by C. S. Pacat
The guards on either side of the entrance were too well trained to react to the presence of royalty leaning all over each other. They passed through the outer doors to the innermost chamber. Here, the low, reclining bed was in the Akielon style, the base carved in marble. It was simple, open to the night from its base to its curved headrest.
‘No one is to enter,’ Damen ordered the guards.
He was aware of the implication—Damianos entering a bedchamber with a young man in his arms and ordering everyone out—and he ignored it. If Isander suddenly had a startling reason why the frigid Prince of Vere had foregone his services, so be it. Laurent, intensely private, would not want his household present while he dealt with the effects of a night’s worth of drinking.
Laurent was going to wake with a blinding headache fuelling his corrosive tongue, and pity anyone who ran into him then.
As for Damen, he was going to give Laurent a push in the small of his back and send him staggering the four steps to the bed. Damen unlooped Laurent’s arm from his neck, disengaged himself. Laurent took a step under his own power, and lifted a hand to his jacket, blinking.
‘Attend me,’ Laurent said, unthinkingly.
‘For old time’s sake?’ said Damen.
It was a mistake to say that. He stepped forward and put his hands on the ties of Laurent’s jacket. He began to draw the ties from their moorings. He felt the curve of Laurent’s ribcage as the tie threaded through its eye.
The jacket tangled at Laurent’s wrist. It took some effort to get it off, disordering Laurent’s shirt. Damen stopped, his hands still inside the jacket.
Under the fine fabric of Laurent’s shirt, Paschal had bound Laurent’s shoulder to strengthen it. He saw it with a pang. It was something Laurent would not have let him see sober, a keen breach of privacy. He thought of sixteen spears thrown, with a constant effort of arm and shoulder, after rough exertion the day before.
Damen took a step back, said: ‘Now you can say you were served by the King of Akielos.’
‘I could say that anyway.’
Lamp-lit, the room was filled with orange light, revealing its simple furnishings, the low chairs, the wall table with its bowl of fresh-picked fruit. Laurent was a different presence in his white undershirt. They were gazing at each other. Behind Laurent, the light concentrated on the bed, where oil flamed in a low, burnished container, and illumination fell on tumbled pillows, and the carved marble base of the bed.
‘I miss you,’ said Laurent. ‘I miss our conversations.’
It was too much. He remembered being strapped to the post and half killed; sober, Laurent had made the line very clear, and he was aware that he had crossed it, they both had.
‘You’re drunk,’ said Damen. ‘You’re not yourself.’ He said, ‘I should take you to bed.’
‘Then, take me,’ said Laurent.
He manoeuvred Laurent determinedly over to the bed, half pushed, half poured him onto it, as any soldier would help his drunk friend to the pallet in his tent.
Laurent lay where Damen put him, on his back in a half-open shirt, his hair tumbled, his expression unguarded. His knee was pushed out to the side, his breathing was slow as one in sleep, the thin fabric of his shirt lay against his skin, rising and falling with it.
‘You don’t like me like this?’
‘You’re really . . . not yourself.’
‘Aren’t I?’
‘No. You’re going to kill me when you sober up.’
‘I tried to kill you. I can’t seem to go through with it. You keep overturning all my plans.’
Damen found a water pitcher and poured water into a shallow cup that he brought to the low table by Laurent’s bed. Then he emptied the fruit bowl of fruit and put it on the floor alongside, to be used as a drunk soldier might use an empty helmet.
‘Laurent. Sleep it off. In the morning, you can punish us both. Or forget this ever happened. Or pretend to.’
He did all of this quite adeptly, though he found that before he poured the water it took him a moment to catch his breath. He put both his hands on the table and leaned his weight on it, only a little breathless. He put Laurent’s jacket over a chair. He closed the shutters so that the morning sun would not intrude. Then he made his way to the door, turning once he reached it for a last glance at the bed.
Laurent, falling through scattered thoughts into sleep, said, ‘Yes, uncle.’
