A Conspiracy of Kings by Megan Whalen Turner Read Free Book Online Page B

correctly, not
considering if anyone would hear or care what I said. There was an
uncomfortable silence before the speaker hesitantly started again,
and in the space of the next few lines, I was asleep. In the
morning, as I shoveled my meal out of my wooden bowl, I realized
that everyone was staring at the man on the next pallet and that he
was eyeing me. A chill settled in the muscles of my back. Then,
like someone tensing before a dive into cold water, the man beside
me said, “You know the Eponymiad ?”
    “Your pardon?”
    “You were in-house? You know the poets?”
    I shrugged. “Some,” I said, not sure where this was
headed. Nowhere, it seemed, as everyone went back to his food and
then trailed off to the fields. They talked among themselves about
me, I could tell. I wondered if I’d revealed some weakness,
lost the protection of my invisibility.
    That evening the skin between my shoulders crawled as I received
my portion of food, and it took all my self-control not to hurry to
my bed to get my back against a wall. Eugenides wouldn’t
hurry, I reminded myself. I wouldn’t, either.
    Later, when everyone was fed, there was a stirring at the far
end of the room. A scrawny boy, the youngest in the barracks, who
nonetheless could shift twice what I could per shovel, came
crouching down beside me and hesitantly offered me his bread from
the meal. “Did you hear anything of the choruses from the
plays this year?” he asked.
    The baron’s food was sufficient, not generous, and I was
hungry, but the boy’s ribs showed, right up to his
collarbones, and I pushed his bread back at him. “I heard all
of them.”
    I recited the opening of the history of the Mannae. Every man,
even the overseer, listened, rapt. Instead of being tired when I
was finished, I felt more awake than I had since I’d been
captured. Lo, the power of poetry, I suppose. So I gave them a
sketch of the plot and a few bits of the important speeches.
I’ve done recitations at wine parties and in front of tutors
and at the court when duty obliged. I’ve never had an
audience as gratifying. I could have talked all night, but after
I’d finished with the Mannae, the workers sighed happily and
lay down to sleep. I lay down as well but was awake in the quiet
dark for a few minutes more.
    So I took my place in the rotation and settled into the company
of laborers. I rose with them in the morning and worked with them
all day, slowly coming to recognize them by name and to know the
jokes they shared, the friendships between them, and the
animosities. They were good men, and their friendships were common
and the animosities very small, in part because Ochto was a direct
and effective overseer and not reluctant to clout on the head a man
who was resting while others worked. Ochto had a cane to enforce
his judgment, but it hung on two pegs near the door to the barracks
and was rarely used. We worked with a sense of companionship and
common cause, and I looked forward to the evenings, when I joined
in the talk and listened to the recitations. I performed no more
often than anyone else. I was a treasure to be parceled out slowly,
and I savored the experience.
     
    My uncle had made it to his allies in the northern part of
Sounis and was raising his armies against the rebels. We heard
little news at first, but that much we knew in the field house
because Hanaktos had sent soldiers to join Baron Comeneus. Why he
was the leader of this rebellion I couldn’t begin to guess. I
wouldn’t have expected him to be able to lead the more
fractious of my uncle’s barons out of a hole in the ground if
it was filling with water, especially after making a botch of the
assassination attempt.
    The men in the barracks seemed to care very little and assumed
it would all be over soon, that the king would deal as summarily
with the rebels as he had in the past. I could not imagine what
good result the rebels thought could come from weakening the nation
when it was already in