Free A Conspiracy of Kings by Megan Whalen Turner Page A

tiny
stars themselves.
    “You know, there are just as many outside the sun’s
rays that are invisible,” she said. Then, in the way of
dreams, she lifted her hand into the air and moved a single dust
mote into the light. “And you?” she asked. She lifted
her hand again, just beyond the edge of the light, and I knew she
held another mote and could move it as easily into the way of the
sun, and I said, “No, thank you. I am content where I
am.”
     
    A few days later I was beaten. It was entirely my own fault. I
forgot that my standing in the barracks was not universal in
reach.
    There were twenty-two of us in the barracks, ranging from
fourteen through fifty or so in years. I had as much freedom as any
of the men. With permission, we walked down to the shore in our
free time if the day was sunny or lounged in the courtyard. On very
rare occasions the men of the megaron might go into town for a
festival, but that was only once or twice a year, and it had not
happened in my time there. Those with friends in the megaron itself
could wander up the slope, across the stable yard to the terrace,
and from there into the scullery and the kitchens. None of the
field hands went farther than that.
    I had been up to the kitchens a number of times with a man named
Dirnes and Oreus, the one who’d named me Bunny. At the end of
the day after my dream of the dust motes, as the last light was
just gone, we were walking up past the stables, intending to cross
the yard to the entryway into the lower levels of the megaron.
Dirnes was friends with one of the lesser cooks, a baker, and he
had hopes of coming by a soft roll or two.
    As we rounded the corner of the stables, Dirnes rammed into
someone coming the other way. It was a direct collision; neither
had the time to turn aside, and the other man was knocked backward.
Clutching at Dirnes, he fell, taking Dirnes with him to the ground
and swearing a blue streak. Dirnes popped up, apologies on his
lips, but the other man, a soldier and a drunken one, was having
none of it. Still sprawled on the ground, he struck Dirnes, who was
bending over him, hard in the mouth.
    Instead of falling back, Dirnes stayed for another blow and went
on trying to help the man up. Angry, I pulled Dirnes aside and
seized the soldier by the shoulders. Using both hands, I heaved him
to his feet. Standing, we were eye to eye, and his belligerence was
impaired by the close look into my face.
    “Better now?” I asked, and he nodded warily.
    I turned him toward his friend and pushed him, not too gently,
on his way. He gave me an evil look over his shoulder but
didn’t come back, heading on unsteadily toward the entrance
of the megaron instead. Dirnes and Oreus, I realized, had left me
and gone back down the path toward the field house.
    When I caught up to them, I found to my consternation that
Dirnes was angry, and angry with me.
    “What did you think you were doing?” he snarled.
    “He was drunk. There was no point in letting him hit
you.”
    “Just hope nothing more comes of it,” Oreus advised
Dirnes, nudging him on toward the barracks. Unsure of my ground, I
held my peace.
    In the morning, just after the call to rise, as we all were
climbing stiffly to our feet and stretching our muscles to face the
day’s work, there was a disturbance at one of the shed doors.
It was the soldier of the night before and another man, his
officer, I supposed. They came to complain of an unruly slave. Any
number of eyes flicked toward Dirnes, who was still sitting on his
pallet. But I rose first, drawing the eye of the soldier.
    “Him!” he said. Dirnes had knocked him down, and no
doubt the soldier would have settled for exercising his revenge
there. He may not even have realized, until I stood, that I was
also a slave, but he knew that I was the one who had embarrassed
him.
    With no other choice in the face of a complaint from a free man,
Ochto walked me out to the punishment post and tied my hands to the
ring there. When