Captive Prince, Volume 2

by C. S. Pacat

  As though responding to some instinct, Laurent looked up and met Damen’s eyes, and in the next moment Laurent was rising and making his way over.

  ‘You aren’t going to come and eat?’

  ‘I should return to oversee the work outside. Ravenel should have impeccable defences. I want . . . I want to do that for you,’ he said.

  ‘It can wait. You just won me a fort,’ said Laurent. ‘Let me spoil you a little.’

  They stood by the wall, and as Laurent spoke, he leaned a shoulder against the contoured stone. His voice was pitched for the space between them, private and unhurried.

  ‘I remember. You take a great deal of pleasure in small victories.’ Damen quoted Laurent’s words back to him.

  ‘It’s not small,’ said Laurent. ‘It’s the first time I’ve ever won a play against my uncle.’

  He said it simply. Light from the torches reflected on his face. Conversation around them was a faded wax and wane of sound, mingling with the restrained colours, the reds, browns and dimmed blues of flame light.

  ‘You know that isn’t true. You won against him in Arles when you had Torveld take the slaves to Patras.’

  ‘That wasn’t a play against my uncle. That was a play against Nicaise. Boys are easy. At thirteen,’ said Laurent, ‘you could have led me around by the nose.’

  ‘I can’t believe you were ever easy.’

  ‘Think of the greenest innocent you’ve ever tumbled,’ said Laurent. And then, when Damen didn’t answer: ‘I forgot, you don’t fuck boys.’

  Across the hall there was a muted burst of laughter at some distant minor antic. The hall was a hazy background of sounds and shapes. The light was a warm torch glow.

  Damen said, ‘Men, sometimes.’

  ‘In the absence of women?’

  ‘When I want them.’

  ‘If I’d known that, I might have felt a frisson of danger, lying next to you.’

  ‘You did know that,’ said Damen.

  There was a pause. Laurent pushed himself away from the wall eventually.

  ‘Come and eat,’ Laurent said.

  Damen found himself at the table. In Veretian parlance, it was a relaxed affair, people already eating bread with fingers and meat from knife points. But the table was arrayed with the best the kitchens could provide at short notice: spiced meats, pheasant with apples, birds stuffed with raisins and cooked in milk. Damen reached unthinkingly for a sliver of meat, but Laurent’s grip on his wrist stopped him, drawing his arm back from the table.

  ‘Torveld tells me that in Akielos, it’s the slave who feeds the master.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Then you can’t have any objection,’ said Laurent, picking up the morsel, and lifting it.

  Laurent’s gaze was steady, with no demure lowering of his eyes. He was nothing like a slave, even when Damen allowed himself to imagine it. Damen remembered Laurent shifting inwards on a long wooden bench in the inn at Nesson to fastidiously eat bread from his fingers.

  ‘I don’t have any objection,’ said Damen.

  He stayed where he was. It was not the role of a master to strain after food held at arm’s length.

  Golden brows arched slightly. Laurent shifted in, and brought the meat to Damen’s lips.

  The act of biting felt deliberate. The meat was rich and warm, a delicacy with southern influences, very like the food of his homeland. Chewing was slow; he was over-aware of Laurent watching him. When Laurent picked up the next sliver of meat, it was Damen who leaned in.

  He took a second bite. He didn’t look at the food, he looked at Laurent, at the way he held himself, always so controlled, so that all of his reactions were subtle, his blue eyes difficult to read, but not cold. He could see that Laurent was pleased, that he was enjoying the acquiescence for its rarity, its exclusivity. It felt like he was on the edge of understanding, as though Laurent was coming into view for the first time.

  Damen drew back, and that was the right thing to do too, allowing the moment to be easy: a small, shared intimacy at table, one that passed largely unnoticed by the other diners.

  Around them, the conversation shifted to other things, news from the border, moments of the battle, discussion of tactics on the field. Damen kept his eyes on Laurent.

