A Conspiracy of Kings (3 page)

“We can go up through the olive grove to the road,”
said my mother.

“No.” I shook my head again. “There might be
more lookouts in the trees,” I said. It was Terve’s
observation from the year before. “It will be better to hide
in the icehouse until they are gone.” That was my solution.
The entranceway beside us might have been bolted from the inside,
but it wasn’t, because the house wasn’t defended even
from thievery. There’d never been a need.

Once inside, we barred the door behind us and went down the
stairs and across the straw that covered the ice. We were
underneath the steward’s office. Another set of stairs led up
to a door that had a lock to keep servants out of the valuable ice.
It was also unlocked. The key would be hanging in the
steward’s room beside the kitchen.

I told my mother, my sisters, and the maids to wait in the
icehouse. I found the key and locked them in, then slid the key
under the door to my mother. They were hidden, and they were safe.
I went to rally the servants, and my ideal plan, painstakingly
worked out with Terve, came to an immediate, ruinous end.

The kitchen, too, had its own doors to the outside, to provide
easy access to the kitchen gardens and the fruit trees. The room
was full of servants. Everyone who had avoided the mysterious
attackers had gathered there. I looked for Malatesta and, when I
didn’t see him, jumped to the worst conclusion.

There were no guards. Eurydice had been correct about the bodies
she had seen. I could hear raised voices from the porch at the top
of the house, and I knew that the latch on my mother’s door
had given way.

I shouted over the babble in the kitchen, “We must rally
here and fight our way into the main house,” and the babble
was replaced by dead silence.

They looked at me like sheep. Or rather, like goats—just
that look a goat gives you when it has decided not to cooperate and
knows you can’t make it. Suddenly, I was me again, just me,
the weakling who cried when his tutor whipped his fingers with a
switch.

“We have to rally here and fight,” I said again, and
my voice cracked. Some of the servants slipped out the door toward
the orchards. “Won’t you fight? I’ve killed two
already,” I said to those who were left. Their eyes dropped.
More of them sidled out the door. From the house there was no more
crashing, but more shouting. They’d found my mother’s
room empty. They were fanning out again to search.

“He’s here!” The cook rushed to the door to
the courtyard, shouting up toward my mother’s balcony. I
lunged after him in horror. Someone grabbed at my arm, and I
disengaged him with my blade. Even rusted, it bit deep. I swung it
again, and those around me fell back, but the cook was still
shouting to the intruders that their prize was waiting for them
like a complete idiot, in the kitchen, surrounded by the people
he’d thought would help him. I tried to back myself toward
the door to the outside, but it was much too late to think
strategically. A wall suddenly appeared on my left, rushing toward
me. I turned, uncomprehending, and raised my sword, but it did
little good against what turned out to be a table turned on end. By
the time I understood what was happening, I was falling backward.
No one, not even Pol, had ever taught me how to fight off a
table.

I
lay on the dirt, my hands tied behind me, my feet
tied, and a bag over my head. The bag was coarsely woven and I
could see a little through it. The day was bright. Men were moving
around. If I hadn’t had something that smelled like a dishrag
in my mouth, I would have cursed them. Impulses of rage swept over
me, and I kicked with both feet and struggled against the ropes,
but I never hit anything, and the ropes were unrelentingly
tight.

The servants had disarmed me neatly by squashing me flat with
the table and then standing on my sword blade until someone could
pry my fingers off the handle. “Sorry,” they whispered,
“sorry,” through the gaps in the tabletop. I screamed
at them every curse I’d ever practiced when I was alone,
trying to imitate the Thief of Eddis, but I doubt I sounded
anything but hysterical. When the men who had attacked the villa
came in, the servants melted back against the walls. Someone pulled
the table off me, and a few minutes later I was tied top and
bottom, but still shouting, which is when I received the wet
dishcloth in my mouth, followed by the bag over my head.

With my own voice muffled, I could hear the men around me
clearly. They hadn’t found my mother and my sisters.

“All right,” said a voice obviously in charge,
“kill all the servants and fire the building.”

They’d carried me away, screaming into the cloth stuffing
my mouth, and tied me, stomach down, onto the back of a donkey that
had gone at an agonizing trot for long enough that I’d lost
track of time, thinking of my mother and my sisters and the maids
patiently waiting for me in the cool dark of the ice cellar,
unaware of their danger until the burning villa above crashed in
upon them. We reached an unknown stopping point, where I was lifted
down and left on the ground while people carried on with some
business nearby.

“He’s still kicking,” someone commented above
me. “I am surprised. I thought he was more like our Hyacinth
here.”

I froze and heard someone, Hyacinth, I had no doubt, gasp in
horror. It was certainly his voice I heard next. “You were
not to tell him!”

I thought of Malatesta, whom I had accused in my head of being a
traitor to my family. He was probably dead at the villa, while
Hyacinth had never even crossed my mind.

Several people above laughed. The first voice I had heard, and
the one who ordered the firing of the villa, said, “There,
that has stopped him kicking.” The voice was closer, as if he
were bending over me, and I sat up as quickly as I could, hoping
that the hard part of my head might connect with his face, but
either I missed, or he jumped back in time. I hit nothing and had
to drop back to the ground, my stomach aching.

The men around me laughed again. “Get that thing off his
head,” their leader said.

Once the hood was off and the gag out of my mouth, I could see
that I was near the shore, on a level spot on a hillside, looking
over the water. Behind me, the hill rose higher. Below me, it
steepened and dropped to the ring road that circled the island. In
the distance, down the coast, I could see the curve of the headland
that hid the city of Letnos.

There were more people around me than I had expected, and they
seemed to be making no effort at concealment. I glanced quickly at
each of them, still expecting Malatesta, but there was no sign of
him. I should have looked for their leader, but I was caught
staring at Hyacinth, who was nearby wringing his hands. “You
helped them?”

“Not by much,” said the heavyset man on my left. His
was the voice I had heard giving orders. “He described the
villa for us and told us where the family was most likely to be at
that time of the day.”

“He wasn’t supposed to know,” Hyacinth cheeped
pathetically. Turning to me, he said, “I didn’t want
you to know. You didn’t have to.”

“I see,” I said calmly. “Can I get
up?”

The stocky man lifted me to my feet easily. He turned out to be
somewhat shorter than I was, once I was standing. His skin was dark
and rough from long days spent in the open. He was about my
father’s age and showed signs of a similar life of violence.
He crouched to cut through the ropes around my ankles, then lifted
the rope to the bonds on my wrists and hesitated. “There are
too many of us to fight, young prince.”

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.

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.