by S. U. Pacat
‘Laurent,’ he said, and he was all the way inside, each thrust driving him closer to an end that ached inside him, and still he wanted to be deeper.
The full weight of his body was on Laurent now, his full length moving inside, and it was wholly sensate: the tangled sound Laurent made, newly, sweetly inarticulate, the flush on his cheeks, the averted twist of his head, sight and sound melded with the hot push into Laurent’s body, the pulse of him, the tremor in his own muscles.
He had a sudden splintering image of how it might be, if this was a world where they had time. There would be no urgency and no end point, just a sweet string of days spent together, long, languorous love making where he could spend hours inside.
‘I can’t—I have to—’ he heard himself say, and the words came out in his own language. Distantly he heard Laurent answer him in Veretian, even as he felt Laurent begin to spill, the pulsing jerk of his body, the first wet stripe of it, hot as blood. Laurent came beneath him, and he tried to experience all of it, tried to hold on, but his body was too close to its own release, and he did as he was bid in Laurent’s fractured voice, and emptied himself inside.
CHAPTER 20
EVERY NOW AND again, Laurent shifted against him without waking.
Damen lay in the warmth beside him and felt the soft golden hair against his neck, the slight weight of Laurent in the places where their bodies touched.
Outside, the shift on the battlements was changing and servants were up, tending fires and stirring pots. Outside, the day was beginning, and all the things related to the day, sentries and hostlers and men rising and arming themselves to fight. He could hear the distant shout of a hail in some courtyard; closer to, the sound of a door slamming.
Just a little longer, he thought, and it might have been a mundane wish to drowse in bed except for the ache in his chest. He felt the passing of time like a growing pressure. He was aware of each moment because it was one fewer that he had left.
Sleeping beside Damen, there was a newly physical aspect revealed in Laurent: the taut waist, the upper body musculature of a swordsman, the exposed angle of his Adam’s apple. Laurent looked like what he was: a young man. When laced into his clothing, Laurent’s dangerous grace lent him an almost androgynous quality. Or perhaps it was more accurate to say that it was rare to associate Laurent with a physical body at all: you were always dealing with a mind. Even when fighting in battle, driving his horse to some impossible feat, the body was under the control of the mind.
Damen knew his body now. He knew the surprise that gentle attention could draw from him. He knew his lazy, dangerous assurance, his hesitancies . . . his sweet, tender hesitancies. He knew the way that he made love, a combination of explicit knowledge and almost shy reticences.
Stirring drowsily, Laurent shifted a fraction closer and made a soft, unthinking sound of pleasure that Damen was going to remember for the rest of his life.
And then Laurent was blinking sleepily, and Damen was watching Laurent grow aware of his surroundings and come awake in his arms.
He wasn’t sure how it would be, but when Laurent saw who was beside him, he smiled, the expression a little shy but completely genuine. Damen, who hadn’t been expecting it, felt the single painful beat of his heart. He’d never thought Laurent could look like that at anyone.
‘It’s morning,’ said Laurent. ‘We slept?’
‘We slept,’ said Damen.
They were gazing at one another. He held himself still as Laurent reached out and touched the plane of his chest. Despite the rising sun they were kissing, slow, fantastic kisses, the wonderful drift of hands. Their legs tangled together. He ignored the feeling inside him and closed his eyes.
‘Your inclination appears to be much as it was last night.’
Damen found himself saying, ‘You talk the same in bed,’ and the words came out sounding like he felt: helplessly charmed.
‘Can you think of a better way of putting it?’
‘I want you,’ said Damen.
‘You’ve had me,’ said Laurent. ‘Twice. I can still feel the . . . sensation of it.’
Laurent shifted, just so. Damen buried his face in Laurent’s neck and groaned, and there was laughter too, and something akin to happiness that hurt as it pushed at the inside of his chest.
‘Stop it. You will not be able to walk,’ said Damen.
