Jord stared at him. At fifteen, the Prince was still only three-quarters grown, with no hint of a beard coming. His words were serious.
In the morning, Jord was released from the cell, and the men of the Prince’s Guard were crowding around him in the barracks. He was given a stool and a wine cup and everyone was talking over everyone, jostling to tell their own version of the story.
Jord got it in snatches: It was the Prince’s word against Chauvin’s. Chauvin was furious. The Prince had vouched for Jord personally. The whole Council had gathered and the Prince had used fancy words, and at the end of it the Regent had said, My sweet nephew. We’ll trust your account. With one condition. If anything like this happens again, the Prince’s Guard will be disbanded.
Downing hard drink that night, Jord said to Orlant, ‘I’m not stupid. They’re going to use this to take down the Prince’s Guard.’
To take them all down, Prince and Guard alike. Orlant didn’t say that. ‘Did I ever tell you how I got thrown out o
f the capital militia the first time?’
Jord shook his head.
‘I called an aristocrat a piece of shit.’
‘What did the Prince say about that?’
‘He said he agreed.’
Jord let out a breath of amusement. ‘What did he really say?’
‘He said if I put a single foot out of line in his Guard he’d throw me into the stocks.’
‘That sounds more like him,’ said Jord.
‘He is a coldblooded son of a bitch,’ Orlant said, proudly.
‘He’s green,’ said Jord, frowning, because the Prince had left himself vulnerable, and was too young to know it. He argued for you, was the thought, but he was a boy who didn’t know better than to stick his neck out. The Regent’s Guard were powerful and their enmity was in earnest. If Jord thought about the formation of the Prince’s Guard, it was a boy’s unthinking whim; they were a collection of rough discards who would never amount to anything.
‘Only a fool would give you and me a second chance,’ said Orlant.
It wasn’t that Jord didn’t know Aimeric was looking at him. He did. It was Aimeric looking at him that got him looking at Aimeric.
In a troop of men who looked like a cliff face and Orlant who looked like a cave in, Aimeric was somewhere to put his eyes when he sat with the men around the campfire at the end of the day, a dented tin mug of wine in his hands.
He liked Aimeric’s stubborn chin. He liked his flop of curls that fit poorly into a helmet. He liked the way that when he looked over, Aimeric was looking back. It was a nice daydream, even if his imagination blanked on the specifics, seeing that Aimeric was an aristocrat.
His experience with aristocrats was that they would say to him things like, Stand to attention, soldier, or, Put those saddlebags down there. He did not know why an aristocrat would turn an eye to a lowborn guard captain, even briefly. Aimeric was so highborn he would have his own paid pet in Fortaine, some kind of pampered youth to play at table with him during the day and warm his bed at night.
Well, all the long looks in the world wouldn’t matter when they were all going to be dead at the end of a rockslide, or a bandit attack.
The only reason that they would survive was because of the yellow haired fiend who had them from sun-up to sundown carrying out the drills that had even the most hardened men dropping, exhausted, to the dirt, too tired to even curse the Prince who had put them there.
Aimeric was coming towards him.
The log next to Jord was empty. Aimeric sat down on it. The campfire in front of them sent up smoke and orange light. Jord passed over his flask; Aimeric coughed when it held spirits and not water. Probably he coughed due to the quality of the spirits, not the strength. Aimeric rubbed his mouth and tried to pass the flask back.
‘Thought you could use it,’ Jord said.
‘I’ll do better,’ said Aimeric, after a long moment. ‘I’ll do better, until it’s good enough.’
Jord looked at the tired set of Aimeric’s shoulders, the smudges under his eyes, and his curls, flattened and turned into sweat licks by a helmet. Aimeric’s fingers had tightened around the flask, and if at any time he’d had the soft, manicured hands of an aristocrat, now they were callused from weeks of drills, dirt from a hard day’s work underneath his chipped nails.
On the other side of the camp, the Prince was dismounting effortlessly, untouched by the day’s exertions, his haughty, posture unaffected. He didn’t even seem to have dust on his boots—typical.
Jord said, ‘Not what you expected?’
It didn’t seem like Aimeric was going to answer, at first. ‘I thought I was going to get a position at court.’