by S. U. Pacat
It was familiar. Damen felt the moment when his pulse kicked in, remembering the love seat in the garden bower, and Laurent’s cool voice giving explicit instructions: suck it, and, tongue the slit.
Damen caught the blonde’s wrist. There was not going to be a repeat performance. The blonde’s fingers had already moved over the lacings, uncovering beneath the dark expensive fabric of his jacket the gold collar. ‘You’re—his pet?’ she said.
‘I can close the room,’ came the voice of an older woman, faintly accented in Vaskian, ‘if that is your wish, and give you gentlemen privacy to enjoy my girls.’
‘You’re the Maitresse?’ said Laurent.
She said, ‘I am in charge of this small house.’
Laurent rose from the reclining couch. ‘If I’m paying gold, I’m in charge.’
She sank down into a deep curtsey, eyes to the floor. ‘Whatever you would like,’ and then, after a slight hesitation, ‘Your Highness. And discretion and silence, of course.’
The golden hair, and the fine clothes, and that face of his—of course he had been identified. Everyone in the town presumably knew who was camped at the keep. The words of the Maitresse provoked from one of the other women a gasp; she had not made the same deductive leap as the Maitresse, and nor had the others. Damen was treated to the sight of the whores of Nesson-Eloy prostrating themselves almost to the floor in the presence of their Crown Prince.
‘My slave and I want a private room,’ said Laurent, ‘at the back of the house. Something with a bed, and a latch on the door, and a window. We do not require company. If you try to send in one of your girls, you will find out the hard way that I don’t like sharing.’
‘Yes, Your Highness,’ said the Maitresse.
She led them with a taper through the old house to the back. Damen was half expecting her to eject some other patron on Laurent’s behalf, but a room that fit Laurent’s requirements was unoccupied. It was furnished simply with a low cushioned chest, a curtained bed and two lamps. The cushions were of red cloth with a raised pattern of velvet. The Maitresse closed the door, leaving them alone together.
Damen threw the latch and then for good measure pushed the chest in front of the door.
There was indeed a window. It was small, and it was covered by metal grillework that was bolted into the plaster.
Laurent was staring at it, nonplussed. ‘This isn’t what I had in mind.’
‘The plaster’s old,’ said Damen. ‘Here.’ He took hold of the grille, and gave it a tug. Bits of plaster rained down from the edges of the window, but it wasn’t enough to detach the grille from the frame. He changed his grip, braced his stance and put his shoulder into it.
On the third attempt, the whole grille came away from the window. It was surprisingly heavy. He placed it carefully on the floor. The thick carpet muffled any sound, as it had done when he had moved the chest.
‘After you,’ he said to Laurent, who was staring at him. Laurent almost looked as though he was going to speak, but then he just nodded, pulled himself through the window and dropped soundlessly into the alley behind the brothel. Damen followed.
They crossed the alley under the projecting eaves, and found a dank space between two houses to push through, then went down a short series of steps. The faint sounds of their own footsteps were not echoed. Their pursuers had not flanked the house.
They had lost them.
‘Here. Take this,’ said Laurent when they were half the town away, tossing Damen his coin purse. ‘It’s better if we’re not recognised. And you should do up the collar on your jacket.’
‘I’m not the one who has to hide his identity,’ said Damen, though he obligingly laced his jacket closed, hiding the gold collar from view. ‘It’s not just the streetwalkers who know you’re camped at the keep. Anyone seeing a young blond man of noble birth is going to guess it’s you.’
‘I brought a disguise,’ said Laurent.
‘A disguise,’ said Damen.
They had reached an inn that Laurent claimed was their destination, and were standing beneath the upper-storey overhang, two steps from the doorway. There was no place to change into a disguise, and there was little besides that could be done about Laurent’s telltale yellow hair. And Laurent was empty handed.
Until he drew something delicate and glittering out of a fold in his clothing. Damen stared at him.
Laurent said, ‘After you.’
Damen opened his mouth. Closed it. He put his hand on the inn door, and pushed it open.
