Well, all the long looks in the world wouldn’t matter when they were all going to be dead at the end of a rockslide, or a bandit attack.
The only reason that they would survive was because of the yellow haired fiend who had them from sun-up to sundown carrying out the drills that had even the most hardened men dropping, exhausted, to the dirt, too tired to even curse the Prince who had put them there.
Aimeric was coming towards him.
The log next to Jord was empty. Aimeric sat down on it. The campfire in front of them sent up smoke and orange light. Jord passed over his flask; Aimeric coughed when it held spirits and not water. Probably he coughed due to the quality of the spirits, not the strength. Aimeric rubbed his mouth and tried to pass the flask back.
‘Thought you could use it,’ Jord said.
‘I’ll do better,’ said Aimeric, after a long moment. ‘I’ll do better, until it’s good enough.’
Jord looked at the tired set of Aimeric’s shoulders, the smudges under his eyes, and his curls, flattened and turned into sweat licks by a helmet. Aimeric’s fingers had tightened around the flask, and if at any time he’d had the soft, manicured hands of an aristocrat, now they were callused from weeks of drills, dirt from a hard day’s work underneath his chipped nails.
On the other side of the camp, the Prince was dismounting effortlessly, untouched by the day’s exertions, his haughty, posture unaffected. He didn’t even seem to have dust on his boots—typical.
Jord said, ‘Not what you expected?’
It didn’t seem like Aimeric was going to answer, at first. ‘I thought I was going to get a position at court.’
‘So why join the Guard?’
‘Because if the Regent and the Prince are feuding, you ally yourself with the man who’ll win, then hedge your bets by sending your disposable son to fight with the other.’
Aimeric flushed. It was the first thing that he had said to Jord that wasn’t deferential, or a compliment. ‘I’m sorry. That wasn’t—’
‘You’re not disposable.’ Jord said, ‘You work harder than any man here. The Prince wants you in this troop.’
‘It’s not the Prince I’m trying to impress.’
There was a silence, as those words stretched out. The fire popped and sparked, and the night around them seemed to draw closer.
‘I want you in this troop,’ said Jord.
‘And out of it?’
‘You’re Councillor Guion’s son.’
‘I don’t care about rank.’ said Aimeric.
‘You should.’
‘Why? Do you?’ said Aimeric.
‘I’m your Captain,’ said Jord.
‘So you’re the one who outranks me.’
‘Knock it off,’ said Jord, but with a smile as he took back the flask and took his own swig.
‘I think about you,’ Aimeric said.
Jord coughed the spirits. He felt something spill in the air between them, and the way his pulse sped up made him feel foolish. Aimeric wasn’t flustered talking like that with a lowborn guard captain—wasn’t tongue tied or awkward the way Jord suddenly felt.
‘Do you think of me even a little?’ said Aimeric. ‘Or are you like the Prince?’
He indicated with his stubborn chin at the Prince, whose blond head identifiable across the camp even in the dim light. Jord was too conscious of him, and of the men in the camp around them, as if what was passing between himself and Aimeric was private, yet at the same time, as if it must be obvious to onlookers; witnessed by everyone.
If Aimeric were a stablehand, Jord would have tumbled him, but Aimeric was closer in rank to a king than to Jord. Aimeric had power and influence far above Jord’s station. Aristocrats didn’t dally with lowborn guard captains, or if they did, it was an unpredictable whim. Turning an aristocrat down—that was bad enough. Taking an aristocrat into the sheets was worse. Councillor Guion wouldn’t let a man like Jord sit at his table, let alone bed his son.
He looked at Aimeric’s aristocratic face, his full lips, the irrepressible curl on his forehead, that he wanted to reach out and tuck away.
‘You know I think well of you,’ Jord said. He felt his cheeks heating.
‘“Well of me”,’ said Aimeric.
‘Even the Prince is a man,’ said Jord.
‘You’re the only one who thinks that,’ said Aimeric. ‘He’s a statue. He doesn’t feel anything.’
Jord looked back at the Prince. It was true that he was a martinet. It had been a day of unsparing orders, coupled with the Prince’s bloodless lack of sympathy for those who could not match the pace he set.
Jord heard himself say, ‘I’ve fought under him since he was fifteen.’
‘So you didn’t have a choice either.’
As a rule, Jord kept to himself what he thought of his betters. He knew that to Aimeric the Prince’s Guard was a demotion: that Aimeric was alone; that he had no one of his own rank to mix with. A councillor’s son might easily have become a boyhood companion to the Prince. But this Prince was a friendless son of a bitch. Rebuffed by the Prince, Aimeric was relegated to the company of lowborn soldiers. He probably sought out their Captain because Jord was the closest thing in the troop to a man of his own rank.
He wouldn’t understand what an honour it was for a man of Jord’s birth to be offered a chance to wear a Prince’s star, let alone to ascend to a captaincy.
‘He’s my King,’ Jord said.
They all remembered it—weeks of swallowing insults, ignoring acts of sabotage, letting the Regent’s Guard run roughshod over them. The Regent’s Guard damaged their equipment. They said nothing. The Regent’s Guard sabotaged their weaponry. They made no complaint. Orlant held Huet back when Chauvin pissed in his bed.
