A Conspiracy of Kings Read online

  I stared. Officially I was heir to Sounis, but no one ever called me prince. I was only a placeholder until the king produced his own heir.

  “Do you understand?” the man asked.

  I nodded. He cut the ropes. I rubbed my wrists for a moment and flexed my hands. The skin where the ropes had burned was sore, but my hands weren’t puffy or weak. I looked around me, and the man who’d spoken was right. I was in the middle of a group of men. There was no chance to run and nowhere to hide, even if I got away. The hillside above us was bare. Below was only a small camp, probably the kidnappers’, a wagon beside a few shabby tents, and an empty road.

  I hardly cared. I took two running steps and lunged for Hyacinth. I had my hands around his neck before anyone else could move. I wasn’t heavier than he was, but I was taller and bore him to the ground, where I did my best to strangle the life out of him.

  “Is it because my sister set aside pastries for you to eat when you visited? Is that why you betrayed her? Is it because my mother admired your horrible flute playing? Is that why you betrayed her? Is it because they were kind to you?” I screamed as his face turned purple.

  Hyacinth writhed ineffectively under me and clutched at my fingers. He rolled his eyes in appeal toward the men looking on, but it was a long time before any of them moved. At last someone did grab me under the arms and try to pull me back, but I didn’t let go of Hyacinth’s neck, so he was raised, still choking, off the ground. Another man put his foot on Hyacinth’s chest and pushed down until my grip broke. It was not much of a rescue. He slithered away sobbing, and once he’d gotten his breath, he cried in earnest, while my abductors looked on in contempt.

  “You said he wouldn’t know!” he shrieked between sobs. To me he said, “We would be friends and you would do me favors when you are king!”

  “He’ll do no one favors when he is king,” said the stocky man, “least of all you,” he added, and turned his back on poor, pathetic Hyacinth, who continued to look at me for forgiveness.

  “They want to make you king. That isn’t a bad thing. And no one was hurt, no one important. Your mother and your sisters weren’t even home.”

  “They were hiding,” I said.

  “Oh,” said Hyacinth, “outside?”

  “In the house.”

  The amusement of the onlookers faded. The leader swore. He looked to one of his men, who shook his head. They had seen no one leave the villa as it burned.

  “I didn’t know!” screamed Hyacinth. “It isn’t my fault!”

  I turned my back on him as the tears filled my eyes. I sank to the ground and cried into my hands, not caring if my captors looked at me with the same disgust that they cast on my worthless former friend.

  The camp below was that of a slave trader. Because slaves don’t often change hands nowadays, the slaver traveled from place to place, buying up slaves one at a time. My parents could remember when there was a regular slave market in most towns of any size. Now families sell off slaves only when they are desperate for the money, and their neighbors look down their noses, as if the family has been reduced to selling off children. There are new slaves, of course, people who can’t pay their debts and other criminals, but the slave markets on Letnos happen just a few times a year, and slavers must travel to gather their wares.

  The trader was the stocky man who was giving orders. I learned that his name was Basrus and that he had a string of fifteen or twenty slaves camped below us next to the road. The rest of the men around me were soldiers of some kind. In the next few minutes they disappeared, probably back to some villa where they would be hidden, and I was left with three men and Hyacinth, still sniffling.

  “You can’t get off the island,” I told Basrus. “Some of the servants will have made it to the nearby landowners. They can’t all be in league with you,” I said, glaring at Hyacinth. “The island governor will call out the soldiers quartered in town and the navy. You won’t get past the war galleys. You can hide your men because no one knows who they are, but you can’t hide me. They will look from house to house in every closet and every cellar. They’ll search every cave deep enough to hide a rabbit.”

  “Oh, but you won’t be in a cellar, my lionhearted young man, or in a cave. You are going to be out in the open. Hold his arms.” He was pulling on heavy leather gloves. The other men who were with us had seized my arms and pulled them behind me.

  “What are you doing?” Hyacinth asked. He was truly stupid. Even more stupid than I had thought. I stared at him amazed and never even felt the first blow, scientifically aimed, as it hit me in the face.

