by C. S. Pacat
There was an uneasy pause. Makedon and Straton had pledged to him in Ravenel, but that was before his alliance with Laurent. These men were being asked to accept Laurent and Vere at first sight, less than a generation out from the war.
Barieus stepped forward. ‘I want assurances that Vere does not hold undue influence over Akielos.’
Undue influence. ‘Speak plainly.’
‘They say the Prince of Vere is your lover.’
Silence. No one would have dared speak that way in his father’s court. It was a sign of the volatility of these warlords, their hatred of Vere—of his own position, newly precarious. Anger rose at the question.
‘Who we take to our bed is not your concern.’
‘If our King takes Vere to his bed, it is our concern,’ said Barieus.
‘Shall I tell them what really happened between us? They want to know,’ Laurent said.
Laurent began to unlace the cuff of his sleeve, drawing the ties through the eyelets, then opening the fabric to expose the fine underside of his wrist—and then the unmistakable gold of the slave cuff.
Damen felt the shocked buzz go around the hall, felt its prurient undercurrent. Hearing that the Prince of Vere wore an Akielon slave cuff was different to seeing it. The scandal was immense, the gold cuff a symbol of the ownership of the Akielon royal family.
Laurent leaned his wrist elegantly on the curved arm of the couch, the open sleeve reminiscent of a delicate open shirt collar, its laces trailing.
‘Do I have the question clear?’ said Laurent, speaking in Akielon. ‘You are asking if I lay with the man who killed my own brother?’
Laurent wore the slave cuff with utter disregard. He had no owner, the aristocratic arrogance of his posture said that. Laurent had always possessed an essential quality of the untouchable. He cultivated a faultless grace on the reclining couch, his chiselled profile and marble-chip eyes those of a statue. The idea that he would let anyone fuck him was impossible.
Barieus said, ‘A man would have to be ice-cold to sleep with his brother’s killer.’
‘Then you have your answer,’ said Laurent.
There was a silence, in which Laurent’s gaze held that of Barieus.
‘Yes, Exalted.’
Barieus bowed his head, and unconsciously used the Akielon Exalted, rather than the Veretian titles Highness or Majesty.
‘Well, Barieus?’ said Damen.
Barieus knelt two steps before the dais. ‘I will pledge. I see that the Prince of Vere stands with you. It’s right that we swear to you here, on the site of your greatest victory.’
He got through the pledges.
He performed his thanks to the bannermen and when the food came, signalling the end of the oaths and the commencement of the feast, he displayed his gratification.
Slaves brought the food. Squires served Damen, since he had made his preferences clear. It was an awkward arrangement that displeased everyone in the hall.
Isander served Laurent. Isander was utterly in love with his master. He strove continuously to do well, selecting each delicacy for Laurent to sample, bringing him only the best, in small, shallow dishes, refreshing the water bowl for Laurent to clean his fingers. He did it all with perfect form, discreetly attentive, and never drawing attention to himself.
His eyelashes drew attention to themselves. Damen made himself look elsewhere.
Two slaves were taking up position in the centre of the hall, one with a kithara, the other standing beside him, an older slave, chosen for his skill in recitation.
Laurent said, ‘Play The Fall of Inachtos,’ and a murmur of approval passed over the hall. Kolnas, the Keeper of Slaves, congratulated Laurent on his knowledge of Akielon epics. ‘It’s one of your favourites, isn’t it?’ said Laurent, transferring his gaze to Damen.
It was one of his favourites. He had called for it countless times, on evenings like this, in the marble halls of his home. He had always liked the depiction of Akielons cutting down their enemies, as Nisos rode out to kill Inachtos, and take his walled city. He didn’t want to hear it now.
Cut off from his brothers
Inachtos strikes too short at Nisos
Where a thousand swords
Have failed, Nisos raises one
The stirring notes of the battle song drew a burst of great approval from the bannermen, and their appreciation of Laurent grew with every stanza. Damen picked up a wine cup. Found it empty. Signalled.
