out
she helped me,” I confessed.

“Hush, there is no trouble I cannot bring her out of, and
if I tell her to keep silent, she will. It will be her secret and
keep her warm for weeks.” She looked me in the eye.
“You will remember what you owe her.”

I promised I would.

Suddenly the door was opened, and on the threshold was an angry
young man I recognized after a moment of blank incomprehension as
Berrone’s brother. I dropped to my knees and hastily started
picking up the pieces of the shattered amphora still on the
floor.

“Berrone!” he shouted. “You’ve gotten
Timos in trouble, and now he can’t dress me for
dinner.”

“I’m sorry,” said Berrone. She was flustered
and looked to me. If her brother noticed, we all were doomed, but
he was too interested in his own problem.