A Conspiracy of Kings (11 page)

“Conyx is dead,” said a voice in the dark.

“Troyus as well.”

No one had seen the others fall. If they were wounded, they
would be cared for. If they were wealthy, they might eventually be
ransomed or bargained for in other ways if events went against
Hanaktos. If events went for Hanaktos, they might someday be in the
very barracks I had left, working for Ochto, building stone walls
in my place.

Unexpectedly my father swiveled in the saddle, bringing one arm
over my head and seizing me in a bear hug. His arms locked around
me, and mine around him, although on my part it might have been
less affection and more a result of being dragged off-balance and
in great danger of falling off the horse. The beleaguered animal
sidestepped uncomfortably. I tightened my hold on my father a
little further, swung my leg free, and, as he reluctantly released
me, dropped to the ground. My father caught me by the hand as I
slipped down and held it while he looked into my face, making out
what he could in the darkness.

“I will kill the man who did this,” he swore.
“With my own hands I will kill him.”

I laughed. My father might kill Baron Hanaktos, but I had no
doubts that the cunning slaver was long gone.

W
E rode into the middle of the armed camp just before
dawn. On foot, feeling my way through familiar fields and groves of
trees, I had led my father’s men in a game of cat and mouse
across Hanaktos’s land. Unable to find us on the main road,
our pursuers soon retreated to the megaron. When we’d covered
enough distance to hide the sound of our hoof-beats, I had mounted
one of the spare horses, and we had ridden inland, first picking
our way slowly in the dark and then moving faster when the moon
rose.

As we dismounted, I found myself seized by my father’s
men. Grateful for their escape, they nearly squeezed the life out
of me and thumped me on the back until I staggered. My father tore
me free and pulled me toward the open doorway of a well-lit tent.
In silhouette, I saw a man I would recognize in any light and threw
myself at him in delight, shouting, “Magus, you are
returned!”

“I returned?” he said. “It is you who
are—”

When he stopped, I knew the light from the tent had fallen on my
face.

“Dear gods all above and around us,” the magus said,
staring at me. Measuring myself against him, I realized we now saw
eye to eye. I had not seen him since I was exiled to Letnos, and
he’d been forbidden to write to me. All I had heard of him
had been rumors, first that he was an Attolian traitor, then that
he was an Eddisian one, which I had dismissed as ridiculous. I had
never doubted him, and suspected from the beginning that Eugenides
might have had a hand in his disappearance. I hadn’t realized
how much I had counted on the magus to solve all of Sounis’s
problems until I realized we stood shoulder to shoulder and he was
not in fact larger than life.

He grabbed me and held me tight. I had to pull myself away
before I began to blubber like a baby. Fortunately he deferred to
my dignity and let me go. He turned to my father. “Thank the
heavens you have rescued him.”

“Backward to the facts, as usual,” my father said as
he swept the magus and me into the tent ahead of him. “He has
rescued us and brought us safely out of Hanaktos’s
trap.”

“It
was
a trap.”

My father said testily, “I told you that we had little
choice but to try. Hanaktos holds the bargaining power. Melenze is
Ferria’s dog, and their fee for aiding us will be the
Melenze–Sounis pass, which they are filling as we
speak.”

From which I gathered that Melenze was assembling its army on
our northern border and offering to come to save us from Attolia.
No doubt they wanted the port of Haptia back as well, to be the
final link in their trade route from the center of the Continent to
the Middle Sea.

“And what cost doing business with Hanaktos?”
snapped the magus. “Even if he hadn’t spitted you? Our
entire country the lapdog of the Medes?”

“Always yapping about the Medes. What have they to do with
Hanaktos?” responded my father. “I have said already,
the Medes are too far away to rule over us with any attention. Let
them have their tribute, and they will leave us to
ourselves.”

“I have told you, the Medes will wipe us out of
existence!” insisted the magus. “As they have every
other nation with which they have ‘allied.’”

Clearly Father and the magus had had no rapprochement in my
absence.

“Hanaktos held my wife and my daughters and my son,”
my father said. “Tell me, then, how shall I not deal with
him?”

