by C. S. Pacat
‘In Akielos we don’t,’ said Damen, ‘in front of other people.’
‘Not even the King?’
‘Especially not the King,’ said Damen, for whom the King still partly meant his father.
‘But how does the court know if the royal marriage has been consummated?’
‘The King knows whether or not it has been consummated!’ Horrified.
Laurent stared at him. Damen was surprised when Laurent dropped his head, and even more surprised when Laurent’s shoulders started shaking. Around the laughter emerged, ‘You wrestled him without any clothes on.’
‘That is sports,’ said Damen. He folded his arms, thinking that Veretians lacked any sense of dignity, even as Laurent sitting up and pressing a delighted kiss to his lips had him slightly mollified.
Later, ‘The King of Vere really consummates his marriage in front of the court?’
‘Not in front of the court,’ said Laurent, as if this were unspeakably foolish, ‘in front of the Council.’
‘Guion is on the Council!’ said Damen.
Later, they lay alongside one another, and Damen found himself tracing the scar on Laurent’s shoulder, the only place his skin was marred, as Damen now knew intimately. ‘I’m sorry Govart is dead. I know you were trying to keep him alive.’
‘I thought he knew something that I could use against my uncle. It doesn’t matter. We’ll stop him another way.’
‘You never told me what happened.’
‘It was nothing. There was a knife fight. I got free, and Guion and I came to an arrangement.’
Damen gazed at him.
‘What?’
‘Nikandros is never going to believe it,’ said Damen.
‘I don’t see why not.’
‘You were taken prisoner, you single-handedly escaped from the cells at Fortaine, and somehow managed to get Guion to switch sides on the way out?’
‘Well,’ said Laurent, ‘not everyone is as bad at escaping as you are.’
Damen let out a breath, and found himself laughing, as he might never have thought possible, considering what awaited him outside. He remembered Laurent in the mountains fighting alongside him, shoring up his injured side.
‘When you lost your brother, was there someone to comfort you?’
‘Yes,’ said Laurent. ‘In a way.’
‘Then I’m glad,’ said Damen. ‘I’m glad you weren’t alone.’
Laurent pushed himself away, up into a sitting position, and for a moment he sat, without speaking. He pushed his palms into his eye sockets.
‘What is it?’
‘It’s nothing,’ said Laurent.
Damen, sitting up alongside him, felt the outside world intrude its presence again. ‘We should—’
‘And we will.’ Laurent turned to him, sliding fingers into his hair. ‘But first, we have the morning.’
* * *
After, they talked.
Servants brought a breakfast of fruits, soft cheese, honey and breads on round platters, and they sat at the table in one of the rooms that opened onto the bedchamber. Damen took the seat closest to the wall, affixing the gold pin he had recovered to the cotton at his shoulder. Laurent sat in a relaxed pose, in only pants and a loose shirt, its collar and sleeves still open. Laurent was talking.
Quietly, seriously, Laurent outlined the state of play as he saw it, describing his plans and his contingencies. Damen realised that Laurent was letting him in to a part of himself he had never shared before, and he found himself drawn in to the political complexities, even as the experience felt new, and a little revelatory. Laurent never opened his thoughts like this, but always kept his planning intensely private, making his decisions alone.
When servants entered to clear the plates from the table, Laurent watched them come and go and then looked at Damen. There was an unspoken question in his words.
‘You are not keeping slaves in your household.’
‘I can’t imagine why,’ said Damen.
‘If you’ve forgotten what to do with a slave, I can tell you,’ said Laurent.
‘You hate the idea of slavery. It turns your stomach.’ Damen said it, a flat statement of truth. ‘If I’d been anyone else, you would have freed me on the first night.’ He searched Laurent’s face. ‘When I argued the case for slavery in Arles you didn’t try to change my mind.’
‘It is not a subject for an exchange of ideas. There is nothing to say.’
‘There will be slaves in Akielos. We are a slave culture.’
‘I know that.’
