As the day waned and nothing whatsoever occurred, Damen realised he felt a sense of anticlimax, almost disappointment, which was absurd. Better to spend the day bored on silk cushions than spend it in the ring. Maybe he just wanted another chance to fight something. Preferably an insufferable yellow-haired princeling.
Nothing happened on the second day, or the third, or the fourth, or the fifth.
The passing of time inside this exquisite prison became its own ordeal; the only thing that interrupted his days was the routine of his meals, and the morning bath.
He used the time to learn what he could. The change of guard at his door happened at times that were intentionally irregular. The guards no longer behaved towards him as though he were a piece of furniture, and he learned several of their names; the ring-fight had changed something. No one else broke orders to enter his room without instruction, but once or twice one of the men handling him would speak words to him, though the exchanges were brief. A few words, here and there. It was something he worked on.
He was attended by servants who provided his meals, emptied the copper pot, lit torches, extinguished torches, plumped the cushions, changed them, scrubbed the floor, aired the room, but it was—so far—impossible to build a relationship with any of them. They were more obedient to the order not to speak to him than the guards. Or they were more afraid of Damen. Once, he had gotten as much as startled eye contact and a blush. That had happened when Damen, sitting with a knee drawn up and his head resting against the wall, had taken pity on the servant boy attempting to do his work while cleaving to the door, and said, ‘It’s all right. The chain’s very strong.’
The abortive attempts he made to get information from Radel met with resistance, and a series of patronising lectures.
Govart, said Radel, was not a royally sanctioned thug. Where had Damen gotten that idea? The Regent kept Govart in employ out of some kind of obligation, possibly to Govart’s family. Why was Damen asking about Govart? Did he not recall that he was here only to do as he was told? There was no need to ask questions. There was no need to concern himself with the goings on in the palace. He should put everything out of his mind but the thought that he must please the Prince, who, in ten months, would be King.
By now, Damen had the speech memorised.
By the sixth day, the trip to the baths had become routine, and he expected nothing from it. Except that today, the routine varied. His blindfold was removed outside the baths, not in it. Radel’s critical gaze was on him, as one surveying merchandise: Was it in fit condition? It was.
Damen felt himself being released from his restraints. Here, outside.
Radel said, briefly:
‘Today, in the baths, you will serve.’
‘Serve?’ said Damen. That word conjured up the curved alcoves, and their purpose, and the etched figures, intertwined.
There was no time to absorb the idea, or to ask questions. Much as he had been propelled into the ring, he was pushed forward into the baths. The guards closed the doors with themselves on the outside, and became half-seen shadows behind the latticed metal.
He wasn’t sure what he expected. Perhaps a debauched tableau such as had greeted him in the ring. Perhaps pets sprawled out on every surface, naked and steam-drenched. Perhaps a scene in motion, bodies already moving, soft sounds, or splashes in the water.
In fact the baths were empty, except for one person.
As yet untouched by the steam, clothed from toe-tip to neck, and standing in the place where slaves were washed before they entered the soaking bath. When Damen saw who it was, he instinctively lifted a hand to his gold collar, unable to quite believe that he was unrestrained, and that they were alone together.
Laurent reclined against the tiled wall, settling his shoulders flat against it. He regarded Damen with a familiar expression of golden-lashed dislike.
‘So my slave is bashful in the arena. Don’t you fuck boys in Akielos?’
‘I’m quite cultured. Before I rape anyone I first check to see if their voice has broken,’ said Damen.
Laurent smiled.
‘Did you fight at Marlas?’
Damen did not react to the smile, which was not authentic. The conversation was now on a knife edge. He said: ‘Yes.’
‘How many did you kill?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Lost count?’
Pleasantly, as one might inquire about the weather.
Laurent said, ‘The barbarian won’t fuck boys, he prefers to wait a few years and then use a sword in place of his cock.’
Damen flushed. ‘It was battle. There was death on both sides.’
‘Oh, yes. We killed a few of you too. I would like to have killed more, but my uncle is unaccountably clement with vermin. You’ve met him.’
Laurent resembled one of the etched figures of the intaglio, except that he was done in white and gold, not silver. Damen looked at him and thought: This is the place where you had me drugged.
‘Have you waited six days to talk to me about your uncle?’ Damen said.
Laurent rearranged himself against the wall into a position that looked even more indolently comfortable than the one before.
‘My uncle has ridden to Chastillon. He hunts boar. He likes the chase. He likes the kill, too. It’s a day’s ride, after which he and his party will stay five nights at the old keep. His subjects know better than to bother him with missives from the palace. I have waited six days so that you and I could be alone.’
Those sweet blue eyes gazed at him. It was, when you shook off the sugared tone, a threat.
‘Alone, with your men guarding the doors,’ said Damen.
‘Are you going to complain again that you’re not allowed to hit back?’ said Laurent. The voice sweetened further. ‘Don’t worry, I won’t hit you unless I have a good reason.’
‘Did I seem worried?’ said Damen.
‘You seemed a little agitated,’ said Laurent, ‘in the ring. I liked it best when you were on your hands and knees. Cur. Do you think I will tolerate insolence? By all means, try my patience.’
Damen was silent; he could feel the steam now, curling heat against his skin. He could feel, too, the danger. He could hear himself. No soldier would talk this way to a prince. A slave would have been on his hands and knees the second he saw that Laurent was in the room.
‘Shall I tell you the part you liked?’ said Laurent.
‘There was nothing I
liked
.’
‘You’re lying. You liked knocking that man down, and you liked it when he didn’t get up. You’d like to hurt me, wouldn’t you? Is it very difficult to control yourself? Your little speech about fair play fooled me about as much as your show of obedience. You have worked out, with whatever native intelligence you possess, that it serves your interests to appear both civilised and dutiful. But the one thing you’re hot for is a fight.’
