Govart casually clasped the back of Erasmus’s gold collar and dragged him up by it, as an uncaring owner might heft a dog around. Erasmus, a boy not a dog, choked violently as the collar dug into his tender throat, caught at the join of neck and jaw, just above his Adam’s apple.
‘Shut up.’ Govart, irritated by the coughing, slapped him hard across the face.
Damen felt the jerk of restraint as his body hit the limits of his chains, heard the metallic sound before he even realised he’d reacted. ‘Let him go.’
‘You want me to?’ He shook Erasmus by the collar for punctuation. Erasmus, who had understood shut up, was wet-eyed from the brief choking, but silent. ‘Don’t think I will. Got told to haul him back. No one said I couldn’t enjoy myself on the way.’
Damen said, ‘If you want another go around, all you have to do is take a step forward.’ It would please him a great deal to hurt Govart.
‘I’d rather fuck your sweetheart,’ said Govart. ‘The way I figure it, I’m owed a fuck.’
As he spoke, Govart pushed up the slave tunic, revealing the curves beneath. Erasmus didn’t struggle when Govart kicked his ankles apart and lifted his arms up. He let himself be manhandled, and then stayed in position, awkwardly bent over.
The realisation that Govart was going to fuck Erasmus right here in front of him hit with the same sense of unreality that he’d felt when faced with Ancel. It wasn’t possible that something like this was going to happen—that this court was so depraved that a mercenary could rape a royal slave a scant distance from the gathered court. There was no one within hearing distance except for the disinterested guard. Erasmus’s face, red with humiliation, was turned determinedly away from Damen.
‘The way I figure it—’ Govart used this phrase again. ‘—your master’s the one who fucked us both. He’s the one who should really be getting it. But in the dark, one blond’s as good as another. Better,’ said Govart. ‘Stick your cock in that frigid bitch, he’d freeze it off. This one likes it.’
He did something with his hand under the bunched up tunic. Erasmus made a sound. Damen jerked, and this time the harsh metallic noise suggested loudly that the ancient iron was about to give.
The sound of it shook the guard loose from his post.
‘There some problem?’
‘He doesn’t like me fucking his little slave friend,’ said Govart. Erasmus, mortifyingly exposed, looked like he was silently breaking down.
‘Fuck him somewhere else then,’ the guard said.
Govart smiled. Then he pushed Erasmus hard in the small of the back.
‘I will,’ Govart said. Shoving Erasmus ahead of him, he disappeared along the paths, and there was absolutely nothing Damen could do to stop him.
Night turned to morning. The garden entertainments ended. Damen was deposited back in his room, clean and tended and chained and powerless.
Laurent’s prediction regarding the reaction of the guards—and the servants, and all the members of his retinue—turned out to be stingingly accurate. Laurent’s household reacted to collusion with the Regent with anger and enmity. The fragile relationships Damen had managed to build were gone.
It was the worst possible time for a change in attitude. Now, when those relationships might have brought him news, or been able in some small way to influence the treatment of the slaves.
He had no thought of his own freedom. There was only the constant pull of concern and of responsibility. To escape alone would be an act of selfishness and betrayal. He could not leave, not if it meant abandoning the others to their fate. And yet, he was totally without power to affect any change in their circumstances.
Erasmus was right. His promise to help was an empty one.
Outside his room, several things were happening. The first was that, in response to the Regent’s edicts, the Prince’s household was being cut back. Without access to income from his various estates, Laurent’s retinue was substantially diminished and his spending curtailed. In the whirlwind of changes, Damen’s room was moved from the royal pet residences to somewhere inside Laurent’s wing of the palace.
It didn’t help him. His new room had the same number of guards, the same pallet, the same silks and cushions, the same iron link in the floor, though this one looked newly installed. Even short of funds, Laurent didn’t seem inclined to skimp on security for his Akielon prisoner. Unfortunately.
From snippets of overheard conversation Damen learned that, elsewhere, the delegation from Patras had arrived to discuss trade with Vere. Patras bordered on Akielos, and was a country of similar culture—not traditionally an ally of Vere. The news of talks concerned him. Was the delegation here simply to discuss trade, or was it part of some larger shift in the political landscape?
He had about as much luck finding out the business of the Patran delegation as he had had in helping the slaves, which was to say none at all.
There had to be something he could do.
There was nothing he could do.
To face his own powerlessness was awful. He had at no point since his capture truly thought of himself as a slave. He had played lip service to the role, at best. He had viewed punishments as no more than minor obstacles, because this situation in his mind was temporary. He had believed that escape was in his future. He still believed that.
He wanted to be free. He wanted to find his way home. He wanted to stand in the capital, raised on its marble pillars, and look out over the greens and blues of mountains and ocean. He wanted to face Kastor, his brother, and ask him, man to man, why he had done what he had done. But life in Akielos went on without Damianos. These slaves had no one else to help them.
And what did it mean, to be a prince, if he did not strive to protect those weaker than himself?