Damen said, ‘Are pets and their contracts so different? Did Nicaise have a choice?’
‘He had the choice of the poor with no other way to survive, the choice of a child powerless to his elders, the choice of a man when his King gives him an order, which is no choice at all, and yet still more than is afforded to a slave.’
Damen felt again the shock of hearing Laurent voice his private beliefs. He thought of him, helping Erasmus. He thought of him visiting the girl from the village, teaching her a sleight-of-hand trick. For the first time, he caught a glimmer of what Laurent would be like as a king. He saw him, not as the Regent’s unready nephew, not as Auguste’s younger brother, but as himself, a young man with a collection of talents thrown into leadership too early, and taking it on, because he was given no other choice. I would serve him, he thought, and that itself was like a little revelation.
‘I know what you think of my uncle, but he is not—’ Laurent spoke after a pause.
‘Not?’
‘He won’t hurt the child,’ said Laurent. ‘Whether it is your son or Kastor’s, it is leverage. It is leverage against you, against your armies, and against your men.’
‘You mean that it hurts me more that my son is alive and whole than it would if he were maimed or dead.’
‘Yes,’ said Laurent.
He said it seriously, looking into Damen’s eyes. Damen felt every muscle in his body ache with the effort of not thinking of it. Of not thinking the other, darker thought, the one that at all costs must be avoided. He tried to think instead of a way forward, though it was impossible.
He had an entire army gathered, Veretians and Akielons alike, ready to march south. He had spent months with Laurent assembling their forces, establishing a base of power, setting up supply lines, winning soldiers to their cause.
In one stroke, the Regent had rendered his army useless, unable to move, unable to fight, because if they did—
‘My uncle knows you won’t move against him while he holds the child,’ said Laurent. And then, calmly, steadily, ‘So we get him back.’
* * *
He looked for changes in her, but the cool, untouchable air was the same, as was the particular way that her eyes regarded him. She had the same colouring as Laurent. She had the same mathematical mind. They were like a matched pair, except that her presence was different. There was a part of Laurent that was always in tension, even when he affected calm. Jokaste’s unassailable composure seemed like serenity, until you knew she was dangerous. A similar core of steel, perhaps, existed in both.
She was waiting for him in her solar, where he’d allowed her to be reinstated, under heavy guard. She sat elegantly, with her ladies arranged around her, like flowers in a garden. She didn’t seem perturbed by her incarceration, or even really to notice it.
After his long, scrolling look around the room, he sat himself in the chair opposite her, and as if the soldiers who had entered behind him didn’t exist.
He said, ‘Is there a child?’
‘I have told you that there is,’ said Jokaste.
‘I wasn’t talking to you,’ said Damen.
The attending women seated around Jokaste were of varying ages, from the eldest of perhaps sixty to the youngest, Jokaste’s age, around twenty-four. He guessed tha
t all seven had been in her household a long time. The woman with the braided black hair was someone he vaguely recognised (Kyrina?). The two slaves were also faintly familiar. He didn’t recognise the older maidservant, or the remaining ladies of good birth. He let his eyes pass over them slowly. All were silent. He returned his gaze to Jokaste.
‘Let me tell you what is going to happen. You are going to be executed. You are going to be executed whatever you say or do. But I will spare your women, if they agree to answer my questions.’
Silence. Not one of the women spoke or came forward.
He said to the soldiers behind him, ‘Take them.’
Jokaste said, ‘This plan of action will mean the death of the child.’
He said, ‘We haven’t established that there is a child.’
She smiled, as if pleased to discover a pet capable of a trick. ‘You’ve never been very good at games. I don’t think you have what it takes to play against me.’
He said, ‘I’ve changed.’
The soldiers had halted, but there was a ripple among the ladies now at their presence, as Damen sat back in his chair.
She said, ‘Kastor will kill it. I will tell Kastor that the child is yours, and he’ll kill it. Sophisticated thoughts about using it as leverage won’t enter his mind.’
