by S. U. Pacat
‘That his favour cannot be trusted? That even the boys in his bed see how false is his claim to the throne? Or that his hold on power is so flimsy that he fears the words of a bought child whore?
‘Let him come to Charcy, with his hithertos and his wherefores, and there he will find me, and with all the might of my kingdom I will scourge him from the field.
‘And if you want a personal message,’ said Laurent, ‘You can tell my uncle boykiller that he can cut the head off every child from here to the capital. It won’t make him into a king, it will simply mean he has no one left to fuck.’
Laurent wheeled his horse, and Damen was there, facing him, as the Regent’s emissaries, dismissed, moved out, and men and women in the courtyard milled, agog with the shock of what they had seen and heard.
For a moment they faced each other and the look Laurent gave him was ice cold, so that if he had been on foot he might have taken a step back. He saw Laurent’s hands hard on the reins, as though white-knuckled under the gloves. His chest felt tight.
‘You’ve outstayed your welcome,’ said Laurent.
‘Don’t do this. If you ride to meet your uncle unprepared you will lose everything you’ve fought for.’
‘But I won’t be unprepared. Pretty little Aimeric is going to give up everything he knows, and when I’ve wrung every last word out of him maybe I’ll send what’s left to my uncle.’
Damen opened his mouth to speak but Laurent cut him off in a whiplash order to Damen’s escort: ‘I told you to get him out of here.’ And he put his heels in his horse, and drove it past Damen’s, up the steps to the dais, where he dismounted in one fluid motion, and headed in the direction of Aimeric’s rooms.
Damen found himself facing Jord. He didn’t need to look up to see the position of the sun.
‘I’m going to stop him,’ said Damen. ‘What are you going to do?’
‘It’s noon,’ said Jord. The words sounded harsh, like they hurt his throat.
‘He needs me,’ said Damen. ‘I don’t care if you tell the world.’
And he rode his horse past Jord, onto the dais.
Dismounting as Laurent had done, he tossed his reins to a nearby soldier and followed Laurent into the fort, taking the stairs up to the second level two at a time. Aimeric’s guards stepped back for him without question, and the door was already open.
He brought up short after a single step inside.
The rooms, of course, were beautiful. Aimeric wasn’t a soldier, he was an aristocrat. He was the fourth son of one of the most powerful Veretian border lords, and his rooms matched his station. There was a bed, and a lounging couch, patterned tiles and a high arched window with a second seat cut into it, tumbled with cushions. There was a table on the far side of the room, and Aimeric had been given food, wine, paper and ink. He had even been given a change of clothing. It was a careful arrangement. Where he sat at the table, he no longer wore the dirt-streaked undershirt he’d worn under his armour. He was dressed like a courtier. He had bathed. His hair looked clean.
Laurent stood still two steps from him, all the lines of his body rigid.
Damen pushed himself forward until he stood alongside Laurent. His was the only movement in the silent room. With half his mind, he noticed little things: the broken pane of glass in the bottom left-hand corner of the window; last night’s meat uneaten on the plate; the bed not slept in.
In the tower, Laurent had struck Aimeric across the right side of his face, but the right side of his face was hidden by his pose—his tousled head resting on his arm—so that all that Damen saw was intact. There was no swollen eye or grazed cheek or blurred mouth, just the unmarred line of Aimeric’s profile, and a shard of glass from the broken window lying by his outflung hand.
Blood had soaked into his sleeve, had pooled out over the table and the tiled floor, but it was old. He had been like this for hours, long enough for the blood to darken, for his movements to cease, for a stillness to invade the room, until it was as still as Laurent, staring at him with sightless eyes.
He’d been writing; the paper was not far from the curl of his fingertips, and Damen could see the three words he’d written. That he had neat handwriting shouldn’t have been a surprise. He had always striven to perform his duties well. On the march he had worn himself into the ground trying to keep up with stronger men.
A fourth son, thought Damen, waiting for someone to notice him. When he wasn’t trying to please, he was baiting authority, as though negative attention could substitute for the approval that he sought—that he had been given, once, by Laurent’s uncle.
