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“I don’t think you chose,” said Laurent, the words plain, heavier than a blow for people like them who didn’t like to be read.
Jokaste weathered the blow, only raising her brows a little. At the mouth of the wagon, the Veretian prince was an icon, waiting.
She thought back to what he had said. Opening a door for him, and in exchange, this opened wagon door, a packed horse. The Veretian prince discharging Damianos’ debts. Jokaste might still be Laurent’s enemy, but he’s not taking that into account.
He had an air of fatalistic calm, hiding nerves, so obvious that it made Jokaste flinch, wondering if she had been that transparent that final night in Ios. Except this was subtly different. A private individual going to a private death, confident of not being disturbed. All the gifts given, the doors locked, the poison waiting.
Jokaste, understanding, looked at him now with some distaste. There was this about the Veretian prince, which Jokaste realized from their short interactions: he couldn’t imagine himself winning against the Regent. He’s convinced himself that only force now would work, that things might only be resolved through war, which had never been the Regent’s element.
But even then, there was uncertainty. Damianos would hesitate because of the child, because he had things he feared to lose. Laurent knew it, judged his own value, and came up with this in a foolish notion of self-sacrifice.
“You want to be the story,” Jokaste said. “The death to justify the rampage. And at the end of it, only one throne. And no one left of your line to take it.”
Laurent didn’t blink or widen his eyes, but he went very still. After a while, he must have realized there was no point in lying, because he added glibly to her narration, “And no Kastor either. So you see: perfect.”
“Puerile, more like.”
Jokaste knew what he imagined: Damianos, angry and unstoppable, going back to rally his men, turning his back now that Laurent was impossible to save. Laurent taken back to the capital and killed, and all his allies fighting under Damianos’ banner, because there was no other choice. The Regent has killed his own nephew, and defecting to his camp would likely only get them killed. Only with Damianos did they have any chance left of winning. And so the alliance would hold, and in the end, Vere, even Akielos, would disappear into a new empire.
“You would wager two kingdoms on this?” And because she didn’t like her child used in any plan of his-- newly born as it was and not yet grown dear to her-- she admitted, with contained violence, “Your uncle has no hostage.”
Laurent shrugged easily in an infuriating Veretian gesture, fluid and unconcerned. But she saw the relief there, the slight smile and easy breath out. She didn’t realize until that moment that she could hate him more.
“So, plan,” Jokaste pressed, sharp as a knife-point.
“I promised him,” Laurent only admitted quietly, “I won’t let my uncle hurt him.”
Jokaste shook her head at the sweet naiveté. Well, why not, Jokaste thought, and heaved herself out of the wagon. Let him be surprised by Damianos’ full measure as a man.
--
Loyse talked with Prince Laurent as she helped lace him into a showy blue dress. Asked after an interval about her son.
Aimeric had been her fourth son. She had thought, at first, it was safe to dote on him, with such a huge difference in age between Aimeric and his brothers. There would be no huge expectations for him, no need for him to be involved in politics.
That, of course, was before the Regent.
She had not known how to act. Her child, love-blind and sullied. She didn’t want to think of him as dirty, but the thought was there, betraying her. She didn’t like the feeling of disgust that had welled up, when she saw Aimeric trailing after the Regent, the smile on his face radiant and fragile.
The Regent’s visit was prolonged by a week, as the Regent sampled as he liked. And even then, she could see he found him wanting, like a friend’s wine you agreed to try and kept sipping because there was nothing else, and you mean to be polite.
Guion dealt with the whole business by talking about horses for the rest of the Regent’s visit and ignoring his son. Though sometimes, he’d look, assessing and a bit disturbed, probably seeing her shadow in him. A husband’s slight territorial disquiet that an echo of his wife was being given to another man.
The Regent, of course, when he wasn’t fucking, was a perfect gentleman.
By now, she’s heard talk of the lover her child had taken in the camp, one of the soldiers who had previously been the captain before the position went to the Prince’s Akielon slave. Who was not a slave, it turned out. Loyse handled the surprise well, mostly because there were so many other things to think about. Less polite company would have harsh things to say about Aimeric if they knew, for what had been allowed to happen to him, all the smear on her precious son, none of it on the man who used him.
Aimeric’s last words were not even for her, his mother. A final apology for a lover he should have had from the start. Loyse shook her head at the absurd, simple tragedy of it.
When the last of the laces were done, she said levelly to the Prince, “I think that I deserve honesty.”
“You’re asking about whether or not he fucked me,” the Prince said, the tone exact and elegant, even if the words were not. Loyse wondered if he thought she would be scared of soldier’s talk. But she had lain with a man, had sons. Knew how men spoke and acted outside of her table. Her own son had been fucked by the Regent.
