When he returned, Damen let Laurent towel him down, with the sweet, unanticipated attentiveness that was also part of the way Laurent behaved in bed. He sipped from the shallow cup that Laurent provided, and poured water for Laurent in turn, which Laurent didn’t seem to expect. Laurent sat awkwardly upright on the bedding.
Damen stretched out comfortably, and waited for Laurent to do the same. That took minutes longer than it would have with any other lover. Eventually, with that same stiff awkwardness, Laurent lay down next to him. Laurent was closer to the fire, the room’s only remaining source of illumination, and it created wells of light and shadow across his body.
‘You’re still wearing it.’
He couldn’t help but say it. Laurent’s wrist was heavy with gold, like the colour of his hair in the firelight.
‘So are you.’
‘Tell me why.’
‘You know why,’ said Laurent.
They lay alongside one another, among the sheets and the mattress and the flat cushions. He rolled onto his back and looked up at the ceiling. He could feel the beat of his own heart.
‘I’ll be jealous when you marry your Patran princess,’ Damen heard himself say.
The room was quiet after he said it, he could hear the fire again, and was too aware of his own breathing. After a moment, Laurent spoke.
‘There will be no Patran princess, or daughter of the Empire.’
‘It’s your duty to continue your line.’
He didn’t know why he said it. There were marks on the ceiling, which was panelled and not plastered, and he could see the dark whorls and grain of the wood.
‘No. I’m the last. My line ends with me.’
Damen turned, to find Laurent was not looking back at him, but also had his eyes on some point in the dim light. Laurent’s voice was quiet. ‘I have never said that to anyone before.’
Damen didn’t want to disturb the silence that followed, the handspan that separated their bodies, the careful space between them.
‘I’m glad you’re here,’ said Laurent. ‘I always thought that I’d have to face my uncle alone.’
He turned to look at Damen, and their eyes met.
‘You’re not alone,’ said Damen.
Laurent didn’t answer, but he did give a smile, and reached out to touch Damen, wordlessly.
* * *
They parted ways with Charls six days later, after they crossed into the southernmost province of Akielos.
It had been a winding, relaxed journey, the days passing in a drone of summer insects and afternoon rest-stops to avoid the worst of the heat. Charls’s wagon train lent them respectability, and they passed Kastor’s patrols without difficulty. Jord taught dice to Aktis, who taught him some choice Akielon vocabulary. Lazar pursued Pallas with the kind of lazy confidence that would have Pallas lifting up his skirt as soon as they stopped somewhere with any semblance of privacy. Paschal gave free advice to Lydos, who went away relieved about the medical nature of his problems.
When the days got too hot, they retreated to inns and wayhouses, and once a large farmhouse where they ate bread, hard cheese and figs, and Akielon sweets of honey and nuts that attracted wasps in the sticky heat.
At the farmhouse, Damen found himself at an outside table, across from Paschal, who nodded his chin at Laurent, visible in the distance under the cooling branches of a tree. ‘He’s not used to the heat.’
That was true. Laurent was not made for the Akielon summer, and during the day decamped to the shade of the wagons, or, at rest-stops, stayed under awnings or the leafy shade of a tree. But he gave little other overt sign of it, neither complaining nor shirking when work needed to be done.
‘You never told me how you ended up in Laurent’s faction.’
‘I was the Regent’s physician.’
‘So you ministered to his household.’
‘And to his boys,’ said Paschal.
Damen said nothing.
After a moment, Paschal said, ‘Before he died, my brother served in the King’s Guard. I never swore my brother’s oath to the King. But I like to think that I’m carrying it out.’
Damen made his way down to the stream, where Laurent stood, his back leaned against the trunk of a young cypress. He was wearing sandals and the white cotton chiton, loose and wonderful, his eyes on the view: Akielos, beneath a wide blue sky.
The hills rolled down to a distant coast, where the ocean gleamed, and houses clustered, painted white as sails, with similar geometry. The architecture had the simple elegance that Akielons prized in their art, in their mathematics, and their philosophy, and which he had seen Laurent respond to silently on the journey.
