In his mind’s eye he saw the future: the long train of Veretian troops moving southward, the provinces of Akielos falling one by one. He saw Veretian soldiers streaming through the palace at Ios, Veretian voices echoing in his father’s hall.
He looked at Laurent.
‘Your welfare hinges on this plot. If only for your own sake, don’t you want it stopped?’
‘I have stopped it,’ said Laurent. The astringent blue gaze was resting on him.
‘I meant,’ said Damen, ‘can’t you put aside whatever family quarrel you have, and speak honestly to your uncle?’
He felt Laurent’s surprise, transmitting itself through the air. Outside, the light was just beginning to turn orange. The fair face did not change.
‘I don’t think that would be wise,’ said Laurent.
‘Why not?’
‘Because,’ said Laurent, ‘my uncle is the murderer.’
‘B
UT—IF THAT’S
true—’ Damen began.
It was true; it was somehow not even a surprise, more like a truth that had grown for some time on the edge of his awareness, now brought into sharp relief. He thought: two thrones for the price of a few hire swords and a dose of pleasure drug. He remembered Nicaise, appearing in the hallway with his huge blue eyes, wearing bed clothes.
‘You can’t go to Delfeur,’ Damen said. ‘It’s a death trap.’
The moment he said it, he understood that Laurent had always known this. He recalled Laurent avoiding border duty again, and again, and again.
‘You’ll forgive me if I don’t take tactical advice from a slave, scant moments after he is dragged back from a failed attempt to escape.’
‘You can’t go. It isn’t just a matter of staying alive. You forfeit the throne as soon as you set foot outside the city. Your uncle will hold the capital. He has already—’ Casting his mind back over the Regent’s actions, Damen saw the series of moves that had led to this, each one played out precisely, and far in advance. ‘He has already cut off your supply lines through Varenne and Marche. You don’t have finances or troops.’
The words were an unfolding realisation. It was clear now why Laurent had worked to exonerate his slave and obfuscate the attack. If war was declared, Laurent’s life expectancy would be even shorter than it was going to be in Delfeur. To actually ride out to the border with a company of his uncle’s men was madness.
‘Why are you doing this? Is it a forced move? You can’t think of a way around it?’ Damen searched Laurent’s face. ‘Is your reputation so far in the dirt that you think the Council will choose your uncle for the throne anyway, unless you prove yourself?’
‘You are right on the edge of what I will allow from you,’ said Laurent.
‘Take me with you to Delfeur,’ said Damen.
‘No.’
‘Akielos is my country. Do you think I want her overrun by your uncle’s troops? I will do anything in my power to prevent war. Take me with you. You will need someone you can trust.’
Speaking those last words, he almost winced, immediately regretting them. Laurent had asked him for trust last night, and he had thrown the words back in his face. He would receive the same treatment.
Laurent just gave him a blankly curious look. ‘Why would I need that?’
Damen stared at him, suddenly aware that if he asked, ‘Do you think you can juggle attempts on your life, military command, and your uncle’s tricks and traps by yourself?’ the answer was going to be: Yes.
‘I would have thought,’ said Laurent, ‘that a soldier like you would be quite happy to see Kastor dethroned, after all he’s done to you. Why not side with the Regency against him—and against me? I’m sure my uncle has approached you to spy for him, on very generous terms.’
‘He has.’ Remembering the banquet: ‘He asked me to bed you, then report back to him.’ Damen was forthright. ‘Not in those words.’
‘And your answer?’
That, unreasonably, annoyed him. ‘If I’d bedded you, you’d know it.’
There was a dangerous, narrow-eyed pause. Eventually: ‘Yes. Your style of grabbing your partner and kicking their legs open does stand out in the memory.’
‘That isn’t—’ Damen set his jaw, in no mood to get drawn into one of Laurent’s infuriating exchanges. ‘I’m an asset. I know the region. I will do whatever it takes to stop your uncle.’ He looked into the impersonal blue gaze. ‘I’ve helped you before. I can again. Use me however you will. Just—take me with you.’