“I am not asking about your slave,” Loyse said, also exact. Prince Laurent gave her a look over the dress’ foolish frills, a look that was in part wariness and respect. And some old pain there, which he shared only briefly as her due before he hid it again under a mask of unassailable calm.
“My uncle then,” he said, and turned away. He said, very clearly, as one would pull off a bandage that has stuck to a wound, quick before the fear of pain could paralyze thought and movement, “Yes.”
Loyse nodded. The Lady Jokaste sat straight-backed and ignoring them completely, partly hidden from her view by a bale of silks. The Prince’s hand closed on the fabric of the dress. Almost absently, Loyse took his hand, the Prince blinking at her as she gently unclenched his fingers. He didn’t seem to know what to make of a gesture that didn’t have anything sexual or harmful about it, and let his hand lie in hers like a dead thing. His hand was very cold.
“My Prince,” Loyse said carefully, and did not imagine saying those words to Aimeric. “Let me help you.”
--
The letter, his brother’s last words, was tucked in the inner pocket of his coat. He has been pretending for a while that he wasn’t treating it like a talisman, but he’s carried it with him for weeks now. There’s a feeling of coming home, a lightness despite the grim business they were going to, Paschal’s brother like a shade over his shoulder.
To admit it would mean his brother was a traitor and had died one. But people have already forgotten about him. Paschal, though, still had a lingering fondness for the bastard. So he was going then, to see the end of it.
The rest of Laurent’s pieces didn’t know about the others. Paschal knew that to Laurent, he was simply a physician, so he knew that there was someone else who was meant to testify. Loyse’s testimony, when it came, could have been enough to sway the Council, but some of the members have obviously been bought. Some, not all, and they were acting like separate men now, not a collective.
What they needed was something more direct to justify turning on the Regent, to make them see there was little political advantage to keep siding with him. They knew what they were risking here, since killing the Prince and the Akielon King wouldn’t magically erase their army in the north. It might turn into a long war, the Council besieged and trapped here, in Ios, far from home, the Akielon King’s supporters hungry for revenge instead of dispersing. And in that chaos, Vask might rouse, amused as a leopard, and lunge to take what was left.
Yes, these were politicians. They must know the stakes, and were uncomfortable. Their reaction was what Paschal hoped for.
He watched the Regent, and thought of how this man had killed his brother without the decency of doing it himself. He thought of the time when he could have used his knowledge to poison the Regent slowly, except he hadn’t known about it.
He could use the letter here now, when the whole hall was tense and ready for it. Damen called for him, not naming him as if even now he was striving to protect everyone, and Damen wondering about all the wrong things. No, reprisal wasn’t the issue at all. Damen tried to awaken his sense of duty, which was predictable for him perhaps, but not at all what Paschal would have responded to at that moment, if he hadn’t planned on doing it from the start. He was alive with nervous energy, the kind that would have an inexperienced card player smiling and spoiling it, and he took a moment to compose himself.
When he brought the letter out, smoothed the pages, he thought of how this damned his brother. But there was also the image of his brother finally getting to point an accusing finger at the Regent, who until then had thought he had won. He spared a thought to the little boy he knew, the Prince who hadn’t known the extent of his uncle’s betrayal, who looked as shocked now as if the whole hall had been leveled by an earthquake.
I’m sorry, Paschal thought. But even the lingering sense of protectiveness for the little boy the Prince was before didn’t stop him from delivering that final piece of evidence. Evidence that was also there to save the Prince’s life. It was easy to justify it that way, though Paschal was honest enough with himself to admit that that wasn’t his main motivation.
The Regent’s fall, when it came, was all the harder, as Paschal knew it would be. Not a physician’s revenge, but a brother’s, so at least that meant he hadn’t soiled his practice.
After, the iron struck from Prince Laurent’s wrists. His uncle destroyed by the hulking mass of feelings that was the Akielon King, by a mother’s atonement and a dead man’s letter.
The hall broke into mad activity, Ios being retaken even with the army still camped well outside. The soldiers went about with their business of killing, a small group breaking off to protect the Council, who was seeing the Prince’s swordsmanship for the first time and reacting with surprised approval. When the hall was more or less secure, the Prince, King now, ran after Damen, skidding slightly on the marble, Paschal following a discreet distance behind with his physician’s kit, because it always ended with wounds with those two.
And there was this now, too. Well. He let them have their moment, only bustling in noisily to announce himself when Damen started yawning from the blood loss. Not bad after all, Paschal thought, and went to work.