Captive Prince: Volume Two

by S. U. Pacat

  Damen looked downwards and saw the way that the white fabric shifted slightly under his thumbs. Laurent’s shirt hung on his body, a containing layer. Then Damen’s eyes travelled up along the balanced nape, to a wick of golden hair tucked behind an ear.

  Damen let his hands move only enough to seek out new muscles to unknot. In Laurent’s body, always, that flickering tension.

  ‘Is it so hard to relax?’ said Damen, quietly. ‘You only have to walk outside to see what you’ve accomplished. Those men are yours.’ He didn’t pay attention to the signs, the slight stiffening. ‘Whatever happens tomorrow, you’ve done more than anyone could—’

  ‘That’s enough,’ said Laurent, pushing himself away unexpectedly.

  When Laurent turned to face him, his eyes were dark. His lips were parted uncertainly. He had lifted his hand to his own shoulder, as though chasing a ghost touch there. He did not look exactly relaxed, but the movement did look a little easier. As if realising that, Laurent said, almost awkwardly, ‘Thank you.’ And then, in wry acknowledgement: ‘Getting tied up leaves an impression. I didn’t realise being captured was so uncomfortable.’

  ‘Well, it is.’ The words sounded close to normal.

  ‘I promise I’ll never tie you to the back of a horse,’ said Laurent.

  There was a pause in which Laurent’s mordant gaze was on him.

  ‘That’s right, I’m still captured,’ said Damen.

  ‘Your eyes say, “For now,”’ Laurent said. ‘Your eyes have always said, “For now.”’ And then: ‘If you were a pet, I would have gifted you enough by now to buy out your contract, many times over.’

  ‘I’d still be here,’ said Damen, ‘with you. I told you that I would see this border dispute through to its finish. Do you think I’d go back on my word?’

  ‘No,’ said Laurent, almost as if he was realising it for the first time. ‘I don’t think you would. But I know you don’t like it. I remember how much it maddened you in the palace, to be bound and powerless. I felt yesterday how badly you wanted to hit someone.’

  Damen found he’d moved without realising it, his fingers lifting to touch the bruised edge of Laurent’s jaw. He said, ‘The man who did this to you.’

  The words just came out. The warmth of skin under his fingers in that moment took all his attention, before he became aware that Laurent had jerked back and was staring at him, blue eyes huge with pupil.

  Damen was suddenly aware of how out of control he was—he felt—and called violently on his faculties to try to put a stop to—this.

  ‘I’m sorry. I . . . know better than that.’ He forced himself a step back too. He said, ‘I think . . . I had better report to the watch. I can take a shift tonight.’

  He turned to leave, and made it all the way to the tent’s entrance. Laurent’s voice caught him with his hand parting the canvas.

  ‘No. Wait. I . . . wait.’

  Damen stopped, and turned. Laurent’s gaze was edged with indecipherable emotion, and his jaw was set at a new angle. The silence stretched out for such a long time that the words, when they came, were a shock.

  ‘What Govart said about my brother and I . . . it wasn’t true.’

  ‘I never thought it was,’ said Damen, uneasily.

  ‘I mean that whatever . . . whatever taint exists in my family, Auguste was free of it.’

  ‘Taint?’

  ‘I wanted to tell you that, because you,’ said Laurent, as though he was forcing the words out, ‘You remind me of him. He was the best man I have ever known. You deserve to know that, as you deserve at least a fair . . . In Arles, I treated you with malice and cruelty. I will not insult you by attempting to atone for deeds with words, but I would not treat you that way again. I was angry. Angry, that isn’t the word.’ It was bitten off; a jagged silence followed.

  Laurent said steadily, ‘I have your oath that you will see this border skirmish through to its end? Then you have mine: stay with me until this thing is done, and I will take off the cuffs and the collar. I will release you willingly. We can face each other as free men. Whatever is to fall out between us can do so then.’

  Damen stared at him. He felt a strange pressure in his chest. The lamplight appeared to wave and flicker.

  ‘It’s not a trick,’ said Laurent.