Damen stopped for a moment, but it was Laurent who turned and said, ‘It’s beautiful.’
‘It’s hot,’ said Damen. Reaching the pebbled bank, Damen leaned down and scooped a cloth into the stream’s clear water. He came forward.
‘Here,’ said Damen, softly. After a slight hesitation, Laurent tipped his head forward and allowed Damen the delight of drizzling cool water over the back of his neck, while he closed his eyes and made a soft, sweet sound of relief. Only this close could you see the faint flush on his cheeks, and the slight sweat damp at the roots of his hair.
‘Your Highness. Charls and the merchants are preparing to depart.’ Pallas caught them with their heads close together, a trickle of water running down the back of Laurent’s neck. Damen looked up, his palm braced against the rough bark of the tree.
‘I see that you used to be a slave, and that Charls has freed you,’ Guilliame said to him, as they prepared to part ways. Guilliame spoke very earnestly. ‘I want you to know that Charls and I have never traded in slaves.’
Damen looked out at the weird beauty of the gnarled landscape. He heard himself say, ‘Damianos will end slavery when he becomes King.’
‘Thank you, Charls. We cannot endanger you any further.’ Laurent was making his own farewells to the merchants.
‘It was my honour to ride with you,’ said Charls. Laurent clasped his hand.
‘When Damianos of Akielos takes the throne, mention my name and tell him you helped me. He’ll give you a good price on your cloth.’
Nikandros was looking at Laurent.
‘He’s very—’
‘You get used to it,’ said Damen, with a little wellspring of joy inside him, because that wasn’t really true.
They made camp for the last time in a small copse that provided them cover, on the edge of the wide, flat plain where the Kingsmeet surmounted the only rise.
It was visible in the distance, high stone walls and marble columns, a place of kings. Tomorrow, he and Laurent would travel there, and rendezvous with the wet nurse, who would exchange herself and her small, precious consignment for Jokaste’s freedom. He looked out at it and felt a belief in the future, and real hope.
His mind full of thoughts of the morning, he lay himself down on his bedroll next to Laurent, and slept.
* * *
Laurent lay beside Damen until all the sounds of the camp were quiet, and then, when Damen was sleeping and there was no one to stop him, Laurent rose, and made his way alone through the sleeping camp to the barred wagon that held Jokaste.
It was very late by then and all the stars were out in the Akielon sky. And that was strange. To be here, so close to the end of his own plans. So close to the end, really, of everything.
To be where he’d never dreamed he would be, and to know that by morning, this would be finished, or at least, his part in it. Laurent moved silently past the sleeping soldiers, to the place, a little distance away, where the wagons stood, still and quiet.
Then, because there should be no witnesses to this, he dismissed the guards. All bad things were done in the dark. The wagon was open to the night air, with the iron bars of its inner door keeping the prisoner insid
e. He came to stand in front of it. Jokaste watched all of this happen and didn’t flinch from it, nor did she scream or plead for help, as he had thought she would not. She just met his gaze calmly through the bars.
‘So you do have your own plans.’
‘Yes,’ said Laurent.
And he stepped forward, unlocking the barred door to the wagon, and let it swing open.
He stepped back. He had no weapon with him. It was simply a path to freedom. Not far off, there was a saddled horse. Ios was a half-day’s ride.
She didn’t walk through the open door, but just gazed at him, and in the cool, steady blue of her eyes were all the ways that leaving the wagon was a trap.
He said, ‘I think it’s Kastor’s child.’
Jokaste didn’t answer him, and there was a silence in which her gaze was on him. Laurent regarded her in turn. Around them, the camp stayed quiet, no sounds except for the breeze and the night.
‘I think you saw it clearly, in those twilight days in Akielos. The end was coming, and Damianos wouldn’t listen to anyone. The only way to save his life was to persuade Kastor to send him as a slave to Vere. To do that you had to be in Kastor’s bed.’
