by S. U. Pacat
He would leave. It was for the best that he would leave. He would ride out early, would be across the border before midday. There would be no need to leave word: when his absence was noticed, Jord would bring report of his departure to Laurent. Veretians would take over the duties and the structures he had set up here at the fort. He had created them to ensure that.
Everything would be simple in the morning. Jord, he thought, would give him time to get beyond Laurent’s scouts before he brought word to Laurent that his Captain, irrevocably, was gone. He focused on the pragmatic realities: a horse, supplies, a route that would avoid scouts. The intricacies of Ravenel’s defence were now matters for other men. The fight they faced over the coming months was not his own. He could put it behind him.
His life in Vere, the man he was here, he could put all of it behind him.
A sound on the stone steps; he lifted his head. The battlements stretched towards the south tower, a stone walkway with toothed crenellation to the left, and torches lit at intervals. Damen had ordered the section cleared. Cresting the circular stone stairs was the only person who could have disobeyed that command.
Damen watched as alone, unattended, Laurent had left his own banquet to find him, to follow him here, up the worn steps out onto to the battlements. Laurent fitted himself next to him, a comfortable, unobtrusive presence that took up room in Damen’s chest. They stood on the edge of the fort they had won together. Damen tried for a conversational tone.
‘You know, the slaves you gifted to Torveld are worth almost the same as the men that he’s given you.’
‘I would say exactly that much.’
‘I thought you helped them out of compassion.’
‘No, you didn’t,’ said Laurent.
The breath that escaped him was not quite like laughter. He looked out at the darkness beyond the torches, the unseen expanse of the south.
‘My father,’ he said, ‘hated Veretians. He called them cowards, deceivers. It’s what he taught me to believe. He would have been just like these border lords, Touars and Makedon. War hungry. I can only imagine what he would have thought of you.’
He looked over at Laurent. He knew his father’s nature, his beliefs. He knew exactly the reaction that Laurent would have provoked, if he’d ever stood before Theomedes at Ios. If Damen had argued for him, had tried to make him see Laurent as . . . he would not have understood. You fight them, you don’t trust them. He’d never stood against his father for anything. He’d never needed to, so closely had their values aligned.
‘Your own father would be proud today.’
‘That I picked up a sword and put on my brother’s ill-fitting clothes? I’m sure he would be,’ said Laurent.
‘You don’t want the throne,’ Damen said after a moment, his eyes passing carefully over Laurent’s face.
‘I want the throne,’ said Laurent. ‘Do you honestly think, after all you’ve seen, that I’d shy from power or the chance to wield it?’
Damen felt his mouth twist. ‘No.’
‘No.’
His own father had ruled by the sword. He had forged Akielos into one nation, and used the new might of that country to expand its borders, fiercely proud. He had launched his northern campaign to return Delpha to his kingdom after ninety years of Veretian rule. But it was not his kingdom any longer. His father, who would never stand inside Ravenel, was dead.
‘I never questioned the way my father saw the world. It was enough for me to be the kind of son he was proud of. I could never bring shame to his memory, but for the first time I realise I don’t want to be . . .’
His kind of King.
It would have felt like dishonour to say it. And yet he had seen the village of Breteau, innocent of aggression, cut down by Akielon swords.
Father, I can beat him, he’d said, and he’d ridden out and returned to a hero’s welcome, to have his armour stripped by servants, to have his father greet him with pride. He remembered that night, all those nights, the galvanising power of his father’s expansionist victories, the approbation, as success flowed from success. He had not thought about the way it had played out on the other side of the field. When this game began, I was younger.
‘I’m sorry,’ said Damen.
Laurent gave him a strange look. ‘Why would you apologise to me?’
He couldn’t answer. Not with the truth. He said, ‘I didn’t understand what being King meant to you.’
‘What’s that?’
‘An end to fighting.’
Laurent’s expression changed, the subtle signifiers of shock imperfectly repressed, and Damen felt it in his own body, a new pull in his chest at the look in Laurent’s dark eyes.
