by C. S. Pacat
‘Good,’ said Laurent. He took a step back. Then, as if a pillar of control had finally collapsed, Laurent surrendered his full weight to the table behind him, his face drained of all colour. He was trembling, his hairline pricked with the sweat of injury. He said: ‘Now get out.’
* * *
The herald was speaking to him.
Damen heard it as if from very far away and understood, at length, that there was a small party of his own men here to ride with him back to his camp. He spoke words to the herald, or thought he did, because the herald went away and left him to mount his horse.
He put his hand on the saddle before he mounted, and for a moment closed his eyes. Laurent had known who he was, and had still made love to him. He wondered what mix of yearning and self-delusion had allowed Laurent to do that.
He was battered by what had happened, bruised and aching, his whole body throbbed. He had not felt the blows struck against him in battle until now, when they all came together. The unsteady physical exhaustion of the melee was on him; he couldn’t move; he couldn’t think.
If he’d imagined it, it was as a single, cataclysmic event, an unmasking that, whatever followed, would be over. Violence would have been both punishment and release. He had never imagined that it would instead go on and on; that the truth had been known; that it had been painfully absorbed; that it would be this crushing pressure that wouldn’t leave his chest.
Laurent had tamped down the smothered emotion in his eyes, and would endure an alliance with his brother’s killer, though he felt nothing but aversion. If he could do it, Damen could do it. He could make impersonal negotiations, speak in the formal language of kings.
The ache of loss didn’t make sense, because Laurent had never been his. He had known that. The delicate thing that had grown between them had never had a right to exist. It had always had an end date, the moment that Damen reassumed his mantle.
Now he had to return with these men to his own camp. The ride back was brief, less than a half mile separated their armies. He made it, with his duty firm in his mind. If it hurt, it was fitting; it was simply kingship.
* * *
There was still one thing that he had to do.
When he finally dismounted, an Akielon city of tents had risen up to mirror the Veretian one, on his orders. He slid down from the saddle and passed off his reins to a soldier. He was very tired by now in a purely physical way that he felt as an effort of concentration. He had to put aside the tremor in his muscles, in his arms and legs.
On the eastern side of the camp was his own tent, which offered sheets, a pallet, a place to close his eyes, and rest. He didn’t enter it. He called Nikandros to the command tent instead, raised in the centre of the army encampment.
It was now night, and the entrance of the tent was lit by torch posts that flamed orange at waist height. Inside, six braziers made jumping shadows out of the table, the chair set to face the entrance, an audience throne.
Even making camp so close to a Veretian troop had the men on edge. They had superfluous patrols and galloping hornsmen with every nerve on alert. If a Veretian threw a pebble, the entire army would launch into action.
They didn’t know yet why they were making camp here; they had simply obeyed his orders. Nikandros would be the first to hear the news.
He remembered Nikandros’s pride the day that Theomedes had given him Delpha. It had meant more than the bestowal of lands, or stone and mortar. It had been proof to Nikandros that he had honoured the memory of his father. Now Damen was going to take it from him, in a piece of cold-blooded statesmanship.
He waited, not turning away from what it meant, now, to be King. If he could give Laurent up, he could do this.
Nikandros came into the tent.
It wasn’t pleasant, the offer or the price. Nikandros couldn’t completely hide the hurt as he searched for understanding that he didn’t find. Damen gazed back at him, unbending and unflinching. They had played together as boys, but now Nikandros faced his King.
‘The Veretian Prince is to be given my home, and he is to be your primary ally in this war?’
‘Yes.’
‘And you have made up your mind?’
‘I have.’
Damen remembered hoping for a homecoming where it could be between them as it was in the old days. As if friendship of that kind could survive statesmanship.
‘He’s playing us against each other,’ said Nikandros. ‘This is calculated. He is trying to weaken you.’
Damen said, ‘I know. It’s like him.’
