Captive Prince, Volume 2

by C. S. Pacat

  ‘He’s gone for a ride,’ said Jord. ‘It was his habit in the palace, too, when he needed to clear his head. Not the type for goodbyes.’

  ‘No,’ said Damen.

  He made to ride out, but Jord put a hand on his reins. ‘Wait,’ said Jord. ‘I wanted to say—thank you. For standing up for Aimeric.’

  ‘I didn’t do it for Aimeric,’ said Damen.

  Jord nodded. And then he said, ‘When the men heard you were leaving, they wanted—we wanted—to see you off.’ He said, ‘There’s time.’

  He gave a wave of his hand and men were coming into the fort’s enormous courtyard, the Prince’s men, and under the ever-rising sun they were forming up in front of the dais. Damen looked out over the immaculate lines and let out a breath that was something like surprise and something like the feeling in his chest. Every strap was polished, every piece of armour gleamed. He let his eyes pass over each of their faces, and then looked out at the wider courtyard, where men and women of the fort were gathering curiously. Laurent wasn’t here, and he let that fact sink into his bones.

  Lazar stepped forward and said, ‘Captain. It was an honour to serve with you.’

  It was an honour to serve with you. Those words echoed in his mind.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘The honour was mine.’

  And then there was a burst of activity from the lower gate, and a rider came into the courtyard: it was Laurent.

  He was not here in a last-minute change of heart. Damen only had to look at Laurent to know that he had intended to stay away until Damen was gone, and was not pleased to have been forced to return early.

  He was dressed in riding leathers. The leathers were winched as tight as the rising gate, not a single strap out of place even after a long ride. He sat straight-backed. His horse, neck curved under a taut rein, was still blowing air through its nostrils from the ride. He tossed Damen a single cool look from across the courtyard before driving his horse on.

  And then Damen saw why he was here.

  He heard the activity on the battlements first, the shouts that went up along the lines, and then from horseback he saw the banner waving its signal. These were his own alerts, and he knew what was coming even as Laurent lifted his hand and gave a signal of his own, acceding to the request for entry.

  The enormous machinery of the gates started to turn, cogs grinding and dark screeching wood with interlocking teeth brought to life with winches and straining human muscle.

  Accompanying it was the cry, ‘Open the gates!’

  Laurent didn’t dismount, but wheeled his horse at the base of the dais to face what was coming.

  They swept into the courtyard in a surge of red. The banners were red, the livery was red, the pennants, the brightwork, the armour was gold and white and red. The blare of the horns was like the sounding of trumpets, and into Ravenel in full panoply came the emissaries of the Regency.

  The gathered soldiers parted for them, and a space opened up between Laurent and his uncle’s men, so that they faced one another along a widening corridor of empty flagstones, with onlookers either side.

  A hush fell. Damen’s own horse shifted, then was still. On the faces of Laurent’s men was the hostility that the Regency had always engendered, now magnified. On the faces of the inhabitants of the fort the reactions were more varied: surprise, careful neutrality, devouring curiosity.

  There were twenty-five Regent’s men: a herald and two dozen soldiers. Laurent, opposing them on horseback, was alone.

  He would have seen the arriving party outside. He had most likely outridden them in returning to the fort. And he had chosen to meet them like this, a young man on horseback, rather than standing at the top of those steps, an aristocrat in command of his fort. He was nothing like Lord Touars, who had greeted an entry with his entire retinue arrayed in disapproving formation on the dais. Against the pomp of the Regent’s emissary Laurent was a single rider casually dressed. But then, he had never needed anything other than his hair to identify him.

  ‘The King of Vere sends a message,’ said the herald.

  His voice, trained to carry, could be heard the full length of the courtyard, by each of the gathered men and women. He spoke:

  ‘The pretender prince is in traitorous conspiracy with Akielos, wherefore he has given over Veretian villages to slaughter, and has killed Veretian border lords. He is therefore summarily expelled from the succession, and charged with the crime of treason against his own people. Any authority he has hitherto claimed over the lands of Vere or the protectorate of Acquitart is now void. The reward for his delivery to justice is generous, and will be administered as swiftly as the punishment against any man who shelters him. So says the King.’

  There was silence in the courtyard. No one spoke.

  ‘But there is no King,’ said Laurent, ‘in Vere.’ His voice carried too. ‘The King my father is dead.’ He said, ‘Speak the name of the man who profanes his title.’

  ‘The King,’ said the herald, ‘your uncle.’

  ‘My uncle insults his family. He uses a title that belonged to my father—that should have passed to my brother—and that runs now in my blood. Do you think I will let this insult stand?’

  The herald spoke again by rote: ‘The King is a man of honour. He offers you one chance for honest battle. If your brother’s blood is truly in your veins, you will meet him on the field at Charcy three days hence. There you may try to prevail with your Patran troops against good Veretian men.’

  ‘Fight him I will, but not at the time and place of his choosing.’

  ‘And is that your final answer?’

  ‘It is.’

  ‘In that case, there is a personal message from uncle to nephew.’

  The herald nodded to the soldier at his left, who unhooked from his saddle a grimy, bloodstained cloth bag.

  Damen felt a sickening lurch of his stomach as the soldier held the bloodstained bag aloft, and the herald said:

  ‘This one pleaded for you. He tried to stand for the wrong side. He suffered the fate of any man who sides with the pretender prince against the King.’

  The soldier pulled the bag away from the severed head.

  It was a fortnight’s hard ride, in hot weather. The skin had lost all the freshness that youth had once lent it. The blue eyes, always his best feature, were gone. But his tumbled brown hair was dressed with star-like pearls, and from the shape of his face, you could see that he had been beautiful.

  Damen remembered him stabbing a fork into his thigh, remembered him insulting Laurent, blue eyes bright with invective. Remembered him standing alone and uncertain in a hallway dressed in bedclothes, a young boy poised on the edge of adolescence, fearing it, dreading it.

  Don’t tell him I came, he’d said.

  They had always, from the beginning, had a strange affinity. This one pleaded for you. Spending, perhaps, the last of his fading currency with the Regent. Not realising how little currency he had left.

  Whether his beauty would survive adolescence no one would ever know, for Nicaise would not see fifteen now.

  In the glaring light of the courtyard, Damen saw Laurent react, and make himself not react. Laurent’s response communicated itself to his horse, which moved in place, a sharp, jittery burst, before Laurent brought it, too, under hard control.

  The herald still held his gruesome trophy. He didn’t know to run when he saw the look in Laurent’s eyes.

  ‘My uncle has killed his catamite,’ said Laurent. ‘As a message to us. And what is the message?’ His voice carried.

  ‘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 king
dom 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 consequences of interrupting him.

  The taller soldier addressed him. ‘Commander, no one has entered in your absence.’ Damen’s eyes passed over the doors again.

&n
bsp; ‘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.