‘I wish it could have been different between us, I wish I could have behaved to you with more honour. I want you to know that you will have a friend across the border, whatever happens tomorrow, whatever happens to both of us.’
‘Friends,’ said Laurent. ‘Is that what we are?’
Laurent’s voice was tightly knotted, as though the answer was obvious; as though it was as obvious as what was happening between them, the air disappearing, mote by mote.
Damen said, with helpless honesty, ‘Laurent, I am your slave.’
The words laid him open, truth exposed in the space between them. He wanted to prove it, as though, inarticulate, he could make up for what divided them. He was aware of the shallowness of Laurent’s breath, it matched his own; they were breathing each other’s air. He reached out, watching for any hesitation in Laurent’s eyes.
The touch he offered was accepted as it had not been last time, fingers gentle on Laurent’s jaw, thumb passing over his cheekbone, soft. Laurent’s controlled body was hard with tension, his rapid pulse urgent for flight, but he closed his eyes in the last seconds before it happened. Damen’s palm slid over Laurent’s warm nape; slowly, very slowly, making his height an offering, not a threat, Damen leaned in and kissed Laurent on the mouth.
The kiss was barely a suggestion of itself, with no yielding of the rigidity in Laurent, but the first kiss became a second, after a fraction of parting in which Damen felt the flicker of Laurent’s shallow breathing against his own lips.
It felt, in all the lies between them, as if this was the only true thing. It didn’t matter that he was leaving tomorrow. He felt remade with the desire to give Laurent this: to give him all he would allow, and to ask for nothing, this careful threshold something to be savoured because it was all Laurent would let himself have.
‘Your Highness—’
They broke apart at the voice, the burst of sound, of nearby footsteps. A head was cresting the stone steps. Damen took a step backwards, his stomach twisting.
It was Jord.
CHAPTER 18
ABRUPTLY SEPARATED, DAMEN stood across from Laurent in one of the islands of light where the torches flamed at intervals. The length of the battlements stretched out on either side and Jord, several feet off, was halted in his approach.
‘I ordered the section cleared,’ Damen said. Jord was intruding. At home in Akielos, he’d only have had to glance up from what he was doing and order, Leave us, and the intrusion would be gone. And he could go back to what he had been doing.
To what, gloriously, he had been doing. He’d been kissing Laurent and that should not be interrupted. His eyes returned warmly, possessively to their object: Laurent looked like any young man who has been pressed against a battlement and kissed. The slight disturbance of the hair at Laurent’s nape was wonderful. His hand had lain there.
‘I’m not here for you,’ said Jord.
‘Then state your business and leave.’
‘My business is with the Prince.’
His hand had lain there, and pushed up into the soft, warm golden hair. Interrupted, the kiss was alive between them, in dark eyes and heartbeats. His attention swung back to the intruder. The threat that Jord posed to him was galvanising. What had happened was not going to be threatened by anything or anyone.
Laurent pushed himself away from the wall.
‘Here to warn me about the dangers of making command decisions in bed?’ Laurent said.
There was a short, spectacular silence. The flaming of the torches, the wind striking the walls were over-loud. Jord stood very still.
‘Something to say?’ said Laurent.
Jord was holding off from them. The same stubborn distaste was in his voice. ‘Not with him here.’
‘He’s your Captain,’ said Laurent.
‘He knows well enough he should go.’
‘While we compare notes on spreading for the enemy?’ said Laurent.
This silence was worse. Damen felt the distance between himself and Laurent with his whole body, four endless steps across the battlements.
‘Well?’ said Laurent.
Jord’s eyes had turned to Damen, full of bloody-mindedness. But, He is Damianos of Akielos, Jord didn’t say, though he looked strained to his limits with repulsion at what he had just seen, and the silence stretched out, thick and tangible with what lay underneath.
Damen stepped forward. ‘Maybe—’
More sound on the stairs, the clatter of several urgent footsteps. Jord turned. Guymar and another of the soldiers were coming to the section he had ordered cleared. Damen passed a hand over his face. Everyone in the fort was coming to the section he had ordered cleared.
