25. Damon

25

DAMON

D amon watches the ship leave.

After that, he sits very still and stares out at the ocean for a long time.

He doesn't want to feel anything. He doesn't want to think.

But he does. He thinks of Lyr moaning under him. He thinks of the runes glowing on Lyr's chest. Damon's own name glowing on his chest.

He looks up at the grey sky. "Fuck you, Zai. What kind of God are you?"

There is no response.

He walks back into the keep. Lyr's pot of barley broth is bubbling on the fire. Damon wrenches at it and throws it across the room.

He tips over the table and smashes the chairs. He goes upstairs and rips the beds to pieces.

He's always had a skill for destroying things.

Then he stamps back downstairs to the ruins. All the things he never deserved are gone now. Even Lyr.

Did he ever even have Lyr ?

Was Lyr only ever a trap sent by a Hevelikar witch?

He thinks of those glowing runes on Lyr's chest. His name in Ur-Ambolk. Did that mean this whole thing, even his own feelings for Lyr were just the meddling of the witch that covered Lyr's body in scars?

He had once thought Lyr was a greater hero than he would ever be, a braver warrior. Lyr who had suffered so much cruelty and still met the world with a lightness and a kindness that made Damon's heart melt. But was it real? Was all that true? Lyr had deceived him. Deceived him in the worst way. Damon's head spins. It hurts too much. He finds the flask of sour red from the night before, unsmashed. He drinks it all and then goes to the cellar in search of more.

Damon passes the next few uncountable days drunk or sleeping. He hates every thought that crosses his mind while sober and awake so he avoids it. Once or twice he thinks to eat some of the hard bread the enforcers had left him, but mostly all he consumes is the sour wine that stops him thinking.

On the day he wakes with a pounding head and furred tongue to find the wine all gone he roars with rage and curses Zai with every foul word in every language he knows.

What now?

In a blind confusion, he searches through the sacks and jars and pots in the cellar, thinking, there must be something, something…

He finds the pot of sofi that Lyr had brought with him. Sent by Doroth Zain. From Zai as man. From Zai himself.

This must be what Zai wants from him .

He scoops all of it out with his fingers, a gritty grey paste. He swallows it.

With luck, it's enough sofi to keep him asleep forever. That's his last thought as he passes out on the cellar floor.

He dreams of war. He dreams of Black Eyes, the whore mother he never met. His father only ever called her Black Eyes. Damon doesn't even know her real name. Did even Rafus know it?

He dreams he is six or seven in his bed at the Rose Palace. Lukas had just come to live with them. Lukas misses his mother. She'd doted on him before she died. A washerwoman called Suri. She died and Rafus had made the generous gesture to take Lukas in. She'd had a daughter too. Suki. But Suki had not been Rafus's child. Damon cannot remember what happened to Suki. Rafus's generosity did not extend to her.

Lukas struggled to adjust to life as one of Rafus's sons. He'd lived wild before. Running around the back corridors in the servants' quarters of the Rose Palace, doing as he pleased while his mother worked. Now he was expected to spend his days like Damon's. Being educated. Learning letters and Magaar grammar and numbers and the history of the empire.

Damon is six or seven. Lukas had been crying for his mother and Damon had spoken sweetly to him until he slept. And now Lukas was sleeping and Damon was wide awake. Wide awake when his father opened the door of the bedchamber. He sees Damon's open eyes and comes into the room.

"Black Eyes," Rafus tells Damon, that night, "was my favourite woman. My woman of women. Perfection. Of all the women I've ever had, and there have been many, Black Eyes was the most beautiful, the most elegant, had the sweetest smile, the fiercest eyes. You are my firstborn son, Damon. No matter what. No matter that I was not married to your mother, you will always be my most precious child. The child of my truest love. I should have married her. It is my deepest regret."

Seven years later, Rafus had sent Damon to slavery and war, to avoid punishment for his crimes.

If Rafus hadn't done that Damon would never have met Lyr. Lyr who betrayed him and lied to him. Lyr who was a talisman of the Hevelikar.

Lyr who was sent to destroy him.

Lyr with whom it was never real.

