*
He knew what Veretian eyes saw when they looked at him: a barbarian in savage splendour.
He did nothing to lessen the impression. He sat on the throne in armour, his thighs and arms heavy with bared muscle. He watched the Regent’s herald enter the hall.
Laurent sat beside him on an identical twin throne. Damen let the Regent’s herald see them—royalty flanked by Akielon soldiers in warlike armour made for killing. He let him take in this bare stone hall of a provincial fort, bristling with the spears of soldiers, where the Akielon prince-killer sat beside the Veretian Prince on the dais, dressed in the same crude leather as his soldiers.
He let him see Laurent too, let him see the picture they presented, royalty united. Laurent was the only Veretian in a hall filled with Akielons. Damen liked it. He liked having Laurent beside him, liked letting the Regent’s herald see that Laurent had Akielos alongside him—had Damianos of Akielos, now in his favoured arena of war.
The Regent’s herald was accompanied by a party of six, four ceremonial guards and two Veretian dignitaries. Walking through a hall of armed Akielons had them nervous, though they approached the thrones insolently, without bending a knee, the herald coming to a halt at the steps of the dais and arrogantly meeting Damen’s eyes.
Damen settled his full weight into the throne, sprawled on it comfortably, and watched all of this happen. In Ios, his father’s soldiers would have taken the herald by the arm and forced him down, forehead to the floor, with a foot atop his head.
He slightly lifted his fingers. The imperceptible gesture halted his men from doing the same now. Last time, Damen vividly recalled, the Regent’s herald had been received in a flurry in a courtyard, Laurent white-faced, pounding in on horseback, wheeling his mount to face his uncle’s herald down. He remembered the herald’s arrogance, his words, and the hessian sack pinned to his saddle.
It was the same herald. Damen recognised his darker hair and complexion, his thickened eyebrows and the embroidered pattern on his laced Veretian jacket. His party of four guards and two officials came to a halt behind him.
‘We accept the Regent’s surrender at Charcy,’ said Damen.
The herald flushed. ‘The King of Vere sends a message.’
‘The King of Vere is seated beside us,’ said Damen. ‘We do not recognise his uncle’s false claim to the throne.’
The herald was forced to pretend that those words had not been spoken. He turned from Damen to Laurent.
‘Laurent of Vere. Your uncle extends his friendship to you in good faith. He offers you a chance to restore your good name.’
‘No head in a bag?’ said Laurent.
Laurent’s voice was mild. Relaxed on the throne, one leg extended out in front of himself, a wrist draped elegantly on the wooden arm, the shift in power was evident. He was no longer the rogue nephew, fighting alone on the border. He was a significant, newly established power, with lands and an army of his own.
‘Your uncle is a good man. The Council has called for your death, but your uncle will not hear them. He will not accept the rumours that you have turned on your own people. He wants to give you the chance to prove yourself.’
‘Prove myself,’ said Laurent.
‘A fair trial. Come to Ios. Stand before the Council and plead your case. And if you are found innocent, all that is yours will be returned to you.’
‘‘All that is mine’,’ Laurent repeated the herald’s words for the second time.
‘Your Highness,’ said one of the dignitaries, and Damen was startled to recognise Estienne, a minor aristocrat from Laurent’s faction.
Estienne had the good manners to sweep off his hat. ‘Your uncle has been fair to all those who count themselves your supporters. He simply wants to welcome you back. I can assure you that this trial is only a formality to appease the Council.’ Estienne spoke with his hat held earnestly in his hands. ‘Even if there have been some . . . minor indiscretions, you only need to show repentance and he will open his heart. He knows just as your supporters know that what they are saying about you in Ios is not . . . cannot be true. You are no traitor to Vere.’
Laurent only regarded Estienne for a moment, before he turned his attention back to the herald. ‘‘All that is mine will be returned to me”? Were those his words? Tell me his exact words.’
‘If you come to Ios to stand trial,’ said the herald, ‘all that is yours will be returned to you.’
‘And if I refuse?’
‘If you refuse, you will be executed,’ said the herald. ‘Your death will be a public traitor’s death, your body displayed on the city gates for all to see. What is left will receive no burial. You will not be entombed with your father and brother. Your name will be struck from the family register. Vere will not remember you, and all that is yours will be cast asunder. That is the King’s promise, and my message.’
Laurent said nothing; an uncharacteristic silence, and Damen saw the subtle signs, the tension across his shoulders, the muscle sliding in his jaw. Damen turned the full weight of his gaze on the herald.
‘Ride back to the Regent,’ said Damen, ‘and tell him this. All that is rightfully Laurent’s will return to him when he is King. His uncle’s false promises do not tempt us. We are the Kings of Akielos and Vere. We will keep our state, and come to him in Ios when we ride in at the head of armies. He faces Vere and Akielos united. And he will fall to our might.’
‘Your Highness,’ said Estienne, his grip on the hat now anxious. ‘Please. You can’t side with this Akielon, not after everything that’s said about him, everything he’s done! The crimes he’s acccused of in Ios are worse than your own.’
‘And what is it I am accused of?’ said Damen with utter scorn.
It was the herald who answered, in clear Akielon and a voice that carried to every corner of the hall.
‘You are a patricide. You killed your own father, King Theomedes of Akielos.’
As the hall dissolved into chaos, Akielon voices shouting in fury, onlookers leaping up from their stools, Damen looked at the herald and said in a low voice, ‘Get him out of my sight.’