A Conspiracy of Kings

THIS BOOK IS GRATEFULLY
DEDICATED TO DIANA WYNNE JONES. THANK YOU FOR THE STORIES AND FOR
THE LEG UP.

T
HE king of Attolia was passing through his city, on
his way to the port to greet ambassadors newly arrived from distant
parts of the world. The king was a newcomer and a foreigner, king
only by virtue of a political marriage to the queen of Attolia and
still unfamiliar to most Attolians. They massed along the Sacred
Way to see him for themselves, as well as to cheer their queen, who
rode beside him in the open coach. One member of the crowd, a young
man with a broken nose, a lip twisted by scar tissue, and dirty
clothes that combined to suggest a person of violent and criminal
habits, had a particular need to get close. He was in the company
of an older man, unscarred, but no less shabby, who boosted him up
the side of a stone street marker that labeled the intersection of
the Sacred Way and one of the larger cross streets.

“Lift your right foot up another few inches. There’s
a chip out of the corner. Yes, that’s it. Are you secure? Can
you see?”

“Yes, I am set, and I can see. Stop nagging,” said
the younger man. With one foot on a narrow ledge and the other
pressed against the chipped indentation, he was high enough to wrap
his left hand around the narrow top of the marker. From this
vantage point, he could see easily over the heads of the people
gathered in the streets, and with a good grip for one hand, he had
the other free. They had chosen the marker the day before because
it offered a view up a long straight stretch of the Sacred Way and
he would have plenty of time to aim.

The crowds were growing thicker. The talk was loud, some of it
the usual complaints about the cost of cooking oil and good wine,
and the behavior of the young these days; some of it about the new
king. One and all disparaged his Eddisian background, but a few
grudging supporters mentioned his rumored love for their queen in
his favor. Such romantic stories were dismissed as foolish by the
more outspoken, but a few expressions softened. Latecomers eyed the
position on the street marker, but the older man defended the
approach to it with the unwitting assistance of a portly woman and
her gaggle of small children. They blocked the access of those who
might have thought they could share the high ground or force the
occupier of it to relinquish his spot. The only danger came from
one or two of the small children who tried to climb up. The younger
man stepped on a few fingers and apologized perfunctorily. The
woman gave him a dirty look but pulled her children down. As the
commotion uphill signaled the approach of the royal procession, the
children’s father appeared, pushing his way through the
crowd, wiping his hands on his dirty smock as he came. He swept up
two of the smallest of the children to his shoulders, and they all
watched for the arrival of the carriage bearing the king and
queen.

The young man, with his free hand, dipped into his pocket and
then lifted his hand to his mouth. He lowered his hand again but
this time took a thin tube from the other man standing below.

The king was visible now, sitting upright in the carriage beside
the queen. The carriage drew closer. The young man clinging to the
street marker took his aim, waited for the right moment, and with a
concentrated puff of air, fired the shot.

The pea hit the king on the cheek. He didn’t react, and
the small pellet dropped out of sight into his lap. He tilted his
head to murmur something to his wife, the queen. His assailant
waved and shouted the king’s name, just like everyone else in
the crowd, and when the king looked up, his eyes passed over his
attacker without pause.

The royal carriage rolled by. The young man dropped from the
stele.

“Did you hit him?” the older man asked.

“Yes,” said the younger.

“Did he see you?”

“If he did, he didn’t recognize me.”

His companion looked grim. “We’d better go,”
he said just as a woman’s voice said more loudly, “He
did what?”

Both of them turned a little too quickly to see the mother of
the brood of children with her hand on the littlest one’s
shoulder, the boy clutching her skirts. “Who did what
now?” asked the father wearily. But the woman wasn’t
angry with her son.

“He says that one—up there on the stele—he
shot something at the king and hit him in the face,” she
said. Her words drew unwelcome attention from those within hearing.
Other heads turned toward them.

“I did not—” The young man tried to deny the
accusation, but the woman was having none of his protest, and his
denial was abbreviated by a stinging smack from the older man, who
then seized him by the upper arm and shook him so hard his teeth
rattled.

“I cannot believe you!” the man shouted. “And
what your mother will say, I don’t know.” He swore with
venom and then apologized to the brood mother. “My
nephew,” he explained, “he breaks his poor
mother’s heart.” The mother nodded warily, only partly
satisfied.

“I never—” said the younger man sullenly, only
to be shaken again.

“You’ll shut your mouth and come home with
me,” snarled his companion.

The youth allowed himself to be dragged off, followed by the
approving nods of the witnesses, and complaining bitterly to his
“uncle” that he’d done nothing at all wrong. The
two men turned down the first cross street they reached and out of
sight of the crowd began to walk faster, the older man still
pulling the younger along by the arm.

“You know, I don’t think you’re allowed to
treat me like this,” the younger pointed out woefully. The
older man laughed.

“Gods protect us,” he said, “we can only hope
the little monster isn’t telling them right now that I handed
you the peashooter.”

They both glanced back. A small crowd of shadowy figures, black
against the sunlit street, appeared around the corner behind them,
the silhouettes of their skirts and smocks easy to identify.

“He told them,” said the younger man.

“Faster,” said the elder, and the two broke into a
run. Pursued by shouts, they raced down the street and around
another corner, and skidded to an abrupt halt, face to face with a
squad of the Royal Guard.

“Back! Back!” the older man shouted, revealing, in
his alarm, a Sounisian accent previously concealed. But their
retreat was already cut off by the people behind them. Through that
crowd came another squad of soldiers. Murmuring grew at the sight
of the Guard, the two men’s transgression exaggerated with
each retelling. “It was a poison dart they shot at the
king!” they heard a voice shout from the crowd.

