*
He wasn’t expecting to receive Laurent’s full weight, but he did, a warm arm slung around his neck, and he was suddenly breathless with the feeling of Laurent in his arms. His hands came up to steady Laurent’s waist, his heart behaving strangely. It was sweetly, impossibly illicit. He felt the ache in his chest.
Damen said, ‘The Prince and I are retiring,’ and waved the lingering slaves out.
‘It’s this way,’ said Laurent. ‘Probably.’
The hall was strewn with the last bits of the gathering, wine cups and empty couches. They passed Philoctus of Eilon, sprawled out on one of them, his head on his arms, sleeping as deeply as if in his own bed. He was snoring.
‘Is today the first time you’ve been beaten in an okton?’
‘Technically, it was a draw,’ said Damen.
‘Technically. I told you I was quite good at riding. I used to beat Auguste all the time when we raced at Chastillon. It took me until I was nine to realise he was letting me win. I just thought I had a very fast pony. You’re smiling.’
He was smiling. They stood in one of the passages, wells of moonlight from the open archways to their left.
‘Am I talking too much? I can’t hold alcohol at all.’
‘I can see that.’
‘It’s my fault. I never drink. I should have realised I’d need to, with men like these, and made an effort to . . . build up some sort of tolerance . . .’ He was serious.
‘Is that how your mind works?’ said Damen. ‘And what do you mean, you never drink? I think you’re protesting a little much. You were drunk the first night I met you.’
‘I made an exception,’ said Laurent, ‘that night. Two and a half bottles. I had to force myself to get it down. I thought it would be easier drunk.’
‘You thought what would be easier?’ said Damen.
‘“What”?’ said Laurent. ‘You.’
Damen felt the hairs rise over his whole body. Laurent said it softly, and as though it was obvious, his blue eyes a little hazy, his arm still around Damen’s neck. They were gazing at one another, halted in the half-light of the passage.
‘My Akielon bed slave,’ said Laurent, ‘named for the man who killed my brother.’
Damen drew in a painful breath. ‘It’s not much further,’ he said.
They went through passages, past the high archways and the windows along the northern side with their Veretian grilles. It wasn’t unusual for two young men to wander the halls together, swaying, after a revel—even among princes—and Damen could pretend for a moment that they were what they seemed to be: brothers in arms. Friends.
The guards on either side of the entrance were too well trained to react to the presence of royalty leaning all over each other. They passed through the outer doors to the innermost chamber. Here, the low, reclining bed was in the Akielon style, the base carved in marble. It was simple, open to the night from its base to its curved headrest.
‘No one is to enter,’ Damen ordered the guards.
He was aware of the implication—Damianos entering a bedchamber with a young man in his arms and ordering everyone out—and he ignored it. If Isander suddenly had a startling reason why the frigid Prince of Vere had foregone his services, so be it. Laurent, intensely private, would not want his household present while he dealt with the effects of a night’s worth of drinking.
Laurent was going to wake with a blinding headache fuelling his corrosive tongue, and pity anyone who ran into him then.
As for Damen, he was going to give Laurent a push in the small of his back and send him staggering the four steps to the bed. Damen unlooped Laurent’s arm from his neck, disengaged himself. Laurent took a step under his own power, and lifted a hand to his jacket, blinking.
‘Attend me,’ Laurent said, unthinkingly.
‘For old time’s sake?’ said Damen.
It was a mistake to say that. He stepped forward and put his hands on the ties of Laurent’s jacket. He began to draw the ties from their moorings. He felt the curve of Laurent’s ribcage as the tie threaded through its eye.
The jacket tangled at Laurent’s wrist. It took some effort to get it off, disordering Laurent’s shirt. Damen stopped, his hands still inside the jacket.
Under the fine fabric of Laurent’s shirt, Paschal had bound Laurent’s shoulder to strengthen it. He saw it with a pang. It was something Laurent would not have let him see sober, a keen breach of privacy. He thought of sixteen spears thrown, with a constant effort of arm and shoulder, after rough exertion the day before.
Damen took a step back, said: ‘Now you can say you were served by the King of Akielos.’
‘I could say that anyway.’
Lamp-lit, the room was filled with orange light, revealing its simple furnishings, the low chairs, the wall table with its bowl of fresh-picked fruit. Laurent was a different presence in his white undershirt. They were gazing at each other. Behind Laurent, the light concentrated on the bed, where oil flamed in a low, burnished container, and illumination fell on tumbled pillows, and the carved marble base of the bed.
‘I miss you,’ said Laurent. ‘I miss our conversations.’
It was too much. He remembered being strapped to the post and half killed; sober, Laurent had made the line very clear, and he was aware that he had crossed it, they both had.
‘You’re drunk,’ said Damen. ‘You’re not yourself.’ He said, ‘I should take you to bed.’
‘Then, take me,’ said Laurent.
He manoeuvred Laurent determinedly over to the bed, half pushed, half poured him onto it, as any soldier would help his drunk friend to the pallet in his tent.
Laurent lay where Damen put him, on his back in a half-open shirt, his hair tumbled, his expression unguarded. His knee was pushed out to the side, his breathing was slow as one in sleep, the thin fabric of his shirt lay against his skin, rising and falling with it.
‘You don’t like me like this?’
‘You’re really . . . not yourself.’
‘Aren’t I?’
‘No. You’re going to kill me when you sober up.’