‘Then—’ Nikandros stopped, and turned away in frustration. ‘He kept you as a slave. He left us at Charcy.’
‘There was a reason for that.’
‘But I am not to know it.’
The list of supplies and men Laurent was offering them lay on the table. It had been more than Damen would have expected, but it was also finite. It was roughly the size of Nikandros’s contribution, equal to the addition of another kyros, perhaps, to his side.
It was not worth Delpha. He could see that Nikandros knew it, as Damen had known it.
‘I would make this easier,’ said Damen, ‘if I could.’
Silence, while Nikandros kept his words in check.
Damen said, ‘Who will I lose?’
‘Makedon,’ said Nikandros. ‘Straton. The northern bannermen, maybe. In Akielos, you’ll find your allies less helpful, the commoners less welcoming, even hostile. There will be problems with troop cohesion on the march, and more problems in battle.’
He said, ‘Tell me what else.’
‘The men will talk,’ said Nikandros. He was pushing the words out with distaste, he did not want to say, ‘About—’
Damen said, ‘No.’
And then, as though Nikandros couldn’t help the words that came out next, ‘If you would at least take off the cuff—’
‘No. It stays.’ He refused to lower his eyes.
Nikandros turned away and put his palms flat on the table, resting his weight there. Damen could see the resistance in Nikandros’s shoulders, bunched across his back, his palms still flat on the table.
Into the painful silence, Damen said, ‘And you? Will I lose you?’
It was all he allowed himself. It came out in a steady enough voice, and he made himself wait, and say nothing more.
As though the words were coming up from the depths of him, against his will, Nikandros said, ‘I want Ios.’
Damen let out a breath. Laurent, he realised suddenly, wasn’t playing them against one another. He was playing to Nikandros. There was a dangerous expertise in all of this; in knowing how far Nikandros’s loyalty might be stretched, and what would keep it from snapping. Laurent’s presence in the room was almost tangible.
‘Listen to me, Damianos. If you have ever valued my counsel, listen. He is not on our side. He is Veretian, and he’ll be bringing an army into our country.’
‘To fight his uncle. Not to fight us.’
‘If someone kills your family you don’t rest until they are dead.’
The words dropped between them. He remembered Laurent’s eyes in the tent as he had procured this alliance for himself.
Nikandros was shaking his head. ‘Or do you really think he’s forgiven you for killing his brother?’
‘No. He hates me for it.’ He said it steadily, without flinching. ‘But he hates his uncle more. He needs us. And we need him.’
‘You need him enough that you would strip me of my home, because he asked you to?’
‘Yes,’ said Damen.
He watched Nikandros struggle with that.
‘I’m doing this for Akielos,’ said Damen.
Nikandros said, ‘If you’re wrong there is no Akielos.’
* * *
He spoke to a few soldiers on his way back to his tent, a word or
two here or there as he moved through the camp, a habit since his first command at seventeen. The men came to attention as he passed, and said only, ‘Exalted,’ if he spoke. It was not like sitting around a campfire swilling wine, exchanging low tales and ribald speculations.
Jord and the other Veretians from Ravenel had been sent back to Laurent to rejoin his army in the extravagant tents at Fortaine. Damen hadn’t seen them go.
It was a warm night, with no need for fires other than for cooking and for light. He knew his way because the rigorous lines of the Akielon camp were easy to follow even in torchlight. The drilled, disciplined troops had done quick and efficient work, the weapons were cleaned and stored, the fires were lit, the stout tent pegs were hammered into the ground.
His tent was made of plain white canvas. There was not much to distinguish it other than its size and the two guards standing armed at the entrance. They came to attention, honour-flushed at the duty; it showed more in the younger guard Pallas than the older Aktis, but was evident in the stance of both. Damen made sure he gave a brief sign of his appreciation as he passed, as was fitting.
He lifted the tent flap, let it settle behind him.