Her expression didn’t alter, but he felt the change in her, the new, careful way she was holding herself. In the cool night air, it transmitted something to him, against her will. It gave something away. And she was angry about it, and for the first time she was afraid.
He said, ‘I think it’s Kastor’s child, because I don’t think you would use Damen’s child against him.’
‘Then you underestimate me.’
‘Do I?’ He held her gaze. ‘I suppose we’ll find out.’
Laurent tossed the key into the wagon, in front of the place where she stood unmoving.
‘We’re alike. You said that. Would you have opened the door for me? I don’t know. But you opened one for him.’
Her voice was wiped clean of inflection, ruthlessly, so that nothing showed but a mocking, mild bitterness. ‘You mean, the only difference between us is that I chose the wrong brother?’
As the stars began to drift across the sky, Laurent thought about Nicaise, standing in the courtyard with a handful of sapphires.
‘I don’t think you chose,’ said Laurent.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
IT WAS BETTER not to drag Jokaste out of her wagon until the exchange was guaranteed, Laurent said, and so the two of them rode to the Kingsmeet alone.
That suited the Kingsmeet’s own protocols. The Kingsmeet strictly enforced its laws of non-violence. It was a sanctum, a place for parley, with centuries-old rules of peace. Pilgrims could enter, but groups of soldiers were not permitted inside its walls.
There were three stages to their approach. First, across the long plains. Then, past the gates. Finally, they would enter the hall, and from there pass into the inner chamber that housed the Kingstone. The Kingsmeet on the horizon was a white marble crown, commanding its vantage from the only rise on the wide, dusty plain. Every white-cloaked soldier in the Kingsmeet would see Damen’s approach with Laurent: two humble pilgrims here on horseback to make their tribute.
‘You approach the Kingsmeet. Announce your purpose.’
The man’s voice was very small, descending from an immense height of fifty feet. Damen shaded his eyes and called back. ‘We are travellers, here to pay tribute to the Kingstone.’
‘Take the pledge, traveller, and be welcome.’
With the sound of a chain screaming, the portcullis rose. They took their horses up the rise to the gates, past the huge, heavy iron portcullis enclosed by four immense stone towers, as at Karthas.
Inside, they dismounted to meet an older man, whose white cloak was fixed to his shoulder with a gold pin, and who, when they ceremonially gave over a great deal of gold in tribute, advanced to put a white sash around each of their necks. Damen had to bend slightly for it.
‘This is a place of peace. No blow may be struck, no sword may be drawn. The man who breaks the peace of the Kingsmeet must face the King’s justice. Do you accept the pledge?’ said the older man.
‘I do,’ said Damen. The man turned to Laurent, who swore the same pledge. ‘I do.’ And they were inside.
He wasn’t expecting the summer tranquility of it, the tiny flowers growing on the grassy slopes that led up to the ancient hall, massive blocks of jutting stone remnants of its long-ago first structure. He had only ever been here during ceremonies, the kyroi and their men thronging the slopes and his father standing powerful in the hall.
He had been an infant the first time he had come here, presented to the kyroi held aloft by his father. Damen had heard the story many times, the King lifting him up, the nation’s joy at the arrival of an heir after years of miscarriages, the Queen seemingly unable to bring a child to term.
In the stories, no one spoke of nine-year-old Kastor, watching from the sidelines as a ceremony bestowed on an infant all that had been promised to him.
Kastor would have been crowned here. He would have called on the kyroi as Theomedes had called on them, and been crowned in the old way, with the kyroi in attendance, and the impassive faces of the Kingsmeet sentries looking on.
Now those sentries flanked them. They were a permanent independent military garrison, the finest chosen from each of the provinces with scrupulous neutrality to serve a two-year term. They lived in the complex of supporting outbuildings, filling the barracks and the gymnasiums, where they slept and woke and trained with immaculate discipline.
It was a soldier’s greatest honour to compete in the yearly games and be chosen from the best to serve here, to uphold the strict laws.