Laurent followed him, after a moment spent affixing the long hanging sapphires of Nicaise’s earring to his own ear.
The sound of voices and music mingled with the smell of roast venison and candle smoke to form a first impression. Damen looked around at a wide open room with trestle tables adorned with plates and pitchers, and a fire at one end with a spit roasting over it. There were several patrons, men and women. No one wore clothing as fine as his own, or Laurent’s. To one side, a set of wooden stairs led to a mezzanine, off which opened private rooms. An innkeeper with rolled up sleeves was approaching them.
After no more than a brief, dismissive glance at Laurent, the innkeeper gave Damen his full attention, greeting him respectfully.
‘Welcome, my lord. Will you and your pet require lodgings for the evening?’
CHAPTER 6
‘I WANT YOUR best room,’ said Laurent, ‘with a big bed and a private bath, and if you send up the house boy, you’ll find out the hard way that I don’t like sharing.’
He delivered the innkeeper a long, cool look.
‘He’s expensive,’ said Damen to the innkeeper, by way of apology.
And then watched as the innkeeper sized up the cost of Laurent’s clothes, and his sapphire earring—a royal gift to a favourite—and the likely cost of Laurent himself, the face, the body. Damen realised that he was about to be charged three times the going rate for everything.
He decided with good humour that he didn’t mind being generous with Laurent’s coin.
‘Why don’t you find us a table. Pet.’ Enjoying the moment. And the sobriquet.
Laurent did as directed. Damen took the time to pay bountifully for the room, thanking the innkeeper.
He kept one eye on Laurent, who even at the best of times could not be predicted. Laurent made straight for the best table, close enough to the fire to enjoy its warmth but not so close as to be overwhelmed by the scent of the slow-roasting venison. Being the best table, it was occupied. Laurent emptied it with what appeared to be a glance, or a word, or the simple fact of his approach.
The earring was not a discreet disguise. Every man in the common room of the inn was taking the time to have a good look at Laurent. Pet. Laurent’s cool-eyed arrogance proclaimed that no one could touch him. The earring said that one man could. It transformed him from unattainable to exclusive, an elite pleasure no one here could afford.
But that was an illusion. Damen sat down across the table from Laurent on one of the long benches.
‘What now?’ said Damen.
‘Now we wait,’ said Laurent.
Then Laurent rose and made his way around the table, sitting himself beside Damen, close as a lover.
‘What are you doing?’
‘Verisimilitude,’ said Laurent. The earring winked at him. ‘I’m glad I brought you along. I wasn’t expecting to have to tear things out of walls. Do you visit brothels often?’
‘No,’ said Damen.
‘Not brothels. Camp followers?’ said Laurent. And then: ‘Slaves.’ And then, after the satisfaction of a pause: ‘Akielos, the garden of delights. So you enjoy slavery in others. Just not in yourself.’
Damen shifted on the long bench, and regarded him.
‘Don’t strain yourself,’ said Laurent.
‘You talk more,’ said Damen, ‘when you’re uncomfortable.’
‘My lord,’ said the innkeeper, and Damen turned. Laurent didn’t. ‘Your room will be ready shortly. The third door
at the top of the stairs. Jehan will bring you wine and food while you wait.’
‘We’ll try to entertain ourselves. Who’s that?’ said Laurent.
He was looking across the room at an older man with hair like a handful of straw protruding from under a dirty woollen cap. He sat at a dark table in the corner. He was shuffling cards as though, although earmarked and greasy, they were his prize possessions.
‘That’s Volo. Don’t play him. He’s a man with a thirst. He won’t take more than a night to drink your coins, your jewels and your jacket.’
With this advice, the innkeeper left.
Laurent was watching Volo with the same expression with which he had regarded the women in the brothel. Volo tried to cajole wine out of the house boy, then he tried to cajole something altogether different out of the house boy, who was not impressed when Volo performed a sleight-of-hand trick that involved holding a wooden spoon in his hand and then vanishing it, as though into thin air.
‘All right. Give me some coin. I want to play that man at cards.’
Laurent rose, leaning his weight against the table. Damen reached for the purse, then paused. ‘Aren’t you supposed to earn gifts with service?’