  CHAPTER THREE

  I woke slowly with everything hurting so much I didn’t know at first what it was that hurt. I put my hands to my face. That was what hurt: my head, my face. My whole head felt enlarged to twice its natural size. I couldn’t see more than a bright haze between swollen eyelids. Someone was sponging me off with a cloth, wiping down my neck and along my shoulders. My shoulders hurt, too, or rather my back, but it was a stinging pain, not the disabling pain in my head that made it hard to link my thoughts into any sensible order.

  “Lie still, lion, while we get this dye off,” said a voice over my head. “We’re almost done with you. We’ll have you at rest in a moment.” As good as his word, he soon left off wiping and lifted me to my feet and helped me walk. We descended the ridge. I still couldn’t see, but I could feel the ground dropping out from below my feet. The bright haze visible through my eyelids faded as we passed into the shade, and my feet tangled in blankets. He held a cup to my swollen lips and I drank, tasting lethium and wine.

  “Down,” he said, and I sagged to my knees and then to my side and lay there with my insensible thoughts linking up randomly and breaking apart again until I fell asleep and it was dreams, not thoughts, floating through my empty head.

  I woke the next morning to a headache, a vast and tiresome pain that seemed outside my head as much as in it, a headache and a very sore and swollen face. I had a vague memory of Hyacinth whispering more tearful apologies into my ear, but he was gone when I opened my eyes as much as the swelling would allow and peered around me. Hyacinth might have been a dream. I lay under a striped cloth, which dropped to the ground on one side like a tent. When I sat up, the skin tightened across my back like lines of fire. I couldn’t seem to twist my head far enough to see over a shoulder, but on my upper arm I could see the red line of a lash. I blinked hazily, and for a moment wondered what I could have done to so infuriate Malatesta. My tongue caught painfully on something sharp; one of my teeth was loose, connected only by a narrow bridge of flesh.

  The slaver squatted beside me. “You’ll be wondering, my lion, just what we are up to. You were right that we cannot easily get you off the island, but we mean to try. Your own mother, I’m sorry, may she journey safely, but even she wouldn’t know you.”

  I lifted my hand away from its explorations of my face and up to the top of my head to find my hair all cut away and ragged.

  “It’s darker now,” Basrus said. “No one will pick you out among my slaves. No one here but myself and my lieutenant, Gorgias, knows who you are. As far as the rest of my men and the other slaves know, you are a very troublesome slave who has killed another slave in a fight and you are on your way to the galleys.”

  “And if I shout to one and all that I am the heir to Sounis?” I asked as clearly as I could, past my swollen lip.

  “That’s the question, then, isn’t it?” He held up a gag with leather straps.

  It’s not so terrible as it sounds. They loaded me into the back of the cart, where I lay for the first day, grieving for my mother and my sisters and cataloging my mistakes, unfairly blaming Terve for not warning me that the villa might be burned, hating Hyacinth, and the slaver, and all his men, and, most of all, with excoriating rage, myself.

  We were stopped by the island’s guard, and each time they looked through the slaver’s receipts it was clear that all was in order. Basrus even pointed me out as his
most recent purchase, and not one of the guard looked twice at a troublemaker sold off for fighting. The first time it happened, I shook my head as fiercely as the pain would allow, only to have the guards assume I was protesting a bad reputation. After that I gave it up as useless.

  As I was bounced and jolted toward the town of Letnos, my uncle was lured out of the city of Sounis by news of fighting between two of the coastal barons. The two, Comeneus and his neighbor, had squabbled often enough that it was no wonder that the king rode out immediately with a century from the garrison at Sounis. He was to have been killed on the road just outside the city, and I was to be installed as a puppet in his place.

  The assassination attempt was a catastrophic failure for the rebels. My uncle fought his way clear and pulled his men to order. He guessed correctly that the gates of Sounis would be closed to him, and instead of riding to the city for aid, he turned across country, eluding his would-be assassins. Heading north, with a handful of men, he made his way toward his loyal barons.

