‘I hear the King of Akielos has sent me a gift,’ said the young man, who was Laurent, Prince of Vere.
‘An Akielon grovelling on its knees. How fitting,’ said Laurent.
Around him, Damen was aware of the attention of courtiers, gathered to witness the Prince’s receipt of his slave. Laurent had stopped dead the moment he had seen Damen, his face turning white as though in reaction to a slap, or an insult. Damen’s view, half-truncated by the short chain at this neck, had been enough to see that. But Laurent’s expression had shuttered quickly.
That he was only one of a larger consignment of slaves was something Damen had guessed, and the murmurs from the two courtiers nearest to him confirmed it, gratingly. Laurent’s eyes were passing over him, as though viewing merchandise. Damen felt a muscle slide in his jaw.
Councillor Guion spoke. ‘He’s intended as a pleasure slave, but he isn’t trained. Kastor suggested that you might like to break him at your leisure.’
‘I’m not desperate enough that I need to soil myself with filth,’ said Laurent.
‘Yes, Your Highness.’
‘Break him on the cross. I believe that will discharge my obligation to the King of Akielos.’
‘Yes, Your Highness.’
He could feel the relief in Councillor Guion. Handlers were quickly motioned to take him away. Damen supposed that he had presented rather a challenge to diplomacy: Kastor’s gift blurred the line between munificent and appalling.
The courtiers were making to leave. This mockery was over. He felt the handler bend to the iron link in the floor. They were going to unchain him to take him to the cross. He flexed his fingers, gathering himself, his eyes on the handler, his single opponent.
‘Wait,’ said Laurent.
The handler halted, straightening.
Laurent came forward a few paces to stand in front of Damen, gazing down at him with an unreadable expression.
‘I want to speak to him. Remove the gag.’
‘He’s got a mouth on him,’ warned the handler.
‘Your Highness, if I might suggest—’ began Councillor Guion.
‘Do it.’
Damen ran his tongue around the inside of his mouth after the handler released the cloth.
‘What’s your name, sweetheart?’ said Laurent, not quite pleasantly.
He knew better than to answer any question posed in that saccharine voice. He lifted his eyes to Laurent’s. That was a mistake. They gazed at each other.
‘Perhaps he’s defective,’ suggested Guion.
Pellucid blue eyes rested on his. Laurent repeated the question slowly in the language of Akielos.
The words came out before he could stop them. ‘I speak your language better than you speak mine, sweetheart.’
His words, carrying only the barest trace of an Akielon accent, were intelligible to all, which earned him a hard blow from the handler. For good measure, a member of the escort pushed his face right down to the floor.
‘The King of Akielos says, if it pleases you, call him “Damen,”’ said the handler, and Damen felt his stomach drop.
There were a few shocked murmurs from the courtiers in the chamber; the atmosphere, already prurient, became electric.
‘They thought a slave nicknamed for their late Prince would amuse you. It’s in poor taste. They are an uncultured society,’ said Councillor Guion.
This time Laurent’s tone didn’t change. ‘I heard that the King of Akielos may marry his mistress, the Lady Jokaste. Is that true?’
‘There was no official announcement. But there was talk of the possibility, yes.’
‘So the country will be ruled by a bastard and a whore,’ said Laurent. ‘How appropriate.’
Damen felt himself react, even restrained as he was, a hard jerk aborted by chains. He caught the self-satisfied pleasure on Laurent’s face. Laurent’s words had been loud enough to carry to every courtier in the room.
‘Shall we have him taken to the cross, Your Highness?’ said the handler.
‘No,’ said Laurent, ‘Restrain him here in the harem. After you teach him some manners.’
The two men entrusted to the task went about it with methodical and matter-of-fact brutality. But they had a natural reluctance to damage Damen totally beyond repair, being that he was the Prince’s possession.
Damen was aware of the ringed man issuing a series of instructions, then departing. Keep the slave restrained here in the harem. The Prince’s orders. No one is to come in or out of the room. The Prince’s orders. Two guards at the door at all times. The Prince’s orders. Don’t let him off the chain. The Prince’s orders.
Though the two men lingered, it seemed that the blows had stopped; Damen pushed himself up slowly to his hands and knees. Gritty tenacity made something of the situation: his head, at least, was now perfectly clear.
Worse than the beating had been the viewing. He had been more shaken by it than he would admit. If the collar-chain had not been so short—so impossibly secure—he might have resisted, despite his earlier resolve. He knew the arrogance of this nation. He knew how the Veretians thought of his people. Barbarian. Slave. Damen had gathered all his good intentions about himself and endured it.
But the Prince—Laurent’s particular blend of spoilt arrogance and petty spite—had been unbearable.
‘He doesn’t look much like a pet,’ said the taller of the two men.
‘You heard. He’s a bed slave from Akielos,’ said the other.
‘You think the Prince fucks him?’ Sceptically.
‘More like the other way around.’
‘Pretty sweet orders for a bed slave.’ The taller’s mind stuck on the subject as the other grunted noncommittally in reply. ‘Think what that’d be like, getting a leg over the Prince.’
I imagine it would be a lot like lying down with a poisonous snake
, thought Damen, but he kept the thought to himself.
As soon as the men left, Damen reviewed his situation: getting free was not yet possible. His hands were untied again, and the collar chain had been lengthened, but it was too thick to separate from the iron link in the floor. Nor could the collar be opened. It was gold, technically a soft metal, but it was also too thick to manipulate, a constant, heavy weight around his neck. It struck him how ridiculous it was to collar a slave with gold. The gold wrist-cuffs were even more foolish. They would be a weapon in a close fight and currency on the journey back to Akielos.
