‘For old time’s sake?’ said Damen.
It was a mistake to say that. He stepped forward and put his hands on the ties of Laurent’s jacket. He began to draw the ties from their moorings. He felt the curve of Laurent’s ribcage as the tie threaded through its eye.
The jacket tangled at Laurent’s wrist. It took some effort to get it off, disordering Laurent’s shirt. Damen stopped, his hands still inside the jacket.
Under the fine fabric of Laurent’s shirt, Paschal had bound Laurent’s shoulder to strengthen it. He saw it with a pang. It was something Laurent would not have let him see sober, a keen breach of privacy. He thought of sixteen spears thrown, with a constant effort of arm and shoulder, after rough exertion the day before.
Damen took a step back, said: ‘Now you can say you were served by the King of Akielos.’
‘I could say that anyway.’
Lamp-lit, the room was filled with orange light, revealing its simple furnishings, the low chairs, the wall table with its bowl of fresh-picked fruit. Laurent was a different presence in his white undershirt. They were gazing at each other. Behind Laurent, the light concentrated on the bed, where oil flamed in a low, burnished container, and illumination fell on tumbled pillows, and the carved marble base of the bed.
‘I miss you,’ said Laurent. ‘I miss our conversations.’
It was too much. He remembered being strapped to the post and half killed; sober, Laurent had made the line very clear, and he was aware that he had crossed it, they both had.
‘You’re drunk,’ said Damen. ‘You’re not yourself.’ He said, ‘I should take you to bed.’
‘Then, take me,’ said Laurent.
He manoeuvred Laurent determinedly over to the bed, half pushed, half poured him onto it, as any soldier would help his drunk friend to the pallet in his tent.
Laurent lay where Damen put him, on his back in a half-open shirt, his hair tumbled, his expression unguarded. His knee was pushed out to the side, his breathing was slow as one in sleep, the thin fabric of his shirt lay against his skin, rising and falling with it.
‘You don’t like me like this?’
‘You’re really . . . not yourself.’
‘Aren’t I?’
‘No. You’re going to kill me when you sober up.’
‘I tried to kill you. I can’t seem to go through with it. You keep overturning all my plans.’
Damen found a water pitcher and poured water into a shallow cup that he brought to the low table by Laurent’s bed. Then he emptied the fruit bowl of fruit and put it on the floor alongside, to be used as a drunk soldier might use an empty helmet.
‘Laurent. Sleep it off. In the morning, you can punish us both. Or forget this ever happened. Or pretend to.’
He did all of this quite adeptly, though he found that before he poured the water it took him a moment to catch his breath. He put both his hands on the table and leaned his weight on it, only a little breathless. He put Laurent’s jacket over a chair. He closed the shutters so that the morning sun would not intrude. Then he made his way to the door, turning once he reached it for a last glance at the bed.
Laurent, falling through scattered thoughts into sleep, said, ‘Yes, uncle.’
CHAPTER TEN
DAMEN WAS SMILING. He lay on his back, his arm over his head, the sheet pooled over his lower body. He had been awake for perhaps an hour in the early light.
The events of last night, endlessly complicated in the candlelit privacy of Laurent’s bedchamber, had resolved into a single, blissful fact this morning.
Laurent missed him.
He felt a flutter of illicit joy when he thought of it. He remembered Laurent gazing up at him. You keep overturning all my plans. Laurent was going to be furious when he arrived at the morning meeting.
‘You’re in a good mood,’ Nikandros said, as he came into the hall. Damen clapped him on the shoulder, and took up his place at the long table.
‘We’re going to take Karthas,’ said Damen.
He had summoned each of the bannermen to this meeting. This would be their first attack on an Akielon fort, and they were going to win it, swiftly and definitively.