There was a thin line of light under the doors of Laurent’s room.
There was only one guard at the door, a dark-haired man wearing the Prince’s livery and, at his hip, a sword. He nodded at his two fellows and said, briefly, ‘He’s inside.’
They stopped long enough at the door to unlock the chain and free Damen completely. The chain dropped in a heavy coil, and was simply left there on the floor. Maybe he knew then.
The doors were pushed open.
Laurent was on the reclining couch, his feet tucked up under him in a relaxed, boyish posture. A book of scrollworked pages was open before him. There was a goblet on the small table beside him. At some point during the night, a servant must have spent the requisite half hour unlacing his austere outer garments, for Laurent wore only pants and a white shirt, the material so fine it did not require embroidery to declaim its expense. The room was lamp lit. Laurent’s body was a series of graceful lines under the shirt’s soft folds. Damen’s eyes lifted to the white column of his throat, and above that the golden hair, parting around the shell cup of an unjewelled ear. The image was damascened, as beaten metal. He was reading.
He looked up when the doors opened.
And blinked, as though refocusing his blue eyes was difficult. Damen looked again at the goblet and recalled that he had seen Laurent once before with his senses blurred by alcohol.
It might have prolonged the illusion of an assignation a few seconds longer, because Laurent drunk was surely capable of all kinds of mad demands and unpredictable behaviour. Except that it was perfectly clear from the first moment that he looked up that Laurent was not expecting company. And that Laurent did not recognise the guards either.
Laurent carefully closed the book.
And rose. ‘Couldn’t sleep?’ said Laurent.
As he spoke, he came to stand before the open archway of the loggia. Damen wasn’t sure that a straight two-storey drop into unlit gardens could be counted as an escape route. But certainly otherwise—with the three shallow steps leading up to where he stood, the small finely carved table and decorative objects all providing a series of obstacles—it was, tactically, the best position in the room.
Laurent knew what was happening. Damen, who had seen the long, empty corridor, dark and quiet and absent of men, knew also. The guard at the door had entered behind them; there were three men, all armed.
‘I don’t think the Prince is in an amorous mood,’ said Damen, neutrally.
‘I take a while to warm up,’ said Laurent.
And then it was happening. As though on cue, the sound of a sword being unsheathed to his left.
Later, he’d wonder what it was that caused him to react as he did. He had no love for Laurent. Given time to think, he would surely have said, in a hardened voice, that the internal politics of Vere weren’t his business, and that whatever acts of violence Laurent brought down upon himself were thoroughly deserved.
Maybe it was bizarre empathy, because he’d lived through something like this, the betrayal of it, violence in a place he’d thought was safe. Maybe it was a way of reliving those moments, of repairing his failure, because he had not reacted as quickly as he should have, then.
It must have been that. It must have been the echo of that night, all the chaos and the emotion of it that he had locked up behind closed doors.
The three men split their attention: two of them moved towards Laurent, while the third remained with a knife, guarding Damen. He obviously expected no trouble. His grip on the knife was slack and casual.
After days, weeks spent waiting for an opportunity, it felt good to have one, and to take it. To feel the heavy, satisfying impact of flesh on flesh in the blow that numbed the man’s arm and caused him to drop the knife.
The man was wearing livery and not armour, a blunder. His whole body curved around Damen’s fist as it drove into his abdomen, and he made a guttural sound that was half a choke for air, half a response to pain.
The second of the three men, swearing, turned back—presumably deciding that one man was enough to dispatch the Prince, and that his attention was better spent subduing the unexpectedly troublesome barbarian.
Unfortunately for him, he thought just having a sword would be enough. He came in fast, rather than approaching cautiously. His two-handed sword, with its large grip, could cleave into a man’s side and go some way towards cutting him in half, but Damen was already inside his guard and in grappling distance.
There was a crash on the far side of the room, but Damen was only distantly aware of it, all his attention on the task of immobilising the second of his assailants, no thought to spare on the third man and Laurent.
The swordsman in his grip gasped out,
‘He’s the Prince’s bitch. Kill him,’
which was all the warning Damen needed to move. He swung his entire body weight against the swordsman, reversing their positions.
And the knife stroke meant for him ran into the swordsman’s unarmoured sternum.
The man with the knife had pulled himself up and recovered his weapon; he was agile, with a scar running down his cheek under the beard, a survivor. Not someone Damen wanted darting around him with a knife. Damen didn’t let him pull his knife from its grisly sheath, but pushed forward, so that the man stumbled backwards, his fingers opening. Then he simply took hold of the man at hip and shoulder and swung his body hard into the wall.
It was enough to leave him dazed, his features slackened, unable to muster any initial resistance when Damen restrained him in a hold.
This done, Damen looked over, half expecting to see Laurent struggling, or overcome. He was surprised to see instead that Laurent was alive and intact, having dispatched his opponent, and was rising from a position bent over the third man’s still form, relieving his dead fingers of a knife.
He supposed that Laurent had possessed, at the very least, the wits to utilise his surroundings.
Damen’s eyes caught on the knife.
His gaze swung down to the dead swordsman. There, too, a knife. A serrated blade-edge finished with the characteristic fretted hilt design of Sicyon, one of the northern provinces of Akielos.
The knife Laurent held was of the same design. It was bloody up to the hilt, he saw, as Laurent descended the shallow steps. It looked incongruous in his hand, since his fine white shirt had survived the struggle in immaculate condition and the lamplight was just as flattering to him as it had been before.
Damen recognised Laurent’s cold, strapped-down expression. He didn’t envy the man he held the interrogation that was coming.
‘What do you want me to do with him?’
‘Hold him still,’ said Laurent.
