The words were abruptly cut off as Nikandros took hold of Jord and slammed him back against the wagon.
‘You will not speak that way to our King.’
‘Let him be.’ The words were thick in Damen’s throat. ‘Let him be. He is loyal. You would have reacted the same way if Laurent had come back alone.’ He found he was between them, that he had intervened bodily. Nikandros was two paces away—Damen had pulled him off.
Released, Jord was panting slightly. ‘He wouldn’t have come back alone. If you think that, you don’t know him.’
He felt Nikandros’s hand on his shoulder, steadying him, though Nikandros was speaking to Jord. ‘Stop it, can’t you see he’s—’
‘What’s going to happen to him?’ Jord’s voice, demanding.
‘He’ll be killed,’ said Damen. ‘There will be a trial. He’ll be branded a traitor. His name will be dragged through the mud. When it’s done, they’ll kill him.’
It was the unadorned truth. It would happen here, publicly. In Ios, they displayed severed heads on rough wooden spikes along the traitor’s walk. Nikandros was speaking.
‘We can’t stay here, Damianos. We have to—’
‘No,’ said Damen.
He had his hand to his forehead. His thoughts whirled, useless. He remembered Laurent saying, I can’t think.
What would Laurent do? He knew what Laurent would do. Stupid, mad Laurent had sacrificed himself. He had used the last piece of leverage he had: his own life. But Damen’s life was valueless to the Regent.
He felt the limits of his own nature, which too easily swung to anger, and the need—stymied by circumstance—to bring about the Regent’s death. All he wanted was to take up his sword and cut a path into Ios. His body felt thick and dull with a single thought that pushed at him, trying to get out. He pressed his eyes closed.
‘He thinks he’s alone,’ he said.
He told himself, sickeningly, that it wouldn’t be quick. The trial would take time. The Regent would draw it out. It was what he liked, public humiliation coupled with private chastisement, his reality validated by all those around him. Laurent’s death, sanctioned by the Council, would restore the Regent’s personal order, the world set to rights.
It wouldn’t be quick. There was time. There had to be time. If he could only think. He felt like a man s
tanding outside the high gates of a city with no way to get inside.
‘Damianos. Listen to me. If he is taken to the palace, then he is gone. You can’t fight your way in single-handed. Even if you made it past the walls, you’d never make it out again. Every soldier in Ios is loyal to Kastor or to the Regent.’
Nikandros’s words penetrated, as hard and painful as only the truth could be.
‘You’re right, I can’t fight my way in.’
From the beginning he had been a tool, a weapon to be used against Laurent. The Regent had used him to hurt, to unsettle, to shake Laurent’s control; and finally, to destroy him.
‘I know what I have to do,’ he said.
* * *
He arrived in the cool of morning, alone. Leaving his horse, he went the last of the way on foot, choosing the goat tracks first, then passing through avenues of apricot and almond, and the dappled shade of olive trees. Shortly after, the tracks ascended, and he began to climb a low limestone hill, the first of the rises that led him up, and up further to the white cliffs, and the city.
Ios; the white city, built on high limestone cliffs that crumbled and broke off into the sea. The familiarity was so strong it was almost dizzying. On the horizon, the sea was a clear blue, only a few shades darker than the strident shade of the sky. He had missed the ocean. The foaming disorder of rocks, and the sudden sharp sense of how spray would feel against skin, more than anything, made him feel like home.
He expected to be challenged at the outer gates by soldiers warned and wary, on the lookout for him. But perhaps they were on the lookout for Damianos, the arrogant young King at the head of his army, not a single man in an old worn cloak, a hood that came down over his face, and sleeves to hide his arms. No one stopped him.
So he walked in, past the first threshold. He took the northern road, one man winding through the crowd. And when he turned the first corner, he saw the palace as everyone saw it: disorientingly, from the outside. There, small as specks, were the high open windows and long marble balconies that invited the sea air in during the evening to cool the baking stone. To the east was the long, columned hall and airy upper quarters. To the north, the King’s quarters, and the high-walled gardens, with their shallow steps and winding paths and the myrtle trees planted for his mother.
Memory was sudden; long days training on the sawdust, evenings in the hall, his father presiding from the throne, himself walking those marble halls with surety and unconcern, an unreal former self, who spent evenings in the great hall laughing with friends, being served as he wished by slaves.
A yapping dog cut across his path. A woman with a parcel under her arm jostled him, then shouted at him in southern dialect to watch where he was going.
He kept walking. He passed the outer homes, with their small windows of differently sized rectangles and squares. He passed the outer storehouses, the granaries, a stone revolving on a millbase, pushed by oxen. He passed the shouts of a dozen market stalls that were all selling fish, pulled from the ocean in the pre-dawn.