by S. U. Pacat
Maybe it was bizarre empathy, because he’d lived through something like this, the betrayal of it, violence in a place he’d thought was safe. Maybe it was a way of reliving those moments, of repairing his failure, because he had not reacted as quickly as he should have, then.
It must have been that. It must have been the echo of that night, all the chaos and the emotion of it that he had locked up behind closed doors.
The three men split their attention: two of them moved towards Laurent, while the third remained with a knife, guarding Damen. He obviously expected no trouble. His grip on the knife was slack and casual.
After days, weeks spent waiting for an opportunity, it felt good to have one, and to take it. To feel the heavy, satisfying impact of flesh on flesh in the blow that numbed the man’s arm and caused him to drop the knife.
The man was wearing livery and not armour, a blunder. His whole body curved around Damen’s fist as it drove into his abdomen, and he made a guttural sound that was half a choke for air, half a response to pain.
The second of the three men, swearing, turned back—presumably deciding that one man was enough to dispatch the Prince, and that his attention was better spent subduing the unexpectedly troublesome barbarian.
Unfortunately for him, he thought just having a sword would be enough. He came in fast, rather than approaching cautiously. His two-handed sword, with its large grip, could cleave into a man’s side and go some way towards cutting him in half, but Damen was already inside his guard and in grappling distance.
There was a crash on the far side of the room, but Damen was only distantly aware of it, all his attention on the task of immobilising the second of his assailants, no thought to spare on the third man and Laurent.
The swordsman in his grip gasped out, ‘He’s the Prince’s bitch. Kill him,’ which was all the warning Damen needed to move. He swung his entire body weight against the swordsman, reversing their positions.
And the knife stroke meant for him ran into the swordsman’s unarmoured sternum.
The man with the knife had pulled himself up and recovered his weapon; he was agile, with a scar running down his cheek under the beard, a survivor. Not someone Damen wanted darting around him with a knife. Damen didn’t let him pull his knife from its grisly sheath, but pushed forward, so that the man stumbled backwards, his fingers opening. Then he simply took hold of the man at hip and shoulder and swung his body hard into the wall.
It was enough to leave him dazed, his features slackened, unable to muster any initial resistance when Damen restrained him in a hold.
This done, Damen looked over, half expecting to see Laurent struggling, or overcome. He was surprised to see instead that Laurent was alive and intact, having dispatched his opponent, and was rising from a position bent over the third man’s still form, relieving his dead fingers of a knife.
He supposed that Laurent had possessed, at the very least, the wits to utilise his surroundings.
Damen’s eyes caught on the knife.
His gaze swung down to the dead swordsman. There, too, a knife. A serrated blade-edge finished with the characteristic fretted hilt design of Sicyon, one of the northern provinces of Akielos.
The knife Laurent held was of the same design. It was bloody up to the hilt, he saw, as Laurent descended the shallow steps. It looked incongruous in his hand, since his fine white shirt had survived the struggle in immaculate condition and the lamplight was just as flattering to him as it had been before.
Damen recognised Laurent’s cold, strapped-down expression. He didn’t envy the man he held the interrogation that was coming.
‘What do you want me to do with him?’
‘Hold him still,’ said Laurent.
He came forward. Damen did as he was told. He felt the man make a renewed attempt to free himself, and simply tightened his grip, aborting the ripple of struggle.
Laurent lifted the serrated knife, and, calmly as a butcher, sliced open the man’s bearded throat.
Damen heard the choked sound, and felt the first spasms of the body within his grip. He let go, partly out of surprise, and the man’s hands came up to his own throat in a hopeless, instinctive gesture, too late. The thin red crescent drawn across his throat widened. He toppled.
Damen didn’t even think before he reacted—as Laurent slanted a look at him, changing his grip on the knife—he moved instinctively to neutralise the threat.
