And all through the hall, there were slaves.
Slaves in hip cloths carried delicacies on small platters. Slaves fanned reclined Akielon guests with woven palm leaves. A male slave filled a shallow wine cup for an Akielon nobleman. A slave held out a finger bowl of rose water, and an Akielon woman dipped her fingers in it without even glancing at the slave. He heard the plucked strings of a kithara, and glimpsed the measured steps of a slave’s dance, just for a moment, before he walked through the doors.
When Damen entered, the hall fell silent.
There was no trumpet flourish or herald’s announcement, as there would have been in Vere. He just walked in, and everyone went to the floor. Guests rose from their couches, then dropped, foreheads to the stone. Slaves went to their stomachs. In Akielos, kings did not elevate their status. It was up to those around him to lower themselves.
Laurent didn’t rise. He wasn
’t required to. He just watched from his reclining couch, as the hall prostrated itself. He had cultivated an elegant sprawl, with his arm draped over his couch back, and his leg drawn up, revealing the arc of an exquisitely clad thigh. His fingers dangled. Silk rucked around his knee.
Isander was prostrated, an inch from Laurent’s casually draped fingertips, his lithe body bare. He wore a brief garment like a Vaskian man’s cloth. His collar fit him like a second skin. Laurent sat relaxed, every line of his body arranged tastefully against the couch.
Damen made himself stroll forward through the silence. Their twin couches were next to each other.
‘Brother,’ Laurent said, pleasantly.
The eyes of everyone in the hall were on him. He felt their gazes, their underfed curiosity. He heard the murmurs—it really is him, Damianos, alive and here—accompanied by the brazen looks, looking at him, looking at the gold cuff on his wrist, looking at Laurent in his Veretian clothes like an exotic ornament—so that is the Veretian Prince. And beneath that the speculation that was never spoken aloud.
Laurent was scrupulously correct in the face of it, his behaviour immaculate, even his use of the slave was an act of unimpeachable etiquette. In Akielos it pleased the host for a guest to make use of his hospitality. And it pleased the Akielon people for their royal family to take slaves, a sign of virility and power, and a cause of great pride.
Damen sat, too aware of Laurent beside him. He could see the sweep of the hall from this vantage, a sea of bowed heads. He gestured, indicating that the hall should rise from their prostrations. He saw Barieus of Mesos, the first of the bannermen after Makedon, a man in his forties with dark hair and a close-cut beard. He saw Aratos of Charon, who had come to Marlas with six hundred men. Euandros of Itys, here with a small cadre of archers, stood with his arms folded across his chest at the back of the hall.
‘Bannermen of Delpha. By now, you have seen the evidence that Kastor killed the King, our father. You know of his alliance with the usurper, the Regent of Vere. Even now, the Regent has troops stationed in Ios, ready to take Akielos. Tonight, we call for your pledge to fight them alongside us, and alongside our ally, Laurent of Vere.’
There was an uneasy pause. Makedon and Straton had pledged to him in Ravenel, but that was before his alliance with Laurent. These men were being asked to accept Laurent and Vere at first sight, less than a generation out from the war.
Barieus stepped forward. ‘I want assurances that Vere does not hold undue influence over Akielos.’
Undue influence. ‘Speak plainly.’
‘They say the Prince of Vere is your lover.’
Silence. No one would have dared speak that way in his father’s court. It was a sign of the volatility of these warlords, their hatred of Vere—of his own position, newly precarious. Anger rose at the question.
‘Who we take to our bed is not your concern.’
‘If our King takes Vere to his bed, it is our concern,’ said Barieus.
‘Shall I tell them what really happened between us? They want to know,’ Laurent said.
Laurent began to unlace the cuff of his sleeve, drawing the ties through the eyelets, then opening the fabric to expose the fine underside of his wrist—and then the unmistakable gold of the slave cuff.
Damen felt the shocked buzz go around the hall, felt its prurient undercurrent. Hearing that the Prince of Vere wore an Akielon slave cuff was different to seeing it. The scandal was immense, the gold cuff a symbol of the ownership of the Akielon royal family.
Laurent leaned his wrist elegantly on the curved arm of the couch, the open sleeve reminiscent of a delicate open shirt collar, its laces trailing.
‘Do I have the question clear?’ said Laurent, speaking in Akielon. ‘You are asking if I lay with the man who killed my own brother?’
Laurent wore the slave cuff with utter disregard. He had no owner, the aristocratic arrogance of his posture said that. Laurent had always possessed an essential quality of the untouchable. He cultivated a faultless grace on the reclining couch, his chiselled profile and marble-chip eyes those of a statue. The idea that he would let anyone fuck him was impossible.
Barieus said, ‘A man would have to be ice-cold to sleep with his brother’s killer.’
‘Then you have your answer,’ said Laurent.
There was a silence, in which Laurent’s gaze held that of Barieus.
‘Yes, Exalted.’