*
He spoke to a few soldiers on his way back to his tent, a word or two here or there as he moved through the camp, a habit since his first command at seventeen. The men came to attention as he passed, and said only, ‘Exalted,’ if he spoke. It was not like sitting around a campfire swilling wine, exchanging low tales and ribald speculations.
Jord and the other Veretians from Ravenel had been sent back to Laurent to rejoin his army in the extravagant tents at Fortaine. Damen hadn’t seen them go.
It was a warm night, with no need for fires other than for cooking and for light. He knew his way because the rigorous lines of the Akielon camp were easy to follow even in torchlight. The drilled, disciplined troops had done quick and efficient work, the weapons were cleaned and stored, the fires were lit, the stout tent pegs were hammered into the ground.
His tent was made of plain white canvas. There was not much to distinguish it other than its size and the two guards standing armed at the entrance. They came to attention, honour-flushed at the duty; it showed more in the younger guard Pallas than the older Aktis, but was evident in the stance of both. Damen made sure he gave a brief sign of his appreciation as he passed, as was fitting.
He lifted the tent flap, let it settle behind him.
Inside, the tent was an austere open space, lit with grease candles on spikes. The privacy was like a blessing. He didn’t have to hold himself up, he could let the weight of exhaustion bear him down to rest. His body ached for it. He wanted only to prise his armour from himself and close his eyes. Alone, he didn’t have to be King. He stopped and went cold, an awful feeling passing over him, an unsteadiness that was like nausea.
He wasn’t alone.
She was naked, at the base of the stark pallet, her full breasts hanging downwards, her forehead to the floor. She didn’t have palace training, and so could not quite disguise the fact that she was nervous. Her fair hair was caught back from her face in a fragile clasp, a northern custom. She was perhaps nineteen or twenty, her body trained and ready for him. She had prepared a bath in an unadorned wooden tub, so that if he pleased he might make use of it; or of her.
He had known that there were slaves with Nikandros’s army, following behind with the carts and the supplies. He had known that when he returned to Akielos there would be slaves.
‘Get up,’ he heard himself say, awkwardly, a wrong order for a slave.
There was a time when he would have expected this, and known how to behave around it. He would have appreciated the charm of her rustic northern skills, and bedded her, if not tonight then certainly in the morning. Nikandros knew him, and she was his type. She was Nikandros’s best, that was evident; a slave from his personal retinue, perhaps even his favourite, because Damen was his guest and his King.
She got up. He didn’t speak. She had a collar around her neck, and metal cuffs around her small wrists that were like the one that he—
‘Exalted,’ she said, quietly. ‘What is wrong?’
He let out a strange, unsteady breath. He realised that his breathing had been unsteady for some time, that his flesh was unsteady. That the silence had been stretching out between them too long.
‘No slaves,’ said Damen. ‘Tell the Keeper. Send no one else. For the length of the campaign I will be dressed by an adjutant, or a squire.’
‘Yes, Exalted,’ she said, obedient and confused and hiding it, or trying to, making for the tent entrance, her cheeks red.
‘Wait.’ He couldn’t send her naked through the camp. ‘Here,’ he unpinned his cloak, and whirled it around her shoulders. He felt the wrongness of it, pushing against every protocol. ‘The guard will escort you back.’
‘Yes, Exalted,’ she said, because she could not say anything else, and she left him thankfully alone.
CHAPTER FIVE
THE FIRST IMPACT of the alliance having fallen on Nikandros, the morning’s announcement was less personal, but more difficult, and done on a grander scale.
Heralds had been galloping back and forth between their camps since before dawn. The preparations for this announcement had been developed before the camp stirred in grey light. Meetings of this kind could take months to arrange; the speed at which it happened now was dizzying, if you did not know Laurent.
Damen summoned Makedon to the command pavilion, and called for his army to form up before him for an address. He sat on the audience throne, with a single oak seat empty beside him and Nikandros standing behind him. He watched the army wheel into place, fifteen hundred men in disciplined lines. Damen’s view commanded the whole sweep of the fields, his army arrayed in a two-block formation before him, with a clear path through their centre that led right to the base of Damen’s throne beneath its pavilion.
It had been Damen’s choice not to tell Makedon independently, but to gather him here for the address, as unaware of what was coming as the soldiers. It was a risk, and every aspect of it must be managed carefully. Makedon of the notched belt held the largest provincial army of the north, and though technically a bannerman under Nikandros’s command, he was a power in his own right. If he left in anger with his men, he would end Damen’s chances at a campaign.