CHAPTER TEN
DAMEN WAS SMILING. He lay on his back, his arm over his head, the sheet pooled over his lower body. He had been awake for perhaps an hour in the early light.
The events of last night, endlessly complicated in the candlelit privacy of Laurent’s bedchamber, had resolved into a single, blissful fact this morning.
Laurent missed him.
He felt a flutter of illicit joy when he thought of it. He remembered Laurent gazing up at him. You keep overturning all my plans. Laurent was going to be furious when he arrived at the morning meeting.
‘You’re in a good mood,’ Nikandros said, as he came into the hall. Damen clapped him on the shoulder, and took up his place at the long table.
‘We’re going to take Karthas,’ said Damen.
He had summoned each of the bannermen to this meeting. This would be their first attack on an Akielon fort, and they were going to win it, swiftly and definitively.
He called for the sand tray that he preferred. Scoured with deep, quick strokes, the strategy was visible without bumping heads while leaning in to peer at the ink lines of a map. Straton arrived with Philoctus, arranging their skirts as they sat. Makedon was already present, along with Enguerran. Vannes arrived and took her seat, arranging her skirts similarly.
Laurent entered, an edge to his grace, like a leopard with a headache, around whom one must tread very, very carefully.
‘Good morning,’ said Damen.
‘Good morning,’ said Laurent.
This was said after an infinitesimal pause, as if maybe for once in his life the leopard wasn’t quite certain what to do. Laurent sat on the throne-like seat of oak beside Damen, and kept his eyes carefully on the space in front of him.
‘Laurent!’ said Makedon, greeting Laurent warmly. ‘I am glad to take up your invitation to hunt with you in Acquitart when this campaign is over.’ He clapped Laurent on the shoulder.
Laurent said, ‘My invitation.’
Damen wondered whether he had ever been clapped on the shoulder in his life.
‘I sent a messenger to my homestead this very morning to tell them to begin preparing light spears for chamois.’
‘You hunt with Veretians now?’ said Philoctus.
‘One cup of griva and you slept like the dead,’ said Makedon. He clapped Laurent’s shoulder again. ‘This one had six! Can you doubt the power of his will? The steadiness of his arm in the hunt?’
‘Not your uncle’s griva,’ said a horrified voice.
‘With two such as us on the ride, there won’t be a chamois left in the mountains.’ Another shoulder clap. ‘We go now to Karthas to prove our worth in battle.’
This provoked a wave of soldierly camaraderie. Laurent did not typically engage in soldierly camaraderie, and did not know what to do.
Damen felt almost reluctant to step forward to the sand tray.
‘Meniados of Sicyon sent a herald to hold talks with us. At the same time, he launched attacks on our village, which were intended to sew dissent and disable our army,’ Damen said, as he scoured a mark in the sand. ‘We’ve sent riders to Karthas to offer him the choice to surrender or to fight.’
This he had done before the okton. Karthas was a classical Akielon fort designed to anticipate attacks, its approach guarded by a series of watchtowers, in the traditional style. He was confident of success. With every watchtower that fell, Karthas’s defences would lessen. That was both the strength
and the weakness of Akielon forts: they dispersed resources, rather than consolidating them behind a single wall.
‘You’ve sent riders to announce your plans?’ said Laurent.
‘This is the Akielon way,’ said Makedon, as he might to a favoured nephew a bit slow at learning. ‘An honourable victory will impress the kyroi and gain the favour that we need at the Kingsmeet.’
‘I see, thank you,’ said Laurent.
‘We attack from the north,’ said Damen, ‘here, and here,’ sand marks, ‘and bring the first of the watchtowers under our control before we make our assault on the fort.’
The tactics were straightforward, and the discussion progressed quickly to its conclusion. Laurent said very little. The few questions the Veretians had regarding Akielon manoeuvres were raised by Vannes, and answered to her satisfaction. Having received their orders for the march, the men rose to depart.
