“All right,” said a voice obviously in charge, “kill all the servants and fire the building.”
They’d carried me away, screaming into the cloth stuffing my mouth, and tied me, stomach down, onto the back of a donkey that had gone at an agonizing trot for long enough that I’d lost track of time, thinking of my mother and my sisters and the maids patiently waiting for me in the cool dark of the ice cellar, unaware of their danger until the burning villa above crashed in upon them. We reached an unknown stopping point, where I was lifted down and left on the ground while people carried on with some business nearby.
“He’s still kicking,” someone commented above me. “I am surprised. I thought he was more like our Hyacinth here.”
I froze and heard someone, Hyacinth, I had no doubt, gasp in horror. It was certainly his voice I heard next. “You were not to tell him!”
I thought of Malatesta, whom I had accused in my head of being a traitor to my family. He was probably dead at the villa, while Hyacinth had never even crossed my mind.
Several people above laughed. The first voice I had heard, and the one who ordered the firing of the villa, said, “There, that has stopped him kicking.” The voice was closer, as if he were bending over me, and I sat up as quickly as I could, hoping that the hard part of my head might connect with his face, but either I missed, or he jumped back in time. I hit nothing and had to drop back to the ground, my stomach aching.
The men around me laughed again. “Get that thing off his head,” their leader said.
Once the hood was off and the gag out of my mouth, I could see that I was near the shore, on a level spot on a hillside, looking over the water. Behind me, the hill rose higher. Below me, it steepened and dropped to the ring road that circled the island. In the distance, down the coast, I could see the curve of the headland that hid the city of Letnos.
There were more people around me than I had expected, and they seemed to be making no effort at concealment. I glanced quickly at each of them, still expecting Malatesta, but there was no sign of him. I should have looked for their leader, but I was caught staring at Hyacinth, who was nearby wringing his hands. “You helped them?”
“Not by much,” said the heavyset man on my left. His was the voice I had heard giving orders. “He described the villa for us and told us where the family was most likely to be at that time of the day.”
“He wasn’t supposed to know,” Hyacinth cheeped pathetically. Turning to me, he said, “I didn’t want you to know. You didn’t have to.”
“I see,” I said calmly. “Can I get up?”
The stocky man lifted me to my feet easily. He turned out to be somewhat shorter than I was, once I was standing. His skin was dark and rough from long days spent in the open. He was about my father’s age and showed signs of a similar life of violence. He crouched to cut through the ropes around my ankles, then lifted the rope to the bonds on my wrists and hesitated. “There are too many of us to fight, young prince.”
I stared. Officially I was heir to Sounis, but no one ever called me prince. I was only a placeholder until the king produced his own heir.
“Do you understand?” the man asked.
I nodded. He cut the ropes. I rubbed my wrists for a moment and flexed my hands. The skin where the ropes had burned was sore, but my hands weren’t puffy or weak. I looked around me, and the man who’d spoken was right. I was in the middle of a group of men. There was no chance to run and nowhere to hide, even if I got away. The hillside above us was bare. Below was only a small camp, probably the kidnappers’, a wagon beside a few shabby tents, and an empty road.
I hardly cared. I took two running steps and lunged for Hyacinth. I had my hands around his neck before anyone else could move. I wasn’t heavier than he was, but I was taller and bore him to the ground, where I did my best to strangle the life out of him.
“Is it because my sister set aside pastries for you to eat when you visited? Is that why you betrayed her? Is it because my mother admired your horrible flute playing? Is that why you betrayed her? Is it because they were kind to you?” I screamed as his face turned purple.
Hyacinth writhed ineffectively under me and clutched at my fingers. He rolled his eyes in appeal toward the men looking on, but it was a long time before any of them moved. At last someone did grab me under the arms and try to pull me back, but I didn’t let go of Hyacinth’s neck, so he was raised, still choking, off the ground. Another man put his foot on Hyacinth’s chest and pushed down until my grip broke. It was not much of a rescue. He slithered away sobbing, and once he’d gotten his breath, he cried in earnest, while my abductors looked on in contempt.
“You said he wouldn’t know!” he shrieked between sobs. To me he said, “We would be friends and you would do me favors when you are king!”
“He’ll do no one favors when he is king,” said the stocky man, “least of all you,” he added, and turned his back on poor, pathetic Hyacinth, who continued to look at me for forgiveness.
“They want to make you king. That isn’t a bad thing. And no one was hurt, no one important. Your mother and your sisters weren’t even home.”
“They were hiding,” I said.
“Oh,” said Hyacinth, “outside?”
“In the house.”
The amusement of the onlookers faded. The leader swore. He looked to one of his men, who shook his head. They had seen no one leave the villa as it burned.
“I didn’t know!” screamed Hyacinth. “It isn’t my fault!”
I turned my back on him as the tears filled my eyes. I sank to the ground and cried into my hands, not caring if my captors looked at me with the same disgust that they cast on my worthless former friend.
The camp below was that of a slave trader. Because slaves don’t often change hands nowadays, the slaver traveled from place to place, buying up slaves one at a time. My parents could remember when there was a regular slave market in most towns of any size. Now families sell off slaves only when they are desperate for the money, and their neighbors look down their noses, as if the family has been reduced to selling off children. There are new slaves, of course, people who can’t pay their debts and other criminals, but the slave markets on Letnos happen just a few times a year, and slavers must travel to gather their wares.
The trader was the stocky man who was giving orders. I learned that his name was Basrus and that he had a string of fifteen or twenty slaves camped below us next to the road. The rest of the men around me were soldiers of some kind. In the next few minutes they disappeared, probably back to some villa where they would be hidden, and I was left with three men and Hyacinth, still sniffling.
“You can’t get off the island,” I told Basrus. “Some of the servants will have made it to the nearby landowners. They can’t all be in league with you,” I said, glaring at Hyacinth. “The island governor will call out the soldiers quartered in town and the navy. You won’t get past the war galleys. You can hide your men because no one knows who they are, but you can’t hide me. They will look from house to house in every closet and every cellar. They’ll search every cave deep enough to hide a rabbit.”
“Oh, but you won’t be in a cellar, my lionhearted young man, or in a cave. You are going to be out in the open. Hold his arms.” He was pulling on heavy leather gloves. The other men who were with us had seized my arms and pulled them behind me.