Kings Rising (7 page)

A few spears had already been thrown at him. They stuck from the target like pins. One protruded from the space between his arm and side. One to the left of his head. The boy’s eyes were glassy, and he held himself motionless. It was clear from the number of spears—and their position—that the aim of this contest was to throw as close to the boy
as possible, without hitting him. The thrower drew back his arm.

Damen could only stand and watch as the thrower’s arm whirled, the spear loosing and beginning its clear pure arc—unable to intervene in case it caused a misthrow that killed the boy. The spear sheared through the air, and hit exactly where it had been intended, between the boy’s legs, just shy of his flesh. It stuck out from the target, grotesquely lewd. The laughter was ribald.

‘And who will throw next?’ said Damen.

The thrower of the spear turned, his taunting expression changing to one of shock and disbelief. All five of them stopped and flattened themselves to the ground.

‘Stand,’ said Damen, ‘like the men you think you are.’

He was angry. The men, standing, perhaps did not recognise that. They didn’t know the slow way that he came forward, or the calm tone of his voice.

‘Tell me,’ he said, ‘what it is you are doing here.’

‘Practising for the okton,’ said a voice, and Damen looked them over but couldn’t see who had spoken. Whoever it was had paled after he said it because they were all pale, and nervous-looking.

They wore the notched belts that marked them as Makedon’s men—one notch for each kill. They might even have expected to get approbation from Makedon for what they had done. There was an uneasy expectancy in their postures, as though they were uncertain of their King’s
reaction, and had some hope they might be praised, or let off with no admonishment.

He said, ‘Do not speak again.’

He went to the boy. The boy’s shirt sleeve was pinned to the tree by a spear. His head was bleeding where a second spear had grazed it. Damen saw the boy’s eyes darken in terror as he approached, and anger was like acid in his veins. He wrapped his hand around the spear between the boy’s legs and pulled it out. Then he pulled out the spear by his head, and the one pinning his shirt sleeve. He had to draw his sword to cut the boy’s ropes, and at the sound of metal, the boy’s breathing went high and strange.

The boy was badly bruised, and he could not stand under his own weight once the ropes were cut. Damen lowered him to the ground. More had been done to him than target practice. More had been done to him than a beating. They had put an iron cuff around his left wrist, like the gold cuff around his own—like the gold cuff around Laurent’s. Damen knew with a sickening feeling in his stomach exactly what had been done to this boy, and why.

The boy didn’t speak Akielon. He had no idea what was happening, or that he was safe. Damen began to speak to him in Veretian, slow, calming words, and after a moment the boy’s glazed eyes focused on him with something like understanding.

The boy said, ‘Tell the Prince I didn’t fight back.’

Damen turned and said in a steady voice to one of the men, ‘Bring Makedon. Now.’

The man went. The other four stood in place while Damen went to one knee and addressed the boy on the ground again. In a soft, low voice Damen kept him talking. The other men didn’t watch because they were too low-ranked to be allowed to look a king in the face. Their eyes were averted.

Makedon did not come alone. Two dozen of his men came with him. Then came Nikandros, with two dozen men of his own. Then a stream of torchbearers, turning the dim clearing into orange light and leaping flame. The grim expression Nikandros wore showed that he was here because Makedon and his men might need a counterweight.

Damen said, ‘Your soldiers have broken the peace.’

‘They will be executed.’ Makedon said it after a cursory glance at the bleeding Veretian boy. ‘They have dishonoured the belt.’

That was genuine. Makedon didn’t like Veretians. He didn’t like his men dishonouring themselves in front of Veretians. Makedon wanted no whiff of Veretian moral superiority. Damen could see that in him, as he could see that Makedon blamed the Veretians for the attack, for the behaviour of his men, for being called to account by his King.

The orange torchlight was unsparing. Two of the five men struggled, and were taken from the clearing unconscious. The others were roped together with pieces of the tough fibrous rope that had bound the Veretian boy.

‘Take the boy back to our camp,’ Damen said to Nikandros, because he knew exactly what would happen if Akielon soldiers bore the bleeding, bruised boy back to the Veretians. ‘Send for Paschal, the Veretian physician. Then inform the Prince of Vere what has happened here.’ A sharp nod of obedience. Nikandros departed with the boy and a section of the torches.

Damen said, ‘The rest of you are dismissed. Not you.’

The light receded, and the sound, disappearing through the trees until he was alone with Makedon in the night air of the clearing.

‘Makedon of the north,’ said Damen. ‘You were a friend to my father. You fought with him for almost twenty years. That means a great deal to me. I respect your loyalty to him, as I respect your power and need your men. But if your soldiers harm a Veretian again, you will face me at the end of a sword.’

