A Conspiracy of Kings (4 page)

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.

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.

My best hope for rescue wasn’t the king’s war
galleys or his soldiers. It was Baron Hanaktos’s daughter.
All night long I prayed earnestly to the goddesses of mercy to
intercede on my behalf and stir Berrone’s soft heart with
pity.

The next morning Gorgias and the slaver went off together after
Gorgias had first checked my chains and pulled tight the narrow
thongs that held the leather gag in place. “We are off to
arrange your sale,” he told me, and I knew that anyone who
heard would think I was soon for the galleys. Basrus, I thought,
was probably taking Gorgias along to carry all the gold my sale
would bring him.

We were left under supervision of the other slavers, and no
sooner were they gone than Berrone appeared. She had a servant with
her. She pointed me out to him and then retreated to a nearby
market stall while the servant approached the pens and gestured to
the slaver left in charge. He asked about me and was told I
wasn’t for sale. A bribe was offered. The guard declined, and
the servant went to check with Berrone. Thank the gods her
father’s allowance to her was so large. Back and forth
between the market stall and the guard the servant went, the bribe
no doubt growing with each iteration, until the slaver’s eyes
were so wide that when he looked over at me, their whites showed
all around.

Basrus was undone by his own secrecy. His guard knew no more
than that I was an unruly slave destined for the galleys. He could
keep half the money himself and still offer his master far more
than he thought I was worth, no doubt expecting his master to be
pleased. I could almost hear the resulting curses from the slaver.
Best of all, I didn’t think that the guard had seen Berrone.
With luck, the slaver wouldn’t know who bought me and
couldn’t track me down before I reached the safety of
Hanaktos’s megaron. All that mattered was that the deal was
done before Basrus returned.