Riding now with the Regent’s mercenaries was nothing to those first few weeks, when stifling restrictions had driven the Prince’s Guard out of the training halls and the courtyard, and insults and humiliations had piled one on the other. There had been nothing to do but take it. For the sake of the Guard, they had to take it. The Prince had staked his reputation on one of their own; they would do right by him.
It had come to a head three weeks after Chauvin had attacked him. Jord found himself standing outside the guard barracks, with six of the Prince’s Guard, alongside Councillor Audin, Chauvin and a squadron of men with flaming torches.
Jord’s stomach dropped when he saw that the rooms they were surrounding belonged to Orlant. Because this time Chauvin’s triumphant claim was that one of the Prince’s Guard was in bed with a pet—a woman.
He thought of Joie the washerwoman, who teased Orlant in the mornings, or Elie from the kitchens who once gave Orlant the end of a loaf of fresh baked bread. It wasn’t going to be a pet in there with Orlant. What pet would risk a life of jewels and comfort for Orlant’s ox face?
It would be someone of their own class, and she would be thrown out along with Orlant. If Orlant was lucky, he would get the lash. If it really was a noblewoman’s pet, he would be executed. Either way, the Prince’s Guard would not survive it. Orlant was finished and so was the Guard—that was the crowing look in Chauvin’s eyes.
The soldiers took position. Jord had just enough time to register the battering beam—the hard looks of the soldiers, the swing—before the door was broken open.
For a moment, everyone stared.
Behind the splintered door, the barracks were small. There was nowhere to take cover or dive behind a partition. Everything was on display: There was Orlant, more naked that Jord ever wanted to see him, and certainly there was someone with him wearing a lady pet’s hat. But it wasn’t a lady pet. It was Huet.
‘Hey!’ said Huet.
‘This isn’t scandalous at all,’ said Audin, with the slight frown of someone whose time has been wasted.
‘This is the second time the Regent’s Guard has falsely accused my men,’ said the Prince to the Council.
He said it mildly. It took a moment for the implications of that mild tone t
o make themselves understood in the Council chamber where they had all been dragged in to report. Chauvin said, ‘It was a simple mistake—’
‘Two simple mistakes,’ said the Prince.
He sat on the dais on the right side of his uncle, a boyish figure with a face that made it seem impossible that he was anything but innocent, hair like sunshine, eyes like the sky, his voice still mild, like his mild regard of Chauvin, who looked instinctively towards his benefactor.
‘Councillor—’
‘Cousin, you have dragged the family name into your squabbles,’ said Audin, frowning at him. ‘The Council isn’t here to solve petty disputes.’
The other Councillors nodded, shifted, murmured their assent. All five of them were older men, and the oldest, Herode, said, ‘We should revisit our discussion of the Prince’s Guard.’
Released into the hall, Jord handed Orlant the spare shirt he had snagged up in his rooms, wordlessly.
‘I’m not fucking Huet,’ said Orlant. ‘He just turned up. Wearing that.’
‘The Prince said everyone would be wearing one,’ said Huet, frowning.
‘At least you’re wearing something,’ Orlant told him, shrugging into the shirt.
‘The Prince sent you to Orlant’s rooms,’ said Jord, ‘wearing that?’
The next morning, the Prince’s Guard gathered in the courtyard in full livery, buckles shining, boots polished. The news had spread like wildfire: Chauvin had been sent back to Marches in disgrace, and the Council had lifted the threat of disbandment from the Prince’s Guard. They were fully reinstated; the Council had decreed the Regent’s Guard would no longer interfere with them.
Jord saw the Prince enter the courtyard and go still when he saw them, gathered in readiness for him in ordered lines. For a moment there was no sound but for the movement of the starburst banners in the breeze.
Then the Prince spoke. ‘Your celebration is premature. I have full authority over you now, and I do not intend to be lenient. I will work you harder than you’ve ever been worked. I expect my Prince’s Guard to be the best.’
He paused on the line in front of Jord, and their eyes met.
‘Huet has nice ankles,’ said Jord.
‘I told you I’d take care of it,’ said the Prince.
The Prince’s command tent was an oblong of cream canvas with a fluttering blue triangle on top and an entryway that was roped open, to let men come and go throughout the day, with reports, with news, ushering in messengers or supplies. Before Jord entered, he saw inside.
There were two heads bent together over the map, one dark-haired, the other blond.
The Prince was alone in the tent with the Akielon who served him. The Akielon was murmuring something, his manner easy, in command of the strategy. The Prince nodded, absorbed. His eyes followed the Akielon’s finger as it traced a line over the map.
Jord had never seen him like this, in comfortable, intimate conversation. The Prince did not cultivate companions; had not done so as a boy, did not do so as a young man. Jord felt as if he was intruding on something private; he was startled by their quiet focus, how close they stood together, their shoulders almost touching.
‘Your Highness,’ Jord said, like clearing his throat.
They looked up simultaneously.
The two faces were different, but had identical expressions—curious at a minor interruption—as the Prince said, ‘Captain. Report.’