I’m sorry, Jord.
They were the last words anyone would have from him. He had killed himself.
CHAPTER 21
THE ROOM WHERE Aimeric lay was quiet. He had been taken from his suite to a smaller cell and laid out on stone, his body covered by fine linen. Nineteen, thought Damen, and quiet.
Outside, Ravenel was preparing for war.
It was a fort-wide undertaking, from the armoury to the storehouses. It had begun when Laurent had turned from the ruined table and said, ‘Saddle the horses. We ride for Charcy.’ He had knocked Damen’s hand off his shoulder when Damen had tried to stop him.
Damen had attempted to follow, and had been prevented. Laurent had spent an hour giving brief orders, and Damen hadn’t been able to get near him. After that, Laurent had retired to his rooms, the doors firmly closed behind him.
When a servant had made to enter, Damen had bodily stopped him. ‘No,’ he said. ‘No one goes in.’
He had put a two-man guard on the door with those same orders, and cleared out the section—as he had done once before, at the tower. When he had been certain that Laurent had sufficient privacy, he had left to learn all he could about Charcy. What he had learned had made his stomach sink.
Lying between Fortaine and the northern trade routes, Charcy was perfectly positioned for two forces to trap a third. There was a reason the Regent was taunting Laurent out of his fort: Charcy was a death trap.
Damen had pushed the maps from himself in frustration. That had been two hours ago.
Now he stood in the quiet of this small, cell-like room of thick stone that housed Aimeric. He lifted his eyes to Jord, who had summoned him.
‘You’re his lover,’ said Jord.
‘I was.’ He owed Jord the truth. ‘We . . . it was the first time. Last night.’
‘So you told him.’
He didn’t answer, and his silence spoke for him. Jord let out a breath, and Damen spoke then.
‘I’m not Aimeric.’
‘You ever wonder what it would feel like to find out you’d spread for your brother’s killer?’ Jord looked around the small room. He looked at the place where Aimeric lay. ‘I think it would feel like this.’
Unbidden, remembered words rose up inside him. I don’t care. You’re still my slave tonight. Damen pressed his eyes closed. ‘I wasn’t Damianos last night. I was just—’
‘Just a man?’ said Jord. ‘You think Aimeric thought that? That there were two of him? Because there weren’t. There was only ever one, and look what happened to him.’
Damen was silent. Then, ‘What are you going to do?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Jord.
‘Are you going to leave his service?’
This time it was Jord who was silent.
‘Someone has to tell Laurent not to meet his uncle’s troops at Charcy.’
‘You think he’ll listen to me?’ said Jord bitterly.
‘No,’ said Damen. He thought of those closed doors, and he spoke with flat honesty. ‘I don’t think he’ll listen to anyone.’
He stood in front of the double doors and the two soldiers that flanked them, and looked at the heavy panelled wood, resolutely shut.
He had put those soldiers on the door to bar the way to those men seeking Laurent out for some trivial matter, or for any matter, because when Laurent wanted to be alone, no one should suffer the consequenc
es of interrupting him.
The taller soldier addressed him. ‘Commander, no one has entered in your absence.’ Damen’s eyes passed over the doors again.
‘Good,’ he said. And he pushed the doors open.
Inside, the rooms were as he remembered them, remade and reordered, and even the table was replenished, with platters of fruit and pitchers of water and of wine. When the doors closed behind Damen, the faint sounds of the preparations in the courtyard could still be heard. He stopped, halfway into the room.
Laurent had changed out of riding leathers and had returned to the severe formality of his prince’s garments, hard-laced into his clothing from neck to toe-tip. He stood at the window, one hand on the stone of the wall, fingers curled as though he held something in his fist. His gaze was fixed on the activity in the courtyard, where the fort was preparing for war on his orders. He spoke without turning.
‘Come to say goodbye?’ said Laurent.
There was a pause, in which Laurent turned. Damen looked at him.
‘I’m sorry. I know what Nicaise meant to you.’
‘He was my uncle’s whore,’ said Laurent.
