Kings Rising (20 page)

He made it four steps before another blow brought him down. His knees hit the marble. His arm was wrenched behind him, and he felt the cold, hard iron before he understood what was happening, the chains on his wrists and legs hobbling him. His movement was totally restrained.

Panting, on his knees, Damen began to come back to
himself. His bloody, discarded sword lay on the stone five feet away, where it had been forced from his hand. The hall was full of white cloaks, not all of them standing. One of the soldiers had his hand clutched to his stomach, where blood blossomed red across the white livery. There were six others on the ground near him, three who weren’t getting up. The Regent was still standing, several feet away.

In the panting silence of the hall, one of the kneeling sentries rose and began to speak.
‘You have drawn your sword in the Kingsmeet.’

Damen’s eyes locked on the Regent’s. Nothing mattered but a promise. ‘I’m going to kill you.’

‘You have broken the peace of the hall.’

Damen said, ‘The moment you laid your hands on him, you were dead.’

‘The laws of the Kingsmeet are sacred.’

Damen said, ‘I will be the last thing that you see. You will go to the ground with my blade in your flesh.’

‘
Your life is forfeit to the King,’
said the sentry.

Damen heard the words. The laugh that came out of him was hollow and jagged. ‘The King?’ he said, with total scorn. ‘Which King?’

Laurent was staring at him with huge eyes. Unlike Damen, it had only taken one of the Kingsmeet soldiers to restrain Laurent, his arms forced behind his back, his breathing shallow.

‘In fact, there is only one King here,’ said the Regent.

And slowly, the impact of what he had done began to make itself clear to Damen.

He looked at the devastation of the Kingsmeet, the blood-streaked marble, and the gathered sentries in disarray, the peace of its sanctum shattered.

‘No,’ said Damen. ‘You heard what he did.’ Roughened, it came out of him. ‘You all
heard him
, are you going to let him do this?’

The sentry who had risen ignored him, and approached the Regent. Damen struggled again, and felt the strain on his arms brought almost to breaking point by the men holding him.

The sentry bowed his head to the Regent, said, ‘You are the King of Vere and not of Akielos, but the attack was against you, and a king’s judgement is sacred in the Kingsmeet. Pass your sentence.’

‘Kill him,’ said the Regent.

He spoke with indifferent authority. Damen’s forehead was pushed down to the cold stone, and there was the scrape of metal as his sword was picked up from the marble. A white-cloaked soldier came forward holding it in the two-handed grip of the executioner.

‘No,’ said Laurent. He said it to his uncle, in a flat, emotionless voice Damen had never heard before, ‘Stop. It’s me you want.’ And Damen said,
‘Laurent,’
a final, terrible understanding resolving, as Laurent said, ‘It’s me you want, not him.’

The Regent’s voice was mild. ‘I don’t want you, Laurent. You are a nuisance. A minor inconvenience that I will clear from my path without much thought.’

‘Laurent,’
said Damen, trying to stop what was happening from his restrained position on his knees.

‘I’ll come with you to Ios,’ said Laurent, in that same detached voice. ‘I’ll let you have your trial. Just let him—’ He didn’t look at Damen. ‘Let him live. Let him walk out of here whole and alive. Take me.’

The soldier holding the sword halted, looking to the Regent for an order. The Regent’s eyes were on Laurent, regarding him with considering attention.

‘Beg,’ said the Regent.

Laurent was held fast in the grip of a soldier, his arm twisted behind his back, the white cotton of his chiton in disarray. The soldier released him, pushing him forward into the silence. Laurent didn’t quite stumble, then began steadily to take one step, then another.
Laurent is going to get down on his knees and beg.
Like a man walking towards a cliff edge, Laurent came forward to stand before his uncle. Slowly, he went to his knees.

‘Please,’ said Laurent. ‘Please, uncle. I was wrong to defy you. I deserve punishment. Please.’

There was a surreal horror to what was happening. No one was stopping it, this travesty of justice. The Regent’s eyes passed over Laurent like those of a father receiving an act of long-overdue filial duty.

‘Is this exchange acceptable to you, Exalted?’ said the sentry.

‘I believe it is,’ said the Regent, after a moment. ‘You see, Laurent. I am a reasonable man. When you are properly penitent, I am merciful.’

‘Yes, uncle. Thank you, uncle.’