  Someone had brought a kithara, and Erasmus was playing, soft, unobtrusive notes. In Akielon performances—as in all things Akielon—restraint was prized. The overall effect was one of simplicity. In the quiet between songs, Damen heard himself say, ‘Play the Conquest of Arsaces,’ speaking the request to the boy without thinking. In the next moment, he heard the first familiar stirring notes.

  The song was old. The boy had a lovely voice. Notes pulsed, winding through the hall, and though the words from his homeland would be lost on the Veretians, Damen recalled that Laurent could speak his language.

  They are surely gods who speak to him

  With steady voices

  A glance from him drives men to their knees

  His sigh brings cities to ruin

  I wonder if he dreams of surrender

  On a bed of white flowers

  Or is that the mistaken hope

  Of every would-be conqueror?

  The world was not made for beauty like his

  The song ended softly, and despite the unfamiliar language, the unassuming performance of the slave had changed the mood in the hall a little. There was a smattering of applause. Damen’s attention was on Laurent’s ivory and gold colouring, the overfine skin, the last traces of bruising from where he’d been tied up and hit. Damen’s gaze travelled, inch by inch, taking in the proud lift of his chin, the uncooperative eyes, the arch of his cheekbone, and dropping back down to his mouth. His sweet, vicious mouth.

  The pulse of desire, when it came, was a throb that re-formed blood and flesh, and transformed awareness. He stood, unthinking. He left the hall, walking out into the great courtyard.

  The fort was a dark, torchlit mass around him. The walls were now manned by their own men, and the occasional shout came from the sentries on its walls; though tonight every gate-lamp was lit, and sounds mingled, laughter and raised voices flowed from the direction of the great hall.

  Distance should have made it easier, but the ache only increased, and he found himself on the thick walls of the battlements, dismissing the soldiers who were manning that section, bracing his arms against the stone and waiting for the feeling to subside.

  He would leave. It was for the best that he would leave. He would ride out early, would be across the border before midday. There would be no need to leave word: when his absence was noticed, Jord would bring report of his departure to Laurent. Veretians would take over the duties and the structures he had set up here at the fort. He had created them to ensure that.

  Everything would be simple in the morning. Jord, he thought, would give him time to get beyond Laurent’s scouts before he brought word to Laurent that his Captain, irrevocably, was gone. He focused on the pragmatic realities: a horse, supplies, a route that would avoid scouts. The intricacies of Ravenel’s defence were now matters for other men. The fight they faced over the coming months was not his own. He could put it behind him.

  His life in Vere, the man he was here, he could put all of it behind him.

  A sound on the stone steps; he lifted his head. The battlements stretched towards the south tower, a stone walkway with toothed crenellation to the left, and torches lit at intervals. Damen had ordered the section cleared. Cresting the circular stone stairs was the only person who could have disobeyed that command.

  Damen watched as alone, unattended, Laurent had left his own banquet to find him, to follow him here, up the worn steps out onto to the battlements. Laurent fitted himself next to him, a comfortable, unobtrusive presence that took up room in Damen’s chest. They stood on the edge of the fort they had wo
n together. Damen tried for a conversational tone.

  ‘You know, the slaves you gifted to Torveld are worth almost the same as the men that he’s given you.’

  ‘I would say exactly that much.’

  ‘I thought you helped them out of compassion.’

  ‘No, you didn’t,’ said Laurent.

  The breath that escaped him was not quite like laughter. He looked out at the darkness beyond the torches, the unseen expanse of the south.

  ‘My father,’ he said, ‘hated Veretians. He called them cowards, deceivers. It’s what he taught me to believe. He would have been just like these border lords, Touars and Makedon. War hungry. I can only imagine what he would have thought of you.’

  He looked over at Laurent. He knew his father’s nature, his beliefs. He knew exactly the reaction that Laurent would have provoked, if he’d ever stood before Theomedes at Ios. If Damen had argued for him, had tried to make him see Laurent as . . . he would not have understood. You fight them, you don’t trust them. He’d never stood against his father for anything. He’d never needed to, so closely had their values aligned.

