They had to push hard to reach Nesson after the delays of the morning, but the men did so willingly, and when they reached the keep the sunset was only just beginning to drain from the sky.
Reporting to Jord, Damen found himself caught in a conversation that he wasn’t ready for. ‘I could tell from your face. You didn’t know he could fight.’
‘No,’ said Damen. ‘I didn’t.’
‘It’s in his blood.’
‘The Regent’s men seemed just as surprised as I was.’
‘He’s private about it. You saw his personal training ring, inside the palace. He’ll go a few rounds with some of the Prince’s Guard occasionally, with Orlant, with me—laid me out a few times. He’s not as good as his brother was, but you only have to be half as good as Auguste to be ten times better than everyone else.’
In his blood: that wasn’t quite it. There were as many differences as similarities between the two brothers: Laurent’s build less powerful, his style built around grace and intelligence, quicksilver where Auguste had been gold.
Nesson turned out to be different to Baillieux in two ways. First, it was attached to a respectably sized township, which lay near one of the few traversable passes through the mountains and received trade in the summer from the Vaskian province of Ver-Vassel. Second, it was well kept enough—just—for the men to spend the night in the barracks, and Laurent to lodge in the keep.
Damen was sent through the low door into the bedchamber. Laurent was outside, still mounted, attending to some matter involving outriders. Damen was given the servant’s task of lighting the candles and the fire, which he did with his mind elsewhere. On the long ride from Baillieux, there had been a lot of time for thought. At first he
had simply turned the duel he had witnessed over in his mind.
Now he thought about the first time he had seen the Regent discipline Laurent, stripping him of his lands. It was a punishment that might have been meted out privately, but the Regent had turned it into a public display. Embrace the slave, the Regent had ordered at the end of it: a gratuity, a garnish, an act of superfluous humiliation.
He thought about the ring, the place where the court gathered to watch private acts played out in public, humiliations and simulated rapes turned into spectacle while the court looked on.
And then he thought about Laurent. The night of the banquet when Laurent had orchestrated the exchange of slaves had been a long, public battle with his uncle, planned out meticulously beforehand, and executed with precision. Damen thought about Nicaise, seated beside him at the high table, and Erasmus, warned in advance.
He has a mind for details, Radel had said.
Damen was finishing with the fire when Laurent came into the room, still in riding clothes. He looked relaxed and fair, as though weathering a duel, cutting down his Captain, and following that up with a day-long ride had had no effect on him at all.
By now Damen knew him too well to be taken in by it. By any of it.
He said, ‘Did you pay that woman to fuck Govart?’
Laurent paused in the act of stripping off his riding gloves and then, deliberately, he continued. He worked the leather from each finger individually. His voice was steady.
‘I paid her to approach him. I didn’t force his cock into her mouth,’ Laurent said.
Damen thought about being asked to interrupt Govart in the stables, and the fact that there were no camp followers at all riding with this troop.
Laurent said, ‘He had a choice.’
‘No,’ said Damen. ‘You only made him think he did.’
Laurent turned the same cool look on him that he had turned on Govart. ‘Expostulation? You were right. It needed to happen now. I was waiting for a confrontation to arise naturally, but that was taking too long.’
Damen stared at him. Guessing at it was one thing, but hearing the words spoken aloud was something else. ‘“Right”? I didn’t mean—’ He cut himself off.
‘Say it,’ said Laurent.
‘You broke a man today. Doesn’t that affect you at all? These are lives, not pieces in a chess game with your uncle.’
‘You’re wrong. We are on my uncle’s board and these men are all his pieces.’
‘Then each time you move one of them, you can congratulate yourself on how much like him you are.’
It just came out. He was in part still reverberating with the blow of having had his guess confirmed. He certainly didn’t expect the words to have the effect on Laurent that they did. They stopped Laurent in his tracks. Damen didn’t think he’d ever seen Laurent caught completely without words before, and since he couldn’t imagine the circumstance was going to last long, he hurried to press his advantage.
‘If you bind your men to you with deception, how can you ever trust them? You have qualities they will come to admire. Why not let them grow to trust you naturally, and in that way—’