  ‘You’d let me go,’ said Damen.

  This time it was Laurent who was silent, gazing back at him.

  Damen said, ‘And—until then?’

  ‘Until then, you are my slave, and I am your Prince, and that is how it is between us.’ Then, with a return to his more usual tone, ‘And you don’t need to take watch,’ said Laurent. ‘You sleep prudently.’

  Damen searched his face, but found nothing in it that he could read, which, he supposed, as he lifted his hands to the laces of his own jacket, was typical.

  CHAPTER 15

  LONG BEFORE DAWN, he was awake.

  There were duties to be performed, inside the tent and out of it. Before he got up and performed them, he lay for a long time with an arm on his forehead, his shirt strewn open, the bedding on his pallet loose around him, staring up at long, hanging folds of twilled silk.

  Outside, when he went outside, any signs of activity were not yet those of waking, but an extension of work that continued in a camp throughout the night: men tending to torches and campfires, the silent pacing of the watch, scouts dismounting and reporting to their night-commanders, who were also awake.

  For himself, he began his early work readying Laurent’s armour, laying out each piece, pulling hard on each strap, checking each rivet. The intricate worked metal with its fluted edges and decorative borders was as familiar to him as his own. He had learned how to handle Veretian armour.

  He turned to the inventory he must make of weapons: check each blade was immaculately free of nicks and marks; check the hilts and pommels were smooth of anything that could catch or impede; check that there was no change in balance that could even for a moment disconcert the man wielding it.

  Returning, he found the tent empty. Laurent had left on some early business. The camp around him was still dark-shrouded, with closed tents, in blissful sleep. The men, he knew, were anticipating riding into Ravenel to the same kind of approbation with which Laurent had ridden into their own camp: cheers for the men who brought in the offenders on a rope.

  Truthfully, Damen found it difficult to imagine how exactly Laurent would use his prisoners to coax Lord Touars down from a fight. Laurent was good at talking, but men like Touars had very little patience for talking. Even if the Veretian border lords could be persuaded, Nikandros’s commanders were rattling their swords. More than rattling them. There had been attacks on both sides of the border, and Laurent had seen the movements of the Akielon forces with his own eyes, as Damen had.

  A month ago, he would have expected, much like the men, that the prisoners would be dragged before Touars, the truth loudly proclaimed, the Regent’s dealings exposed before all. Now . . . Damen could just as easily envisage Laurent denying any knowledge of the culprit, letting Touars find his own way to the Regent—could practically see Laurent’s blue-eyed feigned concern for the truth, followed by his blue-eyed feigned surprise when it was revealed. The search itself would work as a delaying tactic, would draw things out, would take its own time.

  Deception and double dealing; it seemed sufficiently Veretian. He even thought, if Laurent held to his purpose, it could be done.

  And then? The exposure of the Regent, culminating in the night Laurent came to him and freed him with his own hands?

  Damen found himself past the edges of the tent rows, with Breteau forever silent behind him. Soon the dawn would come, the first sounds from the throats of birds, the sky growing lighter, the stars fading as the sun came up. He closed his eyes, feeling his chest rise and fall.

  Because it was impossible, he allowed himself to imagine, just once, what it would be like to face Laurent as a man . . . if there had been no animosity between their countries, L
aurent journeying to Akielos as part of an embassy, Damen’s attention superficially caught by the blond hair. They’d attend banquets and sports together, and Laurent . . . he had seen Laurent with those he cultivated, charming and edged without being lethal; and he was honest enough with himself to admit that if he had encountered Laurent in that mode, all golden lashes and needling remarks, he might well have found himself in some danger.

  His eyes came open. He heard the sound of riders.

  Following the sound, he pushed through the trees and found himself right on the edge of the Vaskian camp. Two women riders had just pounded in on lathered horses, and another was leaving. He remembered that Laurent had spent some time in negotiations and dealings with the Vaskians last night. He remembered that no men were supposed to come here, just as a spearpoint appeared in his path, held steady.

