‘Hello, Damen,’ said Jokaste.
He made himself look at her. He made himself remember every part of her, the way she had smiled, the slow approach of her sandalled feet as he had hung in chains, the touch of her elegant fingers against his bruised face.
Then he turned to the low-level foot soldier to his right, delegating a trivial task that was beneath him, and now meant nothing.
‘Take her away,’ he said. ‘We have the fort.’
CHAPTER ELEVEN
HE FOUND HIMSELF in the women’s solar, with its light, airy fittings and the reclining couch, carved with a simple design, now standing empty. The window had a view of the approach all the way to the first tower.
She would have watched his army arrive from here, cresting the far hill and drawing nearer, watched every step of its progress to the fort. She would have watched her own people depart, taking food and wagons and soldiers, fleeing until the road was empty, until stillness descended, until the second army appeared, far enough away to be silent, but drawing closer.
Nikandros came to stand beside him. ‘Jokaste is confined in a cell in the east wing. Do you have further orders?’
‘Strip her and send her to Vere as a slave?’ Damen didn’t move from the sill.
Nikandros said, ‘You don’t really want that.’
‘No,’ he said. ‘I want it to be worse.’
He said it with his eyes on the horizon. He knew he would not allow her to be treated with anything less than respect. He remembered her picking her way across cool marble towards him in the slave baths. He could see her hand in the attacks on the village, in the framing of Makedon.
‘No one is to speak with her. No one is to enter her cell. Give her every comfort. But do not let her get a hold on any of the men.’ He was not a fool anymore. He knew her abilities. ‘Put your best soldiers on her door, your most loyal, and choose them from among those who have no taste for women.’
‘I’ll post Pallas and Lydos.’ Nikandros nodded, and departed to do his bidding.
Familiar with war, Damen knew what came next, but still felt a grim satisfaction when the first of his alerts from the watchtowers began to sound, the entire warning system flaring to life: horns in the inner towers sounding, his men shouting orders, taking up positions on the battlements, streaming out to man the gates. Right on schedule.
Meniados had fled. Damen had control of both this fort and of a powerful political prisoner in Jokaste. And he and his armies were on their way south.
The Regent’s heralds had come to Karthas.
* * *
He knew what Veretian eyes saw when they looked at him: a barbarian in savage splendour.
He did nothing to lessen the impression. He sat on the throne in armour, his thighs and arms heavy with bared muscle. He watched the Regent’s herald enter the hall.
Laurent sat beside him on an identical twin throne. Damen let the Regent?
??s herald see them—royalty flanked by Akielon soldiers in warlike armour made for killing. He let him take in this bare stone hall of a provincial fort, bristling with the spears of soldiers, where the Akielon prince-killer sat beside the Veretian Prince on the dais, dressed in the same crude leather as his soldiers.
He let him see Laurent too, let him see the picture they presented, royalty united. Laurent was the only Veretian in a hall filled with Akielons. Damen liked it. He liked having Laurent beside him, liked letting the Regent’s herald see that Laurent had Akielos alongside him—had Damianos of Akielos, now in his favoured arena of war.
The Regent’s herald was accompanied by a party of six, four ceremonial guards and two Veretian dignitaries. Walking through a hall of armed Akielons had them nervous, though they approached the thrones insolently, without bending a knee, the herald coming to a halt at the steps of the dais and arrogantly meeting Damen’s eyes.
Damen settled his full weight into the throne, sprawled on it comfortably, and watched all of this happen. In Ios, his father’s soldiers would have taken the herald by the arm and forced him down, forehead to the floor, with a foot atop his head.
He slightly lifted his fingers. The imperceptible gesture halted his men from doing the same now. Last time, Damen vividly recalled, the Regent’s herald had been received in a flurry in a courtyard, Laurent white-faced, pounding in on horseback, wheeling his mount to face his uncle’s herald down. He remembered the herald’s arrogance, his words, and the hessian sack pinned to his saddle.
It was the same herald. Damen recognised his darker hair and complexion, his thickened eyebrows and the embroidered pattern on his laced Veretian jacket. His party of four guards and two officials came to a halt behind him.
‘We accept the Regent’s surrender at Charcy,’ said Damen.
The herald flushed. ‘The King of Vere sends a message.’
‘The King of Vere is seated beside us,’ said Damen. ‘We do not recognise his uncle’s false claim to the throne.’