‘Exalted,’ said Makedon, bowing his head to hide his eyes.

‘You walk a fine line with Makedon,’ Nikandros said, on his return to camp.

‘He walks a fine line with me,’ said Damen.

‘He is a traditionalist, and supports you as the true King, but he will only be pushed so far.’

‘I’m not the one pushing.’

He didn’t retire. He took himself instead to the tent in his camp where the Veretian boy was being tended. He
dismissed the guards there, too, and waited outside for the physician to come out.

At night the camp was quiet and dark, but this tent was marked by a torch flaming outside, and he could see the lights from the Veretian camp to the west. He was aware of the oddness of his own presence—a king waiting outside a tent like a hound for its master—but he stepped forward quickly when Paschal emerged from the tent.

‘Your Majesty,’ said Paschal, surprised.

‘How is he?’ He said it into the odd silence, facing Paschal in the light from the torches.

‘Bruising, a broken rib,’ said Paschal. ‘Shock.’

‘No, I meant—’

He broke off. After a long moment, Paschal said, slowly, ‘He is well. The knife wound was clean. He lost a lot of blood but there is no permanent damage. He has healed quickly.’

‘Thank you,’ said Damen. He heard himself continue, ‘I don’t expect—’ He stopped. ‘I know that I betrayed your trust, and lied to you about who I am. I don’t expect you to forgive me for that.’

He could feel the incongruity of the words, falling awkwardly between them. He felt strange, his breathing shallow.

He said, ‘Will he be able to ride tomorrow?’

‘You mean to Marlas?’ said Paschal.

There was a pause.

‘We all do what we have to,’ said Paschal.

Damen said nothing. Paschal continued after a moment.

‘You should prepare yourself, too. It’s only deep in Akielos that you’ll be able to confront the Regent’s plans.’

A cool night breeze passed over his skin. ‘Guion claimed not to know what the Regent plans to do in Akielos.’

Paschal looked at him with his steady brown eyes.

‘Every Veretian knows what the Regent plans to do in Akielos.’

‘What’s that?’

‘Rule,’ said Paschal.

T
HE FIRST MILITARY
coalition of Vere and Akielos launched from Fortaine in the morning, after the execution of Makedon’s men. There were very few problems, the public killings having been good for the soldiers’ morale.

They hadn’t been good for Makedon’s morale. Damen watched the general swing himself into the saddle, then tug hard on a rein. Makedon’s men were a line of red cloaks stretching across fully half the length of the column.

The horns sounded. The banners went up. The heralds took up their position. The Akielon herald was to the right, the Veretian herald to the left, their banners carefully matched to be the same height. The Veretian herald was named Hendric and he had very strong arms, because banners were heavy.

Damen and Laurent were to ride alongside one another. Neither one of them had the better horse. Neither one of them had the more expensive armour. Damen was taller, but nothing could be done about that, Hendric had said with an impenetrable expression. Hendric, Damen was learning, had something in common with Laurent, in that it was never a simple matter to tell when he was joking.

He brought his horse alongside Laurent’s at the head of the column. It was a symbol of their unity, the Prince and the King riding side by side, as friends. He kept his eyes on the road.

‘At Marlas, we’ll stay in adjacent chambers,’ said Damen. ‘It’s protocol.’

‘Of course,’ said Laurent, his eyes also on the road.

Laurent showed no sign of distress, and sat upright in the saddle, as though nothing at all had happened to his shoulder. He spoke charmingly to the generals and even made pleasant conversation in response to Nikandros, when Nikandros spoke to him.

‘I hope the injured boy was returned to you safely.’

‘Thank you, he returned with Paschal,’ said Laurent.

For a salve?
Damen opened his mouth to say, and didn’t.

Marlas was a day-long ride, and they set a good pace. The air was loud with sound, a line of soldiers, outriders ahead, servants and slaves behind. When the column passed near, the birds took off, a herd of goats fled over the side of the hill.

It was afternoon when they reached the small checkpoint manned by Nikandros’s soldiers and overseen by an Akielon signal tower. They rode through.

The landscape on the other side looked no different; rich grass fields, green from a spring of generous rain, bruised at the edges from their passing. In the next moment, the horns rang out, triumphant and lonely at the same time, the pure sound absorbed by the sky and the wide open landscape around them.

‘Welcome home,’ Nikandros said.

Akielos. He drew in a breath of Akielon air. In months of captivity he had thought of this moment. He couldn’t help glancing next to him at Laurent, his posture and expression easy.

They rode through the first of the villages. This close to the border, larger farms had rudimentary outer walls of stone, and some were like improvised forts, with lookouts or well-tried defence systems. The passing of the army wouldn’t be a surprise, and Damen was prepared for the people of his country to react to it in various ways.