  ‘Your own father would be proud today.’

  ‘That I picked up a sword and put on my brother’s ill-fitting clothes? I’m sure he would be,’ said Laurent.

  ‘You don’t want the throne,’ Damen said after a moment, his eyes passing carefully over Laurent’s face.

  ‘I want the throne,’ said Laurent. ‘Do you honestly think, after all you’ve seen, that I’d shy from power or the chance to wield it?’

  Damen felt his mouth twist. ‘No.’

  ‘No.’

  His own father had ruled by the sword. He had forged Akielos into one nation, and used the new might of that country to expand its borders, fiercely proud. He had launched his northern campaign to return Delpha to his kingdom after ninety years of Veretian rule. But it was not his kingdom any longer. His father, who would never stand inside Ravenel, was dead.

  ‘I never questioned the way my father saw the world. It was enough for me to be the kind of son he was proud of. I could never bring shame to his memory, but for the first time I realise I don’t want to be . . .’

  His kind of King.

  It would have felt like dishonour to say it. And yet he had seen the village of Breteau, innocent of aggression, cut down by Akielon swords.

  Father, I can beat him, he’d said, and he’d ridden out and returned to a hero’s welcome, to have his armour stripped by servants, to have his father greet him with pride. He remembered that night, all those nights, the galvanising power of his father’s expansionist victories, the approbation, as success flowed from success. He had not thought about the way it had played out on the other side of the field. When this game began, I was younger.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Damen.

  Laurent gave him a strange look. ‘Why would you apologise to me?’

  He couldn’t answer. Not with the truth. He said, ‘I didn’t understand what being King meant to you.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘An end to fighting.’

  Laurent’s expression changed, the subtle signifiers of shock imperfectly repressed, and Damen felt it in his own body, a new pull in his chest at the look in Laurent’s dark eyes.

  ‘I wish it could have been different between us, I wish I could have behaved to you with more honour. I want you to know that you will have a friend across the border, whatever happens tomorrow, whatever happens to both of us.’

  ‘Friends,’ said Laurent. ‘Is that what we are?’

  Laurent’s voice was tightly knotted, as though the answer was obvious; as though it was as obvious as what was happening between them, the air disappearing, mote by mote.

  Damen said, with helpless honesty, ‘Laurent, I am your slave.’

  The words laid him open, truth exposed in the space between them. He wanted to prove it, as though, inarticulate, he could make up for what divided them. He was aware of the shallowness of Laurent’s breath, it matched his own; they were breathing each other’s air. He reached out, watching for any hesitation in Laurent’s eyes.

  The touch he offered was accepted as it had not been last time, fingers gentle on Laurent’s jaw, thumb passing over his cheekbone, soft. Laurent’s controlled body was hard with tension, his rapid pulse urgent for flight, but he closed his eyes in the last seconds before it happened. Damen’s palm slid over Laurent’s warm nape; slowly, very slowly, making his height an offering, not a threat, Damen leaned in and kissed Laurent on the mouth.

  The kiss was barely a suggestion of itself, with no yielding of the rigidity in Laurent, but the first kiss became a second, after a fraction of parting in which Damen felt the flicker of Laurent’s shallow breathing against his own lips.

  It felt, in all the lies between them, as if this was the only true thing. It didn’t matter that he was leaving tomorrow. He felt remade with the desire to give Laurent this: to give him all he would allow, and to ask for nothing, this careful threshold something to be savoured because it was all Laurent would let himself have.

  ‘Your Highness—’

  They broke apart at the voice, the burst of sound, of nearby footsteps. A head was cresting the stone steps. Damen took a step backwards, his stomach twisting.

  It was Jord.

  CHAPTER 18

  Abruptly separated, Damen stood across from Laurent in one of the islands of light where the torches flamed at intervals. The length of the battlements stretched out on either side and Jord, several feet off, was halted in his approach.