‘I’d welcome the chance to walk,’ said Laurent. ‘I have to ride a horse.’
‘Is it . . . ? I tried to . . . I wouldn’t—’
‘I like the way it feels,’ said Laurent. ‘I liked the way it felt. You’re a generous, giving lover, and I feel—’ Laurent broke off, and gave a shaky laugh at his own words. ‘I feel like the Vaskian tribe, in the body of one person. I suppose it is often like this?’
‘No,’ said Damen. ‘No, it’s—’ It’s never like this. The idea that Laurent might find this with someone else hurt him.
‘Does that betray my inexperience? You know my reputation. Once every ten years.’
‘I can’t,’ said Damen. ‘I can’t have this for just one night.’
‘One night and one morning,’ said Laurent, and this time it was Damen who found himself pushed down onto the bed.
He dozed, after, drifting in the early sunlight, and woke to an empty bed.
Shock that he’d let himself fall asleep and anxiety about his deadline pushed him up. Servants were entering the room, throwing open the doors and disturbing the space with impersonal activity: clearing away the spent candles and the empty containers where scented oil had flamed.
He looked instinctively at the position of the sun through the window. It was late morning. He’d dozed for an hour. Longer. There was so little time left.
‘Where’s Laurent?’
An attendant was approaching the bed. ‘You are to be taken from Ravenel and escorted directly to the border.’
‘Escorted?’
‘You will rise and ready yourself. Your collar and cuffs will be removed. You will then leave the fort.’
‘Where’s Laurent?’ he said again.
‘The Prince is occupied with other matters. You are to leave before he returns.’
He felt unsteady. He understood that what he had missed in sleeping was not his deadline but the last moments with Laurent, the last kiss, the final parting. Laurent wasn’t here because he had chosen not to be here. And when he thought about goodbye, it was a welling silence full of all the things he couldn’t say.
He rose, then. Bathed and dressed. They laced him into a jacket, and by then the servants had cleared the room, had gathered, piece by piece, last night’s discarded clothing, the scattered boots, the crumpled shirt, the jacket, a mess of laces; had changed the bed.
To take off the collar required a blacksmith.
He was a man named Guerin, with dark straight hair that lay flat on his head like a thin cap. He came to Damen in an outbuilding, and it was done without onlookers and without ceremony.
It was a dusty building with a stone bench and a scattering of blacksmith’s tools brought in from the forge. He looked around at the small room and told himself there was nothing lacking. If he’d left in secret as he had planned it would have been done just like this, unobserved, by a blacksmith across the border.
The collar came first, and when Guerin drew it from his neck he felt the collar’s absence like a lightness, his spine unfurling, his shoulders settling.
Like a lie, cracking and dropping from him.
He looked at the gleam of the gold where Guerin placed it, halved, on the workbench. Veretian shackles. In the curve of its metal was every humiliation of his time in this country, every frustration at Veretian confinement, every indignity of an Akielon serving a Veretian master.
Except that it was Kastor who had put the collar on him, and Laurent who was freeing him.
It was made from Akielon gold. It drew him forward and he touched it. It was still warm from the skin of his neck, like it was part of him. He didn’t
know why that should unnerve him. His fingers, smoothing along the surface, encountered the notch, the deep furrow where Lord Touars had tried to drive his sword into his neck, and had instead bitten into the ring of gold.
He pulled himself away and gave up his right wrist to Guerin. The collar with its latch had been a simple matter to a blacksmith, but the cuffs needed to be struck off with a chisel and mallet.
He had come to this fort a slave. He would ride out of it Damianos of Akielos. It was like shedding a skin, discovering what lay beneath. The first cuff sprang apart under Guerin’s rhythmic strikes and he faced his new self. He was not the headstrong prince he had been in Akielos. The man he had been in Akielos would never have served a Veretian master, or fought alongside Veretians for their cause.
He would never have known Laurent for what he was; never have given Laurent his loyalty or held Laurent’s trust for a moment in his hands.