Equipment and supplies were holding steady. Drills were going well. Jord had disciplined one of the Regent’s mercenaries for some remarks. He detailed the discipline. He didn’t repeat the remarks. The Prince, whose anatomy and preferences the remarks had described at great length, said, ‘That’s a prudent retelling. All right. I count the lack of wholesale slaughter a success.’
‘Your Highness,’ said Jord.
Their presence lingered in the tent long after they had gone.
The Akielon had listened to the reports too—as though he were the one receiving them. There had been a warm look in his dark eyes that spoke of a man who could find simple enjoyment in a complicated position. The Prince seemed to allow it, a form of familiarity that he rejected from others.
Jord looked down at the map.
It was a mess of unfamiliar symbols, a geopolitical shorthand that he didn’t know how to read. Half of them were heraldic sigils he had never seen in his life, others were dots and dash marks that meant nothing to him. He knew his letters, knew his way around a regular map, but this was beyond him.
He was a guard captain. He knew how to run drills. He knew how to administer supplies. He knew how to set up watches, formations and blockades, protect an outpost, or a small train in the mountains.
But this was large-scale tactical warfare. It required a depth of knowledge—generalship, strategy and command that took years to acquire. The Akielon had it. The Prince was learning it, able to absorb complex theoretical concepts and leap in an instant to new ideas.
They were planning here for something that he did not understand, and Jord felt as though he glimpsed, just for a moment, a world that was too big for him.
‘Captain,’ said Aimeric.
Jord looked up. Aimeric lost none of his aristocratic bearing even in simple soldiering clothes. The sun had set, and men had come to light the torches at the tent entrance, just as men had been in and out of the tent all day, bringing this or that to the attention of the Prince. The light framed Aimeric, whose turn it was to enter, where Jord was alone.
‘I could take you through it. If you like.’
Jord flushed. Aimeric wasn’t looking at the war map, but it was clear what he meant.
‘You helped me,’ said Aimeric, ‘when I got here.’
Behind Aimeric, the open entry framed the dark shapes of the evening camp, and the dwindling noise from outside, as most of the men bedded down for the night.
Aimeric came to stand where the Prince had just stood. Jord supposed it was second nature to Aimeric, a part of his upbringing to read the heraldic sigils, the unfamiliar markers and symbols used for ownership of territory.
Jord felt like an impostor. This wasn’t his world, but if war was coming, he wanted to be on the right side of it, and to do what he could. He stepped up to the map.
Aimeric, it turned out, was good at explaining things, and he talked through the basics of the map. Jord was self conscious at first, and so was Aimeric a little, but the inked lines began to make sense, and it was a good feeling, to know that he was coming to understand. Finally quiet fell, and they were done.
‘Thank you,’ Jord said. That wasn’t enough. He told the truth, quietly, awkwardly. ‘This Captaincy means a lot to me.’
The air between them shifted. Aimeric’s gaze dropped to his mouth. The kiss happened with Aimeric’s eyes very dark, Jord’s hand on his neck. He felt the sweet, instant yielding of Aimeric’s mouth. Aimeric’s whole body gave over to the kiss. Jord drew him close, kissed him just the way he’d imagined, long and deep, and when he drew back, Aimeric’s cheeks were flushed and his eyes were dark and wide.
Jord’s mind swirled with foolishness, the sort of things he’d not thought up words to say.
‘Let me,’ said Aimeric, before he could. ‘I’m good at it.’
Aimeric’s hands were fumbling at the lacing at Jord’s crotch. The entry to the tent was still open. It was too fast, too sudden, the feel of that single kiss still dizzily on Jord’s lips.
Jord put his hands on Aimeric’s and pulled back so that they were staring at each other, Aimeric confused and hot cheeked. ‘I don’t understand. I thought you—’
‘I do—I—if you’d have me, I’d invite you to my tent,’ Jord said, his voice roughened, uncertain even as he said it if this was something Aimeric expected or even wanted. ‘I’m not—a man worthy of your birth. I’ll not be what you’re used to. But I meant it when I said that I think well of you.’
Aimeric was staring at him. Jord felt so out of place, standing among the rich silks of
a Prince’s tent. Aimeric was an aristocrat; but there was a way in which he was also simply himself, the young man Jord admired for his stubborn work ethic, who was just as out of place, in his own way, as any of them.
‘Yes— yes all right, if you— yes.’ Aimeric stepped back, his breathing a little quickened, unsteady. He looked at the dark entryway of the tent, then back at Jord. ‘You go first. I’ll follow after. Don’t worry. I won’t let anyone see me. I’m discreet.’ He smiled.
Aimeric moved to wait in the tent by the map, while Jord took his first steps outside, where it was dark but lit with bright torches, lights that he would follow.
Out here, the camp was a collection of mismatched halves, mercenaries and Prince’s Guard, camped together, too small, he thought, to do much damage in a fight, but each tent housed a man ready to do what he could. It was an unlikely partnership, but hope sprang in what could be done together, and not alone. He felt the kiss on his lips again, its newness, its promise, and in that moment he was part of something, a beginning, the night like lights and the border, ahead of him.
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