  He raised his hands in a surrendering gesture. The woman holding the spear didn’t run him through with it. Instead, she gave him a long speculative look, then gestured him forward. Spear at his back, he came into the camp.

  Unlike Laurent’s camp, the Vaskian camp was active. The women were already awake, and were seeing to the business of untying their fourteen prisoners from their nighttime bonds and retying them for the coming day. And something else was occupying their attention. Damen saw that he was being taken towards Laurent, deep in dialogue with the two riders who had dismounted and were standing beside their exhausted horses. When Laurent saw him, he concluded his business, and approached. The woman with the spear had vanished.

  Laurent said, ‘I’m afraid you don’t have time.’

  The tone was limpid. Damen said, ‘Thank you, but I came because I heard the horses.’

  Laurent said, ‘Lazar said he came because he took a wrong turning.’

  There was a pause, in which Damen discarded several replies. Eventually, matching Laurent’s tone, ‘I see. You prefer privacy?’

  ‘I couldn’t if I wanted to. A batch of blond Vaskians really would get me disinherited. I’ve never,’ said Laurent, ‘with a woman.’

  ‘It’s very pleasurable.’

  ‘You prefer it.’

  ‘For the most part.’

  ‘Auguste preferred women. He told me I would grow into it. I told him that he could get heirs and I would read books. I was . . . nine? Ten? I thought I was already grown up. The hazards of overconfidence.’

  On the verge of a reply, Damen stopped. That Laurent could talk, endlessly, like this, he knew. It wasn’t always apparent what was behind the talking, but sometimes it was.

  Damen said, ‘You can rest easy. You are ready to face Lord Touars.’

  He watched Laurent stop. The light was dark blue now rather than pitch, and growing lighter; he could make out Laurent’s fair hair, though not his face.

  Damen found there was something that, for a long time, he had wanted to ask.

  ‘I don’t understand how your uncle has you backed this far into a corner. You can outplay him. I’ve seen you do it.’

  Laurent said, ‘Maybe it seems that I can outplay him now. But when this game began I was . . . younger.’

  They reached the camp. The first calls came from the tent lines. The troop, in the grey light, began waking.

  Younger. Laurent had been fourteen at Marlas. Or . . . Damen moved months around in his head. The battle had been waged in early spring, Laurent reached his maturity in late spring. So, no. Younger. Thirteen, on the cusp of fourteen.

  He tried to picture Laurent at thirteen, and experienced a total failure of imagination. It was just as impossible to imagine him fighting in battle at that age as it was to imagine him trailing around after an older brother he adored. It was impossible to imagine him adoring anyone.

  The tents came down, the men swung up into their saddles. Damen’s view was of a straight back and a blond head lighter in colour than the rich gold of the prince he had faced all those years ago.

  Auguste. The one honourable man on a treacherous field.

  Damen’s father had invited the Veretian herald into his tent in good faith. He had offered the Veretians fair terms: surrender their lands, and live. The herald had spat on the ground and said, Vere will never surrender to Akielos, even as the first sounds of a Veretian attack had come from outside. Attack under the guise of parley: the ultimate affront to honour, with kings on the field.

  You fight them, his father had said. You don’t trust them. His father had been right. And his father had been ready.

  Veretians were cowards and deceivers; they should have scattered when their duplicitous attack met the full force of the Akielon army. But for some reason they hadn’t fallen at the first sign of a real fight, they had stood firm, and shown metal, and, for hour upon hour, they had fought, until the Akielon lines had begun to slip and falter.

  And their general wasn’t the King, it was the twenty-five year old Prince, holding the field.

  Father, I can beat him, he’d said.

  Then go, his father had said, and bring us back victory.

  The field was called Hellay, and Damen knew it as a half-inch of a familiar map, studied in lamplight across from a bent golden head. Discussing the quality of the ground here with Laurent last night he had said, ‘It has not been a harsh summer. It will be grass fields, gentle for riders if we need to depart from the road.’ It turned out to be true. The grass was thick and soft on either side of them. Hills rolled out before them, flowing one into another, and there were hills also to the east.

