Kings Rising (Captive Prince 3)

‘And that is how it is to be between us?’ said Damen. ‘Mercenary? Cold?’

‘How did you think it would be?’ said Laurent. ‘You’d take me to your bed for the public consummation?’

It hurt. Damen said, ‘I won’t do this without Nikandros, and he won’t give up Delpha.’

‘He will when you give him Ios.’

It was too neat. He hadn’t thought as far as Kastor’s defeat, or who would become kyros in Ios, the traditional seat of the King’s closest adviser. Nikandros was the ideal candidate.

‘I see you’ve thought of everything,’ said Damen, bitterly. ‘It didn’t have to be—you could have come to me, and asked for my help, I would have—’

‘Killed the rest of my family?’

Laurent said it standing straight-backed before the table, his gaze unwavering. Thickly, Damen remembered running his sword through the man he’d believed was the Regent; as if killing the Regent would be his expiation. It wouldn’t.

He thought of all Laurent had done here, every piece of impersonal leverage, to control this meeting, to ensure it played out on his terms.

‘Congratulations,’ said Damen. ‘You’ve forced my hand. You have what you want. Delpha, in exchange for your aid in the south. Nothing given freely, nothing done out of feeling, everything coerced, with bloodless planning.’

‘Then I have your agreement? Say it.’

‘You have my agreement.’

‘Good,’ said Laurent. He took a step back. Then, as if a pillar of control had finally collapsed, Laurent surrendered his full weight to the table behind him, his face drained of all colour. He was trembling, his hairline pricked with the sweat of injury. He said: ‘Now get out.’

* * *

The herald was speaking to him.

Damen heard it as if from very far away and understood, at length, that there was a small party of his own men here to ride with him back to his camp. He spoke words to the herald, or thought he did, because the herald went away and left him to mount his horse.

He put his hand on the saddle before he mounted, and for a moment closed his eyes. Laurent had known who he was, and had still made love to him. He wondered what mix of yearning and self-delusion had allowed Laurent to do that.

He was battered by what had happened, bruised and aching, his whole body throbbed. He had not felt the blows struck against him in battle until now, when they all came together. The unsteady physical exhaustion of the melee was on him; he couldn’t move; he couldn’t think.

If he’d imagined it, it was as a single, cataclysmic event, an unmasking that, whatever followed, would be over. Violence would have been both punishment and release. He had never imagined that it would instead go on and on; that the truth had been known; that it had been painfully absorbed; that it would be this crushing pressure that wouldn’t leave his chest.

Laurent had tamped down the smothered emotion in his eyes, and would endure an alliance with his brother’s killer, though he felt nothing but aversion. If he could do it, Damen could do it. He could make impersonal negotiations, speak in the formal language of kings.

The ache of loss didn’t make sense, because Laurent had never been his. He had known that. The delicate thing that had grown between them had never had a right to exist. It had always had an end date, the moment that Damen reassumed his mantle.

Now he had to return with these men to his own camp. The ride back was brief, less than a half mile separated their armies. He made it, with his duty firm in his mind. If it hurt, it was fitting; it was simply kingship.

* * *

There was still one thing that he had to do.

When he finally dismounted, an Akielon city of tents had risen up to mirror the Veretian one, on his orders. He slid down from the saddle and passed off his reins to a soldier. He was very tired by now in a purely physical way that he felt as an effort of concentration. He had to put aside the tremor in his muscles, in his arms and legs.

On the eastern side of the camp was his own tent, which offered sheets, a pallet, a place to close his eyes, and rest. He didn’t enter it. He called Nikandros to the command tent instead, raised in the centre of the army encampment.

It was now night, and the entrance of the tent was lit by torch posts that flamed orange at waist height. Inside, six braziers made jumping shadows out of the table, the chair set to face the entrance, an audience throne.

Even making camp so close to a Veretian troop had the men on edge. They had superfluous patrols and galloping hornsmen with every nerve on alert. If a Veretian threw a pebble, the entire army would launch into action.

They didn’t know yet why they were making camp here; they had simply obeyed his orders. Nikandros would be the first to hear the news.

He remembered Nikandros’s pride the day that Theomedes had given him Delpha. It had meant more than the bestowal of lands, or stone and mortar. It had been proof to Nikandros that he had honoured the memory of his father. Now Damen was going to take it from him, in a piece of cold-blooded statesmanship.