We were so high that on any steep spot on the trail I could have taken us both to our deaths, and Sejanus continued to hold my hand. I was still listening to him, and we’d nearly reached the end of our climb.
“He didn’t ask me if I wanted to escape; he just arranged it. I hated him so much. I meant to go straight to the king. Reveal all my father’s plans. I thought I might redeem myself.”
But he hadn’t told the king his father’s plans.
“My father was dead and his conspiracy with him. All those men who were trapped in his web were free. Most of them didn’t know he was treating with the Medes; some have done nothing more than give Erondites gold when he demanded it. All of them, if they aren’t executed, will see their estates confiscated, their families ruined.”
He was making excuses for them and for himself. “No one could stand up to my father. That’s why Marina ran off. Only Dite ever defied him to his face—Dite the poet, Dite who played the flute and cried when he shot his first dove. My father despised Dite. The king thought he was striking such a blow against Erondites, but I’m sure he was delighted when his disobedient son was exiled, and the whole court would have known it. That’s why no one dared to cross him—he always got his way in the end.”
He tugged on my hand. I’d slowed, waiting to see what he said next. Did he realize that what he said about his father was what the other attendants said about Sejanus? That he always got his way?
He sensed my reluctance. “Pheris, if the king learns who conspired against him, if he destroys their houses, he will never be able to trust anyone again. He will be another Attolia, starting a new rebellion with each one he puts down, and my father will have his way even from beyond the grave. I can stop that. You don’t believe me? No, you are making that face because you have no idea what I’m talking about. I am just nattering away, trying to convince myself. Maybe I am running away because I’m afraid. I don’t know. I am afraid, that’s the truth.”
I slipped my hand free. Resting it on his arm, I watched his face closely in the moonlight, thinking about lies and how we want to believe them. I wanted to believe that he cared about the barons, his country, his countrymen.
His laugh was bleak.
“Poor imbecile. It’s all right. Everything will be all right. Let’s get moving.”
We had nearly reached the spine of the ridge and I had run out of time. I began to back away.
“Pheris?” He looked down at me. There was just enough light that I could see his shoulders sag with exhaustion. “I’m sorry I called you an imbecile. Please don’t be angry.”
Maybe I was the one who was just afraid—afraid of dying, afraid of making another mistake as I had with Emtis. I don’t know.
I’m not going with you.
“What do you mean?” he said, stunned. “You have to—you have to come with me.”
As I had guessed, Juridius and I were not the first babies that Melisande had taught our secret, silent language.
I dug into the purse at my waist and pulled out his ring. I tossed it to him, high in the air so that it would be easy to catch. He still nearly missed it, leaving it until it was almost too late to put out his hands. He cupped the ring to his chest, continuing to stare down at me.
You can sell it to someone and get what you need with the coin.
He took a single step toward me and I was already turning to run down the trail, knowing I would fall.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he called, holding out his hands, stepping deliberately back. “I will not chase you, I promise. But Pheris, you must come with me.”
What happened to your brother?
He looked at me so sadly and said nothing.
Your father killed him.
It took him a long time to speak. “The morning after my grandfather died, when Melisande went to wake him, Pheris was dead.”
I understood. It’s hard to call your father a murderer, easier to say he was a traitor to his country than to say that he had suffocated his own son in his bed. I’d known all my life that my mother, but for spite, might have done the same to me. It is only now, as a grown man, that I can write it out in so many words.
“Come with me, Pheris. Alestis has arranged—”
Alestis arranged nothing.
“What?”
My pony. My directions.
“I don’t understand,” Sejanus said. “Marina told me you were not like our brother.”
She doesn’t know me.
Melisande had seen how cleverness failed to protect my uncle and had changed her tactics. Knowing my mother would otherwise have paraded me like a trophy prisoner in front of her father, knowing that when he lost patience with it, my life would be over, Melisande had insisted I play the fool.
“Pheris, come with me,” begged Sejanus. “We will fetch Melisande to my mother’s villa. She can have a ripe old age with us and you will be safe.”
Safe? Because I don’t matter?
“You cannot go back to the king.”
I will serve him.
“You are Erondites. He will kill you.”
I shook my head, not believing it. The men who took my wine would blame themselves for falling asleep. They would be punished, I knew, but I was stupid with my own cleverness and I told myself they’d brought it on themselves.
“You will lie to your king?” my uncle asked.
As you lied to him. We are liars, all the Erondites.
Sejanus thought back over the trail we had climbed, the narrow places, the ledges and the steep drops. He was realizing how close to death he had been, how close both of us had been.
I play chess, too.
He nodded, remembering his clever brother. “He would have sacrificed a pawn to eliminate a knight. Pheris, my mother loved him. She would take you in and be glad,” he said. “Someday, we could approach the king . . .”
I shook my head and he gave up.
“Can you get back down on your own?” he asked, worried for me.
I nodded. I didn’t know anything of the kind, but I let him believe what he wanted to believe.
“Then thank you, and thank you for this.” He held up the ring.
Gods’ blessings on your road.
“And on yours,” said Sejanus. “Will you write to your grandmother?”
I will.
“Pheris.” I had already started down, but I paused to look over my shoulder. “My brother was the best of the Erondites. He would be honored that you share his name.”
Sejanus climbed on and I began the dangerous descent, hoping my pony was still waiting for me.
I got back to the camp just as the sun was rising. The descent had turned out to be safer than the climb, though hard on my clothes, as I slithered down most of it on my side. Snap had not pulled herself free, and I rode her close enough to camp to be sure she would find the picket lines again on her own. I slipped her bridle off and hung it over her withers, hoping the groom who found her in the morning would be puzzled, but not alarmed, by the empty saddle. I pushed her in the direction of the other horses and made my own way back, coming to the sentry and waiting to be recognized.
“Did you fall in your own hole?” he asked sarcastically, and I looked away. “Do you need a hand?” he asked more kindly, and I shook my head as if embarrassed. My bad leg ached fiercely and I limped at a snail’s pace past Sejanus’s pen and looked through the fencing. The wet blanket was still huddled in the center. The guards had been changed and no one was any the wiser. With the very last of my strength, I made it back to the attendants’ tent and crawled into my cot.