Damon wakes on his belly lying on his ruined bed. Weak, wintery sunshine is coming from… somewhere. A window. He is not in the cellar. He groans in pain. His head is pounding but he's used to that. He realises in fragments that he is in one of the bedchambers of the keep. How did he get here?

Someone else is in the room. Someone spoke when he groaned. Someone said, "He's waking up."

"Lyr?" he says, turning his head.

It is not Lyr. But he is not disappointed when he sees who it is. A tall woman with a strong heavy jaw and her hair shaved to the bone.

"Good Day to you, Sire," she says with a white-toothed grin. "Found you half dead in your cellar."

Damon blinks. For a moment his brain won't take it. He's here with Trysta. Are they still in Jur-Mattan? Are they making ready to march on Pellex? Was it all a dream?

No. This is Sanvicta. He is in the keep. This air is sharp, not the treacle-thick warm air of Jur-Mattan.

"You're here? How are you here?" Memories of when he last saw Trysta, real, true memories, come back in jolts. The last time he saw her. "The Pleasure Night. You were there. You saw?"

"I saw Endrew die," says Trysta evenly. Damon cannot tell what she thinks about that. She has every reason to loathe any member of the Darek bloodline, but her voice is quite neutral. "And I saw Lyr being dragged out by the guards. And you, fighting like a cornered dog. I tried to help you but," she looks down, "I saw your signal. It is a stain on my honour that I stood down as you wished and let them take you."

"No," says Damon. "No. There were too many, even for us both. You would not have survived if you had tried to join that fight. They imprisoned the whores who were there that night. I thank Zai you escaped." He looks at her and he hopes she knows how much he means it. "A good soldier chooses her battles, Trysta," he says to her like he's still her commander. "Where have you been since then?"

"Opeth got us out of there. Me and her and Razelii. She suggested that in the chaos we run, and we did. Three runaway slaves." Trysta takes a breath. "I did not know the details of what had been done to you before that. I heard about the flogging, but not this. I would have come sooner."

"You owe me nothing, Trysta."

"Damon," says another voice. Another voice he knows. He looks across the room and sees Opeth, tall and pale and elegant as ever. She looks like a queen. She is wearing a short grey chiton that is smeared with blood. Her hands are bloody too. Before Damon can ask her any one of the questions that rush to his mind, she says, "I killed one of your sheep. You need a proper meal."

He can smell it now. Mutton stew. His stomach growls. He is amazed to find himself still human, with a human body and all that it needs, after all.

Trysta has him drink some water and brings him more water to wash with before she allows him to leave the bedchamber.

Eventually, he descends the stairs on shaky legs. He moves slow. He is still loose. Sofi in his blood. The kitchen is somewhat restored. It has been swept and the broken furniture has been repurposed as firewood. The table is upright and in place of chairs are the water barrels. One of which, Damon can't help thinking, hid Lyr when he came to save him.

Lyr saved him. He could have run. Or did he only follow him here because of his mission to take Damon to Jareleezi in Ismagaar?

His head hurts trying to think about what was real and what was the work of that Hevelikar witch.

Lyr had never suggested they go to Ismagaar. He had wanted to run away from Azuria. But never to Ismagaar. And the thought of having to see Jareleezi again if she was captured seemed to terrify him.

And he made Damon promise not to go to Jareleezi when he told of where she was.

When he thinks that, and thinks of Lyr, his throat aches with loss. And he wonders again, what is the truth?

The table is set. Despite everything churning through his mind, his stomach growls for food again. He thinks of King Damon, going insane in Vashti, trying to live off nothing but the salt water of Miracle Lake. He sits at the table and Opeth gives him stew. He feels stronger for it.

"Why did you come here?" Damon says as he finishes his bowl of stew. It's one of the best things he's ever eaten.

"We ended up in an Attar pillow house," says Trysta. "After we ran. "

Damon raises an eyebrow. "You work in a pillow house?"

Trysta grins wide. "Pillow houses need security. Opeth and Razelii work there in the more conventional way. And you find out a lot of interesting things working in a pillow house in the jewel of the empire."

"Especially," says Opeth, "if you are someone like me. One of my regulars was one of Atticul's bodymen."

