The idea, when it came, seemed to spool the ground out from beneath his feet, changing the configuration of everything.
It had never made sense that Kastor had kept him alive. Kastor had been so careful to obliterate every piece of evidence of his treachery. He had ordered all of the witnesses killed, from slaves to men of high rank like Adrastus. Leaving Damen alive was mad, dangerous. There was always the possibility that Damen would escape and return to challenge Kastor for the throne.
But Kastor had made an alliance with the Regent. And in exchange for troops, he had given the Regent slaves.
One slave in particular. Damen felt hot, then cold. Could it be that he had been the Regent’s price? That in exchange for troops, the Regent had said, I want Damianos sent as a bed slave to my nephew?
Because throw Laurent together with Damianos, and either one would kill the other, or, if Damen kept his identity concealed and they somehow managed to form an alliance . . . if he helped Laurent instead of hurting him, and Laurent, out of the deep-buried sense of fairness that existed within him, helped him in turn . . . if the foundation of trust was built between them so that they might become friends, or more than friends . . . if Laurent ever decided to make use of his bed slave . . .
He thought about the Regent’s suggestions to him, sly, subtle. Laurent could benefit from a steadying influence, someone close to him with his best interests at heart. A man with sound judgement, who could help guide him without being swayed. And the constant, pervasive insinuation: Have you taken my nephew?
My uncle knows that when I lose control, I make mistakes. It would have given him a perverse kind of pleasure to send Aimeric to work against me, Laurent had said.
How much greater the twisted pleasure to be gleaned from this?
‘I’ve listened to everything that you said to me,’ Laurent was saying. ‘I’m not going to rush off to Charcy with an army. But I still want to fight. Not because my uncle threw down a challenge, but on my own terms, because this is my country. I know that together we can find a way to use Charcy to my advantage. Together we can do what we cannot do apart.’
It had never really had the stamp of Kastor. Kastor was capable of anger, of brutality, but his actions were straightforward. This kind of imaginative cruelty belonged to someone else.
‘My uncle plans everything,’ said Laurent, as though reading Damen’s thoughts. ‘He plans for victory and he plans for defeat. It was you who never quite fit . . . You’ve always been outside of his schemes. For everything that my uncle and Kastor planned,’ said Laurent, as Damen felt himself grow cold, ‘they had no idea what they did when they gifted me with you.’
* * *
Outside, when he pushed outside
, he heard the sound of men’s voices, and the chink of bridles and spurs, the rattle of wheels on stone. He was breathing unsteadily. He put a hand on the wall to take some of his weight.
In a fort full of activity, he knew himself a game piece, and was only beginning to be able to glimpse the scope of the board.
The Regent had done this, and yet he had done this too, he also was responsible. Jord was right. He had owed Laurent the truth, and he hadn’t given it to him. And now he knew what the consequences of that choice might be. Yet he couldn’t bring himself to regret what they had done: last night had been bright in a way that resisted tarnishing.
It had been right. His heart beat with the feeling that the other truth must somehow change to make it right, and he knew that it wouldn’t.
He imagined himself nineteen again, knowing then what he knew now, and he wondered if he would have let that long-ago battle fall to the Veretians—let Auguste live. If he would have ignored his father’s call to arms altogether, and instead found his way to the Veretian tents and sought out Auguste to find some common ground. Laurent would have been thirteen but in Damen’s mind’s eye he would have found him a little older, sixteen or seventeen, old enough that Damen’s nineteen-year-old self could have begun, with all the exuberance of youth, to court him.
He could do none of that. But if there was something that Laurent wanted, he could give it to him. He could deal the Regent a blow from which he wouldn’t recover.
If the Regent wanted Damianos of Akielos standing alongside his nephew, he would get him. And if he couldn’t give Laurent the truth, he could use everything else he had to give Laurent a definitive victory in the south.
He was going to make these three days count.
* * *
The blue-eyed self-control was firmly back in place when Laurent came out onto the courtyard dais, armed and armoured and ready to ride.
In the courtyard, Laurent’s men were mounted and waiting for him. Damen looked at the hundred and twenty riders, the men he’d ridden with from the palace to the border, the men he’d worked alongside and shared bread and wine with in the evenings by the campfires. There were some notable absences. Orlant. Aimeric. Jord.
The plan had taken shape over a map. He’d put it to Laurent simply. ‘Look at Charcy’s location. Fortaine will be the launching point for troops. Charcy will be Guion’s fight.’
‘Guion and all his other sons,’ Laurent had said.
‘The strongest move you can make right now is to take Fortaine. It will give you full control of the south. With Ravenel, Fortaine and Acquitart you’ll hold Vere’s southern trade routes to Akielos as well as to Patras. You already hold the southern routes to Vask, and Fortaine gives you access to a port. You’ll have everything you need to launch a northern campaign.’
There had been a silence, until Laurent had said, ‘You were right. I haven’t been thinking about it like this.’
‘Like what?’ said Damen.
‘Like war,’ said Laurent.