Guerin moved to strike the gold from his left wrist, and he pulled it back.
‘No,’ he heard himself say. ‘Leave that one on.’
Guerin shrugged, turned and with impersonal motions tipped the collar and the cuff segments into a cloth, and wrapped it, before passing it to Damen. Damen took the makeshift bag. The weight was surprising.
Guerin said, ‘The gold’s yours.’
‘A gift?’ he said, as he might have said to Laurent.
‘The Prince doesn’t need it,’ said Guerin.
His escort arrived.
It was six men, and one of them, already mounted, was Jord, who looked him right in the eye and said, ‘You kept your word.’
His horse was being led forward. Not only a riding horse but a pack horse, a sword, clothing, supplies. Is there something you want? Laurent had asked him once. He wondered what ornate Veretian parting gift might lurk in those packs and knew instinctively that there was none. He had maintained from the beginning that he had wanted only his freedom. And that was exactly what he had been given.
‘I always meant to leave,’ he said.
He swung up into the saddle. His eyes passed around the fort’s large courtyard, from the great gates to the dais with its wide, shallow steps. He remembered their first arrival, the stony reception of Lord Touars, the feeling of standing inside a Veretian fort for the first time. He saw the gatesmen at their post, a soldier going about his duty. He felt Jord draw up beside him.
‘He’s gone for a ride,’ said Jord. ‘It was his habit in the palace, too, when he needed to clear his head. Not the type for goodbyes.’
‘No,’ said Damen.
He made to ride out, but Jord put a hand on his reins. ‘Wait,’ said Jord. ‘I wanted to say—thank you. For standing up for Aimeric.’
‘I didn’t do it for Aimeric,’ said Damen.
Jord nodded. And then he said, ‘When the men heard you were leaving, they wanted—we wanted—to see you off.’ He said, ‘There’s time.’
He gave a wave of his hand and men were coming into the fort’s enormous courtyard, the Prince’s men, and under the ever-rising sun they were forming up in front of the dais. Damen looked out over the immaculate lines and let out a breath that was something like surprise and something like the feeling in his chest. Every strap was polished, every piece of armour gleamed. He let his eyes pass over each of their faces, and then looked out at the wider courtyard, where men and women of the fort were gathering curiously. Laurent wasn’t here, and he let that fact sink into his bones.
Lazar stepped forward and said, ‘Captain. It was an honour to serve with you.’
It was an honour to serve with you. Those words echoed in his mind.
‘No,’ he said. ‘The honour was mine.’
And then there was a burst of activity from the lower gate, and a rider came into the courtyard: it was Laurent.
He was not here in a last-minute change of heart. Damen only had to look at Laurent to know that he had intended to stay away until Damen was gone, and was not pleased to have been forced to return early.
He was dressed in riding leathers. The leathers were winched as tight as the rising gate, not a single strap out of place even after a long ride. He sat straight-backed. His horse, neck curved under a taut rein, was still blowing air through its nostrils from the ride. He tossed Damen a single cool look from across the courtyard before driving his horse on.
And then Damen saw why he was here.
He heard the activity on the battlements first, the shouts that went up along the lines, and then from horseback he saw the banner waving its signal. These were his own alerts, and he knew what was coming even as Laurent lifted his hand and gave a signal of his own, acceding to the request for entry.
The enormous machinery of the gates started to turn, cogs grinding and dark screeching wood with interlocking teeth brought to life with winches and straining human muscle.
Accompanying it was the cry, ‘Open the gates!’
Laurent didn’t dismount, but wheeled his horse at the base of the dais to face what was coming.
They swept into the courtyard in a surge of red. The banners were red, the livery was red, the pennants, the brightwork, the armour was gold and white and red. The blare of the horns was like the sounding of trumpets, and into Ravenel in full panoply came the emissaries of the Regency.