“H-he didn’t have me,” I stuttered. “I
was under his nose, but he didn’t know it.” My mind
raced. Perhaps help had arrived after Basrus carried me off.
Perhaps the fire had been put out before it was too late. “My
mother and sisters are not dead?”

“They are hostage,” said my father heavily,
“held by rebels who have some connection with Hanaktos, who
claimed that he wants no more part in this rebellion, only the
settling of it. He offered a mediation and restoration of
Sounis.”

“He is in league with the Medes,” said the
magus.

“You have no proof,” my father countered while I was
still reeling at the idea that Eurydice and Ina and my mother were
somewhere living and not dead in the destruction of the villa on
Letnos. It was a moment before I paid more attention to the
exchange of fire between my father and the magus. They were deep
into what was obviously a familiar rut.

“Surely this is my uncle’s decision,” I
pointed out. Their argument cut off more sharply than I
anticipated.

My father said, “Your uncle is dead.”

The magus said, “You are Sounis.”

I
should have stayed in Hanaktos and built walls.
“More than a month ago,” the magus said when I asked
him how long it had been since the death of my uncle. “Sounis
had a fever before a day of hard riding and died that
night.”

The magus and my father had told no one except a few officers.
To the men in the army they had said the king was elsewhere,
raising more forces.

“Your Majesty”—the magus addressed me, and I
flinched—“we are near to being overwhelmed by Eddis and
Attolia. They only wait for us to be at our weakest. We have lost
the navy and most of the islands. Eddis has fortified the ground at
the base of the Irkes pass. The Mede emperor and the prince of
Melenze are also waiting. There is a chance that if Melenze knew
your uncle who was Sounis had died, they would not wait to make an
alliance with us; they would attack.”

“Attolia and Melenze will tear us apart between
them,” said my father, and got a glare for it from the
magus.

“We need to make an alliance with Melenze before the news
gets out,” said the magus while I stared at him like a
pilchard.

“We need to make an alliance with the Medes before war
breaks out between Melenze and Attolia with us in the
middle,” my father said more forcefully.

“The Medes,” the magus countered, trying to keep his
temper, “started this rebellion, direct this rebellion, and
nearly saw you dead tonight!” He pinched his nose and drew a
deep breath. He said to my father, “Hanaktos will be on your
heels.”

“Hanaktos, thanks to my son, doesn’t know where we
are.” He told the magus of our trip through the dark.

“Thanks to His Majesty,” the magus said, and my
father seemed startled at the correction but not displeased. On the
contrary, he suddenly looked much like Ina when she has all her
embroidery threads arranged to her satisfaction. He looked so
pleased that I checked over my shoulder to see if there might be
someone else behind me who had drawn his attention.

“Your Majesty,” said the magus deferentially, trying
to restart the conversation. “I am sorry to put you in this
position, but I believe Hanaktos might still attack.”

“He has no idea where we are!” my father argued.

“The Mede will have told him!” said the magus.

“The Mede again!” my father said, throwing up his
hands.

“The Mede what?” said a voice behind me. “What
will I have told whom?”

I spun around to see a man standing in the open doorway of the
tent. Only the lack of reaction from my father and the magus
stopped me from jumping at his throat. He was clearly a Mede.

“Aah,” he said in theatrical delight. “The
rumors running around the camp are true: Your lost lamb has been
found.”

Then he looked at the magus and said pointedly,
“Won’t you please present me to your king?,”
confirming that he’d been listening outside the tent and had
heard everything that had been said within. Which is a reason you
should not discuss important business in a tent or at least should
keep your voices down if you do, as my father and the magus
emphatically had not. The Mede was pleased at the magus’s
discomfort, and his saturnine smile showed it.

The magus stiffly said, “Your Majesty, permit me to
present the ambassador Akretenesh from His most Excellent and
Sovereign Majesty Ghaznuvidas, emperor of the Mede.”

Good thing that I hadn’t strangled him, I thought.

“I am most honored, Your Majesty,” said Akretenesh,
with a deep bow.

