The Traitor’s Mercy by Iris Foxglove
Chapter 12
Sabre had forgotten, over the years, how powerful a secret could become.
It didn’t free him to speak of it. He didn’t emerge from the baths with a lighter soul and a new perspective. Instead, it was as though he’d wrapped Laurent up in it and tied it round him like an old scarf. When he woke to find Laurent idly stroking his hair, Sabre didn’t fumble or hesitate when he drew Laurent’s hand to his mouth and kissed Laurent’s palm. Something had shifted the night before, and he didn’t think either of them knew how to change it back.
He still dreamt of the gallows, but when the House opened for the night and Sabre led noble patrons to his door, he thought of how Laurent felt under his hands, the soft light of his desk lamp as he hummed to himself, marking down the House earnings for the evening.
“Do you know who he was, before he became a courtesan?” Sabre asked Rose one morning, while Sabre took down laundry and Rose paced through rows of colorful sheets, staring at her journal. “Laurent.”
“A nerd,” Rose said, pushing aside a crimson pillowcase. “Is effervescent better than ephemeral?”
“Well, they don’t mean the same thing, exactly.”
“Yes, but the way they sound,” Rose said. “Effervescent. Efferve-scent. Maybe not. Why are you worried about what Laurent was, anyways? People forget their childhoods all the time. I know I did. I could meet my mother in the street and I’d never know.”
“That doesn’t upset you?” Sabre asked, folding a sheet.
“Not really. She wasn’t the one who sang to me when I was sick, or taught me how to read and write. It was all Laurent. Even if he is a nerd. Listen to this monologue and tell me what you think.”
Sabre unpinned sheets and towels to the sound of a moon princess lamenting the loss of the bird-children to the Winds of Nothingness, her voice rising as Rose paced and gestured and spun on her heels.
Elise could have used a friend like Rose. She’d grown quieter, after their father’s death, isolating herself from other noble ladies, slipping into her mother’s shadow even as Sabre seemed to shy from it. He didn’t think Isiodore was right about her, exactly. She hadn’t been a lost cause—She’d just been lonely, and her mother was the one who was there for her when Sabre was off on jaunts with other noble heirs, or visiting Adrien and training with Isiodore. Perhaps she’d even been lied to, told that the king arranged her father’s death, a lie Sabre would never believe. Still, lingering on the possibilities did nothing but drag Sabre down into a pit, and he forced himself to watch Rose instead, tracking her movement through the clotheslines.
“Does it get lonely at all?” Sabre asked. “With Laurent working all the time.”
Rose snorted. “He’s never out of my hair. Also, I know what you’re trying to do.”
Sabre froze, holding up a damp gown to the clothesline.
“You’re trying to get me to say he’s nice,” Rose said, marking something in her journal, “because you want an excuse to mope around and stare at him like he hung the stars. Don’t lie,” she added, when Sabre opened his mouth. “I’ve seen you two.”
“There’s no reason for him to stare, though,” Sabre said.
Rose gave him a long-suffering look. “Nanette’s right. Men are hopeless. I’m going to ask Simone about the monologue, instead.”
No one, it seemed, was immune to the Rose Charm Offensive, because even Margritte was signed up to take a role in the revised, slightly shortened Princess of the Moon play, which was slowly starting to take over the common room. Even a few clients were starting to comment on the enormous black curtains covering her haphazard set, and a number of them already invited themselves to see what, exactly, Yves in a north wind costume would look like.
“She’s going to be heartbroken when she realizes she’s a dominant,” Laurent said, painting his face on the morning of the play. He was dressed in what Rose insisted were supposed to be rags, to show off how destitute and tragic he was as a shipwrecked prince, but even ripped, gray window curtains managed to look scandalous on Laurent.
“It won’t stop her from having ten children, though,” Sabre said, braiding colored glass in Laurent’s hair. “Did you feel it earlier, when she came in with the costumes? Her natural dominance is coming through. She’s going to be a terror.”
“Going to be?” Laurent asked, and smiled at Sabre through the mirror. “Prepare for tears, in any case. She had her heart set on being a submissive.”
Sabre grimaced. It was different for everyone, really. Some thought it was a compulsion, a magic that ran through the water or the earth itself—others thought it was just biology, an imperative that passed on through the blood, like yellow hair or brown eyes. Some people, like Sabre, had an inkling of whether they’d skew towards dominance or submission early on, but it hit most like a shipwreck on the shores of puberty, making an utter mess of an otherwise awkward stage in any young person’s life. Rose, it seemed, was heading directly into the shipwreck phase.
“Well, she and I could have a talk about ruined expectations, then,” Sabre said. “I was supposed to be a dominant, as the eldest. So was Adrien—He tried to hide it for a while, but any time someone praises him, he looks like a puppy in a window. Isiodore thanked him, once, and I thought he might die.”
“When I was in training in the House of Gold,” Laurent said, “I was asked to prepare tea for the courtesans, and I told them to prepare it themselves. You can imagine that went over well.”
Sabre trailed his fingers down the beads in Laurent’s hair. “That can’t have been pleasant, though, hiding who you were.”