Laurent said, ‘Is there something you want?’
His voice was sinuous with promise; his gaze was steady as a cat’s.
Damen, who preferred not to be eviscerated, tossed Laurent the purse. Laurent caught it in one hand, and took for himself a handful of copper and silver. He tossed the purse back to Damen as he made his way across the inn floor, seating himself opposite Volo.
They played. Laurent bet silver. Volo bet his woollen cap. Damen watched from his table for a few minutes, then cast his eye around the other patrons to see whether any of them were close enough to him in class to make an invitation plausible.
The most respectable of them was dressed in good clothing with a fur-lined cloak thrown over his chair, perhaps a cloth merchant. Damen extended an invitation for the man to join him if he wished, which the man very much did, hiding his curiosity about Damen only imperfectly, under a blanket of merchant manners. The man’s name was Charls, and he was a trading partner of a significant merchant family. They did indeed trade in cloth. Damen gave an obscure name and pedigree from Patras.
‘Ah, Patras! Yes, you have the accent,’ said Charls.
The talk was of trade and politics, which was natural if you were a merchant. It proved impossible to prise out news of Akielos. Charls did not support the alliance. Charls trusted the Prince to stand firm in negotiations with the bastard Akielon King more than he trusted the Regent uncle. The Crown Prince was camped at Nesson this very minute, on his way to the border to stand up to Akielos. He was a young man serious about his responsibilities, Charls said. Damen had to make an effort not to look over at Laurent, gambling, when he said it.
The food arrived. The inn provided good bread and platters. Charls eyed the plates when it became evident that the innkeeper had given Damen all the best cuts of meat.
The patrons in the common room were thinning out. Charls took his leave shortly after, heading upstairs to the second-best room of the establishment.
When he looked over at the card game, Damen saw that Laurent had managed to lose all his coin, but gain the filthy woollen cap. Volo grinned, slapped Laurent soundly on the back in commiseration, then bought him a drink. Then he bought himself a drink. Then he bought himself the house boy, who was offering very generous rates—one copper for a poke, three coppers for the night—and who had warmed up a great deal to Volo now that he had piled in front of him all of Laurent’s coin.
Laurent took the drink and picked his way back across the room, where he put it, untouched, in front of Damen.
‘Spoils of someone else’s victory.’
Although the inn was emptying out, two of the patrons by the fire were possibly within earshot. Damen said, ‘If you wanted a drink and an old hat that badly, you could have just bought them from him. Cheaper and quicker.’
‘It’s the game I like,’ said Laurent. He reached over and appropriated another coin out of the purse Damen carried, then palmed it. ‘Look, I’ve learned a new trick.’ When he opened his hand, it was empty, as if by magic. A second later, the coin dropped out of his sleeve onto the floor. Laurent frowned at it. ‘Well, I don’t have it quite yet.’
‘If the trick is making coins disappear, I think you do have it, actually.’
‘What’s the food like?’ said Laurent, his eyes on the table.
Damen tore off a piece of bread, and held it like a treat to a house cat. ‘Try it.’
Laurent looked at the bread, and then he looked at the men by the fire, and then he looked at Damen, a long, cool look that would have been difficult to hold if Damen had not had, by now, a great deal of practice.
And then he said, ‘All right.’
It took a moment for those words to penetrate. By the time they did, Laurent had settled next to him on the long bench. Laurent straddled it, facing Damen.
Laurent was really going to do it.
Pets in Vere made a teasing production out of this, flirting and making love to their masters’ hands. Laurent, when Damen brought the mouthful of bread to his lips, did none of those things. He maintained an essential fastidiousness. There was almost nothing of pet and master about it at all, except that Damen felt, just for an instant, the warmth of Laurent’s breath against his fingertips.
Verisimilitude, thought Damen.
His gaze dropped to Laurent’s lips. When he forced it upwards, it fixed instead on the earring. The lobe of Laurent’s ear was pierced through with the ornament of his uncle’s child-lover. It suited him, in the mundane sense that it matched his colouring. In another sense, it looked as incongruous as it felt to tear another mouthful of bread from the flat loaf, and lift it to feed him.
