by S. U. Pacat
‘Your Highness, your uncle has sent for you,’ said Damen.
‘Again,’ said Torveld, a line appearing in the middle of his forehead.
Laurent detached himself. ‘He’s overprotective,’ he said. The line disappeared when Torveld looked at Laurent.
‘You took your time,’ Laurent murmured as he passed Damen.
He was left alone with Torveld. It was peaceful out here on the balcony. The court sounds were muted, as though they were very distant. Louder and more intimate were the sounds of insects in the gardens below, and the slow back and forth of greenery. At some point it occurred to Damen that he was supposed to have lowered his eyes.
Torveld’s attention was elsewhere.
‘He is a prize,’ said Torveld, warmly. ‘I’ll wager you never thought a prince could be jealous of a slave. Right now I would exchange places with you in a heartbeat.’
You don’t know him, thought Damen. You don’t know anything about him. You’ve known him one night.
‘I think the entertainment will begin shortly,’ Damen said.
‘Yes, of course,’ said Torveld, and they followed Laurent back to the court.
Damen had, in his life, been required to sit through many spectacles. In Vere ‘entertainment’ had taken on new meaning. When Ancel came forward holding a long stick in his hands, Damen readied himself for the kind of performance that would make the Patran delegation faint. Then Ancel touched each end of the stick to the torch in the wall bracket, and they burst into flame.
It was a kind of fire dance in which the stick was thrown and caught, and the flame, tossed and twirled, created sinuous shapes, circles and ever-moving patterns. Ancel’s red hair created a pleasing aesthetic alongside the red and orange fire. And even without the hypnotic movement of the flame, the dance was beguiling, its difficulties made to look effortless, its physicality subtly erotic. Damen looked at Ancel with new respect. This performance required training, discipline and athleticism, which Damen admired. It was the first time that Damen had seen Veretian pets display skill in anything other than wearing clothes or climbing on top of one another.
The mood was relaxed. Damen was back on the leash, being used very possibly as a chaperone. Laurent was acting with the carefully bland manners of one trying politely to manage a difficult suitor. Damen thought with some amusement: boxed in by your own cleverness. As Damen watched, Torveld’s servant produced a peach, then a knife, then cut a slice at Torveld’s instruction, offering it to Laurent, who blandly accepted. When he had finished the morsel, the servant brought forth a little cloth from his sleeve with a flourish for Laurent to clean his immaculate fingers. The cloth was transparent silk, edged in gold thread. Laurent returned it crumpled.
‘I’m enjoying the performance,’ Damen couldn’t resist saying.
‘Torveld’s servant is better supplied than you are,’ was all Laurent said.
‘I don’t have sleeves to carry handkerchiefs in,’ said Damen. ‘I wouldn’t mind being given a knife.’
‘Or a fork?’ said Laurent.
A ripple of applause and a small commotion forestalled a reply. The flame dance was finished, and something was happening at the far end of the room.
Baulking like a green colt at the rein, Erasmus was being dragged forward by a Veretian handler.
He heard a girl’s fluting voice say, ‘Since you like them so much, I thought we could watch one of the slaves from Akielos perform.’
It was Nicaise, here on the small matter of an earring.
Torveld was shaking his head, congenially enough. ‘Laurent,’ he said. ‘You’ve been swindled by the King of Akielos. That can’t be a palace slave. He isn’t showing form at all. He can’t even sit still. I think Kastor just dressed up some serving boys and shipped them off to you. Although he is pretty,’ said Torveld. And then, in a slightly different voice, ‘Very pretty.’
He was very pretty. He was exceptional even among slaves chosen to be exceptional, handpicked to be served up to a prince. Except he was clumsy and graceless and was showing no sign of training. He had finally dropped to his knees, but he looked like he was staying there only because his limbs had seized up, his hands clenched as though cramped.
‘Pretty or not, I can’t take two dozen untrained slaves back with me to Bazal,’ Torveld was saying.
Damen took Nicaise by the wrist. ‘What have you done?’