He had forgotten that Delpha had become an Akielon province only six years ago, and that before that, for the span of their entire lives, these men and women had been citizens of Vere.

The silent faces gathered, women and men, children, in doorways, under awnings, standing together as the army passed.

Tense, afraid, they had come out of their homes to watch the first Veretian banners flying here in six years. One of them had fashioned a crude starburst, with sticks. A child held it up, like the image she saw.

The starburst banner means something here on the border
, Laurent had said.

Laurent said nothing, riding straight-backed at the head of the column. He did not acknowledge his people, with their Veretian language, customs and allegiances, making their small living on the border. He was riding with an army of Akielons who wholly controlled this province. He kept his gaze ahead; so did Damen, feeling the everlasting pressure of their destination with every step.

*   *   *

He remembered exactly how it had looked, and that was why he didn’t recognise it at first: the forest of broken spears was gone, and there were no gouged ruts in the earth, no men face down in the churned mud.

Marlas was now a tumble of grass and wildflowers in the blowy, sweet summer weather, shifting back and forth in the gentle air. Here and there an insect droned, a drowsy sound. A dragonfly dipped and darted. Their horses waded, fording long grass. They joined the wide road, sunlight dappling their path.

As their column crossed the fields, Damen found himself searching for some mark of what had happened. There was
nothing. No one remarked on it. No one said,
It was here.
It got worse as they got closer, as though the only evidence of the battle was the feeling in his chest.

And then the fort itself came into view.

Marlas had always been beautiful. It was a Veretian fort in the grand style, with high-flung battlements and crenelles, its elegant arches presiding over green fields.

It still looked like that, from a distance. It was an outline of Veretian architecture, promising an interior of high open galleries, banded in carving, filigree gilt and decorative tile.

Damen remembered, suddenly, the day of the victory ceremonies, the cutting down of the tapestries, the slashing of the flags.

Akielons thronged near the gates, men and women straining for a glimpse of their returned King. Akielon soldiers filled the inner courtyard, and Akielon banners hung from every vantage, gold lions on red.

Damen looked at the courtyard. The parapets were broken down and reshaped. The stonework hacked off. The stone itself carted off for use in new building, the splendid rooftops and towers levelled into an Akielon style.

Damen told himself he thought Veretian ornamentation wasteful. In Arles, his eyes had begged for relief; he had wished daily for a stretch of plain wall. All he could see now was the empty floor with its tiles pulled up, the ruined ceiling, the bare, painfully stripped stone.

Laurent swung down from his horse, thanking Nikandros
for the welcome. He walked past the rows of Akielon soldiers in flawless formation.

Indoors, the fort’s household gathered, excited and proud, to meet and serve their King. Damen and Laurent were jointly presented to those household officials who would serve them during their time here. They moved from the first set of rooms to the second, rounding the corner and coming into the viewing hall.

Lining the hall were two dozen slaves.

They were arrayed in two rows, prostrated, their foreheads to the floor. All were male, ranging in age from perhaps nineteen to twenty-five, with different looks and different colouring, their eyes and lips accentuated by paint. Beside them, the Keeper of Slaves stood waiting.

Nikandros frowned. ‘The King has already made his preference for no slaves known.’

‘These slaves are provided for use of our King’s guest, the Prince of Vere.’ Kolnas, the Keeper of Slaves, bowed respectfully. Laurent strolled forward.

‘I like that one,’ said Laurent.

The slaves were dressed in the northern style, in light gauzy silks that threaded through the link on their collar and covered very little. Laurent was indicating to the third slave to the left, a dark, bowed head.

‘An excellent choice,’ said Kolnas. ‘Isander, step forward.’

Isander was olive-skinned and lithe as a fawn, with dark hair and eyes: Akielon colouring. He shared that with
Nikandros; with Damen. He was younger than Damen, nineteen or twenty. Male, either in deference to Veretian customs, or to suit Laurent’s assumed preferences. He looked like Nikandros’s best, Damen thought. It was probably rare that he was given out to guests. No; he was new, unbedded. Nikandros would never offer royalty anything less than a slave’s First Night.

Damen frowned. Isander was flushing deeply with the honour of being chosen. Shyness radiating from him, he rose, and then went to his knees a body length in front of the others, offering himself with all the sweet grace of a palace slave, too well trained to place himself ostentatiously in front of Laurent.

‘We will have him prepared and brought to you this evening for his First Night,’ Kolnas said.

‘First Night?’ said Laurent.

‘Slaves are trained in the arts of pleasure, but they do not lie with another until their First Night,’ Kolnas said. ‘Here we use the same strict, classical training that is used in the royal palace. Skills are learned through instruction, and practised with indirect methods. The slave remains wholly untouched, kept pure for the first use of the Exalted.’