The wine came. As he took up the cup, he saw Jord approaching the place where Guion sat with his wife, Loyse, to Damen’s left. It was Loyse and not Guion that Jord was approaching. She gave him a cursory look. ‘Yes?’
There was an awkward pause. ‘I just wanted to say . . . that I’m sorry for your loss. Your son was a good fighter.’
‘Thank you, soldier.’
She gave him the token attention a lady might give to any servant, and turned back to her conversation with her husband.
Before he realised it, Damen had lifted his hand and summoned Jord over. Approaching the dais, Jord made the three prostrations as ungracefully as a man wearing a new armour suit.
‘You have good instincts,’ Damen heard himself say.
It was the first time that he had spoken to Jord since the battle at Charcy. He felt how different this was to the nights they’d sat around a campfire swapping stories. He felt how different everything was. Jord gazed at him for a long moment, then indicated Laurent with his chin.
‘I’m glad you two are friends,’ said Jord.
The light was very bright. He drained his wine cup.
‘I thought when he found out about you, he’d swear revenge,’ said Jord.
‘He knew all along,’ said Damen.
‘It’s good that you could trust each other,’ said Jord. And then: ‘I think before you came, he didn’t really trust anyone.’
Damen said, ‘He didn’t.’
Laughter grew louder, as it came in bursts across the hall. Isander was bringing Laurent a sprig of grapes in a small dish. Laurent said something approving, and gestured for Isander to join him on the reclining couch. Isander glowed, shyly besotted. As Damen watched, Isander picked a single grape from the sprig, and lifted it to Laurent’s lips.
Laurent leaned in. He twined a finger around a curl of Isander’s hair and allowed himself to be fed, grape by grape, a prince with a new favourite. Across the hall, Damen saw Straton tap the shoulder of the slave serving him, a signal that Straton wished to discreetly retire, and enjoy the slave’s attentions in private.
He lifted the wine blindly. The cup was empty. Straton wasn’t the only Akielon departing with a slave; men and women throughout the hall were availing themselves. The wine, and the slaves enacting the battle were breaking down inhibitions. Akielon voices grew loud, emboldened by wine.
Laurent leaned in further to murmur something intimately into Isander’s ear, and then, as the recitation reached its climax, the clash of swords like the hammering in his chest, Damen saw Laurent tap Isander’s shoulder, and rise.
I’d wager you never thought a prince could be jealous of a slave. At this moment I’d trade places with you in a heartbeat. Torveld’s words.
He said, ‘Excuse me.’
The entire court around him rose as he pushed up from his couch-throne. Trying to follow Laurent out, he got tangled in ceremony, the hall a stifling press of bodies and noise, and, as a blond head disappeared towards the doorway, he was stopped by party after party blocking his path. He ought to have brought a slave of his own, then the crowd would have melted away, understanding: the King wished privacy.
The corridor was empty when he strode out into it. His heart was pounding. He turned the first corner into a section of the passage, half expecting to catch Laurent’s retreating figure. Instead, he saw a stark, empty arch with all its Veretian lattice s
tripped away.
Under the arch was Isander, standing with his fawn eyes, looking confused and abandoned.
His confusion was such that for a moment he just stared at Damen with wide eyes before he seemed to understand what was happening, and folded to the floor, forehead to the stone.
Damen said, ‘Where is he?’
Isander was well trained, even if nothing was happening as he had expected tonight; and even if, rather mortifyingly, he was being asked to report this fact to his King.
‘His Highness of Vere has gone for a ride.’
‘A ride where?’
‘At the stables a handler might know his destination. This slave can inquire.’
A ride, at night, alone, leaving a feast in his honour.
‘No,’ said Damen. ‘I know where he’s gone.’
* * *
At night, nothing looked the same. It was a landscape of memory. Of old stone and ancient hanging rock, of fallen kingdoms.
