22. Lyr

22

LYR

L yr does not know how long he is left in the dark cell under the Rose Palace. It is not the same cell as the night before but it is similar. They are all dark little holes deep below the Rose Palace with dirt floors and chains bolted to the walls. The woollen cloak is scratchy on his skin but he is glad he has been allowed to keep it. Without it, he is sure he would freeze in the hip cloth.

He does not sleep. He waits. Waits for what Selim promised. Someone who understands Ur-Ambolk who will come and see the marks on his skin. Will read all the secrets that are written on him.

He startles when the door opens, light from the single candle held by the man at the door is blinding.

He can make out scant details of the man. Tall, thin with a neat beard. Purple robes. He is familiar. This is one of the people he has met today, a member of the Rose Court, but he cannot remember who.

A pair of enforcers with the familiar man take hold of Lyr. He is brought to a square room with stone walls. Candles glow in each corner.

Lyr is placed on the room's single wooden chair.

The enforcers leave and a woman walks into the room. She is as tall as the man. Lyr can recognise the Brides of Zai now. She wears their robes, white and grey, covering everything but her pale face. The familiar man says, "Good Evening Lyr. My name is Chancellor Vindar. And this," he indicates the woman, "Is Pershel, the Moon Truth, an expert in false heathen religions and their filthy rituals."

Lyr says nothing.

Pershel looks Lyr up and down. "I understand you were the personal slave of Queen Jareleezi?"

"Yes, My Lady," Lyr says, voice shaky.

"Tell me what she did to you?"

"She used me for her magic."

"How. Exactly?"

Lyr swallows and forces himself to speak as evenly as he can. "She spoke to her Gods, through me. She performed scrying rituals using my body. She made these marks so I could be a vessel they could use to communicate with her." He extends his arms and shows the swirling scars. He remembers Jareleezi's knife. He remembers the cold pain as he was held down by her leather straps and marked with her blade. "She used my blood and my seed too, as well as my skin. She never told me what she meant to achieve," he finishes.

Pershel steps forward. She looks at Lyr's arms, then lifts his shirt to reveal the runes there. "I see," she says. "Could you remove your cloak, please?"

It's a very calm command. Lyr feels uneasy, but he drops the cloak. He stands bared in the hip cloth so Pershel can see every mark. The circular brands on his shoulders, the tiny runes burned into his back and the four runes across his chest.

Pershel runs a long finger across the four marks. She says, "I saw these when you were presented for your justice. These are in Ur-Ambolk, the old tongue of the Amber Forest. The most ancient language we know."

Lyr nods. "I know."

"Do you know what these runes on your chest say?"

Lyr nods again. "I do, yes."

Pershel turns to Vindar. "These marks on his limbs were made first, as he said. To create the vessel. This is body scrying. Work with prophecy. The marks on his back and chest are messages sent by the demons. Tales of the future. The ones on his chest are one thing, their meaning is clear. The ones on his back," she turns Lyr around, "these are very detailed, they must have taken many moons to complete. It will take time to translate it all but they speak of demons, dark Gods, a great threat to the world. This one here," she presses a finger to Lyr's shoulder blade, "is the name of Emperor Selim."

"Why do you have the name of our Emperor written on your skin, slave?" snaps Vindar.

"I don't know," says Lyr. "It's on my back. I cannot read it."

It had hurt, when the messages came. It had taken a long time. Night after night of fire and chanting and slow burning on his skin.

"This is serious," says Pershel. "This slave is a deeper part of all this than I anticipated. I must consult with Zai privately."

Vindar says, "He is to be sent to Sanvicta in the morning. Into exile."

"Then you must stop it. You must insist Selim orders he is to be kept here. "

"No," Lyr says, with a jolt of panic. "No. I must go with Damon. He will die from his injuries."

"This is of far more importance," Pershel says. She turns Lyr around again to face her, with cool hands on his skin. She looks Lyr in the eyes. "What Jareleezi did to you was pure Hevelikar filth," she says. "I am sorry that you are a part of it." And she sweeps out of the room.

Lyr looks at Vindar. He smiles a slow and nasty smile. "Interesting," he says. "Did Damon Darekul know about this when he took you?"

Lyr shakes his head. "Damon had nothing to do with this."

