by S. U. Pacat
‘What do you think, Your Highness?’ said Ancel.
‘I think your master would prefer you intact,’ said Laurent, dryly.
‘You could tie the slave up,’ said Ancel.
It was a testament to Ancel’s lacquered skill that it came out teasing and seductive, rather than what it was, a last attempt of a climber to catch and hold a prince’s attention.
It almost didn’t work. Laurent seemed unmoved by Ancel’s flirtatiousness, even bored by it. He had tossed Damen into the ring, but in the sex-drenched atmosphere of the stands, Laurent’s pulse had not even appeared to flicker. He had been singularly immune to the carnality of what the Veretians called ‘performance’, the only courtier without a pet fawning all over him.
They say he’s frigid, Jord had said.
‘What about something small, while we wait for the main entertainment?’ said Vannes. ‘Surely it’s past time for the slave to learn his place?’
Damen saw Laurent absorb those words. Saw him stop and give the idea his full attention, turning the decision over in his mind.
And saw him make it, his mouth curling, his expression hardening.
‘Why not?’ Laurent said.
‘No,’ said Damen, a surge in his chest, half-stymied as he felt hands on him. Fighting in earnest against armed guards, in front of witnesses and in the middle of a crowded court, was an act of self-destruction. But his mind and body rebelled, dragging instinctively at the handling.
A lovers’ bench nestled inside the bower, creating two curved semi-circles. The courtiers made themselves at ease on it, occupying one side. Vannes suggested wine and a servant was fetched with a tray. One or two other courtiers wandered over, and Vannes struck up a conversation with one of them about the embassy from Patras, due to arrive in a few days.
Damen was lashed to the seat on the other side, facing them.
There was an air of unreality about what was happening. Ancel’s master was delineating the encounter. The slave would be tied up, and Ancel would use his mouth. Vannes protested that it was so rare for the Prince to agree to a performance, they should make the most of it. Ancel’s master would not be swayed.
This was really going to happen. Damen gripped the metalwork of the bower, his wrists cuffed to it above his head. He was going to be pleasured for a Veretian audience. He was probably just one of a dozen discreet entertainments that would unfold in this garden.
Damen’s eyes fixed on Ancel. He almost told himself that this was not the pet’s fault, except that, in a large part, it was.
Ancel dropped to his knees and found his way into Damen’s slave garments. Damen looked down at him and could not have felt less aroused. Even under the best of circumstances, green-eyed, red-haired Ancel was not his type. He looked about nineteen, and though his was not the obscene youth of Nicaise, his body was delicately boyish. His beauty was in fact polished, self-conscious prettiness.
Pet, thought Damen. The word fit. Ancel pushed his long hair to one side, and began without any formality. He was practised, and manipulated Damen expertly with mouth and hands. Damen wondered if he should feel sympathetic or pleased that Ancel was not going to have his moment of triumph: not even half hard under Ancel’s ministrations, Damen doubted he would be able to come for the pleasure of an audience. If there was anything explicit on view, it must be the absence of all desire to be where he was.
There was a faint rustle, and, cool as the water beneath the lily, Laurent came to sit beside him.
‘I wonder if we can do better than this,’ Laurent said. ‘Stop.’
Ancel detached himself from his endeavours and looked up, lips wet.
‘You’re more likely to win a game if you don’t play your whole hand at once,’ said Laurent. ‘Start more slowly.’
Damen reacted to Laurent’s words with inevitable tension. Ancel was close enough for Damen to feel his breath, a hot, focused cloud of heat that rolled in place, a susurration over sensitive skin. ‘Like this?’ Ancel asked. His mouth was an inch from its destination, and his hands slid softly up Damen’s thighs. His wet lips parted slightly. Damen, against his will, reacted.
‘Like that,’ said Laurent.
‘Shall I . . . ?’ said Ancel, leaning forward.
‘Don’t use your mouth yet,’ said Laurent. ‘Just your tongue.’
Ancel obeyed. He tongued the head, an elusive touch, barely the suggestion of itself. Not enough pressure. Laurent was watching Damen’s face with the same cerebral attention that he might apply to a strategic problem. Ancel’s tongue pressed into the slit.