Laurent ate the bread. It was like feeding a predator, the same feeling. Laurent was so close that it would be easy to wrap a hand around the back of his neck and draw him closer. He remembered the feel of Laurent’s hair, his skin, and fought the urge to press against Laurent’s lips with the pads of his fingers.
It was the earring. Laurent was always so austere. The earring reframed him. It gave the appearance of a sensual side, sophisticated and subtle.
But that side didn’t exist. The glint of sapphires was dangerous. As Nicaise had been dangerous. Nothing in Vere was as it seemed.
Another piece of bread. Laurent’s lips brushed against his fingertips. It was brief and soft. This wasn’t what he’d intended when he picked up the bread. He had some sense that his plans had been overturned, that Laurent knew exactly what he was doing. The touch resembled the first brush of lips in the kind of sensual kiss that begins as a series of smaller kisses, and then, slowly, deepens. Damen felt his breathing change.
He reminded himself forcefully of who this was. Laurent, his captor. He made himself recall the fall of each lash on his back, but thanks to some misfiring of the brain, found himself instead in the memory of Laurent’s wet skin in the baths, the way his limbs fitted together like a hilt fitted to the blade of a balanced sword.
Laurent finished the morsel, then rested a hand on Damen’s thigh, and slowly slid it upward.
‘Control yourself,’ said Laurent.
And shifted in, until, facing one another on the straddled bench, they were almost chest to chest. Laurent’s hair tickled against Damen’s cheek as he brought his lips to Damen’s ear.
‘You and I are almost the last ones here,’ Laurent murmured.
‘And so?’
The next murmur slid softly into Damen’s ear, so that he felt the shape of each word, made of lips and breath.
‘And so, take me upstairs,’ said Laurent. ‘Don’t you think we’ve waited long enough?’
It was Laurent who led the way, trailing up the stairs, with Damen following. He was aware of each step, and he found his pulse beating fast beneath his skin.
The third door at the top of the s
tairs. The room was warmed with a well-tended fire in a large hearth. It had thick plastered walls and a window with a small balcony. Its one large bed had cosy-looking bedding and a sturdy dark wooden headboard that was intricately carved with a interlocking pattern of diamonds. There were a few other pieces of furniture, a low chest, a chair by the door.
And there was a man of about thirty with a dark, closely trimmed beard sitting on the bed, who propelled himself off it and onto one knee when he saw Laurent.
Damen sat down rather heavily on the chair by the door.
‘Your Highness,’ the man said, kneeling.
‘Rise,’ Laurent told him. ‘I’m glad to see you. You must have come every night, long after the time when you were due an answer.’
‘While you were camped at Nesson, I thought there was a chance your messenger would come,’ said the man, standing.
‘He was detained. We were followed from the keep as far as the eastern quarter. I think the roads in and out will be watched.’
‘I know a way. I can leave as soon as we’re done.’
The man drew a piece of sealed parchment from inside his jacket. Laurent took it, broke the seal, and read the contents. He read it slowly. From the glimpse Damen caught, it looked like it was written in a cipher. When he was done, he dropped the parchment into the fire, where it curled up and blacked over.
Laurent took out his signet ring, and pressed it into the man’s hand.
‘Give him this,’ said Laurent, ‘and tell him that I will wait for him at Ravenel.’
The man bowed. He left by the door and made his way out of the sleeping inn. It was done.
Damen rose and gave Laurent a long look.
‘You look pleased.’
‘I’m the type who takes a great deal of pleasure in small victories,’ Laurent said.
‘You weren’t sure he’d be here,’ said Damen.
‘I didn’t think he would be. Two weeks is a long time to wait.’ Laurent unpinned the earring. ‘I think we’ll be safe on the road in the morning. The men who followed us seemed more interested in finding him than harming me. They didn’t attack us when they had the chance tonight.’ And then, ‘Does that door lead to the bath?’ And then, halfway to the door, ‘Don’t worry, your services aren’t required.’