"I see," says Vindar. "He is being taken to his exile in the morning. He will be left on Sanvicta. Your assertion is correct, if you remain here, he will not survive alone with those injuries."

Lyr cannot think of anything he can say.

He is allowed to cover himself with his cloak and returned to his cell. He sits in the corner hugging his knees.

That woman, Pershel, she read what was written on his chest. And on his back. But Lyr does not know what is written there in hundreds of tiny symbols. The words the woman said, demons, dark Gods, mean little to him. But the four symbols on his chest, he knows what they say. He knows what she read.

He's thinking this over and over when the cell door opens again. A man stands in the doorway. At first, he thinks it is Vindar, but no. It is another man of similar build, but he doesn't wear Vindar's fine purple robes of state. He wears priest's robes. Lyr looks at his face. He looks like Vindar with a longer beard and less neatly kept hair. He was there at the Justice.

He says, "Lyr of Klish, keep silent and listen to me. At dawn, Damon Darekul will be sent to Sanvicta with bread and water for forty days. Gelen the Green decreed that you would be sent into exile with him. But tonight Chancellor Vindar has asked Emperor Selim for permission to keep you here."

"I know," Lyr says.

"I believe Selim will grant the request."

"Then Damon will die."

The man nods. "They will poison his well if they can, but there are streams and springs on Sanvicta."

Lyr looks at him, he cannot imagine why this man is telling him this.

"They will leave him with ten barrels of fresh water. The barrels are big enough for a man to hide inside. He would not suffer much if one of the barrels he was sent with did not contain water."

Lyr doesn't know who this man is or why he is helping him. It doesn't matter. "Please," he says. "Show me the way."

Lyr has a knife inside the barrel, a small stout blade strong enough for him to pry it open. He also has supplies: linen wound dressings and jars of salix and sofi.

When he escapes the barrel, he finds himself inside a keep. When he walks outside he sees Damon, lying unconscious on a pallet in front of the building. On the horizon, he can see the ship. He slinks back inside and waits until it has vanished from view.

When he is sure it is safe he walks over to Damon, cautious, taking care not to startle him. His back is one festering wound. He looks ashen, his skin is paler than Lyr has ever seen it.

In the keep, he finds two bedchambers upstairs. He doesn't think Damon will be able to walk up stairs and Lyr cannot carry him. So he brings a straw-stuffed mattress and linens down to the kitchen and makes a bed in front of the fire. He lights the fire and uses some of the hard bread and water to make a porridge, which he sets to warm.

He lifts Damon from the pallet and supports him into the keep and onto the bed where he puts him to lie on his belly. He cleans the wounds on his back.

Damon moans, "Lyr?"

"It's me. I'm here."

He puts sofi and salix in Damon's porridge and feeds him, then lets him sleep.

He remembers an old trick his mother taught him once and leaves some damp bread in a corner to grow mould.

Full of sofi, Damon sleeps.

Lyr explores the island. It is cooler here than in Attar. The wind from the Sterum Ocean is sharp. He salvages some food from the ruined garden. Some apples and roots that were missed in the enforcers' hasty destruction of anything that would help Damon survive. He will add them to the next porridge he makes.

There are birds in the trees. Most are black, brown and grey, but there is the occasional bright green flash of a calcis bird. Calcis birds are familiar to Lyr. He knows they are not found naturally in this part of the world. They're from Ik-Sundal, a long way southeast. But they fly wild everywhere. They sang with the mortingales in the gardens of Sanglora. And they even survive here. Lyr has seen them in cages being sold at the markets on Klish and in Attar. Brought back by merchants and sold to be kept in parlours as pretty decorations. The wild ones must have escaped those cages, they have made their homes wherever they found themselves.

Calcis birds are long-lived and hardy. They are survivors. Like me, Lyr thinks. Survivors, a long way from home.

He watches them looping in the sky. He remembers a story Jareleezi told him once of another bird, the calidrius bird, a bird that could heal wounds with its magical song. Could calcis birds be relations of the calidrius bird? Could their presence here be a good omen?

Is there such a thing? If Damon dies Jareleezi's Gods were wrong.

And if he lives…?

Damon does live.

He recovers slowly, over the following days. Lyr is already concerned about how long their provisions will last. Water is not a concern. As the man who freed him promised, Sanvicta has many streams. But enough bread to last Damon forty days is even less when Lyr has to eat too, even when he tries to take as little as he can.