There was a narrow space between two apartment houses, but it
was only an alcove to a door. The older man pushed the younger in
and turned to face the soldiers. The accent of Sounis now clear in
his voice, he warned them, “Your king doesn’t want us
dead.”

Hours later they sat locked in a dark cell under the palace. At
last they heard a door somewhere open with a bang and a light set
of footsteps approaching, followed by several more sets of
footsteps, all heavier, but moving as fast. The younger man jumped
to his feet, but the older, who stepped between him and the door,
was first to see the face of the king of Attolia when it
opened.

“We are uninjured,” the magus of Sounis quickly
reassured him.

“Thank the gods,” said the king. “I thought to
find you black and blue.”

“Indeed, we thought the same,” said the magus. He
exchanged a look with his companion that made them both laugh, and
he welcomed the king into his arms for a mutually crushing
embrace.

“I cannot stay, I am between audiences,” said
Eugenides, king of Attolia. “All the embassies from the
Continent seem to have arrived at the same time. With Eddis here as
well, we are scheduled every moment.” He looked at their
shabby clothes in puzzlement.

“We were traveling anonymously for safety—”
explained the magus.

“But surely—”

“—and then we were robbed on the road.”

“Ah,” said the king, “the danger in being
anonymous. Your novel approach made me think secrecy must be
important, so I told my captain nothing but that you were to be
conveyed quickly and quietly. I just learned that he had seen you
shooting peas in my face, and I am relieved not to find the two of
you hanging by your thumbs.”

“Your Majesty,” someone called from beyond the door,
“we must go.”

“Yes,” said the king before turning back to the
magus. “They will take you up to a room where you can get
clean, and perhaps have a view.” He looked around the tiny
stone-walled room. “I will give credit to Teleus on safety,
at least.”

The young man at the back of the cell snorted at that. The king
stepped around the magus to hug him fiercely. He then released him
but didn’t step away. Looking up, he examined the scarring on
his lip that lifted it into a slight sneer, and the broken nose.
“My god, you’ve been in the wars. Once you are clean
and have had some rest, I will want to hear all about where you
have been and why.” He pulled the younger man’s head
down and kissed him solidly on his forehead, saying seriously,
“Gods-all, I am glad to see you safe, Sophos.”

The young man smiled back. “Sounis,” he said, just
as someone called from the door.

The king looked away and then back, as if uncertain that he had
heard correctly. “What?”

“I am Sounis,” said the young man. “My uncle
is dead.”

All the king’s happiness was wiped away.
“You’re joking?” he suggested.

Bewildered, the younger king shook his head. “No, I am
Sounis.” He meant to make a remark about keeping a visiting
king locked in a cellar, but his own happiness faltered.

“Your Majesty, please,” the man in the passage
called again. The king of Attolia looked to the door, and then at
the magus, and then at the magus’s former apprentice, the new
king of Sounis.

“I’m sorry,” he said, and clearly meant it. He
grasped the younger man briefly by the sleeve, said “I am
sorry” again, and was gone, leaving the magus of Sounis and
his king standing alone, with the open door of their cell before
them.

Sounis turned to the magus. “He cannot think that I cared
about my uncle?”

“I think he was delighted to see you safe,” said the
magus, “and grieved that the next time you meet, it must be
as king and king and not as friends.”

“I hope that I will always be his friend,” said
Sounis.

“I know that he hopes so as well,” the magus assured
him. “But now, let us follow our escort to a bath, if you
please, and some food. You will need your strength, I think, to
answer many questions about where you have been and what has become
of you, since they saw you last.”

M
Y father sacked another tutor. I see that
doesn’t surprise you at all. Terve was my eighth. The magus
had been my seventh. My father and my uncle who was Sounis had sent
me to Letnos with Terve to separate me from the magus after the
ground-shaking set-to the three of them had had after my private
correspondence was discovered. Terve was an old army veteran. He
was to teach me riding and sword and military history and the hell
with anything else. I didn’t really mind. I liked Terve, and
he didn’t get in the way of my real studies. What he mainly
did was drink and tell war stories. In the mornings he oversaw my
sword training from a stump in the training yard with a wineskin in
his lap, tending to be overgenerous in his praise, unlike all my
previous tutors, shouting things like, “A natural! A
natural!” in between swallows of wine.

I did some riding on my own, though not with any real
discipline, and in the afternoon I studied as I pleased. By that
time Terve was well into his second amphora and would lie on a
couch in the study. He might suddenly shout, “You’re
being attacked by six men with swords!” or something similar,
and I would have to come up with a plan for my defense. He would
pick apart my answers and then drift off into another war story
until, eventually, he fell asleep. He was there, snoring quietly,
when my father arrived to check on my progress.

Terve was immediately replaced. A soldier from my father’s
guard was assigned to teach me sword work, and a hateful,
condescending bully named Sigis Malatesta was my new
tutor—from the Peninsula, as you can tell by the name,
supposedly educated at the University in Ferria. He had accompanied
my father to Letnos, so my father must have had some idea of
replacing Terve even before he found him on the couch, though
perhaps not with so much shouting.

I have no idea what my father saw in Malatesta. In the normal
run of things, he doesn’t give a bent pin for learning, but
he’d met Malatesta at the court of Sounis, and I suspect that
he thought hiring Malatesta would be a poke in the eye for the
magus, whom he has never liked. Years ago he sent me to be the
magus’s apprentice with the explicit hope that the
magus’s razor tongue would be the end of my intellectual
pretensions. When that didn’t work out as he intended, it
only made him dislike the magus more.