*
He thrust up from his throne and went to one of the windows. It was too small and thick-glassed to see anything more than a blurry view of the courtyard. Behind him, the hall had cleared on his order. He tried to control his breathing. The shouts of the Akielons in the hall had been shouts of furious outrage. He told himself that. That no one could think for a moment that he would—
His head was pounding. He felt a furious powerlessness at it, that Kastor could kill their father, and then lie like this, poison the very truth, and get away with—
The injustice of it took him in the throat. He felt it like the final tearing of that relationship, as though somehow before this moment there had been some hope that he could reach Kastor, but that now what was between them was unsalvageable.Worse than making him a prisoner, worse than making him a slave. Kastor had made him into his father’s killer. He felt the Regent’s smiling influence, his mild, reasonable voice. He thought of the Regent’s lies spreading, taking hold, the people of Ios believing him a murderer, his father’s death dishonoured and used against him.
To have his people mistrust him, to have his friends turn from him, to have the thing that had been most dear and good in his life twisted into a weapon to hurt—
He turned. Laurent was standing alone, against the backdrop of the hall.
With sudden double vision, Damen saw Laurent as he was, his true isolation. The Regent had done this to Laurent, had whittled away his support, had turned his people against him. He remembered trying to convince Laurent of the Regent’s benevolence in Arles, as naive as Estienne. Laurent had had a lifetime of this.
He said, in a steady, measured voice, ‘He thinks he can provoke me. He can’t. I am not going to act in anger or in haste. I am going to take back the provinces of Akielos one by one, and when I march into Ios, I will make him pay for what he has done.’
Laurent just kept watching him with that slightly assessing expression on his face.
‘You can’t be considering his offer,’ said Damen.
Laurent didn’t answer immediately. Damen said, ‘You can’t go to Ios. Laurent, you won’t get a trial. He’ll kill you.’
‘I’d get a trial,’ said Laurent. ‘It’s what he wants. He wants me proven unfit. He wants the Council to ratify him as King so that he can rule with his claim wholly legitimised.’
‘But—’
‘I’d get a trial.’ Laurent’s voice was quite steady. ‘He’d have a parade of witnesses, and each one would swear me a traitor. Laurent, the debauched shirker who sold his country to Akielos and spread his legs for the Akielon prince-killer. And when I had no reputation left, I’d be taken to the public square and killed in front of a crowd. I’m not considering his offer.’
Looking at him across the gap that separated them, Damen realised for the first time that a trial might have some kind of seductive appeal to Laurent, who must wish, somewhere deep inside himself, to clear his name. But Laurent was right: any trial would be a death sentence, a performance designed to humiliate him, and then end him, overseen by the Regent’s terrifying command of public spectacle.
‘Then what?’
‘There’s something else,’ said Laurent.
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean that my uncle doesn’t hold out a hand for someone to knock it aside. He sent that herald to us for a reason. There’s something else.’ Laurent’s next words were almost unwilling. ‘There’s always something else.’
There was a sound from the doorway. Damen turned to see Pallas in full uniform.
‘It’s the Lady Jokaste,’ said Pallas. ‘She’s asking to see you.’