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Across the courtyard, a couple of alaunt hounds came bounding down the stone stairs to throw themselves ecstatically at Laurent, who indulged one of them with a rub behind the ears, causing a spasm of jealousy in the other.
He opened the first of them searching for the correct pages, and felt a strange sensation pass over him when he realised that he was looking at a seven-year-old list of hunting weaponry made for the Crown Prince Auguste. Prepared for His Highness the Crown Prince Auguste, garniture of hunter’s cutlery, one staff, eight tipped spearheads, bow and strings.
The courtier wasn’t a courtier. It was the young soldier whose name Laurent had dryly mentioned to Jord. Tell the servants to sleep with their legs closed. And Aimeric.
But Damen was different. Damen was untouchable, because Damen had a direct line of reportage to the Prince.
Around the smashed nose, he had a fine-boned aristocratic face, beautifully shaped dark brows, long dark lashes. He was more attractive up close. You noticed things like his pretty mouth, even dripping with nosebleed.
‘If I go down, I stand back up. I’m not afraid to be hit,’ said Aimeric.
subtle foreshadowing
Aimeric didn’t budge. ‘You couldn’t take a flogging like a man. You opened your mouth and squealed to the Regent. You laid hands on him. You spat on his reputation. Then you tried to escape, and he still intervened for you, because he’d never abandon a member of his household to the Regency. Not even someone like you.’ Damen had gone very still. He looked at the boy’s young, bloody face, and reminded himself that Aimeric had been willing to take a beating from three men in defence of his Prince’s honour. He’d call it misguided puppy love, except that he’d seen the glint of something similar in
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‘You’re so loyal to him. Why is that?’ ‘I’m not a turncoat Akielon dog,’ said Aimeric.
He realised that in a moment he was going to return to Govart in this small, dusty stall all that was owed for the rape of Erasmus.
Damen said, ‘These are the Regent’s chambers.’ There was something uneasily transgressive about the idea of sleeping in the place meant for Laurent’s uncle. ‘The Prince stays here often?’
He and his uncle came here a great deal together, in the year or two after Marlas. As he grew older, the Prince lost his taste for the runs here. He now comes only rarely to Chastillon.’
:(
Laurent said, ‘I have saved you till last.’
‘No restraints?’ said Damen. ‘You don’t think I’ll try to leave, pausing only to kill you on the way out?’ ‘Not until we get closer to the border,’ said Laurent.
He felt shock as Laurent’s fingers touched his, pressing the hilt of the knife into his hand. Laurent took hold of Damen’s wrist below the gold cuff, firmed his grip, and drew the knife forward so that it was angled towards his own stomach. The tip of the blade pressed slightly into the dark blue of his prince’s garment. ‘You heard me tell Orlant to leave,’ said Laurent. Damen felt Laurent’s grip slide down his wrist to his fingers, and tighten. Laurent said, ‘I am not going to waste time on posturing and threats. Why don’t we clear up any uncertainty about your intentions?’ It was well
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‘No,’ said Laurent. ‘I know exactly what it is to want to kill a man, and to wait.’
Laurent said, ‘When this campaign is over, I think—if you are a man and not a worm—you will attempt to gain retribution for what has happened to you. I expect it. On that day, we roll the dice and see how they fall. Until then, you serve me. Let me therefore make one thing above all clear to you: I expect your obedience. You are under my command. If you object to what you are told to do I will hear reasoned arguments in private, but if you disobey an order once it is made, I will send you back to the flogging post.’
With a rabble like this, Laurent’s pretty face wasn’t doing him any favours. Damen must have heard a dozen slurs and sly insinuations before he’d even saddled his horse. No wonder Aimeric had been furious: even Damen, who had frankly no objection to men slandering Laurent, was finding himself annoyed. It was disrespectful to speak that way of any commander. He’d loosen up for the right cock, he heard. He pulled too sharply on the girth strap of his horse.
Damen had found himself confronted with an evening spent dispensing tactical information to an enemy he might expect to face one day, country against country, King against King.
Laurent hadn’t seemed to show any inclination to sleep. He had never once glanced at the bed.
As the night wore on, Laurent had abandoned his deliberate comportment for a relaxed, youthful pose, drawing one knee up to his chest and slinging an arm around it. Damen had found his gaze drawn to the easy arrangement of Laurent’s limbs, the balance of wrist on knee, the long, finely articulated bones. He had been aware of a diffuse but growing tension, a sensation almost like he was waiting…waiting for something, unsure what it was. It was like being alone in a pit with a snake: the snake could relax, you could not.
If Laurent had slept at all, he hadn’t done so in the Regent’s bed.
Damen sighed, turned and went to find Jord. ‘You might want to go see Orlant.’ ‘Why’s that?’ ‘Because I’ve seen you talk him down from a fight before.’
‘Well? Attend me,’ said Laurent. ‘Attend,’ said Damen.
In order to begin unlacing the garment, he had to lift his fingers and brush to one side the ends of the gilt hair, soft as fox fur. When he did so, Laurent tipped his head very slightly, offering better access.
Laurent’s skin and the shirt were the exact same delicate shade of white. Damen pushed the garment over Laurent’s shoulders and just for a moment felt, beneath his hands, the hard, corded tension of Laurent’s back.