He said, ‘I believe Kastor will kill any child he believes is mine. But you have no means of getting a message to Kastor.’
‘The child’s wet nurse,’ said Jokaste, ‘will tell Kastor the truth if I am killed.’
‘If you are killed.’
‘That’s right.’
‘You,’ said Damen, ‘but not your women.’
There was a pause.
‘You are the only one protected in your arrangement. These women are going to die. Unless they talk to me.’
She said, ‘You have changed. Or is this the new power behind the throne? Who am I really negotiating with here, I wonder?’
He was already nodding to the nearest soldier. ‘Start with her.’
It wasn’t pleasant. The women resisted, and there was screaming. He watched impassively as soldiers took hold of the women and began to drag them from the room. Kyrina wrenched herself bodily out of the grip of two soldiers and prostrated herself, forehead to the floor. ‘Exalted—’
‘No,’ said Jokaste.
‘—Exalted. You are merciful. I have a son of my own. Spare my life, Exalted—’
‘No,’ said Jokaste. ‘He will not kill a roomful of women for loyalty to their mistress, Kyrina.’
‘—spare my life, I swear, I will tell you all I know—’
‘No,’ said Jokaste.
‘Tell me,’ said Damen.
Kyrina spoke without lifting her head from her prostration. Her long hair, which had escaped from its bindings during the tussle, spread over the floor.
‘There is a child. He was taken to Ios.’
‘That’s enough,’ said Jokaste.
‘None of us know if the child is yours. She says it is.’
‘That’s enough, Kyrina,’ said Jokaste.
‘There’s more,’ said Damen.
‘Exalted—’ said Kyrina—
—as Jokaste said, ‘No.’ —
‘My lady did not trust the Regent of Vere to protect her interests. In the case that there was no other way to save her life, the wet nurse could be instructed to bring the child to you—in exchange for Jokaste’s freedom.’
Damen sat back in his chair, and lifted his brows slightly at Jokaste.
Jokaste’s hand was a fist in her skirts, but she spoke in a calm voice. ‘Do you think you have overturned my plans? There is no way to circumvent my conditions. The wet nurse will not leave Ios. If you are going to make the exchange, you will need to take me there, and exchange me personally.’
Damen looked at Kyrina, who lifted her head and nodded.
Jokaste, he thought, believed that it was impossible for him to travel into Ios, and that there was no place where it was safe for him to attempt an exchange.
But there was a place where two enemies could meet without fear of ambush. An ancient, ceremonial place, which held to strict laws, where, since days of old, the kyroi could gather in safety, protected by the standing rule of peace, and the order of soldiers who enforced it. Kings travelled there to be crowned, nobles to settle disputes. Its strictures were sacred, and allowed parley without the prickling spears and spilt blood of the earliest, warlike days of Akielos.
It had a fated quality that appealed to him. ‘We make the exchange in a place where no man can bring an army, or draw a sword, on pain of death.’ Damen said, ‘We make the exchange in the Kingsmeet.’
There was not much to do after that. Kyrina was taken to an antechamber to arrange communication with the wet nurse. The women were escorted out. And then he and Jokaste were alone.
‘Give my congratulations to the Prince of Vere,’ she said. ‘But you’re a fool to trust him. He has his own plans.’
‘He has never pretended otherwise,’ said Damen.
He looked at her, alone on the low couch. He couldn’t help but remember the day they met. She had been presented to his father, daughter of a minor noble from Aegina, and he had been able to look nowhere else. It was three months of courtship before she was in his arms.
He said, ‘You chose a man who was bent on destroying his own country. You chose my brother, and look where it’s left you. You have no position, no friends. Even your own women have turned on you. Don’t you think it’s a shame things had to end this way between us?’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Kastor should have killed you.’
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
BECAUSE HE COULDN’T put Jokaste in a sack and carry her bodily across the border into Kastor’s territory, the journey presented certain logistical challenges.
