Alas, when we reached the barracks, I discovered an unanticipated difficulty. Ochto had pulled my shirt off before using the cane on my back. In the morning, moving very carefully, I’d managed to get it on. Now I didn’t think I could get it off. Not only was it much too painful to lift my arms over my head, but the stupid thing had gotten stuck to me in places. I was at a standstill, staring wistfully at the well, and noticed that several of the other men were looking daggers at Dirnes.

Reluctantly, he came to help, but he was still angry, and his ministrations were not gentle. He pulled on my shirt, and I swore at him. He was more careful then, but his scowl was no less black. I cared little for that once he was tipping the bucket at my neck. It felt divine. He patted me dry with my own shirt, then handed it to me and walked away without a word. I shrugged cautiously and went to lie down for an afternoon rest.

That night he appeared, to my utter amazement, with an iced cake. He could only have gotten it from his friend the cook, and the cook could only have provided it at some significant risk. Yet Dirnes was still clearly angry with me, and I couldn’t think why he was asking for favors on my behalf.

“Dirnes,” I said, “I don’t want your cake.”

I did, actually. I wanted it a lot.

The men in the barracks were watching us.

“I didn’t ask you to do me any favors!” Dirnes said, very nearly shouting, not just angry, upset. His distress touched me when his anger hadn’t, and I suddenly understood what I had failed to see before: that Dirnes was a slave, like me. He had nothing, or anyway, very, very little. I had saved him a beating from the soldier and taken a beating from Ochto that might have been his. He couldn’t pay me back. An iced cake, a trivial thing, had no doubt cost him all his credit and more with the cook, and he was still obliged to me, would be obliged until he could somehow sacrifice to do a favor in return, with no end for that obligation in sight. This was a principle of indenture of which I had been unaware. Slaves don’t do favors for other slaves.

“Dirnes, I am sorry,” I said, reaching out to grab his hand and squeezing it hard. “It was nothing, really.” I lifted my arm to show him how much more easily it moved. “By rest day it will be healed. Ochto won’t even have left marks.”

Dirnes stared at me as if I’d said I was going to grow a pair of wings and fly up to visit the gods. I was uncomfortably aware that everyone else was staring at me, too. Ochto in particular. Hastily I broke the iced cake in half.

“Here, share with me,” I said.

My previous life just seemed to slip away. My dreams of the library grew more rare and less vivid. I was more cautious passing soldiers. I knew my place. I enjoyed an occasional tidbit from the kitchen, shared in friendship with Dirnes, and hardly thought about the dinners at the Sounis megaron that lasted until dawn. My uncle was losing more ground, but I was less and less interested in the news of the outside world. Dirnes’s pursuit of the cook’s goodwill was more important to day-to-day life. Our progress in terracing the baron’s landscape and digging the ditches to carry the runoff of the heavy winter rains was what mattered, not battles that took place miles away. When my uncle’s army was defeated at Thylos, it hardly seemed to have anything to do with me.

As the rains lessened and the days grew warmer again, I was promoted to wall building and found I had a gift for it. Something about the careful choosing and positioning of stones, something about the way something so durable grew out of an accumulation of small decisions, filled me with satisfaction.

On a day hotter than usual for so early in the year, we had been working on the landward side of a low hill, cut off from the sea breeze. Dirnes had asked for permission to go down to the shore for a quick swim before returning to the barracks to eat. It wasn’t unusual for the men to take a quick break in the middle of the day, and Ochto had agreed, so four of us had hurried down to the shore. We’d stayed overlong and were hurrying back, busily undoing all the good of our swim, but unwilling to risk missing our meal entirely. There were plenty of men ready to eat whatever was left in the pot if Ochto thought we were away too long. We were on the road when we heard horsemen behind us and moved off to avoid the dust they would kick into the air. I looked up as they passed and saw my father.

CHAPTER SEVEN

HE was mounted on a bay horse, surrounded by ten or fifteen of his men. I stood stock-still and watched them go by. My father never looked anywhere but ahead.

“Bunny?” Dirnes asked.

I shook myself. “Nothing,” I said. “A former master of mine.”

“Good one?” he asked.

I shrugged.

Hanaktos was an enemy of the king. Was my father perhaps changing sides? That was a laughable idea; my father is the opposite of changeable. It was far more likely that my uncle had sent my father under a flag of truce to woo Hanaktos back to his side.

I was thoughtful as we continued back to the field house. Should I have called out to my father? I was a failure as a man, a prince, and a son, and I doubted very much that he would care that I was still alive.

Ochto was waiting for us, and there was little I could do but eat my meal and sit on my pallet with my back against the plastered wall while the other men lay down to rest. Was I of any use to my father at all? Would it make any difference to anyone but me if I stayed right where I was?

“There is no wolf to eat you, Bunny,” my tutor reminded me. “Stay where you are, and no man will know and no god will be displeased.” She pointed to a space in the air where I could see nothing. She pursed her lips and exhaled, and a tiny mote appeared, moved by her breath into the broad beam of light. “What do you want, Zecush?” she asked.

My chin dropped to my chest, and I woke, lifting my head abruptly and slamming it into the wall behind me. Eyes watering, I realized that I had been asleep. My tutor had not in fact appeared in the field house of Baron Hanaktos.

The others were still at rest. The room was full of indirect light, though the sun came in none of its doorways and there were no dust motes shining in any sunbeams. It was warm, and I was sweating. I thought of another swim with longing, but I wasn’t a free man, to swim when I pleased. I swam, as I rested and as I ate, when I had permission. I was a slave, owned by the baron, waiting for the call to rise and go with the others to work in the fields. When it came, I pulled myself to my feet and followed Ochto out the door.

Out among the olives, as I began to fit stones into place in the wall I was building, I thought, as if it were the first time, about what I wanted. All of my life people had chosen for me. My father or the king of Sounis, his magus, or the king’s other advisors. All my life they had made choices for me, and I had resented it. Now the choice was mine, and once it was made, I would have no right to blame anyone else for the consequences. Loss of that privilege, to blame others, unexpectedly stung.

I didn’t want a choice; I wanted to stay right where I was and build walls and share poetry with an avid audience and enjoy a swim with friends, but I didn’t want it to be my choice.

Goaded by self-disgust, I worked faster, picking the largest rocks and throwing them into place and then watching in rage when they landed awry. Ochto sent Runeus to give me a hand, but Runeus collided with my glare and backed away. Shrugging helplessly at Ochto, he went to work elsewhere. Only when I caught the tip of one finger between two rocks and stood cursing and swearing like, well, just like a field hand, did I stop. I wiped tears of frustration out of my eyes and faced the truth.