‘You’re hot to help me? The fact that we ride towards Akielos factors in your request not at all?’
Damen flushed. ‘You will have one more person standing between you and your uncle. Isn’t that what you want?’
‘My dear brute,’ said Laurent, ‘I want you to rot here.’
Damen heard the metallic sound of the chain links before he realised that he had jerked against his restraints. They were Laurent’s parting words, spoken with relish. Laurent had turned for the door.
‘You can’t
leave me here
while you ride off into your uncle’s trap. There’s more than your life at stake.’ The words were harsh with frustration.
They had no effect; he could not prevent Laurent leaving. Damen swore.
‘Are you that sure of yourself?’ Damen called after him. ‘I think if you could beat your uncle on your own, you would have done it already.’
Laurent stopped in the doorway. Damen saw the cupped yellow of his head, the straight line of his back and shoulders. But Laurent didn’t turn back to face him; the hesitation only lasted for a moment before he continued out the door.
Damen was left to jerk once more, painfully, at the chains, alone.
Laurent’s apartments filled with the sounds of preparation, the hallways busy, men tramping to and fro in the delicate garden below. It was no small task to arrange an armed expedition in two days. Everywhere, there was activity.
Everywhere except here, in Damen’s rooms, where the only knowledge of the mission came from the sounds outside.
Laurent was leaving tomorrow. Laurent, infuriating, intolerable Laurent, was pursuing the worst possible course, and there was nothing Damen could do to stop him.
The Regent’s plans were impossible to guess. Damen had frankly no idea why he had waited as long as he had to move against his nephew. Was Laurent simply lucky that the Regent’s ambitions spanned two kingdoms? The Regent could have dispensed with his nephew years ago, with little fuss. It was easier to blame the death of a boy on mischance than that of a young man about to ascend to the throne. Damen could see no reason why boy-Laurent should have escaped that fate. Perhaps familial loyalty had held the Regent back . . . until Laurent had blossomed into poisonous maturity, sly-natured and unfit to rule. If that was the case, Damen felt a certain amount of empathy with the man: Laurent could inspire homicidal tendencies simply by breathing.
It was a family of vipers. Kastor, he thought, had no idea what lay across the border. Kastor had embraced an alliance with Vere. He was vulnerable, ill-equipped to fight a war, the bonds within his own country showing cracks to which a foreign power had only to apply pressure.
The Regent must be stopped, Akielos must be rallied, and for that, Laurent must survive. It was impossible. Stuck here, Damen was powerless to act. And whatever cunning Laurent possessed was neutralised by the arrogance that prevented him from grasping how completely his uncle had him outmatched, once he left the capital to go traipsing across the countryside.
Did Laurent really believe he could do this alone? Laurent would need every weapon at his disposal in order to navigate this course alive. Yet Damen had not been able to persuade him of that. He was aware, not for the first time, of a fundamental inability to communicate with Laurent. It was not only that he was navigating a foreign language. It was as though Laurent was an entirely other species of animal. He had nothing but the stupid hope that somehow Laurent would change his mind.
The sun slid slowly across the sky outside, and in Damen’s locked chamber the shadows cast by the furniture moved in a dawdling semi-circle.
It happened in the hours before dawn the next morning. He woke to find servants in his room, and Radel, the overseer who never slept.
‘What is it? Is there some word from the Prince?’
He pushed himself up, one arm braced among the cushions, hand fisting in silk. He felt himself being manhandled before he was fully upright, the hands of the servants on him, and instinct almost shrugged them off, until he realised they were unlocking his restraints. The chain ends fell with a muffled chink into the cushions.
‘Yes. Change,’ said Radel, and dropped a bundle unceremoniously down onto the floor beside him, much as he had done the night before.
Damen felt the thudding of his heart as he looked down at it.