Damen felt Makedon react when the Veretian herald came galloping back into their camp. Makedon was dangerously volatile. He had disobeyed kings before. He had broken the peace treaty only weeks earlier, launching a personal counterattack on Vere.
‘His Highness, Laurent, Prince of Vere and Acquitart,’ called the herald, and Damen felt the men in the tent around him react further. Nikandros kept his outward appearance unvarying, even if Damen could feel the tension in him. Damen’s own heartbeat sped up, though he kept his face impersonal.
When prince met prince there were protocols to observe. You did not greet each other alone in a diaphanous tent. Or thrown to the ground in chains in a palace viewing chamber.
The last time Akielon and Veretian royalty had met ceremonially had been six years ago, at Marlas, when the Regent had surrendered to Damen’s father, King Theomedes. Out of respect to the Veretians, Damen had not been present, but he remembered the satisfaction of knowing that Veretian royalty was bending its knee to his father. He had liked it. He had probably liked it, he thought, about as much as his men disliked what was happening today, and for the same reasons.
The Veretian banners were visible, streaming across the field, six abreast, and thirty-six in length, with Laurent riding at their head.
Damen waited, sitting powerfully on the oak throne, his arms and thighs bare in the Akielon style, his army stretching out before him in immaculate, unmoving lines.
It was not like the ecstatic entries Laurent had made into the towns and villages of Vere. No one swooned or cheered or threw flowers at his feet. The camp was silent. The Akielon soldiers watched him ride through the centre of their ranks towards the pavilion, marked out in sunlight, their own armour and sharpened blades and points of spears glinting; polished after having been so recently used to kill.
But the pure, insolent grace was the same, his bright head uncovered. He was not wearing armour, or any symbol of rank save for the gold circlet on his forehead, but when he swung down off his horse and tossed the reins to a servant, no pair of eyes looked anywhere else.
Damen stood up.
The whole tent reacted, the men standing, shifting, lowering their eyes for the King. Laurent strolled in, beautifully; he seemed sublimely unaware of the reaction that his presence was causing. He came down the path that was cleared for him, as though walking unmolested through an Akielon camp was simply his right. Damen’s own men watched as a man might watch his enemy sauntering into his house, unable to prevent it.
‘My brother of Akielos,’ said Laurent.
Damen met his eyes without flinching. Everyone knew that in the Akielon language, princes of foreign nations addressed each other in the fraternal.
‘Our brother of Vere,’ said Damen.
He was half aware of Laurent’s entourage, liveried servants and some unidentified men outside, and several courtiers from Fortaine in attendance. He recognised Laurent’s Captain, Enguerran. He recognised Guion, the Regent’s most loyal Councillor, who, sometime in the last three days, had switched sides.
Damen lifted his hand, offering it palm up, with fingers outstretched. Laurent lifted his own hand calmly, resting it atop Damen’s. Their fingers met.
He could feel the eyes of every Akielon in the tent on him. They proceeded slowly. Laurent’s fingers rested infinitesimally above his own. He felt the moment when the men around him realised what was going to happen.
Reaching the dais, they sat, facing outward, the twin oak seats now twin thrones.
Shock; it travelled like a wave over the men and women in the tent; out, over the gathered ranks of soldiers. Everyone could see where Laurent and Damen sat: side by side.
He knew what it meant. This was the status of a compeer. It announced equality.
‘We have called you here today to witness our accord,’ said Damen, in a clear voice that carried over the noise. ‘Today we mark the alliance of our nations against those pretenders and usurpers who seek to assail our thrones.’
Laurent settled in as though the place had been made for him, and adopted the posture he typically favoured, one leg straight out before him, a fine-boned wrist balanced on the arm of the throne.
Explosions of outrage, furious exclamations, there were hands on the hilts of swords. Laurent did not look particularly concerned by this, or anything.
‘In Vere, it is customary to bestow a gift on a favoured companion,’ said Laurent in Akielon. ‘Vere therefore offers this gift to Akielos, as a symbol of our alliance, now and in all the days to come.’ His fingers lifted. A Veretian servant came forward, a cushion resting like a platter on his outstretched forearms.
Damen felt the tent fade away before his eyes.
He forgot the men and women watching. He forgot the need to keep his army and his generals from revolt. He only saw what lay on the cushion that the servant bore towards the dais.
Coiled and personal, Laurent’s gift was a Veretian whip, made of gold.