Inside, the tent was an austere open space, lit with grease candles on spikes. The privacy was like a blessing. He didn’t have to hold himself up, he could let the weight of exhaustion bear him down to rest. His body ached for it. He wanted only to prise his armour from himself and close his eyes. Alone, he didn’t have to be King. He stopped and went cold, an awful feeling passing over him, an unsteadiness that was like nausea.
He wasn’t alone.
She was naked, at the base of the stark pallet, her full breasts hanging downwards, her forehead to the floor. She didn’t have palace training, and so could not quite disguise the fact that she was nervous. Her fair hair was caught back from her face in a fragile clasp, a northern custom. She was perhaps nineteen or twenty, her body trained and ready for him. She had prepared a bath in an unadorned wooden tub, so that if he pleased he might make use of it; or of her.
He had known that there were slaves with Nikandros’s army, following behind with the carts and the supplies. He had known that when he returned to Akielos there would be slaves.
‘Get up,’ he heard himself say, awkwardly, a wrong order for a slave.
There was a time when he would have expected this, and known how to behave around it. He would have appreciated the charm of her rustic northern skills, and bedded her, if not tonight then certainly in the morning. Nikandros knew him, and she was his type. She was Nikandros’s best, that was evident; a slave from his personal retinue, perhaps even his favourite, because Damen was his guest and his King.
She got up. He didn’t speak. She had a collar around her neck, and metal cuffs around her small wrists that were like the one that he—
‘Exalted,’ she said, quietly. ‘What is wrong?’
He let out a strange, unsteady breath. He realised that his breathing had been unsteady for some time, that his flesh was unsteady. That the silence had been stretching out between them too long.
‘No slaves,’ said Damen. ‘Tell the Keeper. Send no one else. For the length of the campaign I will be dressed by an adjutant, or a squire.’
‘Yes, Exalted,’ she said, obedient and confused and hiding it, or trying to, making for the tent entrance, her cheeks red.
‘Wait.’ He couldn’t send her naked through the camp. ‘Here,’ he unpinned his cloak, and whirled it around her shoulders. He felt the wrongness of it, pushing against every protocol. ‘The guard will escort you back.’
‘Yes, Exalted,’ she said, because she could not say anything else, and she left him thankfully alone.
CHAPTER FIVE
THE FIRST IMPACT of the alliance having fallen on Nikandros, the morning’s announcement was less personal, but more difficult, and done on a grander scale.
Heralds had been galloping back and forth between their camps since before dawn. The preparations for this announcement had been developed before the camp stirred in grey light. Meetings of this kind could take months to arrange; the speed at which it happened now was dizzying, if you did not know Laurent.
Damen summoned Makedon to the command pavilion, and called for his army to form up before him for an address. He sat on the audience throne, with a single oak seat empty beside him and Nikandros standing behind him. He watched the army wheel into place, fifteen hundred men in disciplined lines. Damen’s view commanded the whole sweep of the fields, his army arrayed in a two-block formation before him, with a clear path through their centre that led right to the base of Damen’s throne beneath its pavilion.
It had been Damen’s choice not to tell Makedon independently, but to gather him here for the address, as unaware of what was coming as the soldiers. It was a risk, and every aspect of it must be managed carefully. Makedon of the notched belt held the largest provincial army of the north, and though technically a bannerman under Nikandros’s command, he was a power in his own right. If he left in anger with his men, he would end Damen’s chances at a campaign.
Damen felt Makedon react when the Veretian herald came galloping back into their camp. Makedon was dangerously volatile. He had disobeyed kings before. He had broken the peace treaty only weeks earlier, launching a personal counterattack on Vere.
‘His Highness, Laurent, Prince of Vere and Acquitart,’ called the herald, and Damen felt the men in the tent around him react further. Nikandros kept his outward appearance unvarying, even if Damen could feel the tension in him. Damen’s own heartbeat sped up, though he kept his face impersonal.
