The herald was forced to pretend that those words had not been spoken. He turned from Damen to Laurent.
‘Laurent of Vere. Your uncle extends his friendship to you in good faith. He offers you a chance to restore your good name.’
‘No head in a bag?’ said Laurent.
Laurent’s voice was mild. Relaxed on the throne, one leg extended out in front of himself, a wrist draped elegantly on the wooden arm, the shift in power was evident. He was no longer the rogue nephew, fighting alone on the border. He was a significant, newly established power, with lands and an army of his own.
‘Your uncle is a good man. The Council has called for your death, but your uncle will not hear them. He will not accept the rumours that you have turned on your own people. He wants to give you the chance to prove yourself.’
‘Prove myself,’ said Laurent.
‘A fair trial. Come to Ios. Stand before the Council and plead your case. And if you are found innocent, all that is yours will be returned to you.’
‘‘All that is mine’,’ Laurent repeated the herald’s words for the second time.
‘Your Highness,’ said one of the dignitaries, and Damen was startled to recognise Estienne, a minor aristocrat from Laurent’s faction.
Estienne had the good manners to sweep off his hat. ‘Your uncle has been fair to all those who count themselves your supporters. He simply wants to welcome you back. I can assure you that this trial is only a formality to appease the Council.’ Estienne spoke with his hat held earnestly in his hands. ‘Even if there have been some . . . minor indiscretions, you only need to show repentance and he will open his heart. He knows just as your supporters know that what they are saying about you in Ios is not . . . cannot be true. You are no traitor to Vere.’
Laurent only regarded Estienne for a moment, before he turned his attention back to the herald. ‘‘All that is mine will be returned to me”? Were those his words? Tell me his exact words.’
‘If you come to Ios to stand trial,’ said the herald, ‘all that is yours will be returned to you.’
‘And if I refuse?’
‘If you refuse, you will be executed,’ said the herald. ‘Your death will be a public traitor’s death, your body displayed on the city gates for all to see. What is left will receive no burial. You will not be entombed with your father and brother. Your name will be struck from the family register. Vere will not remember you, and all that is yours will be cast asunder. That is the King’s promise, and my message.’
Laurent said nothing; an uncharacteristic silence, and Damen saw the subtle signs, the tension across his shoulders, the muscle sliding in his jaw. Damen turned the full weight of his gaze on the herald.
‘Ride back to the Regent,’ said Damen, ‘and tell him this. All that is rightfully Laurent’s will return to him when he is King. His uncle’s false promises do not tempt us. We are the Kings of Akielos and Vere. We will keep our state, and come to him in Ios when we ride in at the head of armies. He faces Vere and Akielos united. And he will fall to our might.’
‘Your Highness,’ said Estienne, his grip on the hat now anxious. ‘Please. You can’t side with this Akielon, not after everything that’s said about him, everything he’s done! The crimes he’s acccused of in Ios are worse than your own.’
‘And what is it I am accused of?’ said Damen with utter scorn.
It was the herald who answered, in clear Akielon and a voice that carried to every corner of the hall.
‘You are a patricide. You killed your own father, King Theomedes of Akielos.’
As the hall dissolved into chaos, Akielon voices shouting in fury, onlookers leaping up from their stools, Damen looked at the herald and said in a low voice, ‘Get him out of my sight.’
* * *
He thrust up from his throne and went to one of the windows. It was too small and thick-glassed to see anything more than a blurry view of the courtyard. Behind him, the hall had cleared on his order. He tried to control his breathing. The shouts of the Akielons in the hall had been shouts of furious outrage. He told himself that. That no one could think for a moment that he would—
His head was pounding. He felt a furious powerlessness at it, that Kastor could kill their father, and then lie like this, poison the very truth, and get away with—
The injustice of it took him in the throat. He felt it like the final tearing of that relationship, as though somehow before this moment there had been some hope that he could reach Kastor, but that now what was between them was unsalvageable.Worse than making him a prisoner, worse than making him a slave. Kastor had made him into his father’s killer. He felt the Regent’s smiling influence, his mild, reasonable voice. He thought of the Regent’s lies spreading, taking hold, the people of Ios believing him a murderer, his father’s death dishonoured and used against him.
To have his people mistrust him, to have his friends turn from him, to have the thing that had been most dear and good in his life twisted into a weapon to hurt—
He turned. Laurent was standing alone, against the backdrop of the hall.
With sudden double vision, Damen saw Laurent as he was, his true isolation. The Regent had done this to Laurent, had whittled away his support, had turned his people against him. He remembered trying to convince Laurent of the Regent’s benevolence in Arles, as naive as Estienne. Laurent had had a lifetime of this.
He said, in a steady, measured voice, ‘He thinks he can provoke me. He can’t. I am not going to act in anger or in haste. I am going to take back the provinces of Akielos one by one, and when I march into Ios, I will make him pay for what he has done.’
Laurent just kept watching him with that slightly assessing expression on his face.