Their departure should have been a relief. So should the Regent’s intervention with his nephew. But Damen recalled the look in Laurent’s blue eyes, and though left alone, with the remainder of the night to rest undisturbed, he could not have said whether the Regent’s mercy had improved his situation, or worsened it.
CHAPTER 2
‘THE REGENT WAS here last night?’ The man with the rings on his fingers greeted Damen with no preamble. When Damen nodded, he frowned, two lines in the centre of his forehead. ‘What was the Prince’s mood?’
‘Delightful,’ said Damen.
The ringed man gave him a hard stare. He broke from it to give a brief order to the servant who was clearing away the remains of Damen’s meal. Then he spoke again to Damen.
‘I am Radel. I am the Overseer. I have only one thing to explain to you. They say in Akielos, you attacked your guards. If you do that here, I will have you drugged as you were aboard the ship, and have various privileges removed. Do you understand?’
‘Yes.’
Another stare, as though this answer was in some way suspect.
‘It is your honour to have joined the Prince’s household. Many desire such a position. Whatever your disgrace in your own country, it has brought you to a position of privilege here. You should bow down on your knees in gratitude to the Prince that this is so. Your pride should be put aside, and the petty business of your former life forgotten. You exist only to please the Crown Prince, for whom this country is held in stewardship—who will ascend the throne as King.’
‘Yes,’ said Damen, and did his best to look grateful and accepting.
Waking, there had been no confusion as to where he was, unlike yesterday. His memory was very clear. His body had immediately protested Laurent’s mistreatment, but Damen, taking a brief inventory, had judged his hurts no worse than those he had occasionally received in the training arena, and put the matter to one side.
As Radel spoke, he heard the far away sound of an unfamiliar stringed instrument playing a Veretian melody. Sound travelled through these doors and windows with their many little apertures.
The irony was that in some ways Radel’s description of his situation as privileged was correct. This was not the rank cell he had inhabited in Akielos, nor was it the drugged, hazily remembered confinement aboard the ship. This room was not a prison room, it was part of the royal pet residences. Damen’s meal had been served on a gilt plate intricately modelled with foliage, and when the evening breeze lifted, in through the screened windows came the delicate scent of jasmine and frangipani.
Except that it was a prison. Except that he had a collar and chain around his neck, and was alone, among enemies, many miles from home.
His first privilege was to be blindfolded and taken, complete with escort, to be washed and readied—a ritual he had learned in Akielos. The palace outside of his rooms remained a blindfolded mystery. The sound of the stringed instrument grew briefly louder, then faded into a half-heard echo. Once or twice he heard the low, musical sound of voices. Once, a laugh, soft and lover-like.
As he was taken through the pet residences, Damen remembered that he was not the only Akielon to have been gifted to Vere, and felt a groundswell of concern for the others. Sheltered Akielon palace slaves would likely be disoriented and vulnerable, never having learned the skills they needed to fend for themselves. Could they even talk to their masters? They were schooled in various languages, but Veretian was not likely to be one of them. Dealings with Vere were limited and, until the arrival of Councillor Guion, largely hostile. The only reason Damen had that language was that his father had insisted that, for a prince, learning the words of an enemy was as important as learning the words of a friend.
The blindfold was removed.
He would never get used to the ornamentation. From its arched ceiling to the depression in which lapped the water of the baths, the room was covered in tiny painted tiles, gleaming in blues, greens and gold. All sound was reduced to hollow echoes and curling steam. A series of curved alcoves for dalliance (currently empty) ringed the walls, by each of them braziers in fantastic shapes. The fretted doors were not wood, but metal. The only instrument of restraint was an incongruous heavy wooden dock. It did not match the rest of the baths at all, and Damen tried not to think that it had been brought here expressly for him. Averting his eyes from it, he found himself looking at the metal intaglio of the door. Figures twined around one another, all male. Their positions were not ambiguous. He shifted his eyes back to the baths.
‘They are natural hot springs,’ Radel explained, as though to a child. ‘The water comes from a great underground river that is hot.’
A great underground river that is hot. Damen said, ‘In Akielos, we use a system of aqueducts to achieve the same effect.’
Radel frowned. ‘I suppose you think that is very clever.’ He was already signalling to one of the servants, his manner slightly distracted.
They stripped him and washed him without tying him up, and Damen behaved with admirable docility, resolved to prove that he could be trusted with small freedoms. Perhaps it worked, or perhaps Radel was used to tractable charges—an overseer, not a jailor—for he said, ‘You will soak. Five minutes.’
Curved steps descended into the water. His es
cort retreated outside; his collar was released from its chain.
Damen immersed himself in the water, enjoying the brief, unexpected sensation of freedom. The water was so hot it was almost on the threshold of tolerance, yet it felt good. The heat seeped into him, melting the ache of abused limbs and loosening muscles that were locked hard with tension.
Radel had thrown a substance onto the braziers as he left, so that they flared and then smoked. Almost immediately, the room had filled with an over-sweet scent, mingling with the steam. It perfused the senses, and Damen felt himself relax further.
His thoughts, drifting a little, found their way to Laurent.
You have a scar. Damen’s fingers slid across his wet chest, reaching his collarbone and then following the line of the faint pale scar, feeling an echo of the uneasiness that had stirred in him last night.
It was Laurent’s older brother who had inflicted that scar, six years ago, in battle at Marlas. Auguste, the heir and pride of Vere. Damen recalled his dark golden hair, the starburst blazon of the Crown Prince on his shield splattered over with mud, with blood, dented and almost unrecognisable, like his once-fine filigree armour. He recalled his own desperation in those moments, the scrape of metal against metal, the harsh sounds of breathing that might have been his own, and the feeling of fighting as he never had, all out, for his life.
He pushed the memory to one side, only to have it replaced by another. Darker than the first, and older. Somewhere in the depths of his mind, one fight resonated with another. Damen’s fingers dropped below the water line. The other scar Damen carried was lower on his body. Not Auguste. Not on a battlefield.