When prince met prince there were protocols to observe. You did not greet each other alone in a diaphanous tent. Or thrown to the ground in chains in a palace viewing chamber.
The last time Akielon and Veretian royalty had met ceremonially had been six years ago, at Marlas, when the Regent had surrendered to Damen’s father, King Theomedes. Out of respect to the Veretians, Damen had not been present, but he remembered the satisfaction of knowing that Veretian royalty was bending its knee to his father. He had liked it. He had probably liked it, he thought, about as much as his men disliked what was happening today, and for the same reasons.
The Veretian banners were visible, streaming across the field, six abreast, and thirty-six in length, with Laurent riding at their head.
Damen waited, sitting powerfully on the oak throne, his arms and thighs bare in the Akielon style, his army stretching out before him in immaculate, unmoving lines.
It was not like the ecstatic entries Laurent had made into the towns and villages of Vere. No one swooned or cheered or threw flowers at his feet. The camp was silent. The Akielon soldiers watched him ride through the centre of their ranks towards the pavilion, marked out in sunlight, their own armour and sharpened blades and points of spears glinting; polished after having been so recently used to kill.
But the pure, insolent grace was the same, his bright head uncovered. He was not wearing armour, or any symbol of rank save for the gold circlet on his forehead, but when he swung down off his horse and tossed the reins to a servant, no pair of eyes looked anywhere else.
Damen stood up.
The whole tent reacted, the men standing, shifting, lowering their eyes for the King. Laurent strolled in, beautifully; he seemed sublimely unaware of the reaction that his presence was causing. He came down the path that was cleared for him, as though walking unmolested through an Akielon camp was simply his right. Damen’s own men watched as a man might watch his enemy sauntering into his house, unable to prevent it.
‘My brother of Akielos,’ said Laurent.
Damen met his eyes without flinching. Everyone knew that in the Akielon language, princes of foreign nations addressed each other in the fraternal.
‘Our brother of Vere,’ said Damen.
He was half aware of Laurent’s entourage, liveried servants and
some unidentified men outside, and several courtiers from Fortaine in attendance. He recognised Laurent’s Captain, Enguerran. He recognised Guion, the Regent’s most loyal Councillor, who, sometime in the last three days, had switched sides.
Damen lifted his hand, offering it palm up, with fingers outstretched. Laurent lifted his own hand calmly, resting it atop Damen’s. Their fingers met.
He could feel the eyes of every Akielon in the tent on him. They proceeded slowly. Laurent’s fingers rested infinitesimally above his own. He felt the moment when the men around him realised what was going to happen.
Reaching the dais, they sat, facing outward, the twin oak seats now twin thrones.
Shock; it travelled like a wave over the men and women in the tent; out, over the gathered ranks of soldiers. Everyone could see where Laurent and Damen sat: side by side.
He knew what it meant. This was the status of a compeer. It announced equality.
‘We have called you here today to witness our accord,’ said Damen, in a clear voice that carried over the noise. ‘Today we mark the alliance of our nations against those pretenders and usurpers who seek to assail our thrones.’
Laurent settled in as though the place had been made for him, and adopted the posture he typically favoured, one leg straight out before him, a fine-boned wrist balanced on the arm of the throne.
Explosions of outrage, furious exclamations, there were hands on the hilts of swords. Laurent did not look particularly concerned by this, or anything.
‘In Vere, it is customary to bestow a gift on a favoured companion,’ said Laurent in Akielon. ‘Vere therefore offers this gift to Akielos, as a symbol of our alliance, now and in all the days to come.’ His fingers lifted. A Veretian servant came forward, a cushion resting like a platter on his outstretched forearms.
Damen felt the tent fade away before his eyes.
He forgot the men and women watching. He forgot the need to keep his army and his generals from revolt. He only saw what lay on the cushion that the servant bore towards the dais.
Coiled and personal, Laurent’s gift was a Veretian whip, made of gold.
