He forgot the men and women watching. He forgot the need to keep his army and his generals from revolt. He only saw what lay on the cushion that the servant bore towards the dais.
Coiled and personal, Laurent’s gift was a Veretian whip, made of gold.
Damen recognised it. It had a carved golden handle, with a ruby or garnet inset distinctively into its base, held in the jaws of a great cat. He remembered the handler’s rod with the same carvings, with its long filigree chain that had affixed to the collar around his neck. The great cat resembled the lion symbol of his own house.
He remembered Laurent’s hand giving a little tug on the rod, infuriating, more than that. He remembered having his legs kicked apart, his hands bound, the thick wood of the post against his chest, the lash about to fall on his back. He remembered Laurent, arranging himself against the opposite wall, settling his shoulders there, positioning himself to watch every slightest expression on Damen’s face.
His gaze swung to Laurent. He knew he had flushed, he could feel the heat in his own cheeks. In front of the gathered generals, he couldn’t say, What have you done?
Outside the tent, something had started happening.
Veretian attendants were placing a series of ten ornamental whipping blocks at even intervals outside the pavilion. Ten men were pulled like sacks of grain from their horses by Veretian handlers, stripped, then bound.
Inside the tent, Akielon men and women were looking at one another questioningly, others craning their necks to see.
In front of the gathered army, the ten captives were shoved towards the blocks, stumbling a little, their balance precarious, their hands tied behind their backs.
‘These are the men who attacked the Akielon village of Tarasis,’ said Laurent. ‘They are clan mercenaries, paid for by my uncle, who killed your people in an attempt to wreck the peace between our nations.’
He had the attention of the tent now. The eyes of every Akielon were on him, from the soldiers to the officers—even the generals. Makedon and his soldiers, in particular, had seen the destruction at Tarasis first-hand.
‘The whip and the men are Vere’s gift to Akielos,’ said Laurent, and then he turned his melting blue eyes on Damen. ‘The first fifty lashes are my gift to you.’
He couldn’t have stopped it, even if he had wanted to. The atmosphere in the pavilion was thick with satisfaction and approval. His men wanted it, appreciated it, appreciated Laurent for it, the golden youth who could order men torn apart, and watch it, unflinching.
The Veretian handlers were hammering the whipping blocks into the earth, and then jerking at them to test that they would hold weight.
A part of Damen’s mind recognised how perfectly this gift had been judged, the exquisite virtuosity of it: Laurent was delivering him a backhanded blow with one hand, and with the other, caressing his generals as a man scratches a dog under the chin.
Damen heard himself say, ‘Vere is generous.’
‘After all,’ Laurent held his gaze, ‘I remember what you like.’
The stripped men were tied down.
The Veretian handlers took up position, each standing by one of the bound prisoners, each holding a whip. The call went out. Damen felt his pulse speed up as he realised he was going to watch Laurent have ten men flayed alive in front of him.
‘Furthermore,’ said Laurent, his voice pitched to carry, ‘Fortaine’s bounty is yours. Its physicians will tend to your wounded. Its storehouses will feed your men. The Akielon victory at Charcy was hard-won. All that Vere gained while you fought is yours, and it is deserved. I will not profit from any hardship that befalls the rightful King of Akielos or his people.’
You will lose Straton. You will lose Makedon, Nikandros had said, but he hadn’t counted on the fact that Laurent would arrive, and begin, dangerously, to control everything.
It took a long time. Fifty lashes, brought with effort of shoulder and arm down onto a man’s unprotected back, was a protracted undertaking. Damen made himself watch it all. He didn’t look at Laurent. Laurent, he knew intimately, could level that endless blue gaze forever while watching a man flayed. He remembered in exact detail what it felt like to be whipped with Laurent’s eyes on on him.
Bloody and pulped, the men, who were no longer men, were cut from the whipping blocks. That took time too, because more than one handler was needed to lift each man, and no one was quite certain which of the men were unconscious and which were dead.
Damen said, ‘We have a personal gift too.’
The eyes of those in the tent turned to him. Laurent’s gift had forestalled any open revolt, but there was still a rift between Akielos and Vere.
Last night, in the evening darkness of the tent, he had pulled this gift from his packs and looked down at it, feeling its weight in his hands. Once or twice before, he had thought about this moment. In his most private thoughts, he’d imagined it happening with the two of them alone together. He hadn’t imagined it like this, the private made public, and painful. He didn’t have Laurent’s ability to hurt with what mattered most.
It was his turn to cement the alliance between their nations. And there was only one way to do that.
‘Every man here knows that you kept us as a slave,’ said Damen. He said it loudly enough that all those gathered in the pavilion tent could hear. ‘We wear your cuff on our wrist. But today, the Prince of Vere will prove himself our equal.’
He gestured and one of his squires came forward. It was still wrapped in cloth. He felt the sudden tension in Laurent, though there was no outward change.
Damen said, ‘You asked for it, once.’