Makedon was explaining the virtues of iron tea to Laurent, and when Laurent massaged his own temple with finely bred fingers, Makedon remarked, rising, ‘You should have your slave fetch you some.’
‘Fetch me some,’ Laurent said.
Damen rose. And stopped.
Laurent had gone very still. Damen stood there, awkwardly. He could think of no other reason why he had stood up.
He looked up and his eyes met those of Nikandros, who was staring at him. Nikandros was with a small group to one side of the table, the last of the men in the hall. He was the only one to have seen and heard. Damen just stood there.
‘This meeting is over,’ Nikandros announced to the men around him, too loudly. ‘The King is ready to ride.’
* * *
The hall cleared. He was alone with Laurent. The sand tray was between them, the march on Karthas laid out in granular detail. The acidulous blue of Laurent’s gaze on him had nothing to do with the meeting.
‘Nothing happened,’ said Damen.
‘Something happened,’ said Laurent.
‘You were drunk,’ said Damen. ‘I took you back to your rooms. You asked me to attend you.’
‘What else?’ said Laurent.
‘I did attend you,’ said Damen.
‘What else?’ said Laurent.
He had thought having the upper hand over a hungover Laurent would be a rather enjoyable experience, except that Laurent was beginning to look like he was going to vomit. And not from the hangover.
‘Oh, stand down. You were too drunk to know your own name, let alone who you were with or what you were doing. Do you really think I’d take advantage of you in that condition?’
Laurent was staring at him. ‘No,’ he said awkwardly, as if, only now giving the question his full attention, he was coming to realise the answer. ‘I don’t think you would.’
His face was still white, his body in tension. Damen waited.
‘Did I,’ Laurent said. It took him a long time to push the words out. ‘Say anything.’
Laurent held himself taut, as if for flight. He lifted his eyes to meet Damen’s.
‘You said you missed me,’ said Damen.
Laurent flushed, hard, the change in colour startling.
‘I see. Thank you for—’ He could see Laurent taste the edges of the statement. ‘—resisting my advances.’
In the silence, he could hear voices beyond the door that had nothing to do with the two of them, or the honesty of the moment that almost hurt, as if they stood again in Laurent’s chambers by the bed.
‘I miss you too,’ he said. ‘I’m jealous of Isander.’
‘Isander’s a slave.’
‘I was a slave.’
The moment ached. Laurent met his gaze, his eyes too clear.
‘You were never a slave, Damianos. You were born to rule, as I was.’
* * *
He found himself in the old residential quarters of the fort.
It was quieter here. The sounds of the Akielon occupation were muted. The thick stone hushed all the noises, and there was only the building itself, the bones of Marlas, its tapestries and trellises torn down, exposed before him.
It was a beautiful fort. He saw that, the ghost of its Veretian grace; of what it had been; of what it could be again, perhaps. For his part, this was farewell. He wouldn’t return here, or if he did, as a visiting King, it would be different, restored as it should be to Veretian hands. Marlas, so hard-won, he would simply give back.
That was strange to think. Once a symbol of Akielon victory, it seemed now a symbol of all that had changed in him, the way that when he looked now, he saw with new eyes.
He came to an old door, and stopped. There was a soldier at the door, a formality. Damen waved him aside.
It was a comfortable, well-lit set of rooms with a fire burning in the hearth, and a series of furnishings including Akielon reclining seats, a wooden chest with cushions, and a low table in front of the fire, with a game and game pieces set up on it.
The girl from the village sat, squat and pale, opposite an older lady in grey skirts, bright coins used in a child’s game strewn out on the table between them. At Damen’s entry the girl scrambled up, the coins knocked to the floor with a chink.
The older lady also stood. The last time Damen had seen her she had been warding him away from a bed with the broken end of a spear.
‘What happened to your village . . . I swore that I would find out who was responsible, and make them pay for it. I meant it,’ said Damen in Veretian. ‘You both have a place here if you want it, among friends. Marlas will belong to Vere again. That is my promise to you both.’
The woman said, ‘They told us who you were.’