Damen recognised it. It had a carved golden handle, with a ruby or garnet inset distinctively into its base, held in the jaws of a great cat. He remembered the handler’s rod with the same carvings, with its long filigree chain that had affixed to the collar around his neck. The great cat resembled the lion symbol of his own house.
He remembered Laurent’s hand giving a little tug on the rod, infuriating, more than that. He remembered having his legs kicked apart, his hands bound, the thick wood of the post against his chest, the lash about to fall on his back. He remembered Laurent, arranging himself against the opposite wall, settling his shoulders there, positioning himself to watch every slightest expression on Damen’s face.
His gaze swung to Laurent. He knew he had flushed, he could feel the heat in his own cheeks. In front of the gathered generals, he couldn’t say, What have you done?
Outside the tent, something had started happening.
Veretian attendants were placing a series of ten ornamental whipping blocks at even intervals outside the pavilion. Ten men were pulled like sacks of grain from their horses by Veretian handlers, stripped, then bound.
Inside the tent, Akielon men and women were looking at one another questioningly, others craning their necks to see.
In front of the gathered army, the ten captives were shoved towards the blocks, stumbling a little, their balance precarious, their hands tied behind their backs.
‘These are the men who attacked the Akielon village of Tarasis,’ said Laurent. ‘They are clan mercenaries, paid for by my uncle, who killed your people in an attempt to wreck the peace between our nations.’
He had the attention of the tent now. The eyes of every Akielon were on him, from the soldiers to the officers—even the generals. Makedon and his soldiers, in particular, had seen the destruction at Tarasis first-hand.
‘The whip and the men are Vere’s gift to Akielos,’ said Laurent, and then he turned his melting blue eyes on Damen. ‘The first fifty lashes are my gift to you.’
He couldn’t have stopped it, even if he had wanted to. The atmosphere in the pavilion was thick with satisfaction and approval. His men wanted it, appreciated it, appreciated Laurent for it, the golden youth who could order men torn apart, and watch it, unflinching.
The Veretian handlers were hammering the whipping blocks into the earth, and then jerking at them to test that they would hold weight.
A part of Damen’s mind recognised how perfectly this gift had been judged, the exquisite virtuosity of it: Laurent was delivering him a backhanded blow with one hand, and with the other, caressing his generals as a man scratches a dog under the chin.
Damen heard himself say, ‘Vere is generous.’
‘After all,’ Laurent held his gaze, ‘I remember what you like.’
The stripped men were tied down.
The Veretian handlers took up position, each standing by one of the bound prisoners, each holding a whip. The call went out. Damen felt his pulse speed up as he realised he was going to watch Laurent have ten men flayed alive in front of him.
‘Furthermore,’ said Laurent, his voice pitched to carry, ‘Fortaine’s bounty is yours. Its physicians will tend to your wounded. Its storehouses will feed your men. The Akielon victory at Charcy was hard-won. All that Vere gained while you fought is yours, and it is deserved. I will not profit from any hardship that befalls the rightful King of Akielos or his people.’
You will lose Straton. You will lose Makedon, Nikandros had said, but he hadn’t counted on the fact that Laurent would arrive, and begin, dangerously, to control everything.
It took a long time. Fifty lashes, brought with effort of shoulder and arm down onto a man’s unprotected back, was a protracted undertaking. Damen made himself watch it all. He didn’t look at Laurent. Laurent, he knew intimately, could level that endless blue gaze forever while watching a man flayed. He remembered in exact detail what it felt like to be whipped with Laurent’s eyes on on him.
Bloody and pulped, the men, who were no longer men, were cut from the whipping blocks. That took time too, because more than one handler was needed to lift each man, and no one was quite certain which of the men were unconscious and which were dead.
Damen said, ‘We have a personal gift too.’
The eyes of those in the tent turned to him. Laurent’s gift had forestalled any open revolt, but there was still a rift between Akielos and Vere.
Last night, in the evening darkness of the tent, he had pulled this gift from his packs and looked down at it, feeling its weight in his hands. Once or twice before, he had thought about this moment. In his most private thoughts, he’d imagined it happening with the two of them alone together. He hadn’t imagined it like this, the private made public, and painful. He didn’t have Laurent’s ability to hurt with what mattered most.
It was his turn to cement the alliance between their nations. And there was only one way to do that.
‘Every man here knows that you kept us as a slave,’ said Damen. He said it loudly enough that all those gathered in the pavilion tent could hear. ‘We wear your cuff on our wrist. But today, the Prince of Vere will prove himself our equal.’
He gestured and one of his squires came forward. It was still wrapped in cloth. He felt the sudden tension in Laurent, though there was no outward change.
