*
And the Akielons were filing out too, the officers and the generals, the dismissed slaves, until he was alone with Nikandros, whose eyes were on him, furious, and with all the flat knowledge of an old friend.
‘You gave him Delpha,’ said Nikandros.
‘It wasn’t—’
‘A bedding gift?’ said Nikandros.
‘You go too far.’
‘Do I? I remember Ianestra. And Ianora,’ said Nikandros. ‘And Eunides’s daughter. And Kyra the girl from the village—’
‘That’s enough. I won’t talk about this.’ He had turned his eyes away, fixing on the goblet in front of him, which, after a moment, he lifted. He took his first mouthful of wine. It was a mistake.
‘You don’t need to talk, I have seen him,’ said Nikandros.
‘I don’t care what you’ve seen. It’s not what you think.’
‘I think he is beautiful and unobtainable, when your whole life, you’ve never had a refusal,’ said Nikandros. ‘You have committed Akielos to an alliance because the Prince of Vere has blue eyes and blond hair.’ And then, in a terrible voice, ‘How many times does Akielos have to suffer because you can’t keep your—’
‘I said that’s enough, Nikandros.’
Damen was angry, he wanted to smash the glass beneath his fingers. To let the pain of the glass cut into him.
‘Do you think—for a moment that I’d . . . Nothing,’ he said, ‘is more important to me than Akielos.’
‘He is the Prince of Vere! He doesn’t care about Akielos! Are you saying you aren’t swayed by the thought of having him? Open your eyes, Damianos!’
Damen pushed himself up from the throne and moved to the wide open mouth of the pavilion. He had an unimpeded view across the fields to the Veretian camp. Laurent and his retinue had disappeared inside of it, though the elegant encampment of Veretian tents still faced him, with every silk pennant waving.
‘You want him. It’s natural. He looks like one of the statues Nereus has in his garden, and he’s a prince of your own rank. He dislikes you, but dislike can have its own appeal,’ said Nikandros. ‘So bed him. Satisfy your curiosity. Then, when you have seen that mounting one blond is much like mounting another, move on.’
The silence went on a moment too long.
He felt Nikandros’s reaction behind him. He kept his eyes on the goblet. He had no intention of putting any of it in words. I told him I was a slave, and he pretended to believe me. I kissed him on the battlements. He had his servants bring me to his bed. It was our last night together, and he gave himself to me. He knew all the while it happened that I was the man who killed his brother.
When he turned, Nikandros’s expression was awful.
‘So it really was a bedding gift.’
‘Yes I lay with him,’ said Damen. ‘It was one night. He barely relaxed the whole time. I will admit I—wanted him. But he is the Prince of Vere and I am the King of Akielos. This is a political alliance. He approaches it without emotion. So do I.’
Nikandros said, ‘Do you think it relieves my mind to hear that he is beautiful and clever and cold?’
He felt all the breath leave him. Since Nikandros had arrived, they had not talked about the summer night in Ios when Nikandros had given him a different warning.
‘It’s not the same.’
‘Laurent is not Jokaste?’
He said, ‘I am not the man who trusted her.’
‘Then you’re not Damianos.’
‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘Damianos died in Akielos when he would not heed your warnings.’
He remembered Nikandros’s words. Kastor has always believed that he deserved the throne. That you took it from him. And his own reply, He wouldn’t hurt me. We are family.
‘Then heed them now,’ said Nikandros.
‘I do. I know,’ said Damen, ‘who he is, and that it means I cannot have him.’
‘No. Listen Damianos. You trust blindly. You see the world in absolutes—if you believe someone a foe, nothing will dissuade you from arming up to fight. But when you give your affections . . . When you give a man your loyalty, your faith in him is unswerving. You would fight for him with your last breath, you would hear no word spoken against him, and you would go to the grave with his spear in your side.’
‘And are you so different?’ said Damen. ‘I know what it means that you are riding with me. I know that if I am wrong you will lose everything.’
Nikandros held his gaze, then let out a breath and passed his hand over his face, massaging it briefly. He said, ‘The Prince of Vere.’ When he looked at Damen again, it was a sidelong glance under his raised brows, and for a moment they were boys again, on the sawdust, throwing spears that fell six feet short of the men’s hide targets.
‘Can you imagine,’ said Nikandros, ‘what your father would say if he knew?’
‘Yes,’ said Damen. ‘Which girl from the village was called Kyra?’
‘They all were. Damianos. You can’t trust him.’
