He didn’t answer, and his silence spoke for him. Jord let out a breath, and Damen spoke then.
‘I’m not Aimeric.’
‘You ever wonder what it would feel like to find out you’d spread for your brother’s killer?’ Jord looked around the small room. He looked at the place where Aimeric lay. ‘I think it would feel like this.’
Unbidden, remembered words rose up inside him. I don’t care. You’re still my slave tonight. Damen pressed his eyes closed. ‘I wasn’t Damianos last night. I was just—’
‘Just a man?’ said Jord. ‘You think Aimeric thought that? That there were two of him? Because there weren’t. There was only ever one, and look what happened to him.’
Damen was silent. Then, ‘What are you going to do?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Jord.
‘Are you going to leave his service?’
This time it was Jord who was silent.
‘Someone has to tell Laurent not to meet his uncle’s troops at Charcy.’
‘You think he’ll listen to me?’ said Jord bitterly.
‘No,’ said Damen. He thought of those closed doors, and he spoke with flat honesty. ‘I don’t think he’ll listen to anyone.’
* * *
He stood in front of the double doors and the two soldiers that flanked them, and looked at the heavy panelled wood, resolutely shut.
He had put those soldiers on the door to bar the way to those men seeking Laurent out for some trivial matter, or for any matter, because when Laurent wanted to be alone, no one should suffer the consequences of interrupting him.
The taller soldier addressed him. ‘Commander, no one has entered in your absence.’ Damen’s eyes passed over the doors again.
&n
bsp; ‘Good,’ he said. And he pushed the doors open.
Inside, the rooms were as he remembered them, remade and reordered, and even the table was replenished, with platters of fruit and pitchers of water and of wine. When the doors closed behind Damen, the faint sounds of the preparations in the courtyard could still be heard. He stopped, halfway into the room.
Laurent had changed out of riding leathers and had returned to the severe formality of his prince’s garments, hard-laced into his clothing from neck to toe-tip. He stood at the window, one hand on the stone of the wall, fingers curled as though he held something in his fist. His gaze was fixed on the activity in the courtyard, where the fort was preparing for war on his orders. He spoke without turning.
‘Come to say goodbye?’ said Laurent.
There was a pause, in which Laurent turned. Damen looked at him.
‘I’m sorry. I know what Nicaise meant to you.’
‘He was my uncle’s whore,’ said Laurent.
‘He was more than that. You thought of him as—’
‘A brother?’ said Laurent. ‘But I do not have terribly good luck with those. I hope you are not here for a mawkish display of sentiment. I will throw you out.’
There was a long silence. They faced each other.
‘Sentiment? No. I wouldn’t expect that,’ said Damen. The sounds of outside were of orders and metal. ‘Since you don’t have a Captain left to advise you, I’m here to tell you that you can’t go to Charcy.’
‘I have a Captain. I’ve appointed Enguerran. Is that everything? I have reinforcements arriving tomorrow and I am taking my men to Charcy.’ Laurent was moving to the table, the dismissal in his voice clear.
‘Then you’ll kill them like you killed Nicaise,’ said Damen. ‘By dragging them into this endless, childish bid of yours for your uncle’s attention that you call a fight.’