Damen left the castle and rode out to the field that he remembered, where ten thousand Akielon men had faced the Veretian army. He guided his horse carefully where the ground dipped and swelled. A listing stone slab, a fragment of stairs; strewn across Marlas were the ruins of something older; older than the battle, a silent witness of broken arches and crumbled, moss-covered walls.
He remembered these stone blocks that were half part of the earth, he remembered the way that fronts had had to ford and split around them. They predated the battle, and they predated Marlas, the remnants of a long-dead empire. They were a lodestar to the memory, a marker of the past on a field that might have erased everything.
Closer; the approach was difficult because it was sharp with memory. Here was the place where their left flank had fallen. Here was the place where he had ordered men to attack the lines that would not fall, the starburst banner that did not falter. Here was the place where he had killed the last of the Prince’s Guard, and come face to face with Auguste.
He dismounted from his horse, looping its reins over the cracked stone column of an overgrown pillar. The landscape was old, and the pieces of stone were old; and he remembered this place, remembered the torn soil and the desperation of the fight.
Clearing a last jut of stone, he saw the curve of a shoulder in the moonlight, the white of a loose shirt, his outer garments stripped, all wrists and exposed throat. Laurent was sitting on a stone outcrop. His jacket was discarded uncharacteristically. He was sitting on it.
A stone slid under his heel. Laurent turned. For a moment, Laurent looked at him wide-eyed, young, and then the look in his eyes changed, as though the universe had fulfilled an ineluctable promise. ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘perfect.’
Damen said, ‘I thought you might want—’
‘Want?’
‘A friend,’ said Damen. He used Jord’s word. His chest felt tight. ‘If you’d prefer me to leave, I will.’
‘Why cavil?’ said Laurent. ‘Let’s fuck.’
He said it with his shirt unlaced, the wind teasing the opening there. They faced each other.
‘That isn’t what I meant.’
‘It might not be what you meant, but it’s what you want.’ Laurent said, ‘You want to fuck me.’
Anyone else would have been drunk. Laurent was dangerously sober. Damen remembered the feel of a palm against his chest, pushing him back on the bed.
‘You’ve been thinking about it since Ravenel. Since Nesson.’
He knew this mood. He should have expected it. He made himself say the words. ‘I came because I thought you might want to talk.’
‘Not particularly.’
He said, ‘About your brother.’
‘I never fucked my brother,’ said Laurent, with a strange edge to the words. ‘That is incest.’
They were standing in the place where his brother had died. With a disorientating sensation Damen realised they weren’t going to talk about that. They were going to talk about this.
‘You’re right,’ said Damen. ‘I’ve been thinking about it since Ravenel. I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it.’
‘Why?’ said Laurent. ‘Was I that good?’
‘No. You fucked like a virgin,’ said Damen, ‘half the time. The rest of the time—’
‘Like I knew what to do?’
‘Like you knew what you were used to.’
He saw the words impact. Laurent swayed, like he’d been dealt a blow.
Laurent said, ‘I’m not certain I can take your particular brand of honesty just at the moment.’
Damen said, ‘I don’t prefer sophistication in bed, if you were wondering.’
‘That’s right,’ said Laurent. ‘You like it simple.’
All the breath left his throat. He stood, stripped, unready for it. Will you use even that against me? he wanted to say, and didn’t. Laurent’s breathing was shallow too, holding his ground.
‘He died well,’ Damen made himself say. ‘He fought better than any man I’ve known. It was a fair fight, and he felt no pain. The end was quick.’
‘Like gutting a pig?’
Damen felt like he was reeling. He barely heard the rumbling of sound. Laurent jerked around to look into the dark, where the sound was growing louder—hoof beats, thundering closer.
‘You sent your men out to look for me too?’ said Laurent, his mouth twisting.
‘No,’ said Damen, and pushed Laurent hard out of sight, into the shelter of one of the huge, crumbling blocks of stone.