  On the second day, I was well enough to walk. Gorgias, on the slaver’s orders, offered to leave off the gag if I gave my word to be silent. I tried unsuccessfully to spit in his face. I also screamed like a speared rabbit when he put the gag in. Gorgias looked at me in a puzzled way when I dropped almost to my knees and then struggled back to my feet, feeling utterly unheroic. My hands were tied behind me, and I was off-balance. The gag, pushing the loose tooth into my tender gum, was infuriating.

  Basrus came over and pushed me back down. He efficiently removed the gag and tilted my head back, holding me pinned in the crook of his elbow. I struggled like a piglet in a farmer’s grasp. Like a farmer, Basrus expertly ran his finger inside my mouth, found the tooth, and yanked it out. I yelled again and kicked, but he held me immobile. Not ungently, he rubbed my head.

  “It will be better now, lion,” he said. He put the gag back in, and he was right that it was far less uncomfortable with the tooth gone. When he released me, he stepped back carefully. I had seen Pol, captain of my father’s guard, treat an angry Eugenides once with the same caution, and for good reason. It was ridiculous that Basrus would treat me so, and humiliation made me more enraged. I would have run myself into him headfirst if Gorgias hadn’t grabbed me by the arm and held me back, saving me, not Basrus. My head was too sore to use as a battering ram, and I would have hurt only myself.

  When we reached Letnos, we marched past the holding pens at the harbor and out the pier to a boat. I was so tired my only feeling was one of relief that we had arrived. The swelling in my face had gone down enough that I could see more clearly, but my head still hurt. My hands were still tied, my legs were shackled as well, and I had to be helped aboard. I’d spent the day twisting between extremes, crying at the thought of my sisters and my mother and snarling in rage. I’d used my feet to kick until Basrus had them shackled, and then I’d used my elbows until my hands had been retied, and my arms cinched tight to my body.

  My back ached and stung like fire in turns, and my stomach had refused any food. Once in the boat, I was shoved to one side and locked to a thwart. It wasn’t a large boat, but the other slaves settled as far from me as they could. All they knew of me was that I tended, when I was on the ground during rest periods, to lash out with both feet together. As we settled in, the slave trader looked over at me. He pinched his nose thoughtfully and said aloud to Gorgias, “A lamb, they said. No more trouble than snatching up a little lamb.”

  The center of town was alive with the king’s soldiers, like an ants’ nest that had been kicked to pieces. The king’s soldiers moved with no more direction than the ants, and I watched them balefully as we pulled away from the pier.

  As we left the harbor, a galley pulled up beside us and ordered the steersman into the wind. The sail flapped overhead as Basrus made his way to the bow and handed a package of papers across to the sailor on the galley, who passed them to his captain. Once again, all the receipts seemed to be in order. Basrus stood at ease, chatting with the nearest men about the weather and such, rocking comfortably with the motion of the waves, while the captain looked through the bill of sale for each of the slaves in the boat. I sat silent behind my gag. Gorgias had already demonstrated that he could, with a discreet tap from the lead weight he held, leave me incapable of anything beyond gasping for breath.

  We were all accounted for, and there was nowhere to hide anything the size of a prince on board, so the captain of the king’s ship waved us on our way, and I added him to the list of people I hated. Once we left the harbor, however, he and everyone else on the list faded rapidly from my mind as my headache, and my empty sour stomach, made every tilt of the boat and every slosh of the waves a trial. I am not a sailor even in the best of circumstances, and I concentrated fiercely on not being sick. The gag in my mouth became more frightening. Gorgias wouldn’t take it out unless I gave him my word to keep silent. I continued to refuse. Finally Basrus picked his way over to me and squatted down, leaning in so close that I could feel the warmth of his breath on my skin as he spoke very softly into my ear.

  “My prince,” he said. “Do you see anyone here to aid you?” He cast a significant look at the slaves and at his men. The only boats visible on the sea around us were far out of the range of my voice. “You’re as green as a dead man, and I’m not being paid to bring a dead man to shore. You’ll have the gag out and you’ll keep your name to yourself, or I swear by my god I will slit the throat of every man on this boat but Gorgias.” He looked into my horrified eyes and said, “I’ll slit their throats and dump them into the sea to keep this secret, and I will never give it another thought. Do you believe me?”