Laurent’s eyes lifted to Damen’s.

‘I never did learn how to command a bed slave,’ said Laurent. ‘Teach me.’

‘They cannot speak Veretian, Your Highness,’ Kolnas explained. ‘In the Akielon language, using the plain form
of address is appropriate. To command any act of service is to honour a slave. The more personal the service, the greater the honour.’

‘Really? Come here,’ said Laurent.

Isander rose for the second time, a faint tremor in his body as he came as close as he dared before dropping to the ground again, his cheeks bright red. He looked a little dazed by the attention. Laurent extended the tip of his boot.

‘Kiss it,’ he said. His eyes were on Damen.

His boot was beautifully turned, his clothing immaculate even after the long ride. Isander kissed the toe tip, then the ankle. Damen thought, that’s where skin would be if he was wearing a sandal. Then, in a moment of unspeakable daring, Isander leaned in and rubbed his cheek against the leather of the boot at Laurent’s calf, a sign of exceptional intimacy and the desire to please.

‘Good boy,’ said Laurent, reaching down to pet Isander’s dark curls, while Isander’s eyes closed and he flushed over.

Kolnas preened, pleased that his selection was appreciated. Damen could see that the fort’s household around them was also pleased, having gone to great lengths to make Laurent feel welcome. They had considered with intense thoughtfulness Veretian culture and Veretian practices. All the slaves were highly attractive, and all were male, so that the Prince might use them in bed without offending Veretian custom.

It was pointless. There were two dozen slaves here, while
the number of times Laurent had had sex in his life could probably be counted on one hand. Laurent was just going to be dragging twenty-four young men back to his rooms to sit around doing nothing. They wouldn’t even be able to unlace Veretian clothing.

‘Can he also serve me in the baths?’ said Laurent.

‘And at the feast for the bannermen this evening when they give their pledge, if that pleases you, Your Highness,’ said Kolnas.

‘It pleases me,’ said Laurent.

*   *   *

Home was not supposed to have felt like this.

His squires wrapped him in the traditional garment. Cloth wound around his waist and over his shoulder, the sort of ceremonial Akielon garb that you could unreel from a person by taking hold of one end and pulling while they rotated. They brought sandals for his feet and the laurel for his head, performing the ritual motions in silence while he stood still for it. It was not appropriate that they speak or look at his person.

Exalted
. He could feel their discomfort, their need to debase themselves; this sort of proximity to royalty permitted only the extreme submissiveness of slaves.

He had sent away the slaves. He had sent them away as he had sent them away in the camp, and after he had stood in the silence of his suite waiting for his squires.

Laurent, he knew, was rooming in the adjoining suite, separated from him by a single wall. Damen was in the King’s chambers, which any lord who built a fort installed, in the hope the King would stop there. But even the former lord of Marlas’s optimism had not stretched to the idea that the heads of two royal families would visit simultaneously. To preserve their arrangements of scrupulous equality, Laurent was in the Queen’s chambers, beyond that wall.

Isander was probably tending him, gamely doing his best with the laces. He would have to unhook the lacings on the back of the neck of Laurent’s riding leathers before drawing them through their eyelets. Or Laurent had taken Isander into the baths, to be undressed by him there. Isander would be flushed with pride at being chosen for the task.
Attend me.
Damen felt his hands curl into fists.

He turned his mind to political matters. He and Laurent would now meet the smaller northern provincial leaders in the hall, where there would be wine and feasting and Nikandros’s bannermen would come, one by one, to make their pledge, swelling the ranks of their army.

When the last laurel leaf was arranged, the last piece of fabric wound into place, Damen proceeded with his squires into the hall.

Men and women reclined on couches, amid scattered low tables or on low, cushioned benches. Makedon leaned, selecting a slice of peeled orange. Pallas, the handsome officer-champion, reclined with the easy posture that spoke
to his aristocratic blood. Straton had hitched his skirts up and drawn his legs onto the couch, crossing them at the ankles. Everyone whom rank or office entitled to be here was assembled, and with every northerner of standing gathered to give their pledge, the hall was packed full.

The Veretians present were mostly vertical, standing awkwardly in small groups, one or two perched gingerly on the edge of a seat.

And all through the hall, there were slaves.

Slaves in hip cloths carried delicacies on small platters. Slaves fanned reclined Akielon guests with woven palm leaves. A male slave filled a shallow wine cup for an Akielon nobleman. A slave held out a finger bowl of rose water, and an Akielon woman dipped her fingers in it without even glancing at the slave. He heard the plucked strings of a kithara, and glimpsed the measured steps of a slave’s dance, just for a moment, before he walked through the doors.

When Damen entered, the hall fell silent.