‘He was more than that. You thought of him as—’
‘A brother?’ said Laurent. ‘But I do not have terribly good luck with those. I hope you are not here for a mawkish display of sentiment. I will throw you out.’
There was a long silence. They faced each other.
‘Sentiment? No. I wouldn’t expect that,’ said Damen. The sounds of outside were of orders and metal. ‘Since you don’t have a Captain left to advise you, I’m here to tell you that you can’t go to Charcy.’
‘I have a Captain. I’ve appointed Enguerran. Is that everything? I have reinforcements arriving tomorrow and I am taking my men to Charcy.’ Laurent was moving to the table, the dismissal in his voice clear.
‘Then you’ll kill them like you killed Nicaise,’ said Damen. ‘By dragging them into this endless, childish bid of yours for your uncle’s attention that you call a fight.’
‘Get out,’ said Laurent. He had gone white.
‘Is the truth hard to hear?’
‘I said get out.’
‘Or do you claim you’re marching to Charcy for some other reason?’
‘I am fighting for my throne.’
‘Is that what you think? You’ve fooled the men into believing it. You haven’t fooled me. Because this thing between you and your uncle isn’t a fight, is it.’
‘I can assure you,’ said Laurent, his right hand clenched unconsciously into a fist, ‘it’s a fight.’
‘In a fight, you try to beat your opponent. You don’t scurry to do what he wants. This is about more than Charcy. You’ve never made a single move of your own against your uncle. You let him set the field. You let him make the rules. You play his games like you want to show him you can. Like you’re trying to impress him. Is that it?’
Damen moved in further.
‘You need to beat him at his own game? You want him to see you do it? At the expense of your position and the lives of your men? Are you that desperate for his attention?’
He let his eyes rake up and down Laurent’s form.
‘Well, you have it. Congratulations. You must have loved it that he was obsessed enough with you that he killed his own boy to get at you. You win.’
Laurent took a step back, an almost-swaying motion of a man in the grip of nausea. He stared at Damen, his face hollowed.
‘You don’t know anything,’ Laurent said then, in a cold, terrible voice. ‘You don’t know anything about me. Or my uncle. You’re so blind. You can’t see what’s—right in front of you.’ Laurent’s sudden laugh was low and mocking. ‘You want me? You’re my slave?’
He felt himself flush. ‘That’s not going to work.’
‘You’re nothing,’ said Laurent, ‘but a crawling disappointment who let a King’s bastard throw him in chains because he couldn’t keep his mistress happy in bed.’
‘That’s not,’ he said, ‘going to work.’
‘You want to hear the truth about my uncle? I’ll tell you,’ said Laurent, a new light in his eyes. ‘I’ll tell you what you couldn’t stop. What you were too blind to see. You were in chains while Kastor was cutting down your royal family. Kastor and my uncle.’
He heard it, and he knew not to engage. He knew, and a part of him was aching at what Laurent was doing, even as he heard himself say, ‘What does your uncle have to do with—’
‘Where do you think Kastor got the military support to hold back his brother’s faction? Why do you think the Veretian Ambassador arrived with treaty in hand right after Kastor took the throne?’
He tried to take a breath. He heard himself say, ‘No.’
‘Did you think Theomedes died from natural sickness? All those visits from physicians that only made him sicker?’
‘No,’ said Damen. There was a pounding in his head, and then he felt it in his body, it was impossible for flesh to contain the shaking force of it. And Laurent was still talking.
‘You didn’t guess it was Kastor? You poor dumb brute. Kastor killed the King, then took the city with my uncle’s troops. And all my uncle had to do was to sit back and watch it happen.’
He thought of his father, in a sick bed ringed with physicians, his eyes and cheeks hollowed out, and the room thick with the smell of tallow and of death. He remembered his sense of powerlessness, watching his father slip away, and Kastor, so solicitous, kneeling by his father’s side.
‘Did you know about this?’
