‘I told you you shouldn’t thank me,’ said Laurent.
And so they took him back into his small, familiar, over-decorated room.
It had been a long, sleepless night, and he had a pallet and cushions on which to rest, but there was a feeling in his chest that prevented sleeping. As he looked around the room, the feeling intensified. There were two arched windows along the wall to his left, with low wide sills, each covered with patterned grilles. They looked out on the same gardens as Laurent’s loggia, which he knew from the position of his room in Laurent’s apartments, not from personal observation. His chain would not stretch far enough to give him a view. He could imagine below the tumbled water and cool greenery that characterised Veretian interior courtyards. But he could not see them.
What he could see, he knew. He knew every inch of this room, every curl of the ceiling, every frond-curve of the window grille. He knew the opposite wall. He knew the unmovable iron link in the floor, and the drag of the chain, and its weight. He knew the twelfth tile which marked the limit of his movements when the chain pulled taut. It had all been exactly the same each and every day since his arrival, with a change only in the colour of the cushions on the pallet, which were whisked in and out as though from some inexhaustible supply.
Around
mid-morning, a servant entered, bearing the morning meal, left him with it, and hastened away. The doors closed.
He was alone. The delicate platter contained cheeses, warm flaking breads, a handful of wild cherries in their own shallow silver dish, a pastry artfully shaped. Each item was considered, designed, so that the display of food, like everything else, was beautiful.
He threw it across the room in an expression of total violent impotent rage.
He regretted this almost as soon as he’d done it. When the servant reentered later, and white-faced with nerves began creeping around the edges of the room picking up cheese, he felt ridiculous.
Then of course Radel had to enter and view the disorder, fixing Damen with a familiar look.
‘Throw as much food as you like. Nothing will change. For the duration of the Prince’s stay at the border, you will not leave this room. The Prince’s orders. You will wash here, and dress here, and remain here. The excursions you have enjoyed to banquets, to hunts and to the baths are ended. You will not be let off that chain.’
For the duration of the Prince’s stay at the border. Damen closed his eyes briefly.
‘When does he leave?’
‘Two days hence.’
‘How long will he be gone?’
‘Several months.’
It was incidental information to Radel, who spoke the words oblivious to their effect on Damen. Radel dropped a small pile of clothing onto the ground.
‘Change.’
Damen must have shown some reaction in his expression, because Radel continued: ‘The Prince dislikes you in Veretian clothing. He ordered the offense remedied. They are clothes for civilised men.’
He changed. He picked up the clothes Radel had dropped from their little folded pile, not that there was much fabric to fold. It was back to slave garments. The Veretian clothing in which he’d escaped was removed by the servants as though it had never been.
Time, excruciatingly, passed.
That one brief glimpse of freedom made him ache for the world outside this palace. He was aware, too, of an illogical frustration: escape, he had thought, would end in freedom or death—but whatever the outcome, it would make some kind of difference. Except now he was back here.
How was it possible that all of the fantastical events of last night had affected no change in his circumstances at all?
The idea of being trapped inside this room for several months—
Perhaps it was natural, trapped like a fly in this filigree web, that his mind should fixate on Laurent, with his spider’s brain under the yellow hair. Last night, Damen had not given much thought to Laurent or the plot that centred on him: his mind had been filled with thoughts of escape; he’d had neither the time nor the inclination to muse on Veretian treachery.
But now he was alone with nothing to think about except the strange, bloody attack.
And so, as the sun climbed its way from morning to afternoon, he found himself remembering the three men, with their Veretian voices and Akielon knives. These three men attacked the slave, Laurent had said. Laurent needed no reason to lie, but why deny he’d been attacked at all? It helped the perpetrator.
He remembered Laurent’s calculating cut with the knife, and the struggle after, Laurent’s body hard with resistance, the breath in his chest drug-quickened. There were easier ways to kill a prince.
Three men, armed with weapons from Sicyon. The Akielon gift-slave brought in to be blamed. The drug, the planned rape. And Laurent, winnowing around talking. And lying. And killing.
He understood.