Veretian clothing.
It was a clear message. The long, drawn-out frustration of the last day meant that he almost couldn’t absorb it, couldn’t trust it. He bent slowly to pick the clothes up. The pants resembled those he had found in the training arena, but were very soft and very fine, of a quality well beyond that of the threadbare pair he had hurried into that night. The shirt was made to fit. The boots looked like riding boots.
He looked back at Radel.
‘Well? Change,’ said Radel.
He put a hand to the fastening at his waist, and felt a bemused curve tug at his mouth as Radel somewhat awkwardly averted his eyes.
Radel only interrupted once, ‘No, not like that,’ and shooed his hands away, gesturing for a servant to step forward and retie some idiotic piece of lacing.
‘Are we—?’ Damen began, as the last lace was tied to Radel’s satisfaction.
‘The Prince ordered you brought down into the courtyard, dressed to ride. You’ll be fitted for the rest there.’
‘The rest?’ Dryly. He looked down at himself. It was already more clothing than he had worn at any one time since his capture in Akielos.
Radel didn’t answer, just made a sharp gesture for him to follow.
After a moment, Damen did, feeling a strange awareness of the lack of restraints.
The rest?
he’d asked. He did not think much about that, as they wound their way through the palace to emerge in an outer courtyard near the stables. Even if he had, he would not have come up with the answer. It was so unlikely that it simply didn’t occur to him—until he saw with his own eyes—and even then, he almost didn’t believe it. He almost laughed aloud. The servant who came forward to meet them had his arms full of leather, straps and buckles, and some larger, hardened leather pieces, the largest with chest mouldings.
It was armour.
The courtyard by the stables was filled with the activity of servants and armourers, stableboys and pages, the shout of orders, the chinking sounds of saddlery. Punctuating these was the discharge of breath through equine nostrils, and the occasional strike of a hoof against paving.
Damen recognised several faces. There were the men who had guarded him in stony-faced twos throughout his confinement. There was the physician who had tended his back, now out of his floor-length robes and dressed for riding. There was Jord who had waved Herode’s medallion in the alleyway and saved his life. He saw a familiar servant ducking riskily under the belly of one of the horses on some errand, and across the courtyard he caught a glimpse of a man with a black moustache who he knew from the hunt as a horse-master.
The predawn air was cool, but soon it would warm. The season was ripening from spring into summer: a good time for a campaign. In the south, of course, it would be hotter. He flexed his fingers and deliberately straightened his back, let the feeling of freedom sink down into him, a powerful physical sensation. He was not particularly thinking of escape. He would after all be riding with a contingent of heavily armed men, and besides, there was now another urgent priority. For now it was enough that he was unshackled and outside in the open air, and that very soon the sun would rise, warming leather and skin, and they would mount up, and ride.
It was light riding armour, with enough nonessential decoration that he took it to be parade armour. The servant told him, yes, they would properly equip at Chastillon. His fitting took place by the stable doors, near to a water pump.
The last buckle was tightened. Then, startlingly, he was given a sword belt. Even more startlingly, he was given a sword to put in it.
It was a good sword. Under the decoration, it was good armour, though not what he was used to. It felt . . . foreign. He touched the starburst pattern at his shoulder. He was dressed in Laurent’s colours, and bearing his insignia. That was a strange feeling. He never thought he’d ride out under a Veretian banner.
Radel, who had departed on some errand, now returned, to give him a list of duties.
Damen listened with part of his mind. He was to be a functional member of the company, he would report to his ranking senior, who would report to the Captain of the Guard, who in turn would report to the Prince. He was to serve and obey, as any man. He would also have the additional duties of attendant. In that capacity, he would report directly to the Prince. The duties described to him seemed to be a mixture of man at arms, adjutant and bed slave—ensuring the Prince’s safety, attending to his personal comfort, sleeping in his tent—Damen’s whole attention swung back to Radel.