A Conspiracy of Kings (23 page)

He was still watching me, looking for some sign that there might
be a message in the text, but I am an idiot, and all that showed on
my face, I am sure, was that I wanted to kill him.

We were interrupted then by Baron Hanaktos, who was immediately
unhappy to see the letter from Eddis in the Mede’s hand.

“I didn’t bring that here so that you could deliver
it,” he said gruffly.

“Oh, why
did
you bring it?” I
asked harshly, and the baron flushed. I almost smiled at his
discomfort. No doubt I looked like a clod, putting on pretensions
to cover my impotence, but the baron bowed and apologized. He
insisted that his only concern was for treachery on the part of
Attolia. I said that I understood completely. He said that he hoped
that the sad rupture in our relationship would heal, and I
pretended that I hadn’t been attacked in my own home,
listened as my servants were killed, and served as a slave on his
estates. In short, I acted as if my family were just then being
held as hostage for my good behavior.

We all mouthed our parts in the play; then we went in to
dinner.

If the baron and I were bad actors, there was an inexplicable
tension between Akretenesh and the baron as well. I wondered if the
baron was beginning to change his estimation of his allies. He was
unhappy about something, and all through the dinner there was a
conversation I couldn’t follow in obscure references and dark
looks.

Hanaktos only stayed for the one night. He left again in the
morning, and an exchange I overheard from an open hallway above the
pronaos made me think the issue, whatever it was, was still
unresolved. Akretenesh and Hanaktos were standing in the open
doorway of the megaron. Their voices carried clearly.

“You will not put me aside,” said Hanaktos.

“I assure you that nothing has changed,” said
Akretenesh.

He might have said more, but Nomenus was with me. I could not
ask him to quiet his footsteps so that I might eavesdrop.
Akretenesh and Hanaktos heard him and fell silent.

When he was gone, Akretenesh came inside to compliment me on my
company manners. I suspected that the visit had been his own
personal test of his control over me and that I had passed. I
excused myself and spent the morning practicing with
Attolia’s handgun.

That afternoon I had nothing new to read and no patience for
rereading. Idly I picked over a plate of food. I paced. I hummed
the chorus’s opening song from Prolemeleus’s
City of Reason
and stood looking out the window
for a long time. As I considered the landscape, it finally occurred
to me that it would be an odd apricot tree that would be producing
fruit in Eddis so far out of season.

I was lucky to be alone as I subsequently recalled the time when
Eugenides, the magus, and I were escaping Attolia. Eugenides had
been growing more and more distant as the blood leaked through his
bandages, staining the shirt I had loaned him. I had been desperate
to hold his attention, afraid he would fade away altogether.

I remembered asking him if he could be anywhere at that moment
where it would be and he’d predictably said in his own bed.
He had described with longing the soft linens and the carved image
of the Sacred Mountain on the footboard with such loving detail
that it came to mind easily. The magus had wished to see the king
of Sounis marry the queen of Eddis, and I, not unlike Gen, had
longed to be home, under a ripening apricot tree, with my
sisters.

If I hadn’t been such an idiot, and so angry at
Akretenesh, he would have known, I am sure, that he had erred in
teasing me with the letter. I would have perceived the message
suggested by the text, and my face would have given me away.

There was no sign of my mother and sisters in Brimedius. I had
circumnavigated the megaron for what felt like a thousand times,
searching for a sign of their presence, and had seen nothing. I had
begun to wonder if they had been moved elsewhere. Akretenesh
insisted that he saw them each day, even bringing me verbal
messages that did seem like Ina, but if he had lost his hostages,
he would hardly want me to know.

I all but hooted with delight.

Was it wishful thinking? I had to ask myself. It might have been
only that, but I had watched Akretenesh underestimate the queens of
Attolia and Eddis, and I wouldn’t do the same to Ina. And
whether my mother and sisters were safe in Eddis or not, there was
nothing more I could do in Brimedius. I chose to believe that I had
come to rescue my mother and sisters, and they had already rescued
themselves.