If he stayed alert while pretending to compliance, opportunity would follow. There was enough length in the chain to allow him perhaps three steps of movement in every direction. There was a wooden carafe of water well within reach. He would be able to lie comfortably on the cushions and even relieve himself in a gilt copper pot. He had not been drugged—or bludgeoned all the way to unconsciousness—as had happened in Akielos. Only two guards at the door. An unbolted window.
Freedom was attainable. If not now, then soon.
It must be soon. Time was not on his side: the longer he was kept here, the longer Kastor would have to cement his rule. It was unbearable not to know what was happening in his country, to his supporters, and to his people.
And there was another problem.
No one had yet recognised him, but that didn’t mean that he was safe from discovery. Akielos and Vere had had few dealings since the decisive battle of Marlas six years ago, but somewhere in Vere there would surely be a person or two who knew his face, having visited his city. Kastor had sent him to the one place where he could expect to be treated worse as a prince than he was treated as a slave. Elsewhere, one of his captors, learning his identity, might be convinced to help him, either out of sympathy for his situation, or for the promise of a reward from Damen’s supporters in Akielos. Not in Vere. In Vere, he couldn’t risk it.
He remembered the words of his father on the eve of the battle of Marlas, warning him to fight, never to trust, because a Veretian would not keep his word. His father had been proven right that day on the battlefield.
He would not think of his father.
It would be best to be well rested. With that in mind, he drank water from the carafe, watching the last of the afternoon light slowly drain from the room. When it was dark, he lay his body, with all its aches, down on the cushions, and, eventually, he slept.
And woke. Dragged up, a hand on his collar chain, until he was on his feet, flanked by two of the faceless, interchangeable guards.
The room was flaring into brightness as a servant lit torches and placed them in the wall-brackets. The room was not over-large, and the flickering of the torches transformed its intricate designs into a continuously moving, sinuous play of shape and light.
In the centre of this activity, regarding him with cool blue eyes, was Laurent.
Laurent’s severe dark blue clothing fitted him repressively, covering him from toe to neck, and was long sleeved to his wrists, with no openings that weren’t done up with a series of tight intricate ties that looked like they would take about an hour to loosen. The warm light of the torches did nothing to soften the effect.
Damen saw nothing that did not confirm his earlier opinion: spoilt, like fruit too long on the vine. Laurent’s slightly lidded eyes, the slackness around his mouth, spoke of a night wasted in a dissolute courtier’s overindulgence in wine.
‘I’ve been thinking about what to do with you,’ said Laurent. ‘Break you on a flogging post. Or maybe use you the way Kastor intended you be used. I think that would please me a great deal.’
Laurent came forward, until he stood just four paces away. It was a carefully chosen distance: Damen judged that if he strained the chain to its limit, pulling it taut, they would almost, but not quite, touch.
‘Nothing to say? Don’t tell me you’re shy now that you and I are alone.’ Laurent’s silken tone was neither reassuring nor pleasant.
‘I thought you wouldn’t soil yourself with a barbarian,’ said Damen, careful to keep his voice neutral. He was aware of the beat of his heart.
‘I wouldn’t,’ said Laurent. ‘But if I gave you to one of the guards, I might lower myself as far as watching.’
Damen felt himself recoil, couldn’t keep his reaction off his face.
‘You don’t like that idea?’ said Laurent. ‘Maybe I can think of a better one. Come here.’
Distrust and dislike of Laurent roiled within him, but Damen recalled his situation. In Akielos, he had thrown himself against his restraints and they had grown ever tighter as a result. Here, he was just a slave, and a chance to escape would come, if he did not ruin it with hot-headed pride. He could endure Laurent’s juvenile, pin-prick sadism. Damen must get back to Akielos, and that meant that for now, he must do as he was told.
He took a wary step forward.
‘No,’ said Laurent, with satisfaction. ‘Crawl.’
Crawl
.
It was as though everything ground to a halt in the face of that single order. The part of Damen’s mind that told him he must feign obedience was drowned out by his pride.
But Damen’s reaction of scornful disbelief only had time to register on his face for a split second before he was sent sprawling onto his hands and knees by the guards, after a wordless signal from Laurent. In the next moment, again responding to a signal from Laurent, one of the guards drove his fist into Damen’s jaw. Once, then again. And again.
His head rang. Blood from his mouth dripped onto the tile. He stared at it, forcing himself, with an effort of will, not to react. Take it. Opportunity would come later.
He tested his jaw. Not broken.
‘You were insolent this afternoon, too. That is a habit that can be cured. With a horse whip.’ Laurent’s gaze tracked over Damen’s body. Damen’s garments had loosened under the rough hands of the guards, baring his torso. ‘You have a scar.’
He had two, but the one that was now visible lay just below his left collarbone. Damen felt for the first time the stir of real danger, the flicker of his own quickening pulse.
‘I—served in the army.’ It wasn’t a lie.
‘So Kastor sends a common soldier to rut with a prince. Is that it?’
Damen chose his words carefully, wishing he had his half-brother’s facility for falsehood. ‘Kastor wished to humiliate me. I suppose I—angered him. If he had another purpose in sending me here, I don’t know what it is.’
‘The Bastard King disposes of his waste by tossing it at my feet. Is that supposed to appease me?’ said Laurent.
‘Would anything?’ said a voice behind him.
Laurent turned.
‘You find fault in so much, lately.’
‘Uncle,’ said Laurent. ‘I didn’t hear you come in.’
Uncle?
Damen experienced his second shock of the night. If Laurent addressed him as ‘uncle’, this man whose imposing shape filled the doorway was the Regent.
There was no physical resemblance between the Regent and his nephew. The Regent was a commanding man in his forties, bulky, with heavy shoulders. His hair and beard were dark brown, without even the highlights to suggest that a blond of Laurent’s fair colouring could have sprung from the same branch of the family tree.