‘Then you know I have the power to keep my promises.’
‘You think if you give us—’ The woman stopped.
She stood beside the girl, the two of them a wall of white-faced resistance. He felt the incongruity of his presence.
‘You should go,’ said the girl into the silence. ‘You’re scaring Genevot.’
Damen looked back at Genevot. Genevot was trembling. She wasn’t scared. She was furious. She was furious at him, at his presence here.
‘It wasn’t fair what happened to your village,’ Damen said to her. ‘No fight is fair. Someone’s always stronger. But I’ll give you justice. That I swear.’
‘I wish Akielons had never come to Delfeur,’ said the girl. ‘I wish someone had been stronger than you.’
She turned her back on him after she said it. It was an act of bravery, a girl in front of a king. Then she went and picked up a coin from the floor.
‘It’s all right, Genevot,’ said the girl. ‘Look, I’ll teach you a trick. Watch my hand.’
Damen’s skin prickled as he recognised it, the echo of another presence, the achingly familiar self-possession that the girl mimicked as she closed her hand over the coin, holding her fist out in front of her.
He knew who had been here before him, who had sat with her, taught her. He had seen this trick before. And though her eight-year-old sleight of hand was a little clumsy, she managed to push the coin into her sleeve, so that when she opened her hand again, it was empty.
* * *
In the field stretching out before Marlas, the joint armies were gathered, and all the adjuncts to an army, the outriders, the heralds, the supply wagons, the livestock, the physicians, and the aristocrats, including Vannes, Guion and his wife Loyse, who in a pitched battle would need to be separated, camped and made comfortable while the soldiers fought.
Starbursts and lions. They stretched out as far as the eye could see, so many banners aloft that they looked more like a fleet of ships than a marching column. Damen looked out at the marshalling vista from his horse, and readied himself to take his place at its head.
He saw Laurent, also mounted, a frowning spicule with blond hair. Rigidly upright in the saddle, his polished armour gleame
d, his eyes impersonal with command. With the head that Laurent had from griva, it was probably a good thing that he would soon be killing people.
When Damen looked back Nikandros’s eyes were on him.
There was a different look on Nikandros’s face than there had been this morning, and it was not just that Nikandros had witnessed Damen standing at Laurent’s order at the end of the meeting. Damen pulled on a rein.
‘You’ve been listening to slave gossip.’
‘You spent the night in the Prince of Vere’s rooms.’
‘I spent ten minutes in his rooms. If you think I fucked him in that time you underrate me.’
Nikandros didn’t move his horse out of the way.
‘He played Makedon at that village. He played him perfectly, as he played you.’
‘Nikandros—’
‘No. Listen to me Damianos. We’re riding into Akielos because the Prince of Vere has chosen to take his fight into your country. It’s Akielos that will be hurt in this conflict. And when the battles are done, and Akielos is exhausted by the fight, someone will step in to take the reins of the country. Make sure it’s you. The Prince of Vere is too good at commanding people, too good at manipulating those around him in order to get his way.’
‘I see. You’re warning me again not to bed him?’
‘No,’ said Nikandros. ‘I know you’re going to bed him. I’m saying that when he lets you, think about what he wants.’
Damen was left then to spur his horse alongside Laurent’s as they took up positions, side by side. Laurent was straight-backed in the saddle beside him, a figure of polished metal. There was no sign of the hesitant young man of this morning. There was just an implacable profile.
The horns blew. The trumpets trumpeted. The whole vista of the united armies began to move, two rivals riding together, blue alongside red.
* * *
The watchtowers were empty.
That’s what the scouts were shouting, when they came pounding back on lathered horses with their uneasy news. Damen shouted back. Everyone had to shout to be heard over the cacophony of sound: the wheels, the horses, the metallic tramp of armour, the rumble of earth, the ear-splitting blow of horns that was their army on the march. The column stretched from hilltop to horizon, a line of sectioned squares that moved over fields and hills. His whole army was poised to descend in attack on the watchtowers of Karthas.
