“Not used to that, are you?” he asked.

I shook my head.

“Better this than a galley, though, right?” He watched me through narrowed eyes as he spoke, and continued to observe me even after I nodded my agreement. He popped the lock off as the potboy brought breakfast. My whole body protesting, I was still first in line for the food.

I dragged myself through the next days, working, resting in the afternoon, digging until the light was going from the sky. I ate and then slept dreamlessly. Slowly I grew stronger and was awake longer. During rest periods I watched the other men as they wandered in and out of the barracks. I began to wait with them when we came in from the fields for my turn to rinse myself at the wellhead instead of going directly to my pallet of blankets in anticipation of my next meal. I was still first in line to eat.

Every night the men entertained themselves under the overseer’s watchful eye. They talked until by mutual consent someone’s offering of poetry or song was chosen, a different man each night, in a subtle order of rotation I didn’t understand. Some knew only one piece, others had a broader range, and they were careful, in an unscripted way, not to overuse anyone’s limited repertoire. One evening, as I lay on my pallet, with my right hand chained to the ring in the wall, I heard a man across the room reciting Eacheus’s speech from the ending of the Eponymiad.

I hadn’t really listened before because I’d been falling asleep as they started. I was falling asleep then, but a mistake caught my ear: “laughing-eyed chorus” instead of “doe-eyed Kora.”

Without lifting my head, I recited the line 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 such peril, but it was the opinion of the men I worked beside that none of it had anything to do with them. By and large, I agreed with them.

By this time I had realized that not all the men around me were slaves. Some were okloi tied to the baron’s family who worked for room and board, and some were salary men, free to go at the end of their contracts. They earned a pittance, paying most of their wages back to cover the cost of their lodging, and would have been better off tied to the baron and working for no wages at all. They had no guarantee of more work or pay at the end of their contracts, though in practice, I suppose, the baron was unlikely to let them go. I knew that I hadn’t yet grasped all the details of the pecking order, because one of the men much admired was a slave, and Ochto himself was a former slave set in place over free men, who worked very comfortably beneath him.

One day, after I had been in the field house for a few weeks, a new worker joined us. The new man thought he should be first in line for food. When he stepped in aggressively between me and the potboy, my first reaction was surprise. Before I could register anything but that he was both taller and heavier than I was, the man behind him tugged urgently at his arm and hissed a warning under his breath: “Man-killer.”

The new worker paused to reevaluate, but I didn’t. I couldn’t afford to lose my reputation, and I certainly would if there were a confrontation. I scooped up a wooden bowl and collected my supper. Then I walked to my bed and sat, making a show of careless bravado by crossing my legs and slumping as if I had not a worry in the world. In other words, I gave my best imitation of Eugenides. All I could do was hope the other men didn’t see through the act.

The new man collected his own dinner and sat across the barracks from me. I spooned my dinner into my mouth as quickly as I could to hide the fact that my hands were shaking. Finally, I screwed my courage to the sticking place and looked over at him to find him staring warily back. I essayed a conciliatory smile. He hastily dropped his eyes to his supper and didn’t look up again. I glanced around at the other men, realizing that they, too, must be wary of me to let me eat first every night. Wary of me. Not of my father or the power of my uncle. Me.