‘Are you here to goad me into one?’ said Damen, in a new voice that seemed to rise up from deep within him.
Laurent pushed off the wall.
‘I don’t roll in the sty with swine,’ said Laurent, coolly. ‘I’m here to bathe. Have I said something astonishing? Come here.’
It was a moment before Damen found he could obey. The instant he had entered the room, he had weighed the option of physically overpowering Laurent, and dismissed it. He would not make it out of the palace alive if he hurt or killed Vere’s Crown Prince. That decision had not come without some regret.
He came to stand two steps away. As well as dislike, he was surprised to find there was something assessing in Laurent’s expression, as well as something self-satisfied. He had expected bravado. Certainly there were guards outside the door, and at a sound from their Prince they would likely come bursting in bristling with swords, but there was no guarantee that Damen wouldn’t lose his temper and kill Laurent before that happened. Another man might. Another man might think that the inevitable retribution—some sort of public execution, ending with his head on a spike—was worth it for the pleasure of wringing Laurent’s neck.
‘Strip,’ said Laurent.
Nudity had never bothered him. He knew by now that it was proscribed among the Veretian nobility. But even if Veretian customs had concerned him, everything that there was to see had been seen, very publicly. He unpinned his garments and let them fall. He was unsure what the point of this was. Unless this feeling was the point.
‘Undress me,’ said Laurent.
The feeling intensified. He ignored it, and stepped forward.
The foreign clothing gave him pause. Laurent extended a coolly peremptory hand, palm up, indicating a starting point. The tight little lacings on the underside of Laurent’s wrist continued about halfway up his arm, and were of the same dark blue as the garment. Untying them took several minutes; the laces were small, complicated and tight, and he must pull each one individually through its hole, feeling the drag of the tie against the material of the eyelet.
Laurent lowered one arm, trailing laces, and extended the other.
In Akielos, clothing was simple and minimal, with a focus on the aesthetics of the body. By contrast, Veretian clothing was concealing, and seemed designed to frustrate and impede, its complexity serving no obvious purpose other than to make disrobing difficult. The methodical ritual of unlacing made Damen wonder, scornfully, if Veretian lovers suspended their passion for a half hour in order to disrobe. Perhaps everything that happened in this country was deliberate and bloodless, including love making. But no, he remembered the carnality of the ring. The pets had dressed differently, offering ease of access, and the red-haired pet had unlaced only that part of his master’s clothing that was required for his purpose.
When all the various lacings were untied, he drew the garment off; it was revealed to be an outer layer only. Beneath it was a simple white shirt (also laced), which had not previously been visible. Shirt, pants, boots. Damen hesitated.
Golden brows arched. ‘Am I here to wait on the modesty of a servant?’
So he knelt. The boots must be taken off; the pants were next. Damen stepped back when it was done. The shirt (now unlaced) had slipped slightly, exposing a shoulder. Laurent reached behind himself and drew it off. He was wearing nothing else.
Damen’s flinty dislike of Laurent forestalled his usual reaction to a well-shaped body. If not for that, he might have experienced a moment of difficulty.
For Laurent was all of a piece: his body had the same impossible grace as his face. He was lighter built than Damen, but his body wasn’t boyish. Instead, he possessed the beautifully proportioned musculature of a young man on the new cusp of adulthood, made for athletics, or statuary. And he was fair. So fair, skin as fair as a young girl’s, smooth and unmarked, with a glimmer of gold trailing down from his navel.
In this over-clothed society Damen might have expected Laurent to display some selfconsciousness, but Laurent seemed as coolly immodest about his nudity as he was about everything else. He stood much like a young god before whom a priest was about to make an offering.
‘Wash me.’
Damen had never performed a servile task before in his life, but he supposed that this one would not overwhelm either his pride or his comprehension. By now he knew the customs of the baths. But he felt a sense of subtle satisfaction from Laurent, and a corresponding internal resistance. It was an uncomfortably intimate form of attendance; he was not restrained, and they were alone, one man serving another.
All the appurtenances had been carefully laid out: a fat-bellied silver pitcher, soft cloths, and bottles of oil and frothy liquid soap, made from clear spun glass, their stoppers capped in silver. The one that Damen picked up depicted a vine heavy with grapes. He felt their contours under his fingers as he unstopped the little bottle with a tug against the resistant suction. He filled the silver pitcher. Laurent presented his back.
Laurent’s very fine skin, when Damen poured water over it, was like white pearl. His body under the slick soap was nowhere soft or yielding, but taut like an elegantly sprung bow. Damen supposed that Laurent partook of those refined sports that courtiers sometimes indulged in, and which the other participants would allow him, being their prince, to win.
He continued from shoulders to lower back. The spill of water wet his own chest and thighs, where it ran in rivulets, leaving behind suspended droplets that glimmered and threatened at any moment to trail suddenly downwards. The water was hot when it pulsed up from the ground, and hot when he poured it from the silver pitcher. The air was hot.
He was conscious of it. He was conscious of the rise and fall of his chest, of his breathing, of more than that. He remembered that in Akielos he had been washed by a slave with yellow hair. Her colouring had matched Laurent’s so closely they might have been twinned. She had been far less disagreeable. She had closed the distance of inches and pressed her body against his. He remembered her fingers curling around him, her nipples soft as bruised fruit where they pressed into his chest. A pulse beat in his neck.
It was a poor time to lose control of his thoughts. He had now progressed far enough in his undertaking that he encountered curves. They were firm under his hands, and the soap made everything slippery. He looked down, and the wash cloth slowed. The hothouse atmosphere of the baths only increased the impression of sensuality, and despite himself, Damen felt the first hardening between his legs.