‘Captain. I apologise for the breach in your orders. But there is a situation developing downstairs.’
‘A situation?’
‘A group of the men have it into their minds to make sport with one of the prisoners.’
The world was not going away. The intrusive world was returning its concerns, the issues of discipline, the mechanisms of captaincy.
‘The prisoners are to be well treated,’ said Damen. ‘If some of the men are too full of drink, you know how to keep them at bay. My orders were clear.’
There was a hesitation. Guymar was one of Enguerran’s men, a career soldier, polished and professional. Damen had promoted him for exactly those qualities.
‘Captain, your orders were clear, but . . .’ said Guymar.
‘But?’
‘Some of the men seem to think that His Highness will support their actions.’
Damen gathered his mind. From the way Guymar said it, it was obvious what type of sport he meant. They had been weeks on the road without camp followers. Yet he had believed that the men capable of actions such as this had been weeded out of the troop.
Guymar’s face was impassive, but his faint disapproval was tangible: these were the actions of mercenaries, dressed up in the Prince’s livery. The Prince’s men were showing their inferior quality.
Like an archer fixing on his target, Laurent said precisely, deliberately, ‘Aimeric.’
Damen turned. Laurent’s eyes were on Jord, and Damen saw in a rush from Jord’s expression that Laurent was right, and of course it was for Aimeric’s sake that Jord had come here.
Under that dangerous, steady gaze, Jord went to his knees.
‘Your Highness,’ said Jord. He wasn’t looking at anyone, but at the dark stones beneath him. ‘I know I’ve done wrong. I’ll accept any punishment for that. But Aimeric was loyal to his family. He was loyal to what he knew. He doesn’t deserve to be handed around the men for that.’ Jord’s head was bowed, but his hands on his knees were fists. ‘If my years of service to you are worth anything at all, let them be worth that.’
‘Jord,’ said Laurent, ‘this is why he fucked you. This moment.’
‘I know that,’ said Jord.
‘Orlant,’ said Laurent, ‘didn’t deserve to die alone on the sword of a self-serving aristocrat he thought was a friend.’
‘I know that,’ said Jord. ‘I’m not asking you to let Aimeric go free or to forgive him what he’s done. It’s just that I know him, and that night, he was . . .’
‘I should make you watch,’ said Laurent, ‘while he’s stripped down for every man in the troop to have him.’
Damen stepped forward. ‘You don’t mean this. You need him as a hostage.’
‘I don’t need him continent,’ said Laurent.
Laurent’s face was perfectly smooth, his blue eyes cool and untouchable. Damen felt himself recoil slightly from that callous look, the surprise of it. He realised that he had fallen out of step with Laurent at some crucial point. He wanted to send everyone away, so that he could find his way back.
And yet this must be dealt with. The situation here was spiralling into something unpleasant.
He said, ‘If there’s to be justice for Aimeric, then let it be justice, reasonably decided, publicly applied, not the men taking matters into their own hands.’
‘Then by all means,’ said Laurent, ‘let us have justice. Since you’re both so eager for it. Drag Aimeric away from his admirers. Bring him to me in the south tower. Let us have everything out in the open.’
‘Yes, Your Highness.’
Damen found himself stepping forward as Guymar bowed briefly and left, and the others followed him, making for the south tower. He wanted to reach out, if not with a hand, then with his voice.
‘What are you doing?’ he said. ‘When I said there should be justice for Aimeric, I meant later, not now, when you’re . . .’ He searched Laurent’s face. ‘When we . . .’
He hit a look like a wall, and the uncaring lift of golden brows.
Laurent said, ‘If Jord wants to get down on his knees for Aimeric, he should know exactly who he’s crawling for.’
