21. Damon

21

DAMON

D amon remembers the pain, blacking out on the scaffold under the lash, and then…

And then…

He is on a ship. He is lying on his belly in a dim room. He is in the hold of a ship. His back roars with pain. He cannot move. Where is he? Where is Lyr?

Lyr should be here.

His head aches. His mouth is dry.

He remembers the lash. The lash, then what? He did not die. He thought he might. The pain was too much. The pain wanted to take him and he wanted to let it. But he did not. He was taken to his father's chambers in the Tower of the Heir.

Where is Lyr? He cannot think.

He has a fever. His wounds are infected and he sweats hot and cold. An enforcer comes into the room. He removes the dressings on Damon's back and washes them down with hot brine. Damon howls in pain, still shaking as a fresh dressing is applied. The enforcer leaves Damon wine and bread. Damon lifts his head .

"Where is Lyr?" he growls. "Send my slave to attend me."

The enforcer looks at Damon sourly. "Your slave has been detained in Attar," he says and exits without another word.

Damon takes the cup of wine with an unsteady hand. He drinks. He does not understand. Lyr should be with him. Has Selim betrayed him?

He will not survive in this state without help. He needs Lyr with him. Surely his father would not have allowed them to do this?

But his father was always a coward.

He had been a boy of fourteen when his father had come to his bedchamber, woken him and told him that there had been an accusation made against him. An accusation so terrible that he might be indentured for twenty years.

Damon loved his father. He was terrified. But his father explained the law of stead. A family member could offer to take the punishment and serve in the Imperial Army for twenty years as an indentured soldier.

Damon had barely understood the words. "Who?"

At fourteen, Damon was well aware that his father's family were his wives, Karo and Ullinor, his legitimate children, Atticul, Ferra and Endrew. His wives and daughter would not be joining the army. Endrew was a babe in arms, still. Atticul?

So, Damon had asked his father if Atticul would be able to survive in the army. Atticul was a soft youth, shorter than Damon and far slighter. Damon had seen him training to fight and he knew he lacked much of the instinctive skill Damon and Lukas possessed.

Atticul, he knew, let his envy of Damon and Lukas's skill fester. He was the trueborn son. But he still saw Damon and Lukas as his rivals and enemies.

Rafus had tears in his eyes when he told Damon, "No. It will not be Atticul."

Damon sat up in his bed. Realising what he meant. "Please Father no, I cannot. Please do not send me away."

Twenty years in the Imperial Army. As a lowly indentured soldier. A slave warrior. He barely knew what it meant. Only that he did not want it.

"I am sorry," said his father. "I begged them to take Lukas but they said it had to be you. But I could ask again. We could find a way to force the issue."

Damon didn't know what this ‘way' could be. He never asked. In later years he suspected his father had meant that Damon ought to sustain an injury that would make him unfit to serve in the army.

But all Damon said that night was, "If you wish it, father. If you need it to be me, I will go."

He never asked his father what crime he had committed.

It was Atticul, a few days later, when plans for Damon's leaving were well underway, who delighted in telling Damon and Lukas his version of the story.

"Father was asked to choose which son would be allowed to take the punishment in his stead," he explained, grinning as he leant against the orchard wall in the grounds of the Rose Palace, he had been happy ever since he had first heard the news that Damon was being sent away. "Father chose Lukas, and Gelen the Green said that as Father wanted Lukas to offer the stead he must love Damon more and so it should be Damon who was allowed to offer."

Damon told Atticul this was a lie. How would he even know what had been said? But Atticul's words did fit with what his father had told him when he had come to his bedchamber.

That night Lukas had run away from The Rose Palace to join the Mortingale Outlaws.

On the day Damon left Attar to join the army, Atticul had been happy. His father had been in tears again. Ullinor had not shown any emotion, but he was sure she was pleased to have him gone too. Karo had also been emotionless. As ever, when it came to Princess Karo, Damon had little idea what she thought about anything, least of all him — the son her husband had sired with a whore.

Atticul and his mother had delighted far less in Damon's fate when he had returned in glory only five years later, having played a pivotal role in the retaking of the western half of Pluma-Ferris from Plumian rebels. He was called The One Man Army and been made a Commander – a thing previously unprecedented for an indentured soldier. He had been celebrated by Emperor Selim and gifted the island of Sanvicta. That evening Atticul had announced his own intentions to join the Imperial Army.

After he ran away, Damon did not see Lukas until a decade and a half later, when he found him in Emperor Selim's quarters in the royal palace.

He had joined the enforcers and palace guard that night to defend the palace, but he had known Lukas would be amongst the outlaws. He had found him. He had made sure he was not killed in the bloody battle. He had steered him subtly towards a place where he knew Lukas could run – promising him only that if he ever returned to Attar, Damon would make sure it was him that took his head.

Eventually, he feels the sounds of the ship coming to a halt. Someone gives him a cup of honey water mixed with sofi. It makes him soft .

He is dimly aware of the pallet he lies on being lifted. A small boat rows to shore and he is set down in front of Sanvicta island's keep.

Damon has not visited Sanvicta for years, but he remembers it. It's small. The only building the tiny keep – not much more than a stone tower with a cellar for storage. It's a scrubby place with chalky ground.

There is a garden here, Damon knows, well kept. His staff of three, a keeper, a gardener and a shepherd tend the place. They send him reports. He enjoys them. On the front, he would read about Sanvicta with quiet satisfaction. Before Felgrace, before Sanglora, he had his island. It was always meant to be his escape, but now it would be his grave.

Those reports mean nothing now. He knows what the enforcers will do. His servants will be removed, by force if necessary. The enforcers will dig up the trees, apple, plum and olive, they will destroy the herbs and roots growing in the garden and salt the earth. If they are very thorough, they will poison the well too.

He will be left forty days' supply of bread and water. It's a death sentence couched in civility.

The enforcers leave. Damon is still foggy from the sofi and shaky from the fever. He will die here, he thinks. He has been betrayed and he will die here.

When he finally opens his eyes and sees Lyr standing over him, backlit against the sun, he thinks he must already be halfway to the afterlife.