  The sun climbed the sky. They had ridden from a pre-dawn departure, but by the time they reached Hellay there was plenty of light to differentiate rise from flat, grass from sky—sky from what lay under it.

  The sun was shining down on them when the crest of the southern hill detached itself: a moving line that thickened and began to glint with silver and red.

  Damen, riding at the head of the column, reined in and to one side, and Laurent beside him did the same, his eyes never leaving the southern hill. The line was no longer a line, it was shapes, recognisable shapes, and Jord was calling for a troop-wide halt.

  Red. Red, the colour of the Regency, scrawled over with the iconography of the border forts, growing, fluttering. These were the banners of Ravenel. Not only the banners, but men and riders, flowing over the hilltop like wine from an over-full cup, staining and darkening its slopes, and spreading.

  By now, columns were visible. It was possible to roughly estimate numbers, five or six hundred riders, two lots of hundred-and-fifty-man infantry columns. Judging from what Damen had seen of the lodgings at the fort, this was in fact Ravenel’s full contingent of horse, and a lesser but substantial portion of its infantry. His own horse moved skittishly under him.

  In the next moment, it seemed, the slopes to their right also grew figures, much closer—close enough to recognise the shape and livery of the men. It was the detachment that Touars had sent to Breteau, who had, a day ago, departed. Not gone, but here, waiting. Add another two hundred to the number.

  Damen could feel the nervous tension of the men behind him, surrounded by colours that half of them down to their bones distrusted, and outnumbered ten to one.

  Ravenel’s forces on the hill began to split into a widening v-shape.

  ‘They’re moving to flank us. Have they mistaken us for an enemy troop?’ said Jord, confused.

  ‘No,’ said Laurent.

  ‘There is still a path open to us, to the north,’ said Damen.

  ‘No,’ said Laurent.

  A parcel of men detached itself from Ravenel’s main column, and began making right for them.

  ‘You two,’ said Laurent, and dug his heels into his horse.

  Damen and Jord followed, and they rode out over the long fields of grass, to meet Lord Touars and his men.

  In form and protocols, from the beginning, it was wrong. It happened sometimes between two forces that there was some parley between messengers, or meeting between principals, for final discussion of conditions or posturing bef
ore a fight. Galloping across the field, Damen felt down to his bones unease at the assertion of wartime arrangements, made worse by the size of the party they rode to meet, and the men it contained.

  Laurent reined in. The party was led by Lord Touars, beside him Councillor Guion, and Enguerran, the Captain. Behind them were twelve mounted soldiers.

  ‘Lord Touars,’ said Laurent.

  There was no preamble. ‘You have seen our forces. You will come with us.’

  Laurent said, ‘I take it that since our last meeting, you have received word from my uncle.’

  Lord Touars said nothing, as impassive as the cloaked, armoured riders behind him, so that it was Laurent, uncharacteristically, who had to break the silence and speak.

  Laurent said, ‘Come with you to what purpose?’

  Lord Touars’s scarred face was cold with contempt. ‘We know you have paid bribes to Vaskian raiders. We know you are in thrall to the Akielon, and that you have conspired with Vask to weaken your country with raids and border attacks. The good village of Breteau fell to one such raid. At Ravenel, you will be tried and executed for treason.’

  ‘Treason,’ said Laurent.

  ‘Can you deny that you have under your protection the men responsible for the attacks, and that you have coached them in an attempt to throw blame onto your uncle?’

  The words fell like the blow from an axe. You can outplay him, Damen had said, but it had been long weeks since he had faced the power of the Regent. It occurred to him, chillingly, that the captured men could indeed have been coached for this moment, just not by Laurent. Laurent, who had therefore brought Touars the very rope that would hang him.

  ‘I can deny anything I like,’ said Laurent, ‘in the absence of proof.’

  ‘He has proof. He has my testimony. I saw everything.’ A rider pushed out intrusively from behind the others, shoving back the hood of his cloak as he spoke. He looked different in an aristocrat’s armour, with his dark curls primped and brushed, but the pretty mouth was familiar, like the antagonistic voice and the bellicose look in his eyes.