Damen said, ‘You asked for it, once.’
The squire drew back the cloth to reveal a gold cuff. He felt rather than saw the tightness in Laurent. The cuff, unmistakably, was the twin to the one Damen wore, altered last night by a blacksmith for Laurent’s finer wrist.
Damen said, ‘Wear it for me.’
For a moment he thought Laurent wasn’t going to do it. But in public, Laurent had no recourse to refusal.
Laurent extended his hand. And then waited, palm outstretched, his eyes lifting to meet Damen’s.
Laurent said, ‘Put it on me.’
Every pair of eyes in the tent was on him. Damen took Laurent’s wrist in his hand. He would have to unlace the fabric and push the sleeve back.
He could feel the devouring gazes of the Akielons in the tent, as hungry for this as they had been for the whipping. Rumours of Damen’s enslavement in Vere had spread like fire through the camp. To see the Veretian Prince wear the gold cuff of a palace bed slave in turn was shocking, intimate, a symbol of Damen’s ownership.
Damen felt the hard, curved edge of the cuff when he lifted it. Laurent’s blue eyes remained cool, but under Damen’s thumb, Laurent’s pulse was rabbit fast.
‘My throne for your throne,’ Damen said. He pushed back the fabric. It was more bare skin than Laurent had ever shown in public, on display to the entire tent. ‘Help me regain my kingdom, and I’ll see you King of Vere.’ Damen fitted the cuff to Laurent’s left wrist.
‘I’m overjoyed to wear a gift that reminds me of you,’ said Laurent. The cuff locked into place. He didn’t withdraw his wrist, just left it leaned on the arm of the throne, laces open and gold cuff in full view.
Horns were blown the length of the ranks, and refreshments were brought. All that had to happen now was for Damen to endure the rest of the welcoming ceremony, and at the end, sign their treaty.
A series of display fights were performed, marking the occasion with disciplined choreography. Laurent watched with polite attention, and underneath that, possibly real attention, as it would suit him to catalogue Akielon fighting techniques.
Damen could see Makedon watching them with an impassive face. Across from Makedon, Vannes was taking refreshments. Vannes had been the Regent’s Ambassador to the all-female court of the Vaskian Empress, who it was said ripped men apart with her leopards for public sport.
He thought of the delicate dealings with the Vaskian clans that Laurent had engineered, all along their ride south.
He said, ‘Are you going to tell me what won Vannes to your side?’
Laurent said, ‘It’s no secret. She is to be the first member of my Council.’
‘And Guion?’
‘I threatened his sons. He took it seriously. I had already killed one of them.’
Makedon was approaching the thrones.
There was an air of expectancy as Makedon came forward, the men in the tent shifting to see what he would do. Makedon’s hatred of Veretians was well known. Even if Laurent had forestalled open rebellion, Makedon would not accept the leadership of a Veretian prince. Makedon bowed to Damen, then stood without showing any respect to Laurent. He looked out briefly at the Akielon choreographed fights, then his eyes travelled over Laurent, slowly and arrogantly.
‘If this is truly an alliance between equals,’ said Makedon, ‘it’s a pity we can’t see a display of Veretian fighting.’
You are seeing one right now and you don’t even know it, thought Damen. Laurent kept his attention on Makedon.
‘Or a contest,’ Makedon said. ‘Veretian against Akielon.’
‘Are you proposing to challenge Lady Vannes to a duel?’ said Laurent.
Blue eyes met brown. Laurent was relaxed on the throne, and Damen was too aware of what Makedon saw: a youth, less than half his age; a princeling who shirked battle; a courtier with lazy, indoor elegance.
‘Our King has a reputation on the field,’ said Makedon, his eyes passing over Laurent slowly. ‘Why not a demonstration fight between you both?’
‘But we are like brothers.’ Laurent smiled. Damen felt Laurent’s fingertips touch his; their fingers slid into one another. He knew from long experience when Laurent was repressing everything into a single hard kernel of distaste.
Heralds brought the document, ink on paper, written in two languages, side by side so that neither one was atop the other. It was simply worded. It did not contain endless clauses and subclauses. It was a brief declaration: Vere and Akielos, united against their usurpers, allied in friendship and common cause.
He signed it. Laurent signed it. Damianos V and Laurent R, with a big loopy L.
‘To our wondrous union,’ said Laurent.
And then it was done, and Laurent was rising, and the Veretians were departing, a blue stream of banners riding out in a long, receding procession across the field.