I waited four long days before suggesting to Akretenesh that if
it was true that the Medes would make me king, I would be pleased
to see some sign of it. He accepted my capitulation with typical
arrogance, and within the week, we were riding toward Elisa to the
Barons’ Meet, where I would face my barons and they would
vote whether I was going to be king or not.

I
N Sounis only the barons hold the power to confirm a
candidate as king. Of course their meetings have happened in all
sorts of places, including on a battlefield surrounded by corpses
in the case of Sounis Peliteus, but the official, dedicated, and
sacred space is Elisa, on the coast, not far from the capital
city.

The barons meet under truce. This is supposed to have something
to do with the blessing of the gods and such, but I think
it’s more likely to be a matter of practicality. If every
time they came together to name a king, the barons brought their
armies, there wouldn’t be a place big enough to hold the
horses, much less all the men. When a group of Mede soldiers
materialized around us as we traveled, I piously mentioned to
Akretenesh the very sacred nature of the truce and the risk of
angering the gods.

I wasn’t surprised that he had brought a small army to
Sounis. It was just what I expected of him, but I didn’t want
them tramping through the sacred precinct of Elisa. He assured me
that we would leave his soldiers in Tas-Elisa, the nearby port town
that served the sacred site. That, too, was just what I expected of
him. On the one hand, he wanted to do nothing that would compromise
my legitimacy as king, and on the other, the road from the port was
one of only two serviceable roads to Elisa. I wondered how he would
close off the other.

Once Akretenesh was confident that I understood that my only
hope of becoming king was through his intervention, he had sent a
message to Baron Brimedius, who in turn sent word to one and all to
come to the sacred meeting. Akretenesh could have installed me by
force, but he wanted no messy disagreements about legality to arise
later. He wanted me legitimated by the council of the barons, so
that all authority would rest in me, and I would rest securely in
the palm of his hand.

He seemed confident of success. To be confirmed, I needed a
golden majority, two-thirds of those present, plus one more baron.
Akretenesh controlled the rebel votes, though we continued to
maintain the pretense that he was a neutral mediator. As the magus
and my father had lost ground in the spring campaign, their allies
had parted company with them, but that still left more than a third
of the barons not directly under Akretenesh’s sway. My
father’s loyalists could still disrupt the vote, but the
ambassador didn’t seem worried.

He had to believe that my father would support me, no matter how
clear it was that I was to be a puppet of the Mede. He probably had
good reason. Given my father’s opinion of me, he might prefer
the arrangement.

On the road Akretenesh brought up the subject of a regent. I was
very young, and I had been in seclusion on Letnos for some time, he
said; my barons did not know me well and would be more comfortable
if a reliable man were to serve as my guide. I was not surprised.
Arrangements have always been made before the meets to secure
votes. A new king will promise a minister’s position to a
baron or offer a smaller office to the baron’s nephew or son.
It’s done all the time. Akretenesh had been informing me
delicately of who my ministers would be, and I was listening for
the name Hanaktos. It hadn’t come up yet. When he raised the
issue of a regent, I thought I knew why.

“Baron Comeneus, Your Majesty, would be a fine man for the
office.”

I was surprised. Akretenesh thought I was reacting to the idea
of a regent and was prepared to soothe my ruffled feathers. When
soothing, Akretenesh was at his most infuriating. It was better to
ignore him, and I did, concentrating my thoughts on Hanaktos. Had I
overestimated his importance to the Medes? Was Comeneus truly the
leader of this rebellion, and Hanaktos only a follower? It was
Hanaktos’s man who had carried out my abduction, it was done
at his orders, and I was taken to Hanaktos afterward. How could he
not
be one of the rebellion’s leaders?
But why wasn’t he in line for some repayment, a
minister’s position, if not prime minister? Perhaps
Akretenesh
had
set him aside.

