‘You will accompany me,’ said Laurent, ‘in lieu of a guard, and we leave at dusk. And that is as far as I will bend on this subject. Any further opining from you will not meet with a loving reception.’
‘All right,’ said Damen.
‘All right,’ said Laurent, after a moment had passed.
* * *
They brought the piebald back on a lead that Laurent fashioned by the simple expedient of unclipping the reins of his own horse, looping them and dropping the loop over the piebald’s head. Damen took possession of the lead rope, since Laurent had to give all his attention to the task of riding his own horse without reins.
Laurent did not divulge any further information about his business in Nesson-Eloy, and as little as he liked the idea, Damen knew better than to ask him.
At camp, Damen dealt with the horses. When he returned to the tent, Laurent was wearing an expensive version of riding leathers, and there was more clothing laid out on the bed.
‘Change into those,’ said Laurent.
The clothes, when Damen lifted them from the bed, were soft under his hands, dark like the clothing worn by the nobility, and of the same quality.
He changed. It took a long time, as it always did with Veretian clothing, though at least these were riding clothes and not court clothing. Still, it was fussier than anything Damen had ever worn in his life, and by far the most luxurious clothing he had been given to wear since his arrival in Vere. This wasn’t soldiering gear, this was the clothing of an aristocrat.
It was, he now learned first hand, much more difficult to lace when you were the one wearing it than it was when you were tying the laces on somebody else. When he was done, he felt overdressed and strange. Even the shapes of the clothes were different, they changed him into something foreign, something that he had never imagined himself being, more so than the armour, or the crude clothing of the soldiers that he had worn.
‘This doesn’t suit me,’ he said, meaning that it didn’t suit him to wear them.
‘No. It doesn’t. You look like one of us,’ said Laurent. He looked at Damen with his intolerant blue eyes. ‘It’s dusk. Go and tell Jord to expect my return mid-morning, and to carry on as usual in my absence. Then meet me by the horses. We leave as soon as you’re done.’
* * *
The problem with tents was that you couldn’t knock. Damen leaned his weight on one of the poles and called out.
The delay from within was pronounced. Finally Jord appeared, shirtless and wide-shouldered. Rather than waste time tying laces, he was holding his pants up with a casual hand.
The raised tent flap showed the source of the delay. Pale-limbed, tangled in bedding, Aimeric had pushed himself up on one elbow, flushed from his chest all the way up past his neck.
‘The Prince has business away from the camp,’ said Damen. ‘He plans to return mid-morning. He wants you to captain the men as usual while he’s gone.’
‘Whatever he needs. How many men is he taking with him?’
‘One,’ said Damen.
‘Good luck,’ was all Jord said.
* * *
The ride to the town of Nesson-Eloy was neither long nor difficult, but when they reached the outskirts they had to give up the horses.
They left them tied off the road, knowing there was a good chance the horses were not going to be there come morning, human nature being the same everywhere. It was necessary. Where the holdings around the keep had dwindled away, the town of Nesson-Eloy, closer to the traversable mountain pass, had grown. It was a tangle of close-built houses and paved streets, and the ringing of hooves on cobblestones would awaken the world. Laurent insisted on silence, and discretion.
Laurent claimed to know the town, since the nearby keep was a common stopping place on the journey between Arles and Acquitart. He seemed sure of directions, and kept them to smaller streets and unlit paths.
But, in the end, the precautions did little good.
‘We’re being followed,’ said Damen.
They were walking along one of the narrow streets, above them balconies and upper-storey juttings of stone and timber that sheltered the street and sometimes arched across it.
Laurent said, ‘If we’re bei
ng followed, they don’t know where we’re going.’