Aimeric stared at him, hand clasped to his nose, holding a fistful of blood. ‘You’re the Prince’s pet. I’ve heard all about you.’
Damen said, ‘If you’re not going to tip your head back, why don’t we go find Paschal? He can give you a scented ointment.’
Aimeric didn’t budge. ‘You couldn’t take a flogging like a man. You opened your mouth and squealed to the Regent. You laid hands on him. You spat on his reputation. Then you tried to escape, and he still intervened for you, because he’d never abandon a member of his household to the Regency. Not even someone like you.’
Damen had gone very still. He looked at the boy’s young, bloody face, and reminded himself that Aimeric had been willing to take a beating from three men in defence of his Prince’s honour. He’d call it misguided puppy love, except that he’d seen the glint of something similar in Jord, in Orlant, and even, in his own quiet way, in Paschal.
Damen thought of the ivory and gold casing that held a creature duplicitous, self-serving and untrustworthy.
‘You’re so loyal to him. Why is that?’
‘I’m not a turncoat Akielon dog,’ said Aimeric.
* * *
Damen delivered the inventory to Rochert, and the Prince’s Guard began the task of preparing arms, armour and wagons for their departure the following morning. It was work that should have been done before their arrival, by the Regent’s men. But of the hundred and fifty Regent’s men set to ride out with the Prince, fewer than two dozen had turned out to help them.
Damen joined the work, where he was the only man to smell, expensively, of ointments and cinnamon. The sole knot remaining in Damen’s back concerned the fact that the castellan had ordered him to report to the keep when he was done.
After an hour or so, Jord approached him.
‘Aimeric’s young. He says it won’t happen again,’ said Jord.
It will happen again, and once the two factions in this camp start retaliating against one another your campaign is over, he didn’t say. He said, ‘Where’s the Captain?’
‘The Captain is in one of the horse stalls, up to his waist in the stableboy,’ said Jord. ‘The Prince has been waiting for him at the barracks. Actually . . . I was told to have you fetch him.’
‘From the stables,’ said Damen. He stared at Jord in disbelief.
‘Better you than me,’ said Jord. ‘Look for him down the back. Oh, and when you’re done, report to the keep.’
It was a long walk across two courtyards from the barracks to the stables. Damen hoped that Govart would be finished by the time he arrived, but of course he wasn’t. The stables contained all the quiet sounds of horses at night, but even so Damen heard it before he saw it: the soft rhythmic sounds coming, as Jord had accurately predicted, from the back.
Damen weighed Govart’s reaction to an interruption against Laurent’s to being kept waiting. He pushed open the stall door.
Inside, Govart was unambiguously fucking the stableboy against the far wall. The boy’s pants were in a crumpled heap on the straw not far from Damen’s feet. His bare legs were splayed wide and his shirt was open and pushed up onto his back. His face was pressed to the rough wooden panelling and held in place by Govart’s fist in his hair. Govart was dressed. He had unlaced his own pants only enough to take out his cock.
Govart stopped long enough to glance sideways and say, ‘What?’ before, deliberately, continuing. The stableboy, seeing Damen, reacted differently, squirming.
‘Stop,’ said the stableboy. ‘Stop. Not with someone watching—’
‘Calm down. It’s just the Prince’s pet.’
Govart jerked the stableboy’s head back for emphasis.
Damen said, ‘The Prince wants you.’
‘He can wait,’ said Govart.
‘No. He can’t.’
‘He wants me to pull out on his order? Go visit him with a hard prick?’ Govart bared his teeth in a grin. ‘You think that too-stuck-up-to-fuck stuff is just an act, and he’s really just a tease who wants cock?’
Damen felt anger settle inside him, a tangible weight. He recognised an echo of the impotence Aimeric must have experienced in the armoury, except that he was not a green nineteen year old who had never seen a fight. His eyes passed impassively over the half-unclothed body of the stableboy. He realised that in a moment he was going to return to Govart in this small, dusty stall all that was owed for the rape of Erasmus.
He said, ‘Your Prince gave you an order.’
Govart forestalled him, pushing the stableboy away in annoyance. ‘Fuck, I can’t get off with all this—’ Tucking himself back in. The stableboy stumbled a few steps, sucking in air.