Body collided hard with body. Damen’s grip closed on the fine bones of Laurent’s wrist, but instead of having things immediately his own way, he was surprised to encounter a moment of muscled resistance. He applied greater pressure. He felt the resistance in Laurent’s body pushed to its limit, though he was still far from his own.
‘Let go of my arm,’ said Laurent, in a controlled voice.
‘Drop the knife,’ said Damen.
‘If you do not let go of my arm,’ said Laurent, ‘it will not go easily for you.’
Damen pushed just slightly harder, and felt the resistance shudder and give way; the knife clattered to the ground. As soon as it did, he let Laurent go. In the same motion Damen stepped backwards out of range. Instead of following him, Laurent also took two steps backwards, widening the distance between himself and Damen.
They stared at one another over the wreckage of the room.
The knife lay between them. The man with the slit throat was dead or dying, his body gone still and his head turned sideways. The blood had soaked through the livery that he wore, blotting out the starburst device of gold on blue.
Laurent’s struggles had not been as contained as Damen’s; the table was knocked over, the shattered pieces of a fine ceramic were strewn across the floor, and the goblet rolled on the tile. A wall hanging had been partly torn down. And there was a great deal of blood. Laurent’s first kill of the night had been even messier than his second.
Laurent’s breathing was shallow with exertion. So was Damen’s. Into the tense, wary moment, Laurent said, steadily:
‘You seem to vacillate between assistance and assault. Which is it?’
‘I’m not surprised you’ve driven three men to try and kill you, I’m only surprised there weren’t more,’ said Damen, bluntly.
‘There were,’ said Laurent, ‘more.’
Understanding his meaning, Damen flushed. ‘I didn’t volunteer. I was brought here. I don’t know why.’
‘To cooperate,’ said Laurent.
‘Cooperate?’ said Damen, with complete disgust. ‘You were unarmed.’ Damen remembered the lax way that man had held a knife on him; they had indeed expected him to cooperate, or at the very least, stand by and watch. He frowned at the closest of the still faces. He disliked the idea that anyone at all believed him capable of cutting down an unarmed man, four on one. Even if that man was Laurent.
Laurent stared at him.
‘Like the man you just killed,’ said Damen, looking back at him.
‘In my part of the fight the men were not helpfully killing each other,’ Laurent said.
Damen opened his mouth. Before he could speak, there was a sound from the corridor. They both instinctively squared off towards the bronze doors. The sound became the clatter of light armour and weaponry, and soldiers in the Regent’s livery were pouring into the room—two—five—seven—the odds started to become daunting. But—
‘Your Highness, are you hurt?’
‘No,’ said Laurent.
The soldier in charge gestured to his men to secure the room, then to check the three lifeless bodies.
‘A servant found two of your men dead at the perimeter of your apartments. He ran immediately to the Regent’s Guard. Your own men have yet to be informed.’
‘I gathered that,’ said Laurent.
They were rougher with Damen, manhandling him into a restraining grip like the ones he remembered from the early days of his capture. He surrendered to it, because what else could he do? He felt his hands pulled behind his back. A meaty hand clasped the back of hi
s neck.
‘Take him,’ said the soldier.
Laurent spoke very calmly. ‘May I ask why you are arresting my servant?’
The soldier in charge gave him an uncomprehending look.
‘Your Highness—there was an attack—’
‘Not by him.’
‘The weapons are Akielon,’ said one of the men.
‘Your Highness, if there’s been an Akielon attack against you, you can bet this one’s in on it.’
It was too neat by half. It was, Damen realised, exactly why the three assailants had brought him here: to be blamed. Of course, they would have expected to survive the encounter, but their intentions held all the same. And Laurent, who spent his every waking moment searching for ways to have Damen humiliated, hurt or killed, had just been given the excuse he needed handed to him on a platter.
He could see—he could feel—that Laurent knew it. He could feel too how badly Laurent wanted it, wanted to see him taken, wanted to trump both Damen and his uncle. He bitterly regretted the impulse that had led him to save Laurent’s life.
