‘To fight his uncle. Not to fight us.’
‘If someone kills your family you don’t rest until they are dead.’
The words dropped between them. He remembered Laurent’s eyes in the tent as he had procured this alliance for himself.
Nikandros was shaking his head. ‘Or do you really think he’s forgiven you for killing his brother?’
‘No. He hates me for it.’ He said it steadily, without flinching. ‘But he hates his uncle more. He needs us. And we need him.’
‘You need him enough that you would strip me of my home, because he asked you to?’
‘Yes,’ said Damen.
He watched Nikandros struggle with that.
‘I’m doing this for Akielos,’ said Damen.
Nikandros said, ‘If you’re wrong there is no Akielos.’
* * *
He spoke to a few soldiers on his way back to his tent, a word or
two here or there as he moved through the camp, a habit since his first command at seventeen. The men came to attention as he passed, and said only, ‘Exalted,’ if he spoke. It was not like sitting around a campfire swilling wine, exchanging low tales and ribald speculations.
Jord and the other Veretians from Ravenel had been sent back to Laurent to rejoin his army in the extravagant tents at Fortaine. Damen hadn’t seen them go.
It was a warm night, with no need for fires other than for cooking and for light. He knew his way because the rigorous lines of the Akielon camp were easy to follow even in torchlight. The drilled, disciplined troops had done quick and efficient work, the weapons were cleaned and stored, the fires were lit, the stout tent pegs were hammered into the ground.
His tent was made of plain white canvas. There was not much to distinguish it other than its size and the two guards standing armed at the entrance. They came to attention, honour-flushed at the duty; it showed more in the younger guard Pallas than the older Aktis, but was evident in the stance of both. Damen made sure he gave a brief sign of his appreciation as he passed, as was fitting.
He lifted the tent flap, let it settle behind him.
Inside, the tent was an austere open space, lit with grease candles on spikes. The privacy was like a blessing. He didn’t have to hold himself up, he could let the weight of exhaustion bear him down to rest. His body ached for it. He wanted only to prise his armour from himself and close his eyes. Alone, he didn’t have to be King. He stopped and went cold, an awful feeling passing over him, an unsteadiness that was like nausea.
He wasn’t alone.
She was naked, at the base of the stark pallet, her full breasts hanging downwards, her forehead to the floor. She didn’t have palace training, and so could not quite disguise the fact that she was nervous. Her fair hair was caught back from her face in a fragile clasp, a northern custom. She was perhaps nineteen or twenty, her body trained and ready for him. She had prepared a bath in an unadorned wooden tub, so that if he pleased he might make use of it; or of her.
He had known that there were slaves with Nikandros’s army, following behind with the carts and the supplies. He had known that when he returned to Akielos there would be slaves.
‘Get up,’ he heard himself say, awkwardly, a wrong order for a slave.
There was a time when he would have expected this, and known how to behave around it. He would have appreciated the charm of her rustic northern skills, and bedded her, if not tonight then certainly in the morning. Nikandros knew him, and she was his type. She was Nikandros’s best, that was evident; a slave from his personal retinue, perhaps even his favourite, because Damen was his guest and his King.
She got up. He didn’t speak. She had a collar around her neck, and metal cuffs around her small wrists that were like the one that he—
‘Exalted,’ she said, quietly. ‘What is wrong?’
He let out a strange, unsteady breath. He realised that his breathing had been unsteady for some time, that his flesh was unsteady. That the silence had been stretching out between them too long.
‘No slaves,’ said Damen. ‘Tell the Keeper. Send no one else. For the length of the campaign I will be dressed by an adjutant, or a squire.’
‘Yes, Exalted,’ she said, obedient and confused and hiding it, or trying to, making for the tent entrance, her cheeks red.
‘Wait.’ He couldn’t send her naked through the camp. ‘Here,’ he unpinned his cloak, and whirled it around her shoulders. He felt the wrongness of it, pushing against every protocol. ‘The guard will escort you back.’
‘Yes, Exalted,’ she said, because she could not say anything else, and she left him thankfully alone.