In order to justify two wagons and an entourage, they would be pretending to be cloth merchants. This disguise was not going to stand up to any serious scrutiny. There would be bolts of cloth in the wagons. There would also be Jokaste. Stepping out into the courtyard, she looked at the preparations with the sort of calm that said she would cooperate wholly with Damen’s plans, and then, given the first opportunity, smile and wreck them.
The real problem was not even the disguise. It was getting past the border patrols. ‘Cloth merchants’ might help them travel unimpeded inside Akielos, but it would not get them past border sentries. It would certainly not get them past border sentries who—Damen was quite sure—had already been alerted to the possibility of their coming by Jokaste. Damen spent two fruitless hours with Nikandros trying to plot a course that could sneak two wagons across the border without alerting patrols, and another fruitless hour alone staring at the map, until Laurent wandered in and outlined a plan so outrageous that Damen had said yes with the feeling that his mind was splitting apart.
They were taking the best of their soldiers, those elite few who had excelled in the games: Jord who had won short sword, Lydos of the trident, Aktis the spear thrower, the young, triple-crowned Pallas, Lazar, who had whistled at him, and a handful of their best spear throwers and swordsmen. Laurent’s addition to the expedition was Paschal, and Damen tried not to think too deeply about the reasons why Laurent thought it necessary to bring a physician.
And then, ludicrously, Guion. Guion could use a sword. Guion’s guilt made him more likely to fight for Damen than anyone else. And if the worst happened, Guion’s testimony had the potential to bring down the Regency. Laurent had said all of this succinctly, and told Guion, in a pleasant voice, ‘Your wife can chaperone Jokaste on the journey.’
Guion had understood more quickly than Damen. ‘I see. My wife is the leverage for my good behaviour?’
‘That’s right,’ said Laurent.
Damen watched from a second-storey window as they gathered in the courtyard:
two wagons, two noblewomen, and twelve soldiers of whom ten were soldiers and two were Guion and Paschal in metal hats.
He himself was dressed in the humble white cloth of a traveller, with a wrist-gauntlet of leather strapped over the gold cuff. He was waiting for Laurent to arrive in order to discuss the finer points of his ridiculous plan. Damen picked up a glazed pitcher of wine in order to pour it into one of the waiting shallow cups.
‘Did you learn the rotation of the border patrols?’ said Laurent.
‘Yes, our scouts found—’
Laurent was standing in the doorway wearing a chiton of unadorned white cotton.
Damen dropped the pitcher.
It shattered, shards flying outward as it slipped from his fingers and hit the stone floor.
Laurent’s arms were bare. His throat was bare. His collarbone was bare, and most of his thighs, his long legs, and all of his left shoulder. Damen stared at him.
‘You’re wearing Akielon clothing,’ said Damen.
‘Everyone’s wearing Akielon clothing,’ said Laurent.
Damen thought that the pitcher had shattered and he could not now take a deep draught of the wine. Laurent came forward, navigating the broken ceramic in his short cotton and sandalled feet, until he reached the seat beside Damen, where the map was laid out on the wooden table.
‘Once we know the rotation of the patrols, we’ll know when to approach,’ said Laurent.
Laurent sat down.
‘We need to approach at the beginning of their rotation in order to give us the most time before they report back to the fort.’
It was even shorter sitting down.
‘Damen.’
‘Yes. Sorry,’ said Damen. And then: ‘What were you saying?’
‘The patrols,’ said Laurent.
The plan was no less outrageous when laid out in meticulous detail, with estimates of travel times and distances. The risk if it failed was enormous. They were taking as many soldiers as they could justify, but if they were discovered, if it came to a fight, they would lose. They had only twelve soldiers. Twelve-ish, amended Damen, thinking of Paschal and Guion.
In the courtyard, he looked at the small assembled party. The armies they had spent so long building would be left behind. Vannes and Makedon would stay to jointly defend the network they had established, from Ravenel, through Fortaine, Marlas, and Sicyon. Vannes could handle Makedon, Laurent said.