‘You’re misinformed,’ said Laurent. He sounded like he was tasting something unpleasant. ‘There has been no attack against me. These three men attacked the slave, claiming some sort of barbarian dispute.’
Damen blinked.
‘They attacked—the slave?’ said the soldier, who was apparently having almost as much difficulty digesting this information as Damen.
‘Release him, soldier,’ Laurent said.
But the hands on him didn’t let go. The Regent’s men didn’t take orders from Laurent. The soldier in charge actually shook his head slightly at the man holding Damen, negating Laurent’s order.
‘Forgive me, Your Highness, but until we can be sure of your safety, I would be negligent if I didn’t—’
‘You’ve been negligent,’ said Laurent.
This statement, calmly delivered, caused a silence, which the soldier in charge weathered, flinching only a little. It was probably why he was in charge. The grip on Damen slackened noticeably.
Laurent said, ‘You’ve arrived late and manhandled my property. By all means, compound your faults by arresting the good-will gift of the King of Akielos. Against my orders.’
The hands on Damen lifted. Laurent didn’t wait for an acknowledgement from the soldier in charge.
‘I require a moment of privacy. You can use the time until dawn to clear my apartments and inform my own men of the attack. I’ll send for one of them when I’m ready.’
‘Yes, Your Highness,’ said the soldier in charge. ‘As you wish. We’ll leave you to your rooms.’
As the soldiers made the first movements towards leaving, Laurent said, ‘I assume I am to drag these three derelicts out myself?’
The soldier in charge flushed. ‘We’ll remove them. Of course. Is there anything else you require from us?’
‘Haste,’ said Laurent.
The men complied. It was not long before the table was righted, the goblet returned to its place. The pieces of fine ceramic were swept into a neat pile. The bodies were removed and the blood was mopped at, in most cases ineffectually.
Damen had never before seen half a dozen soldiers reduced to compliant housekeeping by the sheer force of one man’s personal arrogance. It was almost instructive.
Halfway through proceedings, Laurent stepped backwards to lean his shoulders against the wall.
Finally, the men were gone.
The room had been superficially righted, but had not returned to its former tranquil beauty. It had the air of a sanctuary disturbed, but it was not only the atmosphere that was disrupted; there were tangible blots on the landscape too. The men were soldiers, not house servants. They had missed more than one spot.
Damen could feel the beat of his pulse, but he could not make sense his own feelings, let alone of what had happened. The violence, the killing and the bizarre lies that followed had been too sudden. His eyes scrolled around the room, surveying the damage.
His gaze snagged on Laurent, who was watching him in return rather warily.
Asking to be left alone for the rest of the night really didn’t make much sense.
Nothing that had happened tonight made any sense, but there was one thing that while the soldiers performed their work Damen had come slowly to realise. Laurent’s posture was perhaps slightly more exaggerated than his usual insouciant lean. Damen tipped his head to one side and gave Laurent a long, scrutinising look all the way down to his boots, then back up again.
‘You’re wounded.’
‘No.’
Damen didn’t remove his gaze. Any man but Laurent would have flushed or looked away or given some sign that he was lying. Damen half expected it, even from Laurent.
Laurent returned the look, and then some. ‘If you mean excluding your attempt to break my arm.’
‘I mean excluding my attempt to break your arm,’ said Damen.
Laurent was not, as Damen had first thought, drunk. But if you looked closely, he was controlling his breathing, and there was a faint, slightly febrile look in his eyes.
Damen took a step forward. He stopped when he ran into a blue-eyed look like a wall.
‘I would prefer you to stand further away,’ said Laurent, each word finely chiselled, as though in marble.
Damen swung his gaze over to the goblet that had been knocked over during the fight, its contents spilt; the Regent’s men, unthinkingly, had righted it. When he looked back, he knew from Laurent’s expression that he was right.
