Erasmus shook his head at the last question. ‘I—have a little skill with Patran and the northern dialects. Some words are similar.’ Haltingly, he said a few of them.
Erasmus managed the Veretian well enough; that was not what made Damen frown. The words Erasmus had been able to decipher from what had been said to him were:
Silence. Kneel down. Don’t move.
‘Did I misspeak?’ said Erasmus, misinterpreting the expression.
‘No, you spoke well,’ Damen said, though his consternation remained. He didn’t like the choice of words. He didn’t like the idea that Erasmus and the others were rendered doubly powerless by an inability to speak or understand what was being said around them.
‘You . . . do not have the manner of a palace slave,’ offered Erasmus, hesitantly.
That was an understatement. No one from Akielos would mistake Damen for a body slave, he had neither the manner nor the physique. Damen regarded Erasmus thoughtfully, wondering how much to say. ‘I was not a slave in Akielos. I was sent here by Kastor, as punishment,’ he said, eventually. There was no point lying about that part of it.
‘Punishment,’ said Erasmus. His gaze dropped to the ground. His whole manner changed.
Damen said, ‘But you were trained in the palace? How long were you there?’ He couldn’t account for the fact that he had not seen this slave before.
Erasmus attempted a smile, rallying himself from whatever had disheartened him. ‘Yes. I—But I never saw the main palace, I was in training silks until I was chosen by the Keeper to come here. And my training in Akielos was very strict. It was thought . . . that is . . .’
‘That is?’ said Damen.
Erasmus blushed and said in a very soft voice: ‘In case he found me pleasing, I was being trained for the Prince.’
‘Were you?’ said Damen, with some interest.
‘Because of my colouring. You can’t see it in this light, but in daylight, my hair is almost blond.’
‘I can see it in this light,’ said Damen.
He could hear the approval saturating his own voice. He felt it shift the dynamic between them. He might as well have said,
Good boy.
Erasmus reacted to the words like a flower inclining towards sunlight. It didn’t matter that he and Damen were technically the same rank, Erasmus was trained to respond to strength, to yearn for it and submit to it. His limbs subtly rearranged themselves, a flush spreading on his cheeks, his eyes dropping to the ground. His body became a supplication. The breeze toyed irresistibly with a curl that had tumbled over his forehead.
In the softest little voice he said, ‘This slave is beneath your attention.’
In Akielos, submission was an art, and the slave was the artisan. Now that he was showing his form, you could see that Erasmus was surely the prize pick of the Regent’s gift-slaves. Ridiculous, that he was being dragged around by the neck like an unwilling animal. It was like possessing a finely tuned instrument and using it to smash shells open. Misusing it.
He should be in Akielos, where his training would be fêted and prized. But it occurred to Damen that Erasmus might have been lucky in being chosen for the Regent, lucky in never having come to the attention of Prince Damianos. Damen had seen what had happened to the closest of his personal slaves. They had been killed.
He pushed the memory forcibly out of his mind and returned his attention to the slave in front of him.
Damen said, ‘And is your own master kind?’
‘This slave lives to serve,’ said Erasmus.
It was a formulaic set-phrase, and meant nothing. The behaviour of slaves was tightly proscribed, with the result that what was unsaid was often more important than what was said. Damen was already frowning a little when he chanced to look down.
The tunic Erasmus wore had been slightly disordered when he used it to wipe Damen’s cheek, and he’d had no chance to right it. The hem had lifted high enough to expose the top of his thigh. Erasmus, seeing the direction of Damen’s gaze, quickly pulled the cloth down to cover himself, stretching it as far as it would go.
‘What happened to your leg?’ said Damen.
Erasmus had gone ivory white. He didn’t want to answer, but would force himself to because he’d been asked a direct question.
‘What’s wrong?’
Erasmus’s voice was barely audible, his hands clutching the hem of his tunic. ‘I am ashamed.’
‘Show me,’ said Damen.
Erasmus’s fingers loosened, trembling, and then slowly lifted the fabric. Damen looked at what had been done. At what, three times, had been done.
‘The Regent did this? Speak freely.’
‘No. On the day we arrived, there was a test of obedience. I f-failed.’
‘This was your punishment for failure?’
‘This was the test. I was ordered not to make any sound.’
Damen had seen Veretian arrogance, and Veretian cruelty. He had suffered Veretian insults, had endured the sting of the lash and the violence of the ring. But he had not known anger until now.
‘You didn’t fail,’ said Damen. ‘That you tried at all proves your courage. What was asked of you was impossible. There’s no shame in what happened to you.’
Except for the people who had done this. There was shame and disgrace on every one of them, and Damen would hold them to account for what they had done.
Damen said, ‘Tell me everything that has happened to you since you left Akielos.’
Erasmus spoke matter-of-factly. The story was disturbing. The slaves had been transported aboard the ship in cages, below deck. Handlers and sailors alike had taken liberties. One of the women, worried about the lack of access to any usual means of preventing pregnancy, had tried to communicate the problem to her Veretian handlers, not realising that to them illegitimate birth was a horror. The idea that they might be delivering a slave to the Regent with a sailor’s bastard growing in her belly caused them to panic. The ship’s physic had given her some sort of concoction that induced sweats and nausea. Concerned it would not be enough, her stomach was beaten with rocks. That was before they docked in Vere.
In Vere, the problem was one of neglect. The Regent had not taken any of the slaves to bed. The Regent was a largely absent figure, busy with affairs of state, served by pets of his own choosing. The slaves were left to their handlers, and to the vagaries of a bored court. Reading between the lines, they were treated as animals, their obedience a parlour trick, and the ‘tests’ thought up by the sophisticated court, which the slaves struggled to perform, were in some cases truly sadistic. As in the case of Erasmus. Damen felt sick.