Lyr worries what will happen when the bread runs out. He searches the garden for any more food that is left behind. He thinks the olive tree may have survived, but it will not bear fruit for months. The weather seems to get colder every day. It is hard to see how they will survive the coming winter.

When the damp bread Lyr left starts to bloom mould, he spreads a little of it carefully over the worst of the wounds on Damon's back.

As he does so, Damon says, softly "I made plans."

"Plans for us?" Lyr leans forward.

"Plans for me. It was before I ever knew about you. But you remember that it was only a short while after I was given Sanvicta that Atticul discovered my sin with Plumillar. I knew what I was and I knew what my fate would be if I were ever punished for my sins."

"What do you mean?"

Damon smiles. It is the first time he has smiled on Sanvicta. "I always knew I might end up in this place. And what they would do if I were exiled here. So I planned for it. There are supplies here. There is a secret cellar."

The secret cellar is below the main cellar under the keep. Its entrance is a trap door disguised to look like another flagstone. When Lyr gets it open he finds sacks of barley and lentils, apples carefully preserved in boxes. There are even some barrels of wine.

Lyr's heart leaps to see it. Nothing less than salvation. He moves around the room cautiously, as if this miracle cannot be real, but in each sack and barrel and box, he finds food, carefully preserved. He's not sure if it is enough to see them through the winter, to keep them alive until he can replant and salvage the garden, but it could be. If he is careful.

Lyr cooks some barley broth and Damon sits up from his bed to eat it.

It is another day before Damon is strong enough to hold a long conversation and the first thing he does is ask Lyr how he came to be here after all. Lyr explains about the barrel and the man who freed him from his cell.

Damon frowns. "The man you describe can only be Doroth Zain. He sat with Gelen the Green at the Justice. He is Vindar's brother and they look much alike. But he is the High Word, Zai as Man. Why would Doroth help you? Why would he help me? He should want me dead for my sins more than anyone." He pauses. "Perhaps this is a trap."

"Perhaps," says Lyr. But if this is a trap, he happily walked right into it. "I am surprised that when they discovered me gone they did not come here to find me. Surely they would guess where I would go?"

Damon shrugs. "The men did not know you were hidden on the ship. No other vessel has passed this way. Perhaps they do not think you could have got yourself here."

But Lyr is wary. He often watches the horizon for a ship coming to take him back to Pershel. But no ship comes.

More days pass. Damon is sitting up all day now and healing well with Lyr's careful cleaning and applying of mould to his injuries. His back and shoulders will always be weakened. He will never be The One Man Army again.

Sometimes, as he lies beside Damon in the bed before the fire, Lyr looks at those marks covering Damon's back and thinks about the fact that if he had taken this flogging himself, these injuries would have killed him. But not Damon.

One night, the wounds are healed enough that Lyr can trace his finger over the scars as they sit together by the fire, drinking the sour red from Damon's secret store.

"Why did you do it?" Lyr says.

"Do what?"

"Why did you take this punishment in my stead?"

"Because it would have killed you and it did not kill me."

"You don't think I deserved to die for what I did. I know you loved Endrew."

"I did love Endrew. He was the best of my family. The best Darek by any count. But you did not mean it to happen."

"I'm a slave," says Lyr, running the side of his thumb over a long welt that crosses Damon's back from side to side. He fancies he can remember that one, the slap and rip, Damon's grunt of pain as his flesh was torn again. "I killed the Crown Prince's son," he says quietly.

"You are a slave," says Damon, "and my mother was a slave. And my father made a slave out of me for twenty years."

"Did you hate the army so much?"

"I did not hate being a soldier so much as I hated being forced to be a soldier. I was a good soldier."

"The greatest warrior Azuria has ever seen. The One Man Army."

"I was not that," says Damon. "I wasn't like they say. I wasn't that."

"Then why do they say you were?"

"I was good at killing and I killed a lot of people. And people like a story. Pluma-Ferris was… I am not proud of it. I killed many people who just wanted to live happily in their own land. All Trysta wanted was to live happily in her own land. When we met, she tried to kill me. She nearly did. But I bested her and told her if she wanted to live she could join the Imperial Army as a slave warrior. It saved her life. I told myself it was the only way. But it was not. I should have let her kill me."