The south tower was crowned by a platform and a parapet pierced through not with useful rectangular slits but with slim, pointed arches, because this was Vere and there must always be some flourish. Below the platform was the room where Damen, Laurent and Jord gathered, a small round space connected to the parapet by straight stone stairs. During a fight—during any attack on the fort—the room would be an assembling point for archers and swordsmen, but now it functioned as an informal guards’ room, with a stout wooden table, and three chairs. The men who would usually be on watch, both here and above, had cleared out at Damen’s orders.
Laurent, supremely puissant, ordered that not only Aimeric should be brought, but also refreshments. The food arrived first. Servants battled up to the tower laden with plates of meats, and bread, and pitchers of wine and of water. The goblets they brought were gold, and carved with an image of a deer, mid-hunt. Laurent sat in the high-backed wooden chair by the table and crossed his legs. Damen hardly supposed that Laurent was going to sit across from Aimeric with his legs crossed and make small talk. Or perhaps he was.
He knew that expression. His sense of danger, highly attuned to Laurent’s moods, told him that Aimeric was better off downstairs with a half dozen men than he was up here with Laurent. Laurent’s lids were smooth over a cool gaze, his posture straight-backed, his fingers poised on the rim of the goblet.
I kissed him, thought Damen, the idea unreal here in this small circular stone room. The warm, sweet kiss had been broken in a moment of promise: the first slight parting of lips, the hint that Laurent had been on the cusp of allowing the kiss to deepen, though his body had been singing with tension.
When he closed his eyes, he felt how it might have happened: slowly, Laurent’s mouth opening, Laurent’s hands lifting hesitantly to touch his body. He would have been careful, so careful.
Aimeric was dragged in by two guards. He resisted, his hands lashed behind his back, his arms gripped by his guards. He had been stripped of his armour; his undershirt was streaked with dirt and sweat and it hung partially open in a mess of laces. His curls looked more pulped than polished, and there was a cut across his left cheek.
His eyes retained their defiance. There was an intrinsic antagonism in Aimeric’s nature, Damen knew. He liked a fight.
When he saw Jord, he turned white. And said, ‘No.’ His guard shoved him inside.
‘The loving reunion,’ said Laurent.
When Aimeric heard that, he gathered hi
s defiance to himself. The guards took up their hold again, roughly. Though his face was still white, Aimeric lifted his chin.
‘Have you brought me here to gloat? I’m glad I did what I did. I did it for my family, and for the south. I’d do it again.’
‘That was pretty,’ said Laurent. ‘Now the truth.’
‘That was the truth,’ said Aimeric. ‘I’m not afraid of you. My father’s going to crush you.’
‘Your father has ridden to Fortaine with his tail between his legs.’
‘To regroup. My father would never turn his back on his family. Not like you. Spreading for your brother isn’t the same thing as family loyalty.’ Aimeric’s breathing was shallow.
‘That reminds me,’ said Laurent.
He stood, the goblet hanging casually from his fingertips. He regarded Aimeric a moment. Then he changed his grip on the goblet, lifted it, and brought it with calm brutality in a backhanded blow across Aimeric’s face.
Aimeric cried out. The blow snapped his head to one side, as the heavy gold impacted on his cheekbone with a sick, solid sound. It left him reeling in the arms of his guards. Jord made a violent move forward, and Damen felt his whole body come under strain as, instinctively, he pushed in to halt him.
‘Keep your mouth off my brother,’ said Laurent.
In the first burst of movement, Damen had flung Jord ungently back, then held him off in a restraining grip. Jord had gone still but the strain of muscle was still there, his breathing harsh. Laurent replaced the goblet, with exquisite precision, on the table.
Aimeric just blinked with glazed, stupefied eyes; the contents of the goblet had sprayed outward, wetting Aimeric’s stunned, slack face. There was blood on his lips, where something was bitten or split, and a red brand on his cheekbone.
Damen heard Aimeric say, thickly, ‘You can hit me as much as you like.’
‘Can I? I think we’re going to enjoy each other, you and I. Tell me what else I can do to you.’
‘Stop this,’ said Jord. ‘He’s just a boy. He’s just a boy, he’s not old enough for this, he’s scared. He thinks you’re going to wreck his family.’