‘Let go! I haven’t done anything,’ said Nicaise. He rubbed his wrist when Damen released it. To Laurent: ‘You let him speak to his betters like that?’
‘Not to his betters,’ said Laurent.
Nicaise flushed at that. Ancel was still lazily twirling the fire stick. The flickering of the flames cast an orange light. The heat, when it came near, was surprising. Erasmus had turned white, as though about to vomit in front of everyone.
‘Stop this,’ said Damen to Laurent. ‘It’s cruel. That boy was badly burned. He’s afraid of the fire.’
‘Burned?’ said Torveld.
Nicaise said, quickly, ‘Not burned, branded. He has the scars all over his leg. They’re ugly.’
Torveld was looking at Erasmus, whose eyes were glassy and showed a kind of stupefied hopelessness. If you knew what he thought he was facing, it was hard to believe he was kneeling down waiting for it.
Torveld said, ‘Have the fire put out.’
The sudden acrid smell of smoke drowned out the Veretian perfumes. The fire was out. Summoned forward, Erasmus managed a slightly better prostration, and seemed to calm further in the presence of Laurent, which made little sense until Damen recalled that Erasmus had thought of Laurent as ‘kind’.
Torveld asked Erasmus several questions, which Erasmus answered in Patran with shy but improving form. After that, Torveld’s fingers somehow found their way to rest for a moment protectively on the top of Erasmus’s head. After that, Torveld asked Erasmus to sit beside him during the trade negotiations.
After that, Erasmus kissed Torveld’s toe, then ankle, his curls brushing against Torveld’s firm calf muscle.
Damen looked at Laurent, who had simply let all of this unfold before him. He could see what had made Torveld transfer his affections. There was a superficial resemblance between the Prince and the slave. Erasmus’s fair skin and burnished hair were the closest thing in the room to Laurent’s gold and ivory colouring. But Erasmus had something Laurent lacked: a vulnerability, a need for caring, and a yearning to be mastered that was almost palpable. In Laurent there was only a patrician coolness, and if the purity of Laurent’s profile drew the eye, Damen had the scars on his back to prove that one could look, but not touch.
‘You planned this!’ said Nicaise, his low voice was a hiss. ‘You wanted him to see—you tricked me!’ In the same voice a lover might have said: How could you! Except there was anger there too. And spite.
‘You had a choice,’ said Laurent. ‘You didn’t have to show me your claws.’
‘You tricked me,’ said Nicaise. ‘I’m going to tell—’
‘Tell him,’ said Laurent. ‘All about what I’ve done, and how you helped me. How do you think he’ll react? Shall we find out? Let’s go together.’
Nicaise gave Laurent a look that was desperately, spitefully calculating.
‘Oh, will you—enough,’ said Laurent. ‘Enough. You’re learning. It won’t be as easy to do next time.’
‘I promise you, it won’t,’ said Nicaise venomously, and he left without, Damen noted, giving Laurent his earring.
Fed, sated and entertained, the court dispersed and the Council and Regent sat down and began negotiations. When the Regent called for wine, it was Ancel who poured it. And when he was done, Ancel was invited to sit beside the Regent, which he did, very decoratively, with a well-pleased expression on his face.
Damen had to smile. He supposed that he couldn’t blame Ancel for ambition. And it wasn’t a bad achievement, for an eighteen-year-old boy. There were courtiers aplenty in Damen’s homeland who would consider it the height of
accomplishment to attain a king’s bed. The more so if it was a position of any permanence.
Ancel was not the only one to have gotten what he wanted tonight. Laurent had delivered all Damen had asked for, tied up neatly in a bow. All within the space of a day. If you put everything else aside, you had to admire it for sheer organisational efficiency.
If you did not put everything else aside, you recalled that this was Laurent, and that he had lied and cheated in order to bring this about; you thought about Erasmus, dragged through a night of horrors, and about what it meant for an adult to trick and use a boy who, for all he soundly deserved it, was still only thirteen.
‘It’s done,’ said Laurent, who had come to stand beside him.
Laurent seemed, bizarrely, to be in a good mood. He leaned a shoulder rather casually against the wall. His voice was not exactly warm, but nor was the ice edge polished to cut.
