I had been happy. And I could stay if I wanted to. I could spend my life contemplating olives and reciting old plays to a friendly audience and building excellent walls that would outlast my lifetime. I could save the occasional coin that came to me by way of the baron’s feast day generosities and in time buy a book or two, a blank scroll, ink. In thirty years I might be the poet Leuka. He wasn’t a field hand, but he had been a slave, and his poetry has survived him by four hundred years. No one would know but me and the gods, and I was sure the gods didn’t care. All I had to do was hold my peace, and I knew that I couldn’t do it.

What would I choose if I could have anything? Well, I wouldn’t be useless. I would be the statesman my father wanted and the prince my country needed. But that wasn’t what I was offered. I was still the same poor excuse for a prince that I had always been. Quite likely I would fail to be of any use at all—to my father or anyone. When the rebelling barons were put down, I would see my uncle marry and produce an heir far superior to me, and I would be despised as useless and unwelcome even in my own home. That was what I was choosing.

I wonder if people always choose what will make them unhappy.

In the evening we walked back to the barracks. We ate our late meal as the light began to fade from the sky. Up in the megaron, guests would be gathering to dine. As the other men were settling down, tired from a day of hard work, I picked through the small collection of shells and rocks that I had found while at the shore and selected my favorites. Then I wrapped them in a rag I was using as a pocket and tucked them into the waist of my pants. Curious, the other men grew still and watched. Standing, I turned to Ochto and said, “I’m going.”

Ochto started to give a puzzled assent, then realized I wasn’t stepping out to relieve myself before bed.

“You can’t get far, Zecush,” he said.

“I’m not going far.”

He looked up toward the megaron and over at Dirnes. He must have heard of my comment on the road earlier in the day. “We don’t get to choose our masters.”

“I do,” I said.

“And why would I let you go?”

I swallowed. “We all have to make choices, Ochto. I’m sorry.”

He stared at me. With a word, or just the wave of his hand, he could stop me. The men in the barracks would jump up and seize me. The chain for the bracelet that was still on my wrist was right by his hand. His cane of office hung by the door.

He also knew that I could have walked away without saying anything, as if on my way to the latrine, and he wouldn’t have had any hint that I was gone until it was far too late.

He shook his head slowly. “You were never a slave,” he said.

“Berrone bought me for gold,” I said honestly, but Ochto shook his head again.

“Gold doesn’t make a slave, and it doesn’t always buy one. You stop work every time a woodcock sings. I’ve watched you move the mother scorpion out of the way when you should be setting stones in a wall and waste half a morning watching a grasshopper. You have no sense. What will you do out there in the world, Bunny?”

“Whatever the gods and the king ask of me,” I said.

“Ah,” said Ochto. “He is our baron, but he never was yours, was he?”

“Indeed, he is not,” I said. “You still have to choose.”

“I know nothing of the business of gods and kings,” said Ochto, and he looked away. I waited for him to turn back, then realized that he had made his decision.

There had been no sound in the barracks. I turned to nod farewell to the men who had been my companions and found them also looking away. Swallowing a rock in my throat, I turned back to the door.

“Should we come?” Luca’s voice rose sardonically. He sat at the far end of the room, with one knee pulled up and caught in the circle of his arms. He spoke, but he still didn’t look in my direction.

My own eyes dropped toward the floor. “Believe me, that if I were you, Luca,” I said, “I would stay right here.”

In the twilight I headed up the path to the stables and from there to the kitchens. They were a bustle of activity, and I had no trouble slipping in unnoticed. I sidled up to one of the houseboys and followed him until an opportune moment when he was alone in the corridor between the kitchens and the main rooms of the megaron.

“Lend me your shirt for a minute,” I said.

“Why?” He recognized me. I was familiar enough that he wasn’t frightened, just puzzled.

“Because if you don’t, I’m going to hit you really hard and take it anyway.”

He looked around for help, but we were alone.

“Better make up your mind quick,” I said, and lifted my fist. He loosened his laces and pulled the shirt over his head.

Wearing only his undershirt, he said, “I’ll tell.”

I pulled the overshirt out of his hand. “You do that,” I said as I hurried back toward the kitchen. He ran off in the opposite direction, and I stopped. I’d headed toward the kitchen only so that he would head the other way. It would take him longer to find someone to listen to his story, and by the time he came back I would be gone. I reversed direction and headed farther into the megaron. I pulled the shirt on as I went, and pushed up the sleeves of my rough work shirt underneath it. The overshirt was tight, but it covered enough of the dirty cloth underneath that I could pass for a few moments unnoticed as I found a stairway and hurried up to the residence above.

I’d been in the Hanaktos megaron several times. Berrone’s room was where I expected it to be, and the door was open, making it easy to confirm that I was in the right place. I knocked on the frame, and when I heard her voice, I rushed inside.

“Mistress,” I cried out, dropping to my knees in the sitting room, where she was, thank the gods, instead of visiting some household pet somewhere. “Like a goddess, you have aided me, and I beg your aid again.”

I knelt there with my hands clasped in front of me, praying, not to her but to the old god of deception, Eugenides, that she wouldn’t recognize me. She didn’t. Not at all. I’d been worried that she would see the prince of Sounis. It hadn’t occurred to me that I wouldn’t strike some chord. That she would look at me without any glint of recognition.

Hastily, I explained that I had been a poor lost soul when she had rescued me from certain death in the galleys.

“Oh,” she said, “you’re that slave that I bought.”

“Please help me,” I said. “You are my only hope in a dark, dark world.”

I told her a tale of woe and horror that could have come straight from the stage. I was the son of a minor landowner. At the untimely death of my father, his partner, an evil okloi, had made off with all the money in the business. My sister and I had been sold into slavery to pay debts.

“They took her away from me, though I tried to stop them. I was sold to an overseer of a farm on Letnos. Your father, of blessed renown, mistress, was the farm owner. He was a good master, and I was not unhappy, but you must believe that I ached and grieved for my sister.” I thought of Eurydice then, though I hadn’t meant to, and suddenly the tears I faked for my imaginary sister were all too real. “But she was not lost, mistress. In a chance that could only have been decreed by the gods, she was sold to the owner of a villa nearby. He was a brutal man, mistress, and his overseer worse. Not like the honorable man who runs your father’s farm.”