The sentry bowed. ‘The exchange of a life satisfies our laws. Your nephew will face trial in Ios. The other will be held until morning, then released. Let the will of the King be done.’

The other sentries echoed the words,
‘Let the will of the King be done.
’

Damen said,
‘No.’
He was struggling again.

Laurent didn’t look at Damen. He kept his eyes fixed on a point in front of him, their blue slightly glazed. Under the thin cotton of his chiton, he was breathing shallowly, his body held taut, an attempt at control.

‘Come, nephew,’ said the Regent.

They went.

T
HEY KEPT DAMEN
until dawn, and then brought him back to the camp, with his hands bound anew. He fought, intermittently, the whole way, through a kind of dark haze of exhaustion that wouldn’t leave him.

When they reached the camp, they threw him down onto the ground so that he went to his knees with his hands bound behind him. Jord came forward with his sword drawn, but Nikandros held him back, eyes wide in fear and respect for the white cloaks of the Kingsmeet. Then Nikandros came forward. Damen was rising to his feet, and he felt Nikandros turning him and slicing the ropes from his arms with his knife.

‘The Prince?’

‘He’s with the Regent.’ He said it once, then for a moment could say nothing at all.

He was a soldier. He knew the brutality of the battlefield, had seen the things that men could do to those weaker than themselves, yet had never thought—

—Nicaise’s head drawn from a blood-stained hessian bag, Aimeric’s cold body sprawled out beside a letter, and—

It was very bright. He was aware of Nikandros speaking to him.

‘I know you felt something for him. If you are going to be sick, do it quickly. We have to go. There will already be men coming to find us.’

Through the haze he heard Jord’s voice. ‘You left him? You saved your own life and left him with his uncle?’

Damen looked up, and saw that everyone had come out from the wagons to see. He was ringed by a small group of faces. Jord had come to stand in front of him. Nikandros stood behind him, and still had a hand on his shoulder, having steadied him to cut off the ropes. He saw Guion a few steps off, and Loyse. Paschal.

Jord said, ‘You coward, you left him to—’

The words were abruptly cut off as Nikandros took hold of Jord and slammed him back against the wagon.

‘You will not speak that way to our King.’

‘Let him be.’ The words were thick in Damen’s throat. ‘Let him be. He is loyal. You would have reacted the same way if Laurent had come back alone.’ He found he was between them, that he had intervened bodily. Nikandros was two paces away—Damen had pulled him off.

Released, Jord was panting slightly. ‘He wouldn’t have come back alone. If you think that, you don’t know him.’

He felt Nikandros’s hand on his shoulder, steadying him, though Nikandros was speaking to Jord. ‘Stop it, can’t you see he’s—’

‘What’s going to happen to him?’ Jord’s voice, demanding.

‘He’ll be killed,’ said Damen. ‘There will be a trial. He’ll be branded a traitor. His name will be dragged through the mud. When it’s done, they’ll kill him.’

It was the unadorned truth. It would happen here, publicly. In Ios, they displayed severed heads on rough wooden spikes along the traitor’s walk. Nikandros was speaking.

‘We can’t stay here, Damianos. We have to—’

‘No,’
said Damen.

He had his hand to his forehead. His thoughts whirled, useless. He remembered Laurent saying,
I can’t think
.

What would Laurent do? He knew what Laurent would do. Stupid, mad Laurent had sacrificed himself. He had used the last piece of leverage he had: his own life. But Damen’s life was valueless to the Regent.

He felt the limits of his own nature, which too easily swung to anger, and the need—stymied by circumstance—to bring about the Regent’s death. All he wanted was to take up his sword and cut a path into Ios. His body felt thick and dull with a single thought that pushed at him, trying to get out. He pressed his eyes closed.

‘He thinks he’s alone,’ he said.

He told himself, sickeningly, that it wouldn’t be quick. The trial would take time. The Regent would draw it out. It was what he liked, public humiliation coupled with private chastisement, his reality validated by all those around him. Laurent’s death, sanctioned by the Council, would restore the Regent’s personal order, the world set to rights.

It wouldn’t be quick. There was time. There had to be time. If he could only think. He felt like a man standing outside the high gates of a city with no way to get inside.