  I did.

  He untied the gag and pulled it free. “Get him some water,” he said to Gorgias, and returned to the stern.

  I looked at the men who were hostage for my good behavior, and I stayed quiet. When we neared Hanaktos, Gorgias put the gag back in. When we reached the dock in the harbor, we were unloaded and marched to market pens more often used for goats than for men.

  Within the hour of our arrival, we were being looked over by various townspeople, one of whom I recognized as the wife of Baron Hanaktos. Lady Hanaktia didn’t know me. Neither did her daughter, who was with her. The swelling in my face felt much reduced, but no doubt my bruises were still disfiguring. Berrone and I had danced together just a few months earlier at a reception my mother arranged in the capital. It had been a failed attempt to reconcile me with my uncle and my father. I’d been, as usual, paralyzed. All the young women danced with me for form’s sake, but Berrone did it out of pity as well, which was enough to cement the disaster. I was returned to Letnos the following day.

  Ina tells me that Berrone is more beautiful than any other young woman in our acquaintance. I suppose my personal affections alter my perceptions. She is lovely. She is very kind, too, as Ina has also pointed out, though if you knew Ina, you would know she wasn’t being kind when she did. Because what Ina was saying, without saying, is that Berrone is also the stupidest person we know.

  During our dances at the reception months earlier, Berrone had told me with delight the ridiculous amount of money she had given a shopkeeper for a magical device that would keep things from being lost. Berrone was always losing things, scarves, rings, purses. She showed me the device, which turned out to be an ordinary piece of string. She had tied one end of it to a ring and the other to her finger.

  Still, no matter how silly she was, I was certain she would know me if she just looked closely enough. She and her mother stood not too far away, eyeing the merchandise as the slaver’s man, Gorgias, pointed out and described potential purchases. Sitting on the packed dirt, with a wide empty space around me, I stared hard at Berrone. She did look at me, but my stare disconcerted her, and she glanced away again quickly. When she glanced at me again, I looked down and tried to look harmless and as appealing as possible. I modeled myself on my apologetic former friend Hyacinth, certain she would recognize me then. From under my
eyebrows, I could tell that Berrone was asking about me, though I couldn’t hear her words, spoken quietly to the slaver’s man. No doubt he related my story, sold off for fighting and disobedience. The Lady Hanaktos shook her head briskly and turned to another proposed purchase. But Berrone looked back my way.

  She was softhearted. She felt sorry for me. She was looking at me earnestly, and I was sure that the slaver’s disguise would fail. Then her mother recalled her sharply and led her away. Crushed, I almost screamed my frustration into the gag in my mouth and prayed for some god to reach down from the sky and shake the stupid girl until her little pea brains rattled in her head.

  There was no sign of divine intervention, but Berrone did glance at me again, even as her mother drew her away, and I took that as a reason to hope. Over the next hour I slowly moved closer to the edge of the pen. The slavers didn’t notice the movement, but the slaves around me did, and as gradually as I moved, they moved as well, keeping an empty space between my feet and them. Finally, through the latticed sides of the pen, I saw the baron’s daughter as she returned with her mother. They had a young slave in tow, no doubt a house slave, maybe for her brother or maybe for the kitchens. The slave climbed up onto the back of a lightweight carriage as the women climbed onto the cushions in front. Berrone looked over at me, and I clasped my hands together in appeal, glad that they were tied in front and not behind me. She smiled and then turned to sit next to her mother.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  I hoped. I hoped all that afternoon and through dinner, because I knew about Berrone. I knew she spent a fortune buying songbirds at the market and then setting them free. No one had the heart to tell her that they were captive bred and that they probably starved—if they weren’t eaten first by the predators of the town: the cats, the rats, and the hawks. She brought stray animals home from the streets, and the maids had to put them out. She’d convinced her father to outlaw the drowning of kittens because it was cruel, and for a year the port of Hanaktos was overrun with starved and mangy animals, until finally the townspeople had revolted and spent three days on a massacre that upset everyone and the baron revoked the injunction.