He came forward. Damen did as he was told. He felt the man make a renewed attempt to free himself, and simply tightened his grip, aborting the ripple of struggle.
Laurent lifted the serrated knife, and, calmly as a butcher, sliced open the man’s bearded throat.
Damen heard the choked sound, and felt the first spasms of the body within his grip. He let go, partly out of surprise, and the man’s hands came up to his own throat in a hopeless, instinctive gesture, too late. The thin red crescent drawn across his throat widened. He toppled.
Damen didn’t even think before he reacted—as Laurent slanted a look at him, changing his grip on the knife—he moved instinctively to neutralise the threat.
Body collided hard with body. Damen’s grip closed on the fine bones of Laurent’s wrist, but instead of having things immediately his own way, he was surprised to encounter a moment of muscled resistance. He applied greater pressure. He felt the resistance in Laurent’s body pushed to its limit, though he was still far from his own.
‘Let go of my arm,’ said Laurent, in a controlled voice.
‘Drop the knife,’ said Damen.
‘If you do not let go of my arm,’ said Laurent, ‘it will not go easily for you.’
Damen pushed just slightly harder, and felt the resistance shudder and give way; the knife clattered to the ground. As soon as it did, he let Laurent go. In the same motion Damen stepped backwards out of range. Instead of following him, Laurent also took two steps backwards, widening the distance between himself and Damen.
They stared at one another over the wreckage of the room.
The knife lay between them. The man with the slit throat was dead or dying, his body gone still and his head turned sideways. The blood had soaked through the livery that he wore, blotting out the starburst device of gold on blue.
Laurent’s struggles had not been as contained as Damen’s; the table was knocked over, the shattered pieces of a fine ceramic were strewn across the floor, and the goblet rolled on the tile. A wall hanging had been partly torn down. And there was a great deal of blood. Laurent’s first kill of the night had been even messier than his second.
Laurent’s breathing was shallow with exertion. So was Damen’s. Into the tense, wary moment, Laurent said, steadily:
‘You seem to vacillate between assistance and assault. Which is it?’
‘I’m not surprised you’ve driven three men to try and kill you, I’m only surprised there weren’t more,’ said Damen, bluntly.
‘There were,’ said Laurent, ‘more.’
Understanding his meaning, Damen flushed. ‘I didn’t volunteer. I was brought here. I don’t know why.’
‘To cooperate,’ said Laurent.
‘Cooperate?’ said Damen, with complete disgust. ‘You were unarmed.’ Damen remembered the lax way that man had held a knife on him; they had indeed expected him to cooperate, or at the very least, stand by and watch. He frowned at the closest of the still faces. He disliked the idea that anyone at all believed him capable of cutting down an unarmed man, four on one. Even if that man was Laurent.
Laurent stared at him.
‘Like the man you just killed,’ said Damen, looking back at him.
‘In my part of the fight the men were not helpfully killing each other,’ Laurent said.
Damen opened his mouth. Before he could speak, there was a sound from the corridor. They both instinctively squared off towards the bronze doors. The sound became the clatter of light armour and weaponry, and soldiers in the Regent’s livery were pouring into the room—two—five—seven—the odds started to become daunting. But—
‘Your Highness, are you hurt?’
‘No,’ said Laurent.
The soldier in charge gestured to his men to secure the room, then to check the three lifeless bodies.
‘A servant found two of your men dead at the perimeter of your apartments. He ran immediately to the Regent’s Guard. Your own men have yet to be informed.’
‘I gathered that,’ said Laurent.
They were rougher with Damen, manhandling him into a restraining grip like the ones he remembered from the early days of his capture. He surrendered to it, because what else could he do? He felt his hands pulled behind his back. A meaty hand clasped the back of his neck.
‘Take him,’ said the soldier.
Laurent spoke very calmly. ‘May I ask why you are arresting my servant?’
The soldier in charge gave him an uncomprehending look.
‘Your Highness—there was an attack—’
‘Not by him.’
‘The weapons are Akielon,’ said one of the men.
‘Your Highness, if there’s been an Akielon attack against you, you can bet this one’s in on it.’
It was too neat by half. It was, Damen realised, exactly why the three assailants had brought him here: to be blamed. Of course, they would have expected to survive the encounter, but their intentions held all the same. And Laurent, who spent his every waking moment searching for ways to have Damen humiliated, hurt or killed, had just been given the excuse he needed handed to him on a platter.
He could see—he could
feel
—that Laurent knew it. He could feel too how badly Laurent wanted it, wanted to see him taken, wanted to trump both Damen and his uncle. He bitterly regretted the impulse that had led him to save Laurent’s life.
‘You’re misinformed,’ said Laurent. He sounded like he was tasting something unpleasant. ‘There has been no attack against me. These three men attacked the slave, claiming some sort of barbarian dispute.’
Damen blinked.
‘They attacked—the slave?’ said the soldier, who was apparently having almost as much difficulty digesting this information as Damen.
‘Release him, soldier,’ Laurent said.
But the hands on him didn’t let go. The Regent’s men didn’t take orders from Laurent. The soldier in charge actually shook his head slightly at the man holding Damen, negating Laurent’s order.
‘Forgive me, Your Highness, but until we can be sure of your safety, I would be negligent if I didn’t—’
‘You’ve been negligent,’ said Laurent.
This statement, calmly delivered, caused a silence, which the soldier in charge weathered, flinching only a little. It was probably why he was in charge. The grip on Damen slackened noticeably.
Laurent said, ‘You’ve arrived late and manhandled my property. By all means, compound your faults by arresting the good-will gift of the King of Akielos. Against my orders.’