Damon takes a single juddering breath. "One of the ones he brought here?"

"One of the ones he brought here."

"Did he tell you Lyr was here? That they took him?"

"He did. That was how we knew something was wrong," says Opeth.

"What do you mean?"

Trysta leans forward. "Damon, you took a punishment stead for that slave. You were flogged half to death in public. He found a way to escape the dungeons and get here to save your life. And after all that, you let Atticul take him. You didn't fight at all, the bodyman said. You let it happen. Something was wrong."

"Something was wrong alright," Damon says darkly. "Did this bodyman tell you what Atticul told me?"

"He wouldn't. He said it wouldn't be worth his life."

Damon inhales. He wishes the bodyman had told them. So he wouldn't have to. "There are four runes on Lyr's chest," Damon begins, "branded there by the Hevelikar witch Jareleezi. She used her scrying magic to know to place him in the harem so I would end up taking him. He had a mission from her. To seduce me and persuade me to run away with him to Ismagaar. To take me to her. None of it was real. I gave my skin for nothing. He didn't mean what he said to me, it was all for his mistress. "

"Oh," says Opeth. "No, that isn't… He didn't seduce you."

"Don't," Damon says. "I know you are his friend. He probably lied to you too."

Opeth laughs. "No. No, he told me the truth. All of it. It was sending him half mad. Jareleezi sent him to you because her Gods told her that that would set you on a path which would lead you to her in Ismagaar. He did nothing. He was just a tool of those vicious Gods, the same Gods that had Jareleezi carve and burn marks into his skin."

Damon shakes his head, feeling a mess of emotions break over him like a wave. "He had my name written on his chest, by her, in her filthy rituals. My name."

Opeth sighs, "But he didn't put it there himself did he?"

"What do you mean?"

"Damon," Opeth says, "Jareleezi used Lyr's flesh to receive messages from her Gods. She hurt him deeply. Partly for magical rituals and partly, I think, because she enjoyed it. She had absolute power over him. He was terrified of her. And he was as terrified of you discovering what he was. But did he ever do anything to hurt you? Did he ever place you in danger? Did he make any attempt to take you to Jareleezi? You know his heart is yours."

"He didn't tell me the truth," Damon says in a whisper.

"That's his only crime against you? Not telling you something for fear it would drive you away. Because he had fallen in love with you."

Damon looks down into his empty wooden bowl. He hates how true Opeth's words are. He knows Lyr. He does. He knows his heart. "I don't know how to trust him now. He even dosed himself with foribunda on the Azuria Ascendant, to try and make me take my pleasure from him when I resisted."

"That," Opeth says, "was me."

Damon's whole body goes tight. He controls himself but his body language must have given something away because Trysta's hand moves on her dagger. "You?" Damon growls out, "How could you do such a thing?"

Opeth shrugs. "He wanted you. And you wanted him. I thought it would help you get over your reticence. I wanted Lyr safe. I thought he would be safest in your care if you took him, as you desired."

"He was desperate for me on the Azuria Ascendant," Damon says, his voice a low, sad rumble. "I almost fucked him."

"You would have been safe on the Azuria Ascendant to do so."

"I would have been doing exactly what Atticul wanted me to do."

"And what you wanted to do."

Damon nods. "Yes."

"Damon," Trysta says, "I know you loved him."

"I love him still," Damon answers in a whisper. He shivers. Lyr has had such a miserable life, unthinkably miserable, and yet he treated everyone with bright, sweet kindness. He'd lost his mind if he ever thought Lyr had betrayed him.

"Then why don't we go and get him?," Trysta says.

"At least talk to him," says Opeth.

The idea seems to eclipse every other thought in Damon's head. He will get Lyr back, he thinks. He will take Lyr back and hear the truth from his own sweet lips. Exiled or not, he will go to Attar. He will storm the Rose Palace. They called him One Man Army once, let them see what a One Man Army can truly do .

He stands up. "Let us go. Let us go tonight and take him. I will kill anyone who stands in my way."

His legs buckle under him and he slumps back onto his barrel.

Trysta pats his arm, "Gather your strength, you took enough sofi to kill a carthorse. What's one more night? We will go take him in the morning, One Man Army."