The gathered soldiers parted for them, and a space opened up between Laurent and his uncle’s men, so that they faced one another along a widening corridor of empty flagstones, with onlookers either side.
A hush fell. Damen’s own horse shifted, then was still. On the faces of Laurent’s men was the hostility that the Regency had always engendered, now magnified. On the faces of the inhabitants of the fort the reactions were more varied: surprise, careful neutrality, devouring curiosity.
There were twenty-five Regent’s men: a herald and two dozen soldiers. Laurent, opposing them on horseback, was alone.
He would have seen the arriving party outside. He had most likely outridden them in returning to the fort. And he had chosen to meet them like this, a young man on horseback, rather than standing at the top of those steps, an aristocrat in command of his fort. He was nothing like Lord Touars, who had greeted an entry with his entire retinue arrayed in disapproving formation on the dais. Against the pomp of the Regent’s emissary Laurent was a single rider casually dressed. But then, he had never needed anything other than his hair to identify him.
‘The King of Vere sends a message,’ said the herald.
His voice, trained to carry, could be heard the full length of the courtyard, by each of the gathered men and women. He spoke:
‘The pretender prince is in traitorous conspiracy with Akielos, wherefore he has given over Veretian villages to slaughter, and has killed Veretian border lords. He is therefore summarily expelled from the succession, and charged with the crime of treason against his own people. Any authority he has hitherto claimed over the lands of Vere or the protectorate of Acquitart is now void. The reward for his delivery to justice is generous, and will be administered as swiftly as the punishment against any man who shelters him. So says the King.’
There was silence in the courtyard. No one spoke.
‘But there is no King,’ said Laurent, ‘in Vere.’ His voice carried too. ‘The King my father is dead.’ He said, ‘Speak the name of the man who profanes his title.’
‘The King,’ said the herald, ‘your uncle.’
‘My uncle insults his family. He uses a title that belonged to my father—that should have passed to my brother—and that runs now in my blood. Do you think I will let this insult stand?’
The herald spoke again by rote: ‘The King is a man of honour. He offers you one chance for honest battle. If your brother’s blood is truly in your veins, you will meet him on the field at Charcy three days hence. There you may try to prevail with your Patran troops against good Veretian men.’
‘Fight him I will, but not at the time and place of his choosing.’
‘And is that your final answer?’
‘In that case, there is a personal message from uncle to nephew.’
The herald nodded to the soldier at his left, who unhooked from his saddle a grimy, bloodstained cloth bag.
Damen felt a sickening lurch of his stomach as the soldier held the bloodstained bag aloft, and the herald said:
‘This one pleaded for you. He tried to stand for the wrong side. He suffered the fate of any man who sides with the pretender prince against the King.’
The soldier pulled the bag away from the severed head.
It was a fortnight’s hard ride, in hot weather. The skin had lost all the freshness that youth had once lent it. The blue eyes, always his best feature, were gone. But his tumbled brown hair was dressed with star-like pearls, and from the shape of his face, you could see that he had been beautiful.
Damen remembered him stabbing a fork into his thigh, remembered him insulting Laurent, blue eyes bright with invective. Remembered him standing alone and uncertain in a hallway dressed in bedclothes, a young boy poised on the edge of adolescence, fearing it, dreading it.
Don’t tell him I came, he’d said.
They had always, from the beginning, had a strange affinity. This one pleaded for you. Spending, perhaps, the last of his fading currency with the Regent. Not realising how little currency he had left.
Whether his beauty would survive adolescence no one would ever know, for Nicaise would not see fifteen now.
In the glaring light of the courtyard, Damen saw Laurent react, and make himself not react. Laurent’s response communicated itself to his horse, which moved in place, a sharp, jittery burst, before Laurent brought it, too, under hard control.
The herald still held his gruesome trophy. He didn’t know to run when he saw the look in Laurent’s eyes.
‘My uncle has killed his catamite,’ said Laurent. ‘As a message to us. And what is the message?’ His voice carried.