He would leave. It was for the best that he would leave. He would ride out early, would be across the border before midday. There would be no need to leave word: when his absence was noticed, Jord would bring report of his departure to Laurent. Veretians would take over the duties and the structures he had set up here at the fort. He had created them to ensure that.
Everything would be simple in the morning. Jord, he thought, would give him time to get beyond Laurent’s scouts before he brought word to Laurent that his Captain, irrevocably, was gone. He focused on the pragmatic realities: a horse, supplies, a route that would avoid scouts. The intricacies of Ravenel’s defence were now matters for other men. The fight they faced over the coming months was not his own. He could put it behind him.
His life in Vere, the man he was here, he could put all of it behind him.
A sound on the stone steps; he lifted his head. The battlements stretched towards the south tower, a stone walkway with toothed crenellation to the left, and torches lit at intervals. Damen had ordered the section cleared. Cresting the circular stone stairs was the only person who could have disobeyed that command.
Damen watched as alone, unattended, Laurent had left his own banquet to find him, to follow him here, up the worn steps out onto to the battlements. Laurent fitted himself next to him, a comfortable, unobtrusive presence that took up room in Damen’s chest. They stood on the edge of the fort they had won together. Damen tried for a conversational tone.
‘You know, the slaves you gifted to Torveld are worth almost the same as the men that he’s given you.’
‘I would say exactly that much.’
‘I thought you helped them out of compassion.’
‘No, you didn’t,’ said Laurent.
The breath that escaped him was not quite like laughter. He looked out at the darkness beyond the torches, the unseen expanse of the south.
‘My father,’ he said, ‘hated Veretians. He called them cowards, deceivers. It’s what he taught me to believe. He would have been just like these border lords, Touars and Makedon. War hungry. I can only imagine what he would have thought of you.’
He looked over at Laurent. He knew his father’s nature, his beliefs. He knew exactly the reaction that Laurent would have provoked, if he’d ever stood before Theomedes at Ios. If Damen had argued for him, had tried to make him see Laurent as . . . he would not have understood. You fight them, you don’t trust them. He’d never stood against his father for anything. He’d never needed to, so closely had their values aligned.
‘Your own father would be proud today.’
‘That I picked up a sword and put on my brother’s ill-fitting clothes? I’m sure he would be,’ said Laurent.
‘You don’t want the throne,’ Damen said after a moment, his eyes passing carefully over Laurent’s face.
‘I want the throne,’ said Laurent. ‘Do you honestly think, after all you’ve seen, that I’d shy from power or the chance to wield it?’
Damen felt his mouth twist. ‘No.’
‘No.’
His own father had ruled by the sword. He had forged Akielos into one nation, and used the new might of that country to expand its borders, fiercely proud. He had launched his northern campaign to return Delpha to his kingdom after ninety years of Veretian rule. But it was not his kingdom any longer. His father, who would never stand inside Ravenel, was dead.
‘I never questioned the way my father saw the world. It was enough for me to be the kind of son he was proud of. I could never bring shame to his memory, but for the first time I realise I don’t want to be . . .’
His kind of King.
It would have felt like dishonour to say it. And yet he had seen the village of Breteau, innocent of aggression, cut down by Akielon swords.
Father, I can beat him, he’d said, and he’d ridden out and returned to a hero’s welcome, to have his armour stripped by servants, to have his father greet him with pride. He remembered that night, all those nights, the galvanising power of his father’s expansionist victories, the approbation, as success flowed from success. He had not thought about the way it had played out on the other side of the field. When this game began, I was younger.
‘I’m sorry,’ said Damen.
Laurent gave him a strange look. ‘Why would you apologise to me?’
He couldn’t answer. Not with the truth. He said, ‘I didn’t understand what being King meant to you.’
‘What’s that?’
‘An end to fighting.’
Laurent’s expression changed, the subtle signifiers of shock imperfectly repressed, and Damen felt it in his own body, a new pull in his chest at the look in Laurent’s dark eyes.
‘I wish it could have been different between us, I wish I could have behaved to you with more honour. I want you to know that you will have a friend across the border, whatever happens tomorrow, whatever happens to both of us.’
‘Friends,’ said Laurent. ‘Is that what we are?’
Laurent’s voice was tightly knotted, as though the answer was obvious; as though it was as obvious as what was happening between them, the air disappearing, mote by mote.