“You are welcome, Your Excellency,” I said, tilting
my head, probably a little too far. “I am of course
gratified, though very surprised, to receive you in
such”—I couldn’t think of a diplomatic word and
settled for—“unusual circumstances.”

“Allow me to say, and to speak for my master when I do,
how pleased we are to be introduced to you in any circumstances. We
are delighted that you are found safe and returned to your anxious
parent.”

He turned to my father then. “And your wife and daughters
are as well, I trust?”

“No,” said my father. “It was a trap.”
He told him of Hanaktos’s treachery.

The Mede was horrified, stopping just short of saying that it
was the sort of thing one could expect from barbarians like us. He
asked how my father intended to free my mother and sisters, and my
father had no answer except, “They do not matter. Only Sounis
is important.”

I glared at him, but he would not meet my eye.

“Indeed,” the Mede murmured, forfeiting any
tolerance I might have had for him. He turned to me and said
earnestly, “Your Majesty, you can count on our support. We
have the ships to patrol your coast and to retake your islands from
Attolia. We have the armies to aid you here on land. With our help,
you can be secure on your throne.”

I said, “Our thanks, Excellency. I believe we would
benefit more from your gold…as Attolia did.”

Akretenesh’s expression didn’t change, but it was a
hit. We both knew that the Mede emperor had provided gold to
Attolia, thinking he was buying control over her country from a
foolish queen. If he had been successful, Akretenesh wouldn’t
have been in a tent in the dark with me, offering his
emperor’s support. Instead, Attolia would be a subject state,
invading us with those very same Mede armies at her back.

“Permit me to say that your youth is refreshing, Your
Majesty, but perhaps it should be tempered by experience. Will you
have a regent?”

“Nonsense,” said my father.

“Surely he is not confirmed king? Not yet elected by your
barons?”

It’s true that the kings in Sounis are confirmed in a
meeting of all the barons, but I was the appointed heir. My father
explained that in such cases, the Barons’ Meet was a
formality.

He extolled my many virtues in the fight at Hanaktos and the
escape afterward. A year earlier I would have been gratified.
Contrariwise, all I felt was resentment at being talked of as if I
were a tent pole. Behind my father, the magus was signaling. He
hadn’t liked my comment about the Attolian gold, and he
didn’t want me pricking the ambassador.

“He is a fine king already!” my father said in
conclusion.

Eyeing the magus, I demurred. “His Excellency may be
right, Father,” I said. The magus nodded, and my father
stared at me.

“Perhaps the right regent,” hinted the magus.

My father opened his mouth to call me a fool and froze. As the
magus had pointed out earlier, I was his king. His ambitions had
elevated me beyond his dictatorial control. He turned on the magus
instead. “This is your doing,” he snarled. “You
have corrupted him with your incessant nattering. Next he will say
that we go to Melenze.”

“I do,” I said. “I do say we should go to
Melenze. You will take the army north immediately.”

That was the bitter end of my brief moment in the sunshine of my
father’s affection. It was also the beginning of a shouting
match between the magus and my father that could be heard on the
other side of the camp, never mind the other side of the tent
walls.

My father accused the magus of manipulating me and of being a
power-hungry monster. The magus called my father beef witted and
lamented the combination of his dim wits and his short temper. All
this in front of the Mede ambassador. My father has always been
prone to temper, and the magus acid-tongued, but they were like
schoolboys. I hardly knew the magus. I feared I had made a terrible
mistake following his lead, and Akretenesh didn’t help,
spreading oil on the waters only to set fire to it.

I didn’t know what to do. I stood there indecisive, until
suddenly the magus fell silent and seemed to be staring intently at
the ground. So strange was his behavior that even my father paused
in his diatribe. The magus looked up, and his face was almost
purple. He took a single explosive breath, the color drained out of
his face, and he fell at my feet.

“Magus!” I squealed, and dropped to my knees beside
him. I shouted at my father to call the camp physician and cradled
the magus’s head. His color was better, but he was
insensible. I ignored the Mede ambassador’s hastily excusing
himself and listened for a heartbeat. I sighed in relief when I
heard it and then waited impatiently for the physician.