‘I tried to kill you. I can’t seem to go through with it. You keep overturning all my plans.’
Damen found a water pitcher and poured water into a shallow cup that he brought to the low table by Laurent’s bed. Then he emptied the fruit bowl of fruit and put it on the floor alongside, to be used as a drunk soldier might use an empty helmet.
‘Laurent. Sleep it off. In the morning, you can punish us both. Or forget this ever happened. Or pretend to.’
He did all of this quite adeptly, though he found that before he poured the water it took him a moment to catch his breath. He put both his hands on the table and leaned his weight on it, only a little breathless. He put Laurent’s jacket over a chair. He closed the shutters so that the morning sun would not intrude. Then he made his way to the door, turning once he reached it for a last glance at the bed.
Laurent, falling through scattered thoughts into sleep, said, ‘Yes, uncle.’
CHAPTER TEN
DAMEN WAS SMILING. He lay on his back, his arm over his head, the sheet pooled over his lower body. He had been awake for perhaps an hour in the early light.
The events of last night, endlessly complicated in the candlelit privacy of Laurent’s bedchamber, had resolved into a single, blissful fact this morning.
Laurent missed him.
He felt a flutter of illicit joy when he thought of it. He remembered Laurent gazing up at him. You keep overturning all my plans. Laurent was going to be furious when he arrived at the morning meeting.
‘You’re in a good mood,’ Nikandros said, as he came into the hall. Damen clapped him on the shoulder, and took up his place at the long table.
‘We’re going to take Karthas,’ said Damen.
He had summoned each of the bannermen to this meeting. This would be their first attack on an Akielon fort, and they were going to win it, swiftly and definitively.
He called for the sand tray that he preferred. Scoured with deep, quick strokes, the strategy was visible without bumping heads while leaning in to peer at the ink lines of a map. Straton arrived with Philoctus, arranging their skirts as they sat. Makedon was already present, along with Enguerran. Vannes arrived and took her seat, arranging her skirts similarly.
Laurent entered, an edge to his grace, like a leopard with a headache, around whom one must tread very, very carefully.
‘Good morning,’ said Damen.
‘Good morning,’ said Laurent.
This was said after an infinitesimal pause, as if maybe for once in his life the leopard wasn’t quite certain what to do. Laurent sat on the throne-like seat of oak beside Damen, and kept his eyes carefully on the space in front of him.
‘Laurent!’ said Makedon, greeting Laurent warmly. ‘I am glad to take up your invitation to hunt with you in Acquitart when this campaign is over.’ He clapped Laurent on the shoulder.
Laurent said, ‘My invitation.’
Damen wondered whether he had ever been clapped on the shoulder in his life.
‘I sent a messenger to my homestead this very morning to tell them to begin preparing light spears for chamois.’
‘You hunt with Veretians now?’ said Philoctus.
‘One cup of griva and you slept like the dead,’ said Makedon. He clapped Laurent’s shoulder again. ‘This one had six! Can you doubt the power of his will? The steadiness of his arm in the hunt?’
‘Not your uncle’s griva,’ said a horrified voice.
‘With two such as us on the ride, there won’t be a chamois left in the mountains.’ Another shoulder clap. ‘We go now to Karthas to prove our worth in battle.’
This provoked a wave of soldierly camaraderie. Laurent did not typically engage in soldierly camaraderie, and did not know what to do.
Damen felt almost reluctant to step forward to the sand tray.
‘Meniados of Sicyon sent a herald to hold talks with us. At the same time, he launched attacks on our village, which were intended to sew dissent and disable our army,’ Damen said, as he scoured a mark in the sand. ‘We’ve sent riders to Karthas to offer him the choice to surrender or to fight.’
This he had done before the okton. Karthas was a classical Akielon fort designed to anticipate attacks, its approach guarded by a series of watchtowers, in the traditional style. He was confident of success. With every watchtower that fell, Karthas’s defences would lessen. That was both the strength and the weakness of Akielon forts: they dispersed resources, rather than consolidating them behind a single wall.
‘You’ve sent riders to announce your plans?’ said Laurent.
‘This is the Akielon way,’ said Makedon, as he might to a favoured nephew a bit slow at learning. ‘An honourable victory will impress the kyroi and gain the favour that we need at the Kingsmeet.’
‘I see, thank you,’ said Laurent.
‘We attack from the north,’ said Damen, ‘here, and here,’ sand marks, ‘and bring the first of the watchtowers under our control before we make our assault on the fort.’
The tactics were straightforward, and the discussion progressed quickly to its conclusion. Laurent said very little. The few questions the Veretians had regarding Akielon manoeuvres were raised by Vannes, and answered to her satisfaction. Having received their orders for the march, the men rose to depart.
Makedon was explaining the virtues of iron tea to Laurent, and when Laurent massaged his own temple with finely bred fingers, Makedon remarked, rising, ‘You should have your slave fetch you some.’
‘Fetch me some,’ Laurent said.
Damen rose. And stopped.
Laurent had gone very still. Damen stood there, awkwardly. He could think of no other reason why he had stood up.
He looked up and his eyes met those of Nikandros, who was staring at him. Nikandros was with a small group to one side of the table, the last of the men in the hall. He was the only one to have seen and heard. Damen just stood there.
‘This meeting is over,’ Nikandros announced to the men around him, too loudly. ‘The King is ready to ride.’