‘Damianos. Listen to me. If he is taken to the palace, then he is gone. You can’t fight your way in single-handed. Even if you made it past the walls, you’d never make it out again. Every soldier in Ios is loyal to Kastor or to the Regent.’

Nikandros’s words penetrated, as hard and painful as only the truth could be.

‘You’re right, I can’t fight my way in.’

From the beginning he had been a tool, a weapon to be used against Laurent. The Regent had used him to hurt, to unsettle, to shake Laurent’s control; and finally, to destroy him.

‘I know what I have to do,’ he said.

*   *   *

He arrived in the cool of morning, alone. Leaving his horse, he went the last of the way on foot, choosing the goat tracks first, then passing through avenues of apricot and almond, and the dappled shade of olive trees. Shortly after, the tracks ascended, and he began to climb a low limestone hill, the
first of the rises that led him up, and up further to the white cliffs, and the city.

Ios; the white city, built on high limestone cliffs that crumbled and broke off into the sea. The familiarity was so strong it was almost dizzying. On the horizon, the sea was a clear blue, only a few shades darker than the strident shade of the sky. He had missed the ocean. The foaming disorder of rocks, and the sudden sharp sense of how spray would feel against skin, more than anything, made him feel like home.

He expected to be challenged at the outer gates by soldiers warned and wary, on the lookout for him. But perhaps they were on the lookout for Damianos, the arrogant young King at the head of his army, not a single man in an old worn cloak, a hood that came down over his face, and sleeves to hide his arms. No one stopped him.

So he walked in, past the first threshold. He took the northern road, one man winding through the crowd. And when he turned the first corner, he saw the palace as everyone saw it: disorientingly, from the outside. There, small as specks, were the high open windows and long marble balconies that invited the sea air in during the evening to cool the baking stone. To the east was the long, columned hall and airy upper quarters. To the north, the King’s quarters, and the high-walled gardens, with their shallow steps and winding paths and the myrtle trees planted for his mother.

Memory was sudden; long days training on the sawdust, evenings in the hall, his father presiding from the throne,
himself walking those marble halls with surety and unconcern, an unreal former self, who spent evenings in the great hall laughing with friends, being served as he wished by slaves.

A yapping dog cut across his path. A woman with a parcel under her arm jostled him, then shouted at him in southern dialect to watch where he was going.

He kept walking. He passed the outer homes, with their small windows of differently sized rectangles and squares. He passed the outer storehouses, the granaries, a stone revolving on a millbase, pushed by oxen. He passed the shouts of a dozen market stalls that were all selling fish, pulled from the ocean in the pre-dawn.

He passed the traitor’s walk, thick with flies. He scanned the tops of the spikes, but the dead were all dark-haired.

A burst of a cavalcade came trotting out on horses. He stepped to the side; they trotted past him, red-cloaked and regimented, without a second glance.

It was all uphill in the city, because the palace was built on the peak, with the sea at its back. He realised as he walked that he had never done this on foot before. When he reached the palace square, a feeling of disorientation came over him again, because he only knew the square from the opposite angle: as a view from the white balcony, where his father used to emerge sometimes to raise a hand and address the crowd.

Now he walked into the square as a visitor from one of the city entrances. From this angle, the palace loomed
impressively, the guards like gleaming statues, the bases of their spears fixed to the ground.

He locked his eyes on the closest of the guards and began to walk forward.

At first no one paid any attention to him. He was just one man in the busy columned square. But by the time he reached the first of the guards he had garnered a few looks. It was rare to approach the steps to the high gate directly.

He could feel the growing attention, could feel eyes turning to look at him, could feel the guards’ awareness of him, though they held their impassive positions. He put his sandalled foot on the first step.

Crossed spears blocked his way, and the men and women of the square began to turn, to create a semicircle of curiosity, nudging each other.

‘Halt,’ said the guard. ‘State your business, traveller.’

He waited, until he had the eyes of everyone near the gate on him, then he let the hood of his cloak fall back. He heard the shocked murmurs, the outbreak of sound as he spoke, his words, clear and unmistakable.

‘I am Damianos of Akielos, and I surrender to my brother.’

*   *   *

The soldiers were nervous.

Damianos.
In the moments before they hurriedly ushered him in through the gate, the crowd grew.
Damianos.
The
name spread from mouth to mouth, like a spark into a line of leaping fire, awed, fearful, shocked.
Damianos of Akielos.
The guard to the right just continued to look at him blankly, but there was growing recognition on the face of the guard to the left, who said, fatally,
‘It’s him.’