‘I know that.’ He finished the wine. Outside, there were hours of daylight left, and work to be done. ‘You’ve spent a morning with him and you’re warning me off. Just wait,’ said Damen, ‘until you’ve spent a full day with him.’
‘You mean that he improves with time?’
‘Not exactly,’ said Damen.
CHAPTER SIX
THE DIFFICULTY WAS that they could not ride out straight away.
Damen ought to have been used to working with a divided troop, having had, by now, a great deal of practice. But this was not a small band of mercenaries, this was two powerful forces that were traditional enemies, headed by volatile generals on both sides.
Makedon rode into Fortaine for their first official meeting with his mouth turned down. In the audience room Damen found himself waiting, tense, for Laurent’s arrival. Damen watched Laurent enter with his first adviser Vannes and his Captain Enguerran. He was frankly uncertain whether it was going to be a morning of invisible needling, or a series of unbelievable remarks that left everyone’s jaw on the floor.
In fact, it was impersonal and professional. Laurent was exacting, focused, and spoke entirely in Akielon. Vannes and Enguerran had less of the language and Laurent took the lead in discussion, using Akielon words like phalanx as though he had not learned them from Damen only two weeks earlier, and giving the calm overall impression of fluency. The little brow furrows as he searched for vocabulary, the ‘How do you say—?’ and ‘What is it called when—?’ were gone.
‘It’s lucky for him he speaks our language so well,’ said Nikandros, as they returned to the Akielon camp.
‘Nothing involving him has anything to do with luck,’ said Damen.
When he was alone, he looked out of his tent. The spreading fields looked peaceful but soon the armies would move. The red outline of the horizon would grow nearer, the rising ground that contained all that he had ever known. He tracked it with his eyes and when he was done he turned from the view. He did not look at the burgeoning new Veretian encampment, where coloured silks lifted on the breeze, and the occasional sound of laughter or lilting carried across the springy grass of the field.
Their camps, they agreed, would be kept separate. Akielons, seeing the Veretian tents begin to spring up in the fields, with their pennants and silks and multicoloured panels, were scornful. They did not want to fight alongside these new, silky allies. In that respect, Laurent’s absence at Charcy had been a disaster. His first true tactical misstep, from which they were all still trying to recover.
The Veretians were scornful too, in a different way. Akielons were barbarians who kept company with bastards and walked around half naked. He heard the snatches of what was said on the edges of their camp, the ribald calls, the jeers and taunts. When Pallas walked past, Lazar wolf-whistled.
And that was before the more specific rumours, the murmurings among the men, the sidelong speculation that had Nikandros in the warm summer evening, saying, ‘Take a slave.’
Damen said, ‘No.’
He buried himself in work, and in physical exercise. During the day he threw himself into the logistics and planning, the tactical groundwork that would facilitate a campaign. He plotted routes. He set up supply lines. He commanded drills. At night he went alone from the camp, and when there was no one around him, he took out his sword and practised until he was dripping with sweat, until he could no longer raise his sword but only stand, his muscles trembling, the tip of his blade pointed to the ground.
He went to bed alone. He undressed and sluiced himself down, and only used squires to perform those menial tasks without intimacy.
He told himself that this was what he had wanted. There was a working relationship between himself and Laurent. There was no longer—friendship—but that had never been possible. He had known it would not be some stupid fantasy of showing Laurent his country; of Laurent leaning against the marble balcony at Ios, turning to greet him in the cool air overlooking the sea, his eyes bright with the splendour of the view.
So he worked. There were tasks to do. He sent out a stream of correspondence to the kyroi of his homeland to announce his return. Soon he would know the initial extent of his support in his own country, and he could begin to settle the routes and advances that would secure him a victory.
He came to his tent after three hours of solitary weapons practice, his body damp with sweat that would be wiped down by body squires, since he had dismissed all his slaves. He sat down to write letters instead. The candles flickered low around him, but it was enough light for what must be done. He wrote by his own hand the personal missives to those he knew. He didn’t tell any of them the details of what had happened to him.
Across the evening fields, Jord, Lazar and the other members of the Prince’s Guard were somewhere in the Veretian encampment, working under the new regimen. He thought about Jord, staying in the fort that had been Aimeric’s home. He remembered Jord saying, You ever wonder what it would feel like to find out you’d spread for your brother’s killer? I think it would feel like this.
The silence was one of hollow hours filling up all the space in his tent, alone with the muted night-time activity of an army, when he found his final letter done.
To Kastor, he sent only a single message: I come. He didn’t watch that messenger depart.
It’s not naive to trust your family.
He had said that, once.