‘He likes that. Do it harder,’ said Laurent.
Damen swore, a single Akielon word. Unable to resist the flickering lures being played across its flesh, his body was awakening, and beginning to crave rhythm. Ancel’s tongue curled lazily around the head.
‘Now lick him. The whole length.’
Cool words preceded a long, hot lick, wet from base to tip. Damen could feel his thighs tighten, then, minutely, spread, his breath quickening in his chest. He wanted out of the restraints. There was a metallic sound as he pulled against the cuffs, his hands fists. He turned towards Laurent.
It was a mistake to look at him. Even in the shadows of evening, Damen could see the relaxed arrangement of Laurent’s body, the marmoreal perfection of his features, and the detached unconcern with which he gazed at Damen, not bothering to so much as glance down at Ancel’s moving head.
If you believed the Prince’s Guard, Laurent was the impregnable citadel, and took no lovers at all. Right now Laurent gave the impression of a mind somewhat engaged, and a body wholly aloof, untouched by ardour. The ribald fancy of the Prince’s Guard held a kernel of plausibility.
On the other hand, the aloof, untouched Laurent was at this moment delivering a precise treatise on cocksucking.
And Ancel obeyed instruction, his mouth doing what it was told. Laurent’s commands were leisurely, unhurried, and he had the refined practice of suspending his engagements at the very moment they began to get interesting. Damen was used to taking pleasure where he wished, touching where he wanted, coaxing responses from his partners as he pleased. Frustration peaked as gratification was stymied, relentlessly. Every part of him suffused with thwarted sensation, the cool air over his hot skin, the head in his lap just one part of a whole that included the awareness of where he was and who was sitting beside him.
‘Push down on it,’ Laurent said.
Damen felt the breath release shatteringly from his chest at the first long wet slide, down onto his cock. Ancel couldn’t quite take it all, though his throat was exquisitely trained, lacking a gag reflex. Laurent’s next order came like a tap on the shoulder, and Ancel drew obediently back up to do no more than suckle the head.
Damen could hear the sound of his own breathing now, even over the clamouring of his flesh. Even without rhythmical attention, diffuse pleasure was beginning to coalesce into something more urgent; he could feel the shift, the orientation of his body towards climax.
Laurent uncrossed his legs, and rose.
‘Finish him off,’ said Laurent, incidentally and without a backwards glance, returning to the other courtiers to make a few remarks about the subject currently under discussion, as though he had no particular need to see out the conclusion now that it was inevitable.
The image of Ancel absorbing his erection was joined in his fragmenting thoughts by the sudden harsh desire to get his hands on Laurent’s body and exact revenge—both for his actions and for his airy absence. Orgasm rolled up like flame over a hot surface, striping out seed that was, professionally, swallowed.
‘A little slow in the beginning, but quite a satisfactory climax,’ said Vannes.
Damen was unshackled from the lovers’ seat and pushed back down onto his knees. Laurent was seated opposite, legs crossed. Damen’s eyes fixed on him, and looked nowhere else; his breathing was still noticeable, and his pulse rapid, but anger produced all the same effects.
The musical
sound of bells intruded on the gathering; Nicaise interrupted without any sign of deference to those of higher rank at all.
‘I’m here to speak to the Prince,’ said Nicaise.
Laurent lifted his fingers minutely, and Vannes, Ancel and the others took it as a signal to make a brief obeisance, and depart.
Nicaise came to stand in front of the bench and stared at Laurent with an expression of hostility. Laurent, for his part, was relaxed, one arm spread out over the back of the bench.
‘Your uncle wants to see you.’
‘Does he? Let’s make him wait.’
One pair of unlikeable blue eyes stared at another. Nicaise sat down. ‘I don’t mind. The longer you wait the more trouble you’ll be in.’
‘Well, as long as you don’t mind,’ said Laurent. He sounded amused.
Nicaise lifted his chin. ‘I’m going to tell him you waited on purpose.’
‘You can if you like. I just assumed he’d guess, but you can save him the effort. Since we’re waiting, shall I call for refreshments?’ He gestured to the last of the tray-bearing servants, who stopped his retreat and approached. ‘Do you take wine, or aren’t you old enough yet?’