‘I’ve arranged for Torveld to meet with you later, to discuss the transportation of the slaves. Did you know that Kastor sent them to us without any handlers from Akielos?’
‘I thought you and Torveld would have other plans.’ It just came out.
Laurent said, ‘No.’
Damen realised that he was pushing at the limits of Laurent’s good mood. So he said, not without difficulty, ‘I don’t know why you did any of this, but I think the others will be well treated in Bazal. Thank you.’
‘You are permanently disgusted by us, aren’t you?’ said Laurent. And then, before Damen could speak: ‘Don’t answer that question. Something made you smile earlier. What was it?’
‘It was nothing. Ancel,’ said Damen. ‘He’s finally found the royal patronage he was looking for.’
Laurent followed his gaze. He calmly appraised the way that Ancel leaned in to pour wine, the way that the Regent’s ringed fingers lifted to trace the line of Ancel’s cheek.
‘No,’ said Laurent, without much interest. ‘That’s done for appearance’s sake only. I think not all the practices of this court would meet with the approval of Torveld’s delegation.’
‘What do you mean?’
Laurent detached his gaze from the Regent and turned it back on Damen, his blue eyes showing neither his usual hostility, nor arrogance, nor contempt, but instead something that Damen could not make out at all.
‘I warned you about Nicaise because he is not Councillor Audin’s pet. Haven’t you guessed yet whose pet he is?’ Laurent said, and then, when he didn’t answer: ‘Ancel is too old to interest my uncle.’
CHAPTER 9
HE WAS TAKEN to see Torveld in the early morning, after a long interview with two Patran servants in which he dredged up all the knowledge he had regarding the treatment of slaves. Some of the questions he was asked he had no idea how to answer. Others he was more comfortable with: Were they trained in Patran protocols, and which guests could they be expected to entertain? Yes, they had language and protocol training in Patran, as well as Vaskian, though perhaps not the provincial dialects. And of course they knew all that was needed of Akielos and Isthima. Not Vere, he heard himself saying. No one had ever believed there would be a treaty, or an exchange.
Torveld’s rooms resembled Laurent’s, though they were smaller. Torveld came out of the bedchamber looking well rested, wearing only pants and an overrobe. It fell straight to the ground on either side of his body, revealing a well-defined chest, lightly haired.
Through the archway Damen could see the tumble of milky limbs on the bed, and the burnished head. Just for a moment he remembered Torveld making love to Laurent on the balcony, but the hair was a shade too dark, and curled.
‘He’s sleeping,’ said Torveld.
He spoke in a low voice, so as not to disturb Erasmus. He motioned Damen towards a table where they both sat. Torveld’s robe settled in folds of heavy silk.
‘We have not yet—’ Torveld said, and there was a silence. Damen had grown so used to explicit Veretian talk that he waited, in the silence, for Torveld to say what he meant. It took him a moment to realise that this silence said all that was needed, to a Patran. Torveld said, ‘He is . . . very willing, but I suspect there has been some mistreatment, not only the branding. I brought you here because I wanted to ask you the extent of it. I am concerned that I will inadvertently . . .’ Another silence. Torveld’s eyes were dark. ‘I think it would help for me to know.’
Damen thought, this is Vere, and there is no delicate Patran way to describe the things that happen here.
‘He was being trained as a personal slave for the Prince of Akielos,’ said Damen. ‘It’s likely that he was a virgin before he arrived in Vere. But not after.’
‘I see.’
‘I don’t know the extent of it,’ said Damen.
‘You don’t need to say more. It’s as I thought,’ said Torveld. ‘Well, I thank you for your candour, and for your work this morning. I understand it’s customary to give pets a gift after they perform a service.’ Torveld gave him a considering look. ‘You don’t look like the type for jewellery.’
Damen, smiling a little, said, ‘No. Thank you.’
‘Is there something else I can offer you?’
He thought about it. There was something he wanted, very badly. It was dangerous to ask. The grain of the table was dark, and only the edge was carved; the rest was a smooth plain surface.