‘You must crave freedom more than I do,’ said Damen. The slave’s courage made him feel ashamed.
‘Freedom?’ said Erasmus, sounding scared for the first time. ‘Why would I want that? I cannot . . . I am made for a master.’
‘You were made for better masters than these. You deserve someone who appreciates your worth.’
Erasmus flushed and said nothing.
‘I promise you,’ said Damen. ‘I will find a way to help you.’
‘I wish—’ said Erasmus.
‘You wish?’
‘I wish I could believe you,’ said Erasmus. ‘You talk like a master. But you are a slave, like I am.’
Before Damen could reply, there was a sound from the paths, and, as he had done once before, Erasmus prostrated himself, anticipating the arrival of another courtier.
Voices from the path: ‘Where’s the Regent’s slave?’
‘Back there.’
And then, rounding the corner: ‘There you are.’ And then: ‘And look who else they let out.’
It was not a courtier. It was not petite, malicious, exquisite Nicaise. It was coarse-featured, broken-nosed Govart.
He spoke to Damen, who had last faced him in the ring in a desperate grapple for purchase and mastery.
Govart casually clasped the back of Erasmus’s gold collar and dragged him up by it, as an uncaring owner might heft a dog around. Erasmus, a boy not a dog, choked violently as the collar dug into his tender throat, caught at the join of neck and jaw, just above his Adam’s apple.
‘Shut up.’ Govart, irritated by the coughing, slapped him hard across the face.
Damen felt the jerk of restraint as his body hit the limits of his chains, heard the metallic sound before he even realised he’d reacted. ‘Let him go.’
‘You want me to?’ He shook Erasmus by the collar for punctuation. Erasmus, who had understood
shut up
, was wet-eyed from the brief choking, but silent. ‘Don’t think I will. Got told to haul him back. No one said I couldn’t enjoy myself on the way.’
Damen said, ‘If you want another go around, all you have to do is take a step forward.’ It would please him a great deal to hurt Govart.
‘I’d rather fuck your sweetheart,’ said Govart. ‘The way I figure it, I’m owed a fuck.’
As he spoke, Govart pushed up the slave tunic, revealing the curves beneath. Erasmus didn’t struggle when Govart kicked his ankles apart and lifted his arms up. He let himself be manhandled, and then stayed in position, awkwardly bent over.
The realisation that Govart was going to fuck Erasmus right here in front of him hit with the same sense of unreality that he’d felt when faced with Ancel. It wasn’t possible that something like this was going to happen—that this court was so depraved that a mercenary could rape a royal slave a scant distance from the gathered court. There was no one within hearing distance except for the disinterested guard. Erasmus’s face, red with humiliation, was turned determinedly away from Damen.
‘The way I figure it—’ Govart used this phrase again. ‘—your master’s the one who fucked us both. He’s the one who should really be getting it. But in the dark, one blond’s as good as another. Better,’ said Govart. ‘Stick your cock in that frigid bitch, he’d freeze it off. This one likes it.’
He did something with his hand under the bunched up tunic. Erasmus made a sound. Damen jerked, and this time the harsh metallic noise suggested loudly that the ancient iron was about to give.
The sound of it shook the guard loose from his post.
‘There some problem?’
‘He doesn’t like me fucking his little slave friend,’ said Govart. Erasmus, mortifyingly exposed, looked like he was silently breaking down.
‘Fuck him somewhere else then,’ the guard said.
Govart smiled. Then he pushed Erasmus hard in the small of the back.
‘I will,’ Govart said. Shoving Erasmus ahead of him, he disappeared along the paths, and there was absolutely nothing Damen could do to stop him.
Night turned to morning. The garden entertainments ended. Damen was deposited back in his room, clean and tended and chained and powerless.
Laurent’s prediction regarding the reaction of the guards—and the servants, and all the members of his retinue—turned out to be stingingly accurate. Laurent’s household reacted to collusion with the Regent with anger and enmity. The fragile relationships Damen had managed to build were gone.
It was the worst possible time for a change in attitude. Now, when those relationships might have brought him news, or been able in some small way to influence the treatment of the slaves.
He had no thought of his own freedom. There was only the constant pull of concern and of responsibility. To escape alone would be an act of selfishness and betrayal. He could not leave, not if it meant abandoning the others to their fate. And yet, he was totally without power to affect any change in their circumstances.
Erasmus was right. His promise to help was an empty one.
Outside his room, several things were happening. The first was that, in response to the Regent’s edicts, the Prince’s household was being cut back. Without access to income from his various estates, Laurent’s retinue was substantially diminished and his spending curtailed. In the whirlwind of changes, Damen’s room was moved from the royal pet residences to somewhere inside Laurent’s wing of the palace.
It didn’t help him. His new room had the same number of guards, the same pallet, the same silks and cushions, the same iron link in the floor, though this one looked newly installed. Even short of funds, Laurent didn’t seem inclined to skimp on security for his Akielon prisoner. Unfortunately.
From snippets of overheard conversation Damen learned that, elsewhere, the delegation from Patras had arrived to discuss trade with Vere. Patras bordered on Akielos, and was a country of similar culture—not traditionally an ally of Vere. The news of talks concerned him. Was the delegation here simply to discuss trade, or was it part of some larger shift in the political landscape?
He had about as much luck finding out the business of the Patran delegation as he had had in helping the slaves, which was to say none at all.
There had to be something he could do.
There was nothing he could do.
To face his own powerlessness was awful. He had at no point since his capture truly thought of himself as a slave. He had played lip service to the role, at best. He had viewed punishments as no more than minor obstacles, because this situation in his mind was temporary. He had believed that escape was in his future. He still believed that.