‘I’m thirteen. I drink whenever I like.’ Nicaise scorned the tray, pushing at it so hard it almost overbalanced. ‘I’m not going to drink with you. We don’t need to start pretending politeness.’
‘Don’t we? Very well: I think it is fourteen by now, isn’t it?’
Nicaise turned red, under the paint.
‘I thought so,’ said Laurent. ‘Have you thought about what you’re going to do, after? If I know your master’s tastes, you have another year, at most. At your age the body begins to betray itself.’ And then, reacting to something in the boy’s face: ‘Or has it started already?’
The red grew strident. ‘That isn’t any of your business.’
‘You’re right, it isn’t,’ said Laurent.
Nicaise opened his mouth, but Laurent continued before he could speak.
‘I’ll offer for you, if you like. When the time comes. I wouldn’t want you in my bed, but you’d have all the same privileges. You might prefer that. I’d offer.’
Nicaise blinked, and then sneered. ‘With what?’
A breath of amusement from Laurent. ‘Yes, if I have any land left at all, I may have to sell it to buy bread, never mind pets. We will both have to navigate the next ten months on the tips of our toes.’
‘I don’t need you. He’s promised. He’s not going to give me up.’ Nicaise’s voice was smug and self-satisfied.
‘He gives them all up,’ said Laurent, ‘even if you’re more enterprising than the others have been.’
‘He likes me better than the others.’ A scornful laugh. ‘You’re jealous.’ And then it was Nicaise’s turn to react to something he saw in Laurent’s face, and he said, with a horror Damen didn’t understand, ‘You’re going to tell him you want me.’
‘Oh,’ said Laurent. ‘No. Nicaise . . . no. That would wreck you. I wouldn’t do that.’ Then his voice became almost tired. ‘Maybe it’s better if you think that I would. You have quite a good mind for strategy, to have thought of that. Maybe you will hold him longer than the others.’ For a moment it seemed as if Laurent would say something else, but in the end he just stood up from the bench, and held his hand out to the boy. ‘Come on. Let’s go. You can watch me get told off by my uncle.’
CHAPTER 6
‘YOUR MASTER SEEMS kind,’ said Erasmus.
‘Kind?’ said Damen.
The word was difficult to get his mouth around, grating in his throat as he pushed it out. He looked across in disbelief at Erasmus. Nicaise had trailed off hand in hand with Laurent, leaving Erasmus behind, his leash forgotten on the ground beside him where he knelt. A soft breeze shifted his fair curls, and above them foliage moved like an awning of black silk.
‘He cares for your pleasure,’ explained Erasmus.
It took a moment for those words to attach to their correct meaning, and when they did a breath of helpless laughter was the only possible response. Laurent’s precise instructions and their inevitable result had not been intended as a kindness, but rather the opposite. There was no way to explain Laurent’s cool, intricate mind to the slave, and Damen didn’t try.
‘What is it?’ said Erasmus.
‘Nothing. Tell me. I wished for news of you and the others. How is it for you, so far from home? Are you well treated by your masters? I wondered . . . can you understand their language?’
Erasmus shook his head at the last question. ‘I—have a little skill with Patran and the northern dialects. Some words are similar.’ Haltingly, he said a few of them.
Erasmus managed the Veretian well enough; that was not what made Damen frown. The words Erasmus had been able to decipher from what had been said to him were: Silence. Kneel down. Don’t move.
‘Did I misspeak?’ said Erasmus, misinterpreting the expression.
‘No, you spoke well,’ Damen said, though his consternation remained. He didn’t like the choice of words. He didn’t like the idea that Erasmus and the others were rendered doubly powerless by an inability to speak or understand what was being said around them.
‘You . . . do not have the manner of a palace slave,’ offered Erasmus, hesitantly.
That was an understatement. No one from Akielos would mistake Damen for a body slave, he had neither the manner nor the physique. Damen regarded Erasmus thoughtfully, wondering how much to say. ‘I was not a slave in Akielos. I was sent here by Kastor, as punishment,’ he said, eventually. There was no point lying about that part of it.
‘Punishment,’ said Erasmus. His gaze dropped to the ground. His whole manner changed.
