Chapter Text
‘He said you’d try to keep me talking. He said you had a mouth like a whore. He said you’d lie, wheedle, suck up to me.’ The slow smile widened. ‘He said, “The only way to make sure my nephew doesn’t talk his way free is to cut his tongue out.”’ As he spoke, Govart pulled out a knife.
The room around Laurent greyed; his whole attention narrowed, his thoughts attenuating.
‘Except that you want to hear it,’ said Laurent, because this was only beginning, and it was a long, winding, bloody road till the end. ‘You want to hear all of it. Every last broken syllable. It’s the one thing my uncle never understood about you.’
‘Yeah? What’s that?’
‘You always wanted to be on the other side of the door,’ said Laurent. ‘And now you are.’
‘You’re right.’ Govart paused, his wide yellow-toothed grin growing stale on his face. ‘But your Uncle was right too. There really is only one way to shut you
Damen was here; they had arrived, dirt and grime covered, wounded, some of them, pushing past exhaustion because it was what discipline demanded of them, to look out at the sight that greeted them.
Rows upon rows of peaked, coloured tents were pitched on the field outside Fortaine’s walls, the sun lighting the pavilions, the banners, and the silks of a graceful encampment. It was a city of tents, and it camped a fresh, intact force of Laurent’s men, who had not fought and died through the morning.
The constructed arrogance of the display was intentional. It said, exquisitely: Did you exert yourself at Charcy? I have been here examining my nails.
Nikandros reined in alongside him. ‘Uncle and nephew are alike. They send other men to do their fighting for them.’
Damen was silent. What he felt in his chest was a hardness like anger. He looked at the elegant silken city and thought about men dying on the field at Charcy.
Some kind of herald’s greeting party was riding towards them. He gripped the Regent’s bloody, torn banner in his hand.
‘Just me,’ said Damen, and put his heels into his horse.
About halfway across the field, he was met by the herald, who arrived with an anxious party of four attendants saying something urgent about protocol. Damen listened to four words of it.
‘Don’t worry,’ said Damen. ‘He’s expecting me.’
Inside the encampment, he swung down off his horse and tossed the reins to a passing servant, ignoring the flurry of activity that his arrival provoked, the heralds cantering in desperately behind him.
Without even pulling off his gauntlets, he strode to the tent. He knew its high scalloped folds; he knew the starburst pennant. No one stopped him. Not even when he reached the tent and dismissed the soldier at the entrance with a single order: ‘Go.’ He didn’t bother to see if his order was obeyed. The soldier let him through: of course he did; this had all been planned. Laurent was ready for him whether he came docilely behind the herald or, as he did now, the dirt and the sweat of the battle still on him, blood dried in the places where a cursory swipe with a cloth had not reached it.
He swept the tent flap back with an arm, and stepped inside.
Silken privacy, as the tent flap settled behind him. He stood in a pavilion tent, its high ceiling canopied like a flowerhead, supported by six thick interior poles wrapped in spiralled silk. It was enclosing despite its size, the fall of the flap enough to mute the sounds from outside.
This was the place Laurent had chosen. He made himself acquainted with it. There were a few furnishings, low seats, cushions, and short a trestle table, at which sat two figures.
Jord knelt on the cushion nearest the entrance, speaking in a low, hushed, urgent tone over the tabletop. At the sound of the flap falling he looked back at Damen in the doorway and rose.
Jord couldn’t meet his gaze. The former captain of the guard looked behind himself once more, as if waiting for a command from his Prince, though none came. He hung his head and brushed wordlessly past Damen and out of the tent.
At his departure Damen leveled his attention on the exquisitely attired figure draped across the seat at the other end of the table, watching him.
The silence hung thick.
Damen forced himself to take it in. He forced himself to take it all in, and to stroll himself inside the tent, so that he stood in the elegant surrounds in full armour, crushing delicate embroidered silks under his muddied feet.
He threw the Regent’s banner down onto the table. It clattered, in a mess of mud and stained silk. Then turned his eyes to Laurent. He wondered what Laurent saw when he looked at him. He knew he looked different.
‘Charcy is won.’
Nothing. Just a cold blue gaze starting back at him.
He and his men had bled for Charcy, hour after punishing hour. The clash of steel, the cries of the dying; the sounds still echoed in his skull.
Of the three thousand Akielons who had marched under his command, barely half had left the field with their lives. The weight of their sacrifice pressed against his chest, heavier than his armor. Rage began to stir, slow and deliberate, like a blade being drawn. He had trusted Laurent. He had followed his plan. And now he stood in front of him with blood on his hands and silence for thanks.
‘Your men think you’re a coward. Nikandros thinks that you deceived us. That you sent us to Charcy, and left us there to die by your uncle’s sword.’
Damen closed the distance in measured strides, stopping with only an arm’s length between them. He forced a breath, the air between them feeling taut.
‘Please. Tell me it isn’t true.’ His voice softening, pleading. ‘You wouldn’t break an oath,’ said Damen, past the feeling in his chest. ‘Even to me.’
Silence.
Anger surged. No, not just anger, but a white hot fury. His hands curled into fists at his sides. ‘Do you have nothing to say to me?’ he demanded, ‘You, of all people. You who’s never lacked for words. Who can wield a sentence like a sword.’ He stepped closer, the edge in his voice turning dangerous. ‘Now you sit there in silence?’
‘I hope it was worth it,’ he hissed, each word sharp with venom. ‘Lying with me just to keep me in line. To make sure I stayed loyal.’ He leaned in, his voice dropping to a brutal whisper. ‘Because you should know this. You gave yourself to the man who killed your brother.’
He let the words hang, cruel and unforgiving.
‘You’re disgusting.’
Damen dropped to a crouch, bringing himself level with the man who had dropped his gaze. He searched Laurent’s face, desperate for something; anger, shame, remorse, anything that proved he felt the weight of what had been done.
‘Look at me,’ he growled, his voice low and trembling with a mixture of fury and hurt.
Slowly, Laurent’s red-rimmed eyes lifted to meet his, nameless emotion simmering beneath the surface.
‘Say something,’ Damen demanded, his voice cracking with desperation. Then raising, ‘Answer me!’— a command that brooked no refusal. But no reply came.
Before he could stop himself, Damen’s arm snapped out. The crack of the fist against Laurent’s cheek shattering the stillness of the tent.
Laurent’s head snapped sharply to the side, a raw, pained cry tearing from his throat.