‘Pretty or not, I can’t take two dozen untrained slaves back with me to Bazal,’ Torveld was saying.
Damen took Nicaise by the wrist. ‘What have you done?’
‘Let go! I haven’t done anything,’ said Nicaise. He rubbed his wrist when Damen released it. To Laurent: ‘You let him speak to his betters like that?’
‘Not to his betters,’ said Laurent.
Nicaise flushed at that. Ancel was still lazily twirling the fire stick. The flickering of the flames cast an orange light. The heat, when it came near, was surprising. Erasmus had turned white, as though about to vomit in front of everyone.
‘Stop this,’ said Damen to Laurent. ‘It’s cruel. That boy was badly burned. He’s afraid of the fire.’
‘Burned?’ said Torveld.
Nicaise said, quickly, ‘Not burned, branded. He has the scars all over his leg. They’re ugly.’
Torveld was looking at Erasmus, whose eyes were glassy and showed a kind of stupefied hopelessness. If you knew what he thought he was facing, it was hard to believe he was kneeling down waiting for it.
Torveld said, ‘Have the fire put out.’
The sudden acrid smell of smoke drowned out the Veretian perfumes. The fire was out. Summoned forward, Erasmus managed a slightly better prostration, and seemed to calm further in the presence of Laurent, which made little sense until Damen recalled that Erasmus had thought of Laurent as ‘kind’.
Torveld asked Erasmus several questions, which Erasmus answered in Patran with shy but improving form. After that, Torveld’s fingers somehow found their way to rest for a moment protectively on the top of Erasmus’s head. After that, Torveld asked Erasmus to sit beside him during the trade negotiations.
After that, Erasmus kissed Torveld’s toe, then ankle, his curls brushing against Torveld’s firm calf muscle.
Damen looked at Laurent, who had simply let all of this unfold before him. He could see what had made Torveld transfer his affections. There was a superficial resemblance between the Prince and the slave. Erasmus’s fair skin and burnished hair were the closest thing in the room to Laurent’s gold and ivory colouring. But Erasmus had something Laurent lacked: a vulnerability, a need for caring, and a yearning to be mastered that was almost palpable. In Laurent there was only a patrician coolness, and if the purity of Laurent’s profile drew the eye, Damen had the scars on his back to prove that one could look, but not touch.
‘You planned this!’ said Nicaise, his low voice was a hiss. ‘You wanted him to see—you tricked me!’ In the same voice a lover might have said: How could you! Except there was anger there too. And spite.
‘You had a choice,’ said Laurent. ‘You didn’t have to show me your claws.’
‘You tricked me,’ said Nicaise. ‘I’m going to tell—’
‘Tell him,’ said Laurent. ‘All about what I’ve done, and how you helped me. How do you think he’ll react? Shall we find out? Let’s go together.’
Nicaise gave Laurent a look that was desperately, spitefully calculating.
‘Oh, will you—enough,’ said Laurent. ‘Enough. You’re learning. It won’t be as easy to do next time.’
‘I promise you, it won’t,’ said Nicaise venomously, and he left without, Damen noted, giving Laurent his earring.
Fed, sated and entertained, the court dispersed and the Council and Regent sat down and began negotiations. When the Regent called for wine, it was Ancel who poured it. And when he was done, Ancel was invited to sit beside the Regent, which he did, very decoratively, with a well-pleased expression on his face.
Damen had to smile. He supposed that he couldn’t blame Ancel for ambition. And it wasn’t a bad achievement, for an eighteen-year-old boy. There were courtiers aplenty in Damen’s homeland who would consider it the height of
accomplishment to attain a king’s bed. The more so if it was a position of any permanence.
Ancel was not the only one to have gotten what he wanted tonight. Laurent had delivered all Damen had asked for, tied up neatly in a bow. All within the space of a day. If you put everything else aside, you had to admire it for sheer organisational efficiency.
If you did not put everything else aside, you recalled that this was Laurent, and that he had lied and cheated in order to bring this about; you thought about Erasmus, dragged through a night of horrors, and about what it meant for an adult to trick and use a boy who, for all he soundly deserved it, was still only thirteen.
‘It’s done,’ said Laurent, who had come to stand beside him.
Laurent seemed, bizarrely, to be in a good mood. He leaned a shoulder rather casually against the wall. His voice was not exactly warm, but nor was the ice edge polished to cut.
‘I’ve arranged for Torveld to meet with you later, to discuss the transportation of the slaves. Did you know that Kastor sent them to us without any handlers from Akielos?’
‘I thought you and Torveld would have other plans.’ It just came out.