It’s him—
and the spark ignited into a blaze, seizing the crowd.
It’s him. It’s him. Damianos.
Suddenly it was everywhere. The crowd was jostling, exclaiming. A woman fell down onto her knees. A man shoved forward. The guards were close to being overwhelmed.

They pushed him inside, roughly. His public surrender had accomplished that much: he had won himself the privilege of being manhandled into the palace.

If it worked, if he was in time—how long could a trial last? How long could Laurent stall for time? The trial would have commenced in the morning—how long until the Council returned their verdict, and Laurent was taken to the public square to be shoved to his knees, his head lowered, the sword brought down on his neck—?

He needed them to take him into the hall to face Kastor. He had given up his freedom for that single chance, gambling everything.
He’s alive. Damianos is alive.
The whole city knew, they couldn’t dispatch him in secret. They must take him to the hall.

In fact, they took him to an empty set of apartments on the eastern side of the palace, and discussed in hushed whispers what to do. He sat under guard on one of the low
seats and didn’t scream in frustration, as time passed, and then more time. This was already different to all his hopes; there were too many things that could go wrong.

The latch on the doors was thrown open, and a new set of soldiers entered, heavily armed. One was an officer. Another carried irons. He stopped dead when he saw Damen.

‘Cuff him,’ said the officer.

The soldier holding the irons didn’t move, his wide eyes staring at Damen.

‘Do it,’ came the order.

‘Do it, soldier,’ said Damen.

‘Yes, Exalted,’ said the soldier, and then flushed, as though he had done something wrong. He might have. It might have been treason to say that.

Or it might be treason to step forward and close the iron around Damen’s wrists. Damen held his arms ready behind his back and still the man hesitated. This was a complex political proposition for the soldiers. They were nervous.

The moment the iron closed around Damen’s wrists, the nerves showed themselves in a different way. The soldiers had done something irrevocable. They had to think of Damen as a prisoner now, and they grew rougher, shouting and shoving him in the back, out of the apartment, blustering and too loud.

Damen’s heartbeat sped up. Was it enough? Was he in time? The soldiers pushed him around a corner, and he saw
the first stretch of corridor. It was happening, he was being taken to the great hall.

High, shocked faces lined the passages as they passed. The first person to recognise him was a household official carrying a vase which smashed, dropping from his hands.
Damianos.
A slave, caught in a crisis of etiquette, fell half to his knees and then stopped, agonisingly uncertain whether he should complete his prostration. A soldier froze in his tracks, eyes wide with horror. It was unthinkable that any man should lay hands on the King’s son. And yet Damianos was being escorted in shackles, pushed forward by a spear butt when he walked too slowly.

Thrust into the crush of the great hall, Damen saw several things at once.

There was a ceremony underway—the columned hall was full of soldiers. Half of the thick crowd were soldiers. Soldiers guarded the entrance. Soldiers lined the walls. But they were the Regent’s soldiers. Only a small Akielon honour guard stood near the dais. Veretian and Akielon courtiers were packed into the hall with them, assembled for a spectacle.

And there wasn’t one throne on the dais, there were two.

Kastor and the Regent sat side by side, presiding over the hall. Damen’s whole body reacted against the wrongness of it—the Regent sitting on his father’s throne. Sickeningly, there was a boy of about eleven on a stool beside the Regent. Damen’s gaze fixed on the Regent’s bearded face, the wide shoulders swathed in red velvet, the heavily ringed hands.

It was strange—he had waited for so long to face Kastor, and now he found him simply extraneous. The Regent was the sole intrusion, the sole threat.

Kastor looked satisfied. He didn’t see the danger. He didn’t understand what he had let into Akielos. The Regent’s soldiers thronged the hall. The entire Veretian Council was here, gathered in assembly near the dais, as if Akielos was already their country. A part of Damen’s mind registered all of that, as the rest of him kept looking, kept scanning the faces—

And then, as the crowd parted slightly, he saw what he was searching for: the first glimpse of a yellow head.

Alive, alive, Laurent was alive. Damen’s heart leapt, and for a moment he just stood and drank the sight in, giddy with relief.