Kings Rising (Captive Prince 3)

The older lady also stood. The last time Damen had seen her she had been warding him away from a bed with the broken end of a spear.

‘What happened to your village . . . I swore that I would find out who was responsible, and make them pay for it. I meant it,’ said Damen in Veretian. ‘You both have a place here if you want it, among friends. Marlas will belong to Vere again. That is my promise to you both.’

The woman said, ‘They told us who you were.’

‘Then you know I have the power to keep my promises.’

‘You think if you give us—’ The woman stopped.

She stood beside the girl, the two of them a wall of white-faced resistance. He felt the incongruity of his presence.

‘You should go,’ said the girl into the silence. ‘You’re scaring Genevot.’

Damen looked back at Genevot. Genevot was trembling. She wasn’t scared. She was furious. She was furious at him, at his presence here.

‘It wasn’t fair what happened to your village,’ Damen said to her. ‘No fight is fair. Someone’s always stronger. But I’ll give you justice. That I swear.’

‘I wish Akielons had never come to Delfeur,’ said the girl. ‘I wish someone had been stronger than you.’

She turned her back on him after she said it. It was an act of bravery, a girl in front of a king. Then she went and picked up a coin from the floor.

‘It’s all right, Genevot,’ said the girl. ‘Look, I’ll teach you a trick. Watch my hand.’

Damen’s skin prickled as he recognised it, the echo of another presence, the achingly familiar self-possession that the girl mimicked as she closed her hand over the coin, holding her fist out in front of her.

He knew who had been here before him, who had sat with her, taught her. He had seen this trick before. And though her eight-year-old sleight of hand was a little clumsy, she managed to push the coin into her sleeve, so that when she opened her hand again, it was empty.

* * *

In the field stretching out before Marlas, the joint armies were gathered, and all the adjuncts to an army, the outriders, the heralds, the supply wagons, the livestock, the physicians, and the aristocrats, including Vannes, Guion and his wife Loyse, who in a pitched battle would need to be separated, camped and made comfortable while the soldiers fought.

Starbursts and lions. They stretched out as far as the eye could see, so many banners aloft that they looked more like a fleet of ships than a marching column. Damen looked out at the marshalling vista from his horse, and readied himself to take his place at its head.

He saw Laurent, also mounted, a frowning spicule with blond hair. Rigidly upright in the saddle, his polished armour gleame

d, his eyes impersonal with command. With the head that Laurent had from griva, it was probably a good thing that he would soon be killing people.

When Damen looked back Nikandros’s eyes were on him.

There was a different look on Nikandros’s face than there had been this morning, and it was not just that Nikandros had witnessed Damen standing at Laurent’s order at the end of the meeting. Damen pulled on a rein.

‘You’ve been listening to slave gossip.’

‘You spent the night in the Prince of Vere’s rooms.’

‘I spent ten minutes in his rooms. If you think I fucked him in that time you underrate me.’

Nikandros didn’t move his horse out of the way.

‘He played Makedon at that village. He played him perfectly, as he played you.’

‘Nikandros—’

‘No. Listen to me Damianos. We’re riding into Akielos because the Prince of Vere has chosen to take his fight into your country. It’s Akielos that will be hurt in this conflict. And when the battles are done, and Akielos is exhausted by the fight, someone will step in to take the reins of the country. Make sure it’s you. The Prince of Vere is too good at commanding people, too good at manipulating those around him in order to get his way.’

‘I see. You’re warning me again not to bed him?’

‘No,’ said Nikandros. ‘I know you’re going to bed him. I’m saying that when he lets you, think about what he wants.’