“I made it worth it, in the end,” Laurent said, but there was a hardness to his mouth, and Sabre tried to imagine what that would have been like, holding so much of himself back for so long. He’d heard of the practice, of course, of submissive firstborns trying to hide their inclination to serve, but his father had forbidden it, as it never lasted very long before resulting in a scandal. His father was a submissive, anyways, and he’d inherited just fine.
“I don’t think I can picture you as a submissive,” Sabre said.
“Oh? And how do you picture me?” Laurent asked.
“In that costume? I don’t think my imagination needs the help,” Sabre said, and Laurent’s smile took on a wicked air.
Which was why, when they inevitably arrived just a minute shy of late, Sabre’s shirt was undone, his hair was a mess, and Laurent’s pale face was slightly flushed, as though they’d run down the stairs and Sabre had tripped out of half of his clothes.
“Why,” Rose said, as Sabre buttoned up his shirt. “Okay. Okay, no. It doesn’t matter. Sabre, you’re—”
“In charge of the curtain,” Sabre said. Even Charon had earned a speaking role, but Sabre’s inability to act was so horrifying that his job consisted of pulling a rope three times an hour.
“Good. No distractions,” Rose said. “This is serious.”
“As the grave,” Laurent said. Rose narrowed her eyes.
Sabre took a seat by the rope pulley and watched, with mild amusement, as the small audience sprawled on the common room couches politely applauded. There weren’t many nobles in attendance, save for Lady Cornelia and the younger daughter of Lady Fournier, who had a pale green wig and a pleated bonnet that made her face look perfectly round. She applauded loudly as Rose stepped in front of the curtain, and kept leaning over as though trying to see who was waiting on the other side.
Rose stared at the common room like a rabbit frozen before the hawk, hands clenched around her journal.
“Th-thank you for coming,” she said, after a long, painful silence. “To the play.”
Sabre applauded, and Rose turned to push jerkily through the curtain. Simone, dressed in a lovely silver gown with fairy wings, kissed her on the cheek, and Rose covered her face with both hands.
“They’ll be eating out of your palm soon enough, Rosie,” Laurent whispered, and Rose groaned slightly.
Simone was the first on stage, depicting the mourning moon queen with the kind of grace and talent that probably didn’t belong on a stage made out of window hangings, and when she died tragically off stage left, Lady Fournier the younger burst into tears.
“She’s so beautiful,” she sobbed, as Simone lay artfully in a field of paper flowers.
Charon stepped into the middle of the stage. His face was painted with harsh white lines down his cheeks, and he was wearing a fur stole over one shoulder.
“I am the storm,” he said, which wasn’t, in fact, his line. “My lover is the wind, which I also am.”
Yves leapt onto the stage to a smattering of applause. “Oh, storm king,” he cried, flinging himself onto Charon’s bare chest. “I have thrown the moon princess from her bower, and the queen has died of a broken heart!”
Charon blinked down at him, then looked at Rose, hovering behind a painted castle. “Am I to punish him, then.”
A number of the audience members sat up in their seats, but Simone, half rising from her death pose, flapped a hand for silence.
“Off stage!” Yves said, a little desperately. “Punish me off stage, oh storm king.”
Charon, who seemed to have remembered at last what a play was supposed to be, shrugged and carried Yves off to general applause.
When Laurent appeared, flopping himself down onto the stage with a dramatic sigh, Gwydion whistled, and Rose dropped from Percival’s arms in her puffy white moon gown.
“What’s this?” she said, in a wooden voice, gesturing broadly to Laurent. “An orphan prince, cast off and unwanted, pale and hideous as curdled milk. What tragedy to have befallen someone so graceless and inconsequential!”
“Oh!” Laurent cried, kicking his leg up. Rose slapped it down. “Woe! Woe, that I should languish in misery, alone and ugly.”
“That’s fine,” Rose said, resting a hand on his head. “I’ll take you in, because that’s what princesses do, even if you’re so terribly afflicted.”
Sabre held back a laugh as Laurent swooned in gratitude.
The play ended at the first act, when Yves was turned into a flock of birds by the storm king and sent to carry Laurent away, with Rose and Pirate Queen Nanette swearing revenge. The audience applauded, with Lady Cordelia standing with a delighted grin as Nanette bowed, and more than one person whistling at Laurent in his rags. When the courtesans turned to applaud for Rose, Rose stared at them, took a single, gasping breath, and sobbed on Laurent’s chest.
“They actually applauded for it,” Rose cried later, sitting in the kitchen with a basket of pastries and flowers while most of the House ran in and out, changing out of their costumes. “Someone even, even laughed, during the scene where the pirate queen made a joke.”
“You did great, Rosie,” Laurent said, softly, feeding her another pastry.
“Lady Fournier cried when the queen died, you know,” Sabre said.
Rose turned to Sabre. “You’re so nice, Sabre, and I didn’t even give you a role.”
“Oh,” Sabre said, as she flung herself into his arms. He held her gingerly, patting her shoulder. “I didn’t mind.”
“You officially have my permission,” Rose whispered, half sobbing into his shirt, “to marry Laurie. If you have to.”
