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.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
IN 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 acto
r 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.
I escaped to the baths with just Nomenus, who had come with us from Brimedius to attend me. I’d washed in my rooms in Brimedius and hadn’t had a real bath since I’d left Attolia. I hid in the steam room until I was too light-headed to care anymore what the Elisians were going to make of me. After the plunge, Nomenus was waiting with a robe.
“Your Majesty,” he said as he wrapped me in it, “I believe you are most welcome here.”
I twisted to look him in the face, but he dropped his eyes.
“I did not mean to offend Your Majesty.”
“No, you didn’t,” I said, grateful for the reassurance.
When I reached my rooms, everything was carefully arranged, all my finery in the wardrobes and my luggage cases cleared away. Sitting on a table by the window was the box from Attolia. I ran my hand across the bowed top, and then flipped open the latch and lifted the lid, to see if the gun was still inside. It lay untouched within its velvet-covered bolster. One gun, against Akretenesh and all my rebellious barons. Akretenesh knew how insignificant it was. How insignificant I was. I wondered if my sisters had been in Brimedius after all, watching me from a window as I rode away. I wondered where the magus was. There had been no sign of him, and I had had no word from my father.
I thanked the three or four servants in the rooms with me for their work. They smiled, maybe not just in politeness, and I sent them on their way. I sent Nomenus away as well and sat on a stool in front of the table, staring at the gun for a long time.
In the morning I met with the first of my barons. It was their right to speak to me before the vote, and they wouldn’t give it up. There was a protocol—Xorcheus first, as his was the oldest created barony, and then, after him, all the other barons in the order of their creations. A baron could choose to bring another baron, lower in seniority, with him. The more senior barons usually make some money selling off the privilege, but Xorcheus came alone. I think he would have skipped the entire process if he could have. He had a small property of almost no significance, and I got the impression that he wished we all would just go away and leave him to it.
He grunted a greeting when he was ushered into the room and didn’t know whether he would bow or not. I imagined asking for a full obeisance face down on the floor, and just the vision I produced in my own head helped me relax a little in my chair and wave him to sit before he made a decision we both would have to live with.
We were in a long, narrow room on the ground floor. I had asked to have the chairs moved as far away as possible from the shuttered window, but I had no way of knowing who was out on the terrace, listening for any word he might catch. Akretenesh had chosen the room. It had murals painted in panels between the timbers that supported the upper floors. Winter, Spring, Summer, and Fall, four beautiful women carrying baskets of fruit or flowers, or, in the case of Winter, bundles of spindling branches. All of them with their backs to me, which I didn’t take for a particularly encouraging omen.
Akretenesh, as “mediator,” was with us. He would be in every meeting as I tried to convince my barons not just to elect me king but to make me king without a regent. He didn’t say anything. He knew that the rebels weren’t likely to cooperate. The whole object of their rebellion had been to seize the king’s authority for themselves. That they had started an all-out civil war by accident didn’t mean that they would give up their prizes.
The loyalists wouldn’t be much more easily convinced. My barons knew where I had been, that I had been abducted and had hidden in Hanaktos’s fields, and that I had gone to Attolia to negotiate a surrender. The Medes looked better and better to them all the time.
So I talked myself hoarse. First to Xorcheus and then to the rest of my barons, one at a time or in small groups. I went over, again and again, my arrangements with Attolia, the loss of the islands but the end of the war. I had practiced my arguments on the magus as we rode from Attolia and polished them in the tent at night. I had gone over them again while I was a prisoner in Brimedius. I was determined to convince the barons to end their revolt without bloodshed. So I explained the advantages of peace and trade. I swore up and down that the Attolians would have no hand in our governance, only a promise of our loyalty and our support if they were ever attacked.
And my conversations all seemed to go awry. Was it true that I would swear an oath of allegiance to Attolia? I said no, that I would swear to Attolis, but that made little difference to them. They didn’t like the Thief of Eddis any better as an overlord. There was nothing impossible in what I was saying. My arguments were good, but my barons would have to trust me, and they wouldn’t. They looked from me to the Mede and back again. Then they said polite things and excused themselves.
Akretenesh watched, amused.
There was no point in trying to tell the barons the things that the magus had taught me, the way the Medes had dealt with their “allies” in the past. They weren’t interested in history lessons. I knew that my uncle who was Sounis had set his barons against one another in order to keep them weak. I knew that he had used his army to threaten anyone who dared disagree with him. They hadn’t liked him, they had lived their lives wondering when he would turn on them, but that was what they expected a king to be. I wasn’t nearly intimidating enough.
I told them how things work in Eddis and tried to show them that there is a rule of law that is better than backbiting and self-interest as a means to run a state. My idealistic words made Xorcheus uncomfortable. They made the rest of the barons contemptuous.
At the end of one day, when I had worked my way through almost half the barons and was tripping over my tongue, so tired was I of talking, Nomenus came to the door of the audience room.
“I thought that was the last for now, Nomenus,” I said.
“It’s your father, Your Majesty. He has arrived from the north, and he asks an audience.”
I stood up and went to greet my father at the door. He wrapped me in a hug as fierce as the one he’d given me as I slid from the back of his horse outside Hanaktos’s megaron. I swallowed. So much depended on him. I had left him under attack by Hanaktos and gone to surrender to Attolia, and I had no idea what he thought of me.
“Won’t you come sit down?” I said, and we crossed the room together.
“Ambassador,” my fat
her said, and reached out to take Akretenesh’s hand. “Won’t you join us?” So the three of us settled into chairs facing one another.
“This business of surrendering to Attolia. I am not at ease,” my father said.
I shrugged. “You have heard all the arguments already from the magus.”
My father nodded and rolled his eyes. “That man bent my ear mercilessly. He never stopped for an instant.” He looked at Akretenesh. “Your empire has a history of absorbing its allies the way a tide overcomes a tide pool.”
Akretenesh smiled comfortably, and I felt like a child again, watching from the corners while the adults talked. I couldn’t tell from my father’s brief comment when he had last seen the magus. I could only hope that the magus had made his way safely to meet my father after the battle near Brimedius. I didn’t dare ask.
Akretenesh was speaking. “I know how things can change their appearance when seen from a distance. Our allies have become part of our empire by their own choice because it was to their advantage. But Sounis does not lie on our borders, the way they did, and cannot be integrated so easily into our system of provinces. Your case is quite different, I assure you.”
My father nodded and looked around the room. “At any rate,” he said, “I can see that all goes well here.” To me he said, “You need have no worries. You will be king one way or another.” Then he patted me on the knee and stood up, saying that he had to see to his men.
That evening I stood at the window looking at the amphitheater in the moonlight. Nomenus was tidying the room behind me and laying out my nightclothes. The night was cool. The armies waiting for their barons’ return, on the inland side of the hills, would be baking in the heat, but Elisa, high in the hills, caught the sea breeze. I listened to the creak of the night insects and watched the leaves flutter against the white marble of the amphitheater that seemed to glow in the reflected light, and I wondered what my father thought of me.