*
After, they crowned each other with laurels. They were borne to the dais by the thronging crowd, surrounded by cheers. Damen dipped his head to receive the prize from Laurent’s fingers. Laurent eschewed his gold circlet in favour of the ring of leaves.
Drink flowed. The new camaraderie was a heady ambrosia, and it was too easy to get carried away by it. There was a warmth in his chest whenever he looked at Laurent. He didn’t look often for that reason.
As the afternoon deepened into evening, they moved inward, to end the day to the accompaniment of shallow cups of Akielon wine and the soft sounds of a kithara. There was a fragile feeling of fellowship solidifying among the men, which they had needed from the beginning, and which gave him hope—real hope—for tomorrow’s campaign.
The games had been a success and that had meant something, at least. Their men would ride out unified, and if there was a crack down the centre, no one knew about it. He and Laurent were good at pretending.
Laurent took his place on one of the lounging couches like he was born to it. Damen sat alongside him. The new-lit candles illuminated the expressions of the men around them, and the evening lighting faded the rest of the hall into a pleasant, hazy gloom.
Out of the gloom came Makedon.
He was flanked by a small retinue, two soldiers in their notched belts, and an attending slave. He came straight across the hall, and stopped right in front of Laurent.
The whole room went silent. Makedon and Laurent faced one another. The silence stretched out.
‘You have the mind of a snake,’ Makedon said.
‘You have the mind of an old bull,’ said Laurent.
They stared at one another.
After a long moment, Makedon waved at the slave, who came forward with a fat-bellied bottle of Akielon spirits and two shallow cups.
‘I will drink with you,’ said Makedon.
Makedon’s expression did not change. It was like the offer of a door from an impermeable wall. Shock rippled over the room, and every eye in the hall turned to Laurent.
Damen knew the amount of pride that Makedon had swallowed to make this offer, a gesture of friendship to an indoor princeling half his age.
Laurent glanced at the wine that the slave had poured, and Damen knew with absolute certainty that if it was wine, Laurent wasn’t going to drink.
Damen braced himself for the moment when every scrap of goodwill that Laurent had garnered for himself was thrown away—as every tenet of Akielon hospitality was insulted, and Makedon swept forever out of the hall.
Laurent picked up the cup in front of him, drained it, then returned it to the table.
Makedon gave a slow nod of approval, lifted his own cup, downed it.
And said, ‘Again.’