Damen entered, resisting the urge to tug on his sleeve. He had never been so overlaced. His new status meant an aristocrat’s clothing, which was harder to put on and take off. Dressing had taken almost an hour, and that was after bathing and all manner of attentions that had included trimming his hair. He had been forced to take reports and give orders over the heads of servants, while they meticulously attended to his laces. The last report from Guymar was what now had him scanning the crowd.
He’d been told that the small retinue that had ridden in with the last of the Patrans was that of Torveld, Prince of Patras. Torveld was here accompanying his men, though he had not taken part in the fight.
Damen moved through the hall, with Laurent’s men congratulating him on all sides, a slap on the back, a clasp of his shoulder. His eyes stayed fixed on the yellow head at the long table, so that it was almost a surprise when he found the knot of Patrans elsewhere in the room. The last time Damen had seen Torveld, he had been murmuring sweet nothings to Laurent on a darkened balcony, with the night flowers jasmine and frangipani blooming in the garden below. Damen had been half expecting to find him in intimate conversation with Laurent once again, but Torveld was with his own retinue, and when he saw Damen, he approached him.
‘Captain,’ said Torveld. ‘That is a title well earned.’
They spoke about the Patran men, and about Ravenel’s defences. In the end, what Torveld said about his own presence here was brief:
‘My brother is not happy. I’m here against his wishes, because I have a personal stake in your campaign against the Regent. I wanted to face your Prince man to man, and tell him that much. But I will ride for Bazal tomorrow, and you will have no more help from Patras. I cannot act further against my brother’s orders. This is all I can give you.’
‘We are lucky the Prince’s messenger got through with his signet ring,’ Damen acknowledged.
‘What messenger?’ said Torveld.
Damen thought the answe
r political circumspection, but then Torveld added, ‘The Prince approached me for men in Arles. I didn’t agree until I was six weeks out of the palace. As for my reasons, I think you must know them.’ He motioned for one of his retinue to come forward.
Slender and graceful, one of the Patrans detached himself from the group by the wall, dropping to his knees in front of Damen, and kissing the floor by his feet, so that Damen’s view was of a tumble of curls, burnished honey-gold.
‘Rise,’ said Damen, in Akielon.
Erasmus lifted his bowed head, but did not come up from his knees.
‘So humble? We’re the same rank.’
‘This slave kneels for a Captain.’
‘I’m a Captain through your help. I owe you a great deal.’
Shyly, after a pause: ‘I told you that I would repay you. You did so much to help me in the palace. And . . .’ Erasmus hesitated, looking over at Torveld. When Torveld nodded that he should speak, he lifted his chin, uncharacteristically. ‘And I didn’t like the Regent. He burnt my leg.’
Torveld gave him a proud look, and Erasmus flushed and made obeisance again with perfect form.
Damen repressed another instinct to tell him to stand up. It was odd that the usual manners of his homeland should feel so strange to him. Perhaps it was just that he had spent several months in the company of pushy, forward pets and unpredictable Veretian free men. He looked at Erasmus, the demure limbs and the lowered lashes. He had bedded slaves like this, as pliant in bed as they were out of it. He remembered enjoying it, but the memory was distant, as though it belonged to someone else. Erasmus was pretty, he could see that. Erasmus, he recalled, had been trained for him. He would be obedient to every order, intuit every whim, willingly.
Damen turned his eyes to Laurent.
A picture of cool, difficult distance confronted him. Laurent sat in brief conversation, wrist balanced on the edge of the great table, fingertips resting on the base of a goblet. From the severe, straight-backed posture to the impersonal grace of his cupped yellow head; from his detached blue eyes to the arrogance of his cheekbones, Laurent was complicated and contradictory, and Damen could look nowhere else.
As though responding to some instinct, Laurent looked up and met Damen’s eyes, and in the next moment Laurent was rising and making his way over.
‘You aren’t going to come and eat?’
‘I should return to oversee the work outside. Ravenel should have impeccable defences. I want . . . I want to do that for you,’ he said.
‘It can wait. You just won me a fort,’ said Laurent. ‘Let me spoil you a little.’
They stood by the wall, and as Laurent spoke, he leaned a shoulder against the contoured stone. His voice was pitched for the space between them, private and unhurried.
‘I remember. You take a great deal of pleasure in small victories.’ Damen quoted Laurent’s words back to him.
‘It’s not small,’ said Laurent. ‘It’s the first time I’ve ever won a play against my uncle.’
He said it simply. Light from the torches reflected on his face. Conversation around them was a faded wax and wane of sound, mingling with the restrained colours, the reds, browns and dimmed blues of flame light.
‘You know that isn’t true. You won against him in Arles when you had Torveld take the slaves to Patras.’