‘Know?’ said Laurent. ‘Everyone knows. I was glad. I just wish I could have seen it happen. I wish I could have seen Damianos when Kastor’s hire-swords came for him. I would have laughed in his face. His father got exactly what he deserved, to die like the animal he was, and there was nothing any of them could do to stop it happening. Then again,’ said Laurent, ‘maybe if Theomedes had kept his cock in his wife instead of sticking it in his mistress—’
That was the last thing he said, because Damen hit him. He drove his fist into Laurent’s jaw with all the force of his weight behind it. Knuckles impacted on flesh and bone and Laurent’s head snapped sideways even as he hit the table behind him hard, sending its contents scattering. Metallic platters crashed against tile, a mess of spilt wine and strewn food. Laurent clutched the table with the arm that he’d flung out instinctively to stop his fall.
Damen was breathing hard, his hands clenched into fists. How dare you talk that way about my father. The words were on his lips. His mind pulsed and throbbed.
Laurent pushed himself up and gave Damen a look glittering with triumph, even as he dragged the back of his right hand across his mouth, where his lips were smeared with blood.
And then Damen saw what else lay among the overturned platters that littered the floor. It was bright against the tiles, like a scattering of stars. It was what Laurent had been holding in his right hand when Damen entered. The blue sapphires of Nicaise’s earring.
The doors behind him opened, and Damen knew without turning around that the sound had summoned the soldiers into the room. He didn’t take his eyes off Laurent.
‘Arrest me,’ said Damen. ‘I have raised hands to the Prince.’
The soldiers hesitated. It was the just response to his actions but he was—or had been—their Captain. He had to say again, ‘Do it.’
The darker-haired soldier stepped forward and Damen felt the grip take him. Laurent set his jaw.
‘No,’ said Laurent. And then, ‘It was provoked.’
Another hesitation. It was clear that the two soldiers did not know what to make of what they had walked into. The air of violence was heavy in the room, where their Prince stood in front of a ruined table, with blood welling from his lip.
‘I said let him go.’
It was a direct order from their Prince, and this time it was obeyed. Damen felt the hands release him. Laurent’s gaze followed the soldiers out as they bowed, then left, the doors closing
behind them. Then Laurent transferred his gaze to Damen.
‘Now get out,’ Laurent said.
Damen pressed his eyes closed briefly. He felt raw with thoughts of his father. Laurent’s words pushed at the inside of his eyelids.
‘No,’ he said. ‘You can’t go to Charcy. I need to convince you of that.’
Laurent’s laugh was a strange, breathless sound. ‘Didn’t you hear anything that I just said to you?’
‘Yes,’ said Damen. ‘You tried to hurt me, and you have. I wish you would see that what you have just done to me is what your uncle is doing to you.’
He saw Laurent receive that like a man at the very ends of his endurance being given another hit. ‘Why,’ said Laurent, ‘do you—do you always—’ He stopped himself. The rise and fall of his chest was shallow.
‘I came with you to stop a war,’ said Damen. ‘I came because you were the only thing standing between Akielos and your uncle. It’s you who’ve lost sight of that. You need to fight your uncle on your own terms, not on his.’
‘I can’t.’ It was a raw admission. ‘I can’t think.’ The words were torn out of him. Wide-eyed in the silence, Laurent said them again in a different voice, his blue eyes dark with the exposure of the truth. ‘I can’t think.’
‘I know,’ said Damen.
He said it softly. There was more than one admission in Laurent’s words. He knew that too.
He knelt, and scooped up the glimmer of Nicaise’s earring from the floor.
It had been a delicate thing, and well made, a handful of sapphires. Rising, he set it down on the table.
After a time, he moved back from the place where Laurent leant, fingers curled around the table edge. He drew a breath, made to take another step back.
‘Don’t go,’ said Laurent, quietly.
‘I’m just clearing my head. I already told my escort I wouldn’t need them until morning,’ said Damen.
And there was another awful silence, as Damen realised what Laurent was asking him.
‘No. I don’t mean—forever—just—’ Laurent broke off. ‘Three days.’ Laurent said it as though producing from the depths the answer to a painstakingly weighed question. ‘I can do this alone. I know I can. It’s only that right now I can’t seem to . . . think, and I can’t . . . trust anyone else to stand up to me when I’m . . . like this. If you could give me three days, I—’ He forcibly cut himself off.