In the next second, the troop was on them, at least two hundred men, so that the air was thick with the passage of horses. Damen pressed Laurent firmly into the rock, and held him in place with his body. The riders didn’t slow, even on this uncertain ground in the dark, and any man in their path would be trampled, tumbled, kicked from hoof to hoof. Discovery was a real threat, the rock cool under his palms, the dark shuddering with the pounding of hooves and heavy lethal horseflesh.
He could feel Laurent against him, the barely contained tension, adrenalin mixed with his dislike of the proximity, the urge in him to prise himself out and away, stifled by necessity.
He had a sudden thought for Laurent’s jacket, lying exposed on the outcrop, and for their horses, tied up a little way off. If they were discovered, it might mean capture or worse. They couldn’t know who these men were. His fingers bit into the stone, feeling the moss and the crumbled pieces beneath. Horses plunged all around them like the rushing of a stream.
And then they were gone, passing them as quickly as they had arrived, disappearing across the fields towards a destination in the west. The hoof beats receded. Damen didn’t move, their chests pressed to each other, Laurent’s shallow breath against his shoulder.
He felt himself shoved back as Laurent pushed himself out to stand with his back to him, breathing hard.
Damen stood with his hand against the stone, and looked after him across the landscape of strange shapes. Laurent didn’t turn back to him, just stood holding himself still. Damen could see him once again as a pale outline in a thin shirt.
‘I know you’re not cold,’ said Damen. ‘You weren’t cold when you ordered me tied to the post. You weren’t cold when you pushed me down on your bed.’
‘We need to leave.’ Laurent spoke without looking at him. ‘We don’t know who those riders were, or how they got past our scouts.’
‘Laurent—’
‘A fair fight?’ said Laurent, turning back to him. ‘No fight’s ever fair. Someone’s always stronger.’
And then the bells from the fort began to ring, the sound of a warning, their sentries belatedly reacting to the presence of unknown riders. Laurent reached down to snag up his jacket, shrugging into it, laces hanging loose. Damen brought over their horses, unhooking his reins from the stone column. Laurent swung up wordlessly into his saddle and put his heels into h
is horse, both of them riding hard back to Marlas.
CHAPTER EIGHT
IT MIGHT HAVE been nothing, simply an incursion. It was Damen’s decision to follow the riders, which meant dragging men up to ride out in the dim light of pre-dawn. They streamed out of Marlas and rode west, out through the long fields. But they found nothing, until they came to the first village.
They smelled it first. The thick, acrid smell of smoke, blown in from the south. The outer farms were deserted and blackened with fire, which still smouldered in places. There were large patches of scorched earth that spooked the horses with their startling heat when they passed.
It was worse when they rode into the clustered village itself. An experienced commander, Damen knew what happened when soldiers rode through populated lands. Given warning, the old and the young, the women and the men would make for the surrounding countryside, taking shelter in the hills with their best cow, or provisions. If not given warning, they were at the mercy of the troop’s leader, the most benevolent of whom would make his men pay for the provisions they took, and the daughters and sons they enjoyed. At first.
But that was different to the vibration of hooves at night, to rousing in confusion with no chance to escape, only time to bar the doors. Barricading themselves inside would have been instinctive but not useful. When the soldiers set fire to the houses, they would have had to come out.
Damen swung down off his horse, his heels crunching on the blackened earth, and looked at what was left of the village. Laurent was reining in behind him, a pale, slender shape beside Makedon and the Akielon men riding with him in the thin dawn light.
There was grim familiarity on both Veretian and Akielon faces. Breteau had looked like this. And Tarasis. This was not the only unprotected village ruined as a salvo in this fight.
‘Send a party to follow the riders. We stop here to bury the dead.’
As he spoke, Damen saw a soldier let a dog loose from the chain it strained at. Frowning, he watched it streak across the village, stopping at one of the far outbuildings, scrabbling at the door.