Akretenesh went on assuring me that I would be a fine and
powerful king someday, and I went on ignoring him as I turned this
idea over and over in my head.

There are five roads into the sacred city of Elisa, which sits
high in the hills above the sea. Three come from inland and two
from the coast. Of the coast roads, only one is of any use. It runs
between the port of Tas-Elisa and the sacred site. The other coast
road ends in Oneia, which is just a scatter of houses on an exposed
cliff top with a narrow slice of stony beach at its foot.

Of the inland routes, the widest is the King’s Road, which
leads to the city of Sounis. It comes into the sacred site from the
opposite direction of the Tas-Elisa Road, so if one wants to go by
land from Tas-Elisa to the city of Sounis, one must first climb all
the way up to the valley in the hills and then go down along the
King’s Road from there.

The other two routes come over the hills from behind Elisa and
are mere tracks. They might be as wide as a wagon, but you
couldn’t move one on them. No doubt, on the inland side of
the hills where they were wider, they were lined with the camps of
armies that had been left there by the barons as they came to the
meet.

Tas-Elisa is a small town with a reasonable harbor and several
far more serviceable roads out to the hinterlands. It was half a
day’s ride from there up to Elisa. As good as his word,
Akretenesh billeted his men outside the town. He would have his men
ready to hand if the truce was broken, and he also neatly blocked
anyone else who might intend to bring an army through that way.

There was only one other route sufficiently wide enough to move
an army quickly into Elisa.

“And the King’s Road?” I asked.

“Baron Hanaktos will leave his men there,” said
Akretenesh.

We arrived at Elisa as the sun set. The great theater sits in a
natural curve of the hills, and the best view of it from a distance
is on the coast road. No one knows when Elisa’s slopes were
first terraced and lined with marble seats, but the temple keeps
lists of the plays performed here during the spring and fall
festivals, and they go back hundreds of years, all the way back to
when the plays were performed in the archaic language on the open
orchestral ground in front of the seats.

There is a stage now, built over rooms for storage space and
costume changes, but the actors still come down to the open space
in front of the seats. Each play has some special speech set there
to take advantage of the miracle of Elisa’s design. Standing
in the right place, an actor can speak his lines in a whisper and
be heard all the way to the back rows of seats.

If I had my say, all the plays would be performed in the old
way, and there would be no stage. The building across the open side
of the amphitheater spoils the view across the valley and over the
lower hills between Elisa and the sea. I admit, though, that I am
as delighted as anyone else when an actor in the role of a god is
lowered onto the stage and even more so when he disappears through
a trapdoor and then emerges from the doorway below to continue his
lines. Those sorts of effects cannot happen with only the open
ground to perform on.

Scattered at the base of the amphitheater in no particular order
are the rest of the buildings: dormitories, villas, temples, and a
stadium all hidden among the trees. Below them is the town. During
festivals, the overflow of the crowds lived in tents, but there
would not be so many for the barons’ council. I was certainly
not headed for a tent. We rode directly to the king’s
compound, where we were met by the steward and servants who were
waiting to pay their respects.

I was sick with trepidation—and this at the necessity of
meeting the servants, never mind my barons. But these weren’t
the lackeys at Brimedius; they were people who knew me as the heir
of Sounis. I had come here every year for as long as I could
remember to see the plays. I could measure my chance of success in
their reaction when I arrived. When I climbed down from my horse, I
wasn’t sure my knees would hold me. I would rather be beaten
again at Hanaktos’s whipping post than relive that
introduction.

The steward was very polite. He welcomed me in exactly the words
I had heard him use to my uncle, while I listened for the contempt
I was afraid I would hear in his voice. When he was finished, he
and all the servants bowed together. Then he introduced the senior
members of the staff. I knew many of them and said gracious things
and tried to memorize the names I did not know. I was looking to
see some sign that they despised me, and not seeing it, I was
convincing myself that I was blind. I was honestly grateful when
Akretenesh suggested that I was fatigued and might wish to have a
bath while my rooms were readied.