"How is she your friend? If you killed her people and took her prisoner? You forced her to fight for her enemies."

"Trysta hated me for a long time. And who could condemn her for it? But Trysta is as loyal as she is brave and fierce. She told me she realised we were the same. I was a slave too. I had no choice about what I did. I went where they told me and killed who they told me, for twenty years. If I'd refused, my father would have been made a slave."

"Do you regret it? Do you wish you'd refused to serve for your father's crime?"

"I don't think about it. "

"You don't think about the choices you made. Everything it meant for you to become a soldier." Lyr says, picking up the bottle and refilling Damon's cup.

"It does not matter now," Damon says. "I thought I'd found a way to build a better life. I should have known it was impossible for me to do so."

Lyr leans in and kisses Damon, softly. The kiss grows deep — but halts when Damon hisses as Lyr's fingers brush his shoulders where some of the welts are still sore and raised.

Lyr pulls back. His eyes feel prickly with tears. "How did you stand it?" Lyr says, the memory of watching Damon's lashing bright in his mind. "How did you live through a flogging like that?"

"I thought of you," Damon says, reaching over and stroking Lyr's side. His voice drops, grows raspy, "I thought of you. Of you spending as I tongued your hole. I wanted to live to do that."

Lyr gasps. A shiver of pleasure ripples through him. "Please," he whispers.

"Thank you for coming here," Damon says roughly. "Thank you for finding a way to get here and save me."

"You saved me," Lyr says.

"Nevertheless," Damon strokes a thumb over Lyr's face. "When Doroth Zain freed you, you could have run. You could have left me to my fate here. And now I am tired, I am weary from fighting for an empire that wants me dead. I just want to take some pleasure for myself. Now, please, let that pleasure be your body."

"Damon, I want that, please I do." His voice drops low with arousal at the thought of what is about to happen. "You can take anything you want from me. Do anything you want. Please, Master."

"Slave," Damon says lovingly, kissing Lyr's cheek, "we may not have our palace in Felgrace, but we have this. You will attend me in bed."

"Are you sure you are healed? We can wait."

"No, we can't. I can't. You asked me why I did what I did for you. I did it because I could not face a world without you in it. And I cannot face a world where I do not have this. Lyr, you have bewitched me."

Damon kisses Lyr again, this time with a passion that makes Lyr forget everything else. It doesn't end before they are ready – like so many of the other kisses they've shared.

Damon takes his time kissing Lyr, touching his body. He runs his fingertips over the lines scarred into his thighs and the swirls scarred into his shoulders. He examines the symbols and runes scarred and branded onto his back. And all the time he does the runes on Lyr's chest glow.

They get brighter when Damon slides an oiled finger into Lyr, spreads Lyr on the sheets and kisses down his chest, spreading his thighs, licking over his hole. As he did in the Coupling Grove, he licks Lyr until he's begging for Damon to fuck him.

They make love for so long. Lyr did not think it was possible to spend so many times. More times than he thought he was capable of. Damon inside him, Damon's hands on him. Damon seems to delight in seeing it. He cries out and shakes in Damon's arms over and over again.

Later, as the sun rises, Lyr spends with only Damon's fingers inside him, cock untouched. Damon watches his face. Kisses it. Calls him beautiful.

Days pass like this on Sanvicta. It feels like a kind of sweetened dream. Lyr can't spend all his time in Damon's bed. There are things that must be done. Cooking and carrying and cleaning Damon's wounds.

But every night – and at intervals throughout the day – Damon makes love to him with a greedy passion, leaving him sobbing and shaking until he falls into a deep sleep in Damon's arms.

It is hard to stay worried about surviving the winter when he is half-blind with pleasure, walking around on shaking legs, marks from Damon's teeth and fingers covering Jareleezi's old scars.

One night, when Damon is deep inside him, he looks down at Lyr and pants, "This is a sin of the body," as if the statement arouses him. Lyr can see sweat prickling his brow, the muscles in his arms that ripple and strain as he takes Lyr so hard that Lyr sees stars swim before his eyes.

"It is," gasps Lyr, amazed he can speak at all.

"If I'd known how sweet the punishment for my sins would be, I would have confessed them to the Rose Court years ago."