‘Not wounded. Poisoned,’ said Damen.
‘You can restrain your delight. I am not going to die from it,’ said Laurent.
‘How do you know that?’
But Laurent, delivering him a killing look, refused to elaborate.
He told himself, feeling oddly detached, that it was no more than justice: Damen perfectly recalled the experience of being doused with a drug then thrown into a fight. He wondered if the drug was chalis: could it be drunk as well as inhaled? It explained why the three men had been so casually assured of their own success in tackling Laurent.
It also lay the blame all the more firmly at his own feet, Damen realised. It was sordidly believable that he would revenge himself on Laurent with the same tactics that Laurent had thrown at him.
This place sickened him. Anywhere else, you simply killed your enemy with a sword. Or poisoned him, if you had the honourless instincts of an assassin. Here, it was layer upon layer of constructed double-dealing, dark, polished and unpleasant. He would have assumed tonight the product of Laurent’s own mind, if Laurent were not so clearly the victim.
What was really going on?
Damen went over to the goblet and lifted it. A shallow slide of liquid remained in the cup. It was water, surprisingly, not wine. That was why the thin rim of pinked colour on the inside of the cup was visible. It was the distinctive mark of a drug Damen knew well.
‘It’s an Akielon drug,’ said Damen. ‘It’s given to pleasure slaves, during training. It makes them—’
‘I am aware of the effect of the drug,’ Laurent said, in a voice like cut glass.
Damen looked at Laurent with new eyes. The drug, in his own country, was infamous. He had sampled it himself, once, as a curious sixteen year old. He had taken only a fraction of a normal dose, and it had provided him with an embarrassment of virility for several hours, exhausting three cheerfully tumbled partners. He had not bothered with it since. A stronger dose led from virility to abandonment. To leave residue in the goblet the amount had been generous, even if Laurent had taken only a mouthful.
Laurent was hardly abandoned. He was not speaking with his usual ease, and his breathing was shallow, but these were the only signs.
Damen realised, suddenly, that what he was witnessing was an exercise in sheer, iron-willed self-control.
‘It wears off,’ said Damen. Adding, because he was not above enjoying the truth as a form of minor sadism, ‘After a few hours.’
<
br /> He could see in the look Laurent levelled at him that Laurent would rather have cut off his own arm than have anyone know about his condition; and further, that he was the last person that Laurent wished to know, or be left alone with. He was not above enjoying that fact either.
‘Think I’m going to take advantage of the situation?’ said Damen.
Because the one thing that emerged clearly from whatever tangled Veretian plot had unfolded this evening was the fact that he was free of restraints, free of obligations, and unguarded for the first time since his arrival in this country.
‘I am. It was good of you to clear your apartments,’ said Damen. ‘I thought I’d never have the chance to get out of here.’
He turned. Behind him, Laurent swore. Damen was halfway to the door before Laurent’s voice turned him back.
‘Wait,’ said Laurent, as though he forced the word out, and hated saying it. ‘It’s too dangerous. Leaving now would be seen as an admission of guilt. The Regent’s Guard wouldn’t hesitate to have you killed. I can’t . . . protect you, as I am now.’
‘Protect me,’ said Damen. Flat incredulity in his voice.
‘I am aware that you saved my life.’
Damen just stared at him.
Laurent said: ‘I dislike feeling indebted to you. Trust that, if you don’t trust me.’
‘Trust you?’ said Damen. ‘You flayed the skin from my back. I have seen you do nothing but cheat and lie to every person you’ve encountered. You use anything and anyone to further your own ends. You are the last person I would ever trust.’
Laurent’s head tipped backwards against the wall. His eyelids had dropped to half mast, so that he regarded Damen through two golden-lashed slits. Damen was half expecting a denial, or an argument. But Laurent’s only reply was a breath of laughter, which strangely showed more than anything else how close to the edge he was.
‘Go, then.’
Damen looked again at the door.