‘When Vere fought Akielos at Sanpelier, there was a manoeuvre that broke through our eastern flank. Tell me how that worked,’ Laurent said.
Faster than the sword strike, Damen moved—inside Orlant’s range and still moving, and in the next second Orlant’s back hit the dirt, the wind knocked hard out of his chest, the tip of Damen’s sword at his throat.
Laurent didn’t answer, and Damen couldn’t interpret his expression. ‘What is it?’ said Damen. ‘You’re better than I am.’
Laurent flushed. The colour hit his cheeks hard, and a muscle tightened in his jaw as whatever he felt was forcibly repressed. It was not like any reaction that Damen had ever seen from him before, and he couldn’t resist pushing it a little further. ‘Why? Do you want to spar? We can keep it friendly,’ Damen said. ‘No,’ said Laurent.
‘He hates you,’ said Aimeric, cheerfully.
Jord nodded slowly. ‘Any time you want the practice, I’d be honoured to go a few rounds against you. I’m a lot better than Orlant.’ ‘I know that too,’ said Damen. He got the closest thing to a smile he’d received from Jord. ‘You weren’t that good when you fought Govart.’ ‘When I fought Govart,’ said Damen, ‘I had my lungs full of chalis.’ Another slow nod. ‘I’m not sure how it is in Akielos,’ said Jord, ‘but…you shouldn’t take that stuff before a fight. Slows your reflexes. Saps your strength. Just some friendly advice.’ ‘Thank you,’ said Damen, after a long, drawn out moment had passed.
‘He’s too young. He’s too attractive. He starts fights. He’s not the reason I came to speak with you, but since you asked what I think: Aimeric causes problems, and one day soon he’s going to stop making eyes at you and let one of the men fuck him, and the problems will get worse.’
‘I know you are capable of bringing Govart to heel without it being seen as an act of aggression against your uncle. I can’t believe you fear Govart. If you did, you’d never have set me against him in the ring. If you’re afraid of—’ ‘That’s enough,’ said Laurent. Damen set his jaw. ‘The longer this goes on, the harder it will be to regain face with your uncle’s men. They already talk about you like—’ ‘I said that’s enough,’ said Laurent. Damen was silent. It took a great deal of effort. Laurent was staring at him with a frown. ‘Why do you give me good advice?’ asked Laurent. Isn’t that why you
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Laurent, at night when their conversations were done, habitually paid him no more attention than a piece of furniture.
Your problem,’ said Govart, and it wasn’t until that moment that Damen saw how wrong it was going, how secure Govart was in his authority, and how deeply rooted was his antipathy for Laurent, ‘is that the only man you’ve ever been hot for was your broth—’ And any hope Damen had that Laurent could control this scene ended as Laurent’s face shuttered, as his eyes went cold, and with the sharp sound of steel, his sword came out of its sheath. ‘Draw,’ said Laurent.
He’s going to be killed, thought Damen, seeing the future in that moment with perfect clarity.
and then the two men came apart and Damen’s heartbeat was loud with the shock of his surprise: at the end of the first exchange, Laurent was still alive. At the end of the second also. At the end of the third he was, persistently and remarkably, still alive, and watching his opponent calmly, measuringly.
Laurent fought like he talked. The danger lay in the way he used his mind: there was not one thing he did that was not planned in advance. Yet he was not predictable, because in this, as with everything he did, there were layers of intent, moments when expected patterns would suddenly dissolve into something else.
If there was one thing that Laurent knew, it was how to prick someone into fury and then set about exploiting the emotion.
It was not an even match at all. It was a lesson in abject public humiliation. But the one teaching the lesson, the one effortlessly outclassing his opponent, was not Govart. ‘Pick it up,’ said Laurent, the first time Govart lost his weapon.
Damen remembered Auguste, the strength that had held the front for hour after hour, and against which wave after wave had broken. And here fought the younger brother.
Laurent was not going to kill him. He was going to break him. Here, in front of everyone.
He looked first to the Prince’s men, instinctively expecting to see his own reaction to the fight mirrored on their faces, but instead they showed gratification coupled with a total lack of surprise. None of them had been concerned that Laurent might lose, he realised.
His own reaction had him feeling oddly off balance. It was just that it was—unexpected. He had not known this about Laurent, that he was trained like this, capable like this. He wasn’t sure why he felt as though something, fundamentally, had changed.
The advice of his father came back to him: never to take your eyes off a wounded boar; that once you engaged an animal in the hunt, you must fight it to the finish, and that when a boar was wounded, that was when it was the most dangerous animal of all.
Round one: Laurent.
‘I could tell from your face. You didn’t know he could fight.’ ‘No,’ said Damen. ‘I didn’t.’ ‘It’s in his blood.’
He’s not as good as his brother was, but you only have to be half as good as Auguste to be ten times better than everyone else.’
Now he thought about the first time he had seen the Regent discipline Laurent, stripping him of his lands. It was a punishment that might have been meted out privately, but the Regent had turned it into a public display. Embrace the slave, the Regent had ordered at the end of it: a gratuity, a garnish, an act of superfluous humiliation.
‘You broke a man today. Doesn’t that affect you at all? These are lives, not pieces in a chess game with your uncle.’ ‘You’re wrong. We are on my uncle’s board and these men are all his pieces.’ ‘Then each time you move one of them, you can congratulate yourself on how much like him you are.’