Damen said, ‘But you were trained in the palace? How long were you there?’ He couldn’t account for the fact that he had not seen this slave before.
Erasmus attempted a smile, rallying himself from whatever had disheartened him. ‘Yes. I—But I never saw the main palace, I was in training silks until I was chosen by the Keeper to come here. And my training in Akielos was very strict. It was thought . . . that is . . .’
‘That is?’ said Damen.
Erasmus blushed and said in a very soft voice: ‘In case he found me pleasing, I was being trained for the Prince.’
‘Were you?’ said Damen, with some interest.
‘Because of my colouring. You can’t see it in this light, but in daylight, my hair is almost blond.’
‘I can see it in this light,’ said Damen.
He could hear the approval saturating his own voice. He felt it shift the dynamic between them. He might as well have said, Good boy.
Erasmus reacted to the words like a flower inclining towards sunlight. It didn’t matter that he and Damen were technically the same rank, Erasmus was trained to respond to strength, to yearn for it and submit to it. His limbs subtly rearranged themselves, a flush spreading on his cheeks, his eyes dropping to the ground. His body became a supplication. The breeze toyed irresistibly with a curl that had tumbled over his forehead.
In the softest little voice he said, ‘This slave is beneath your attention.’
In Akielos, submission was an art, and the slave was the artisan. Now that he was showing his form, you could see that Erasmus was surely the prize pick of the Regent’s gift-slaves. Ridiculous, that he was being dragged around by the neck like an unwilling animal. It was like possessing a finely tuned instrument and using it to smash shells open. Misusing it.
He should be in Akielos, where his training would be fêted and prized. But it occurred to Damen that Erasmus might have been lucky in being chosen for the Regent, lucky in never having come to the attention of Prince Damianos. Damen had seen what had happened to the closest of his personal slaves. They had been killed.
He pushed the memory forcibly out of his mind and returned his attention to the slave in front of him.
Damen said, ‘And is your own master kind?’
‘This slave lives to s
erve,’ said Erasmus.
It was a formulaic set-phrase, and meant nothing. The behaviour of slaves was tightly proscribed, with the result that what was unsaid was often more important than what was said. Damen was already frowning a little when he chanced to look down.
The tunic Erasmus wore had been slightly disordered when he used it to wipe Damen’s cheek, and he’d had no chance to right it. The hem had lifted high enough to expose the top of his thigh. Erasmus, seeing the direction of Damen’s gaze, quickly pulled the cloth down to cover himself, stretching it as far as it would go.
‘What happened to your leg?’ said Damen.
Erasmus had gone ivory white. He didn’t want to answer, but would force himself to because he’d been asked a direct question.
‘What’s wrong?’
Erasmus’s voice was barely audible, his hands clutching the hem of his tunic. ‘I am ashamed.’
‘Show me,’ said Damen.
Erasmus’s fingers loosened, trembling, and then slowly lifted the fabric. Damen looked at what had been done. At what, three times, had been done.
‘The Regent did this? Speak freely.’
‘No. On the day we arrived, there was a test of obedience. I f-failed.’
‘This was your punishment for failure?’
‘This was the test. I was ordered not to make any sound.’
Damen had seen Veretian arrogance, and Veretian cruelty. He had suffered Veretian insults, had endured the sting of the lash and the violence of the ring. But he had not known anger until now.
‘You didn’t fail,’ said Damen. ‘That you tried at all proves your courage. What was asked of you was impossible. There’s no shame in what happened to you.’
Except for the people who had done this. There was shame and disgrace on every one of them, and Damen would hold them to account for what they had done.
Damen said, ‘Tell me everything that has happened to you since you left Akielos.’
Erasmus spoke matter-of-factly. The story was disturbing. The slaves had been transported aboard the ship in cages, below deck. Handlers and sailors alike had taken liberties. One of the women, worried about the lack of access to any usual means of preventing pregnancy, had tried to communicate the problem to her Veretian handlers, not realising that to them illegitimate birth was a horror. The idea that they might be delivering a slave to the Regent with a sailor’s bastard growing in her belly caused them to panic. The ship’s physic had given her some sort of concoction that induced sweats and nausea. Concerned it would not be enough, her stomach was beaten with rocks. That was before they docked in Vere.