‘You were in Akielos. You were there after the funeral ceremonies?’
‘Yes, that’s right.’
‘What happened to the Prince’s household—after his death?’
‘I assume it was disbanded. I did hear that his personal slaves slit their own throats from grief. I don’t know anything more.’
‘From grief,’ said Damen, remembering the ringing of swords, and his own surprise—the surprise that had meant he had not understood what was happening until it was too late.
‘Kastor was furious. The Keeper of the Royal Slaves was executed for letting it happen. And several of the guard.’
Yes. He had warned Adrastus. Kastor would have wanted the evidence of what he had done blotted out. Adrastus, the guards, probably even the yellow-haired slave who had tended him in the baths. Everyone who knew the truth, systematically, would have been killed.
Almost everyone. Damen took a steadying breath. He knew with every locked-down particle in his body that he shouldn’t let himself ask, and yet he couldn’t help it.
‘And Jokaste?’ Damen said.
He said her name as he would have said it to her, without a title. Torveld gazed at him speculatively.
‘Kastor’s mistress? She was in good health. The pregnancy is proceeding without incident . . . You didn’t know? She carries Kastor’s child. Whether there will be a wedding or not is still in question, but certainly it’s in Kastor’s interests to secure the succession. He gives every indication that he will raise the child as—’
‘His heir,’ said Damen.
It would have been her price. He remembered every perfect coil of her hair, like winding silk. Close those doors.
He looked up. And suddenly he was aware, from the way Torveld was looking back at him, that he had lingered on this topic too long.
‘You know,’ said Torveld, slowly, ‘you resemble Kastor a little. It’s something in the eyes. In the shape of the face. The more I look at you—’
No.
‘—the more I see it. Has anyone ever—’
No.
‘—remarked on it before? I’m sure Laurent would—’
‘No,’ said Damen. ‘I—’
It came out sounding too loud and too urgent. His heartbeat was loud in his chest, as he was dragged from thoughts of home back to this—deception. He knew that the only thing standing between himself and discovery at this moment was the sheer audacity of what Kastor had done. A right-minded man like Torveld would never guess at this kind of brazen, inventive treachery.
‘Forgive me. I meant to say that—I hope you won’t tell the Prince you think I look like Kastor. He wouldn’t be
pleased by the comparison at all.’ It wasn’t a lie. Laurent’s mind would have no trouble jumping from clue to answer. Laurent was too close to guessing the truth already. ‘He has no love for the Akielon royal family.’
He should say something about being flattered to hear there was a likeness, but he knew he wasn’t going to be able to get his mouth around the words.
For the moment at least, it distracted Torveld.
‘Laurent’s feelings about Akielos are too well known,’ Torveld said, with a troubled look. ‘I’ve tried to talk to him about it. I’m not surprised he wanted those slaves gone from the palace—if I were Laurent, I’d be suspicious of any gift from Akielos. With conflict brewing among the kyroi, the last thing Kastor can afford is a hostile neighbour on his northern border. The Regent is open to friendship with Akielos, but Laurent . . . it would be in Kastor’s interests to keep Laurent off the throne.’
Trying to imagine Kastor plotting against Laurent was like trying to imagine a wolf plotting against a serpent.
‘I think the Prince can hold his own,’ said Damen, dryly.
‘Yes. You could be right. He has a rare mind.’ Torveld rose as he spoke, indicating that the interview was done. In the same moment, Damen became aware that there were signs of stirring from the bed. ‘I’m looking forward to a renewed relationship with Vere, after his ascension.’
Because he’s bewitched you, Damen thought. Because you’re moonstruck and you have no idea of his nature.
‘You can tell him I said that if you like. Oh, and tell him I’m looking forward to beating him to the mark today,’ said Torveld with a grin, as Damen made his way out.
Damen, thankfully for his sense of self-preservation, had no chance to tell Laurent anything of the kind, but instead was thrust into a change of clothing. He was to be taken out to accompany the Prince. He didn’t have to ask, ‘Accompany him where?’ It was Torveld’s last day, and Torveld was well known for his enjoyment of the hunt.