Damen said, ‘Nikandros served here, for two years.’
At fifteen, he had felt such pride at Nikandros’s accomplishment, even as he had embraced Nikandros and felt what it meant that his closest friend was leaving him to serve alongside the greatest fighters in Akielos. Perhaps, underneath that, something else, unacknowledged, was now in his voice.
‘You were jealous.’
‘My father said that I had to learn to lead, not to follow.’
‘He was right,’ said Laurent. ‘You’re a king in a place of kings.’
They had passed the gates. They started to climb the steps, up the grassy hillside towards the marble pillars that marked the entry to the hall. Each stage had sentries, white-cloaked and standing guard.
A hundred queens and kings of Akielos had been crowned here, the processionals taking the same path that they took now: up the marble steps that led from the gates all the way to the entrance of the hall, the steps themselves eroded by decades of ascending feet.
He felt the solemnity of the place, and its quiet majesty. He heard himself say, ‘The first King of Akielos was crowned here, and every queen and king since.’
They passed more sentries as they walked past the pillars and into the long, cavernous space of pale marble. The marble walk was carved with figures, and Laurent paused before one of them, a woman on horseback.
‘That’s Kydippe, she was Queen before Euandros. She took the throne from King Treus and averted civil war.’
‘And that one?’
‘That’s Thestos. He built the palace at Ios.’
‘He looks like you.’ Thestos was carved in outline, holding a giant piece of masonry aloft. Laurent touched his bicep, then touched Damen’s. Damen let out a breath.
There was a transgressive thrill to walking with Laurent here—he had brought a Veretian prince into the heart of Akielos. His father would have barred the way to Laurent, not let him rise, a slender figure, utterly dwarfed by the scale of the hall.
‘That’s Nekton, who broke the Kingsmeet’s laws.’
Nekton had drawn a sword to protect his brother, King Timon. He was pictured on his knees, with an axe to his neck. King Timon had been forced to sentence his brothe
r to death for what he had done, so strict were the ancient laws of the Kingsmeet. ‘That’s Timon, his brother.’
They passed them in succession: Eradne, Queen of the Six, the first since Agathon to rule six provices and command six kyroi; Queen Agar, who had brought Isthima into the kingdom; King Euandros, who had lost Delpha. He felt the weight of those kings and queens as he had never felt it—here before them not as a king, but as a man.
He came to a halt in front of the oldest carving, a single name chiselled crudely into the stone.
‘That is Agathon,’ said Damen, ‘the first King of Akielos. My father is descended from King Euandros, but my line runs back to Agathon through my mother.’
‘His nose is chipped,’ said Laurent.
‘He unified a kingdom.’ My father had all the same dreams. Damen said, ‘Everything I have has passed to me from him.’ They reached the end of the walk.
The sentries stood, guarding the inviolable space, the inner chamber of rougher stone, the only place in Akielos where a prince could kneel, to be crowned and rise a king.
‘As it will pass, I suppose, to my son,’ said Damen.
They entered, and saw a figure waiting for them, swathed in red, sitting comfortably on the heavy, carved wooden throne.
‘Not quite,’ said the Regent.
* * *
Every nerve came to alert. Damen’s mind flashed to—ambush, double cross—his eyes scanning the entrances for figures, for the swarm of men surrounding them. But the ring of metal, the clatter of feet never came. There was just his heart pounding in the silence, the impassive faces of the Kingsmeet soldiers, and the Regent rising and strolling forward, alone.
Damen forced himself to release the hilt of his sword, which he’d gripped instinctively. The stymied desire to put his blade to the Regent’s throat beat in him, a thundering call to action that he must ignore. The rules of the Kingsmeet were sacrosanct. He could not draw a sword here and live.
The Regent stood waiting for them like a king before the Kingstone, his authority carried in his bones, dressed in dark red, a royal mantle on his shoulders. The scale of the hall suited him, the commanding power he possessed, as he met Laurent’s eyes.