  ‘I ordered the section cleared,’ Damen said. Jord was intruding. At home in Akielos, he’d only have had to glance up from what he was doing and order, Leave us, and the intrusion would be gone. And he could go back to what he had been doing.

  To what, gloriously, he had been doing. He’d been kissing Laurent and that should not be interrupted. His eyes returned warmly, possessively to their object: Laurent looked like any young man who has been pressed against a battlement and kissed. The slight disturbance of the hair at Laurent’s nape was wonderful. His hand had lain there.

  ‘I’m not here for you,’ said Jord.

  ‘Then state your business and leave.’

  ‘My business is with the Prince.’

  His hand had lain there, and pushed up into the soft, warm golden hair. Interrupted, the kiss was alive between them, in dark eyes and heartbeats. His attention swung back to the intruder. The threat that Jord posed to him was galvanising. What had happened was not going to be threatened by anything or anyone.

  Laurent pushed himself away from the wall.

  ‘Here to warn me about the dangers of making command decisions in bed?’ Laurent said.

  There was a short, spectacular silence. The flaming of the torches, the wind striking the walls were over-loud. Jord stood very still.

  ‘Something to say?’ said Laurent.

  Jord was holding off from them. The same stubborn distaste was in his voice. ‘Not with him here.’

  ‘He’s your Captain,’ said Laurent.

  ‘He knows well enough he should go.’

  ‘While we compare notes on spreading for the enemy?’ said Laurent.

  This silence was worse. Damen felt the distance between himself and Laurent with his whole body, four endless steps across the battlements.

  ‘Well?’ said Laurent.

  Jord’s eyes had turned to Damen, full of bloody-mindedness. But, He is Damianos of Akielos, Jord didn’t say, though he looked strained to his limits with repulsion at what he had just seen, and the silence stretched out, thick and tangible with what lay underneath.

  Damen stepped forward. ‘Maybe—’

  More sound on the stairs, the clatter of several urgent footsteps. Jord turned. Guymar and another of the soldiers were coming to the section he had ordered cleared.
Damen passed a hand over his face. Everyone in the fort was coming to the section he had ordered cleared.

  ‘Captain. I apologise for the breach in your orders. But there is a situation developing downstairs.’

  ‘A situation?’

  ‘A group of the men have it into their minds to make sport with one of the prisoners.’

  The world was not going away. The intrusive world was returning its concerns, the issues of discipline, the mechanisms of captaincy.

  ‘The prisoners are to be well treated,’ said Damen. ‘If some of the men are too full of drink, you know how to keep them at bay. My orders were clear.’

  There was a hesitation. Guymar was one of Enguerran’s men, a career soldier, polished and professional. Damen had promoted him for exactly those qualities.

  ‘Captain, your orders were clear, but . . .’ said Guymar.

  ‘But?’

  ‘Some of the men seem to think that His Highness will support their actions.’

  Damen gathered his mind. From the way Guymar said it, it was obvious what type of sport he meant. They had been weeks on the road without camp followers. Yet he had believed that the men capable of actions such as this had been weeded out of the troop.

  Guymar’s face was impassive, but his faint disapproval was tangible: these were the actions of mercenaries, dressed up in the Prince’s livery. The Prince’s men were showing their inferior quality.

  Like an archer fixing on his target, Laurent said precisely, deliberately, ‘Aimeric.’

  Damen turned. Laurent’s eyes were on Jord, and Damen saw in a rush from Jord’s expression that Laurent was right, and of course it was for Aimeric’s sake that Jord had come here.

  Under that dangerous, steady gaze, Jord went to his knees.

  ‘Your Highness,’ said Jord. He wasn’t looking at anyone, but at the dark stones beneath him. ‘I know I’ve done wrong. I’ll accept any punishment for that. But Aimeric was loyal to his family. He was loyal to what he knew. He doesn’t deserve to be handed around the men for that.’ Jord’s head was bowed, but his hands on his knees were fists. ‘If my years of service to you are worth anything at all, let them be worth that.’