Sabre glanced quickly at Laurent, whose face hadn’t changed—Perhaps he hadn’t heard. “Ah. Thank you, Rose. That’s very…magnanimous of you.”
“Yes,” she said, wetly. “I know.”
* * *
Devon Chastain would probably have been horrifiedif he knew his father was there two hours ago, with Sabre riding him while Oscar pulled his hair and smacked him, over and over, until Sabre cried and came all over them both.
Devon was not fucking Sabre at the moment. He had Sabre with his hands bound behind him, which Laurent knew Sabre hated, kneeling with a short lead clipped to his collar. Devon was standing behind him, caning Sabre, whose cock was standing hard between his legs as he bit back a moan with each smack.
“You really…you really just take it. What kind of, of whore,” Devon snarled, hitting Sabre harder. Sabre seemed to be enjoying himself. Laurent, who stopped pretending to have a vested interest in watching Sabre’s appointments with clients since everyone in the house knew which way the very obvious wind was blowing, still felt himself on edge as he watched. He knew Sabre did like this, that whatever strange biology made submissives want to kneel made masochists want to hurt, but he didn’t like Devon Chastain.
He didn’t like Oscar Chastain, either, but for an entirely different reason. Oscar was getting the lovesick look of a client who was taking his transactional relationship too far. Devon looked like if Emile wanted him to execute Sabre by hand, he’d revel in it. There was something so personal about Devon’s snarling, vicious sadism. Most of Sabre’s clients now did genuinely enjoy hurting him, but not because of his family, not anymore. They liked how the humiliation made him gasp, grind against their boot, how the pain made him pant for it and beg to be fucked.
True masochists were rare, but Devon didn’t seem to care or appreciate that—if anything, what made Laurent the most nervous about him was that he seemed to be angry at Sabre for enjoying his attentions, because clearly he wanted to hurt Sabre and have Sabre hate it, not like it.
“You’re so fucked up,” Devon said, and he was aiming his strikes too high, on Sabre’s back. The look on Sabre’s face was close to blissful. “How can you like this, you—you’re nothing, you’re not even, they should add money to your debt, you’re not supposed to like being punished.”
“Yes, my lord,” Sabre said, swaying on his knees. He was staring, Laurent knew, at the place behind the wall where Laurent was watching. He liked showing off for him, Laurent knew.
“I don’t know why you act like you like this,” Devon was saying, throwing the cane down in disgust and going for his belt. “It’s just to make me look foolish, isn’t it?”
“No, my lord,” Sabre said, blinking. “It’s not an act.”
Laurent startled as Devon moved quickly, wrapping the belt around Sabre’s neck above the collar and starting to pull. “Think your former whore of a boss could save you before I choked you to death, like you should have on the gallows? Fuck, why didn’t you just die like your fucking sister? I bet you would have gotten off, wouldn’t you.”
Sabre didn’t struggle, and his erection didn’t flag. There was an easy way into the room, and he knew it; Laurent wouldn’t let this angry noble choke Sabre to death, and Sabre liked the edge of fear, he wasn’t even trying not to choke and was, in fact, leaning forward a bit as if he wanted to feel more of the bite of leather against his neck.
“You think you’re better than me, don’t you?”
Sabre didn’t say anything, he couldn’t, he was still choking.
“You do. You and the prince both, so eager to fucking take it, be treated like the whores you are, and my father fucking fawns over my brother and he’s no dominant, he’s—like you, you know, a submissive.” Devon said the word like it was a curse. “And the heir. As if I’m nothing. That’s what you think I am, don’t you? That I’m nothing.”
He stopped choking Sabre and went back to hitting him with the belt. It had Sabre moaning, rocking forward on his knees, inelegant and showing his throat—not to Devon, that lout, but to Laurent, watching behind the plaster.
“My brother, you, the prince, your boyfriend,” Devon sneered, sounding like a schoolchild. “All of you. Fuck you for being—useless. Tell me you’re useless.”
Sabre looked mostly annoyed by the fact Devon had stopped whipping him to talk, but he was amenable enough to the demand, saying, “I’m useless, my lord,” and Laurent couldn’t help but bite back a smile at how he was pretty sure Sabre was rolling his eyes.
Maybe he’d help, after this. Devon would pin Sabre down, come on his face, leave Sabre unsatisfied. Laurent was good with a belt. He’d string Sabre up, maybe tease his cock with a feather, belt him until he was begging and—
He pushed that aside as Devon reached down to undo Sabre’s bindings around his wrists. He picked up the cane, and seemingly heedless of Sabre’s free hands, started to hit him again. “You are. You’re useless, just like your sister and your mother, nothing left to even bury, and your—your father, he was just as useless as you. Like father, like son, your father couldn’t even ride a horse, properly, weak, cowardly creature that he was—”
Sabre, who would simply kneel and let the nobles lash him with their whips and their words, apparently had found his limit. He caught the cane with his hand and got to his feet, turning to stare Devon Chastain right in his wild, bright eyes. “I am the son of a traitor, and I’ve never denied it. I’m a whore who craves the lash and I won’t deny that, either. But my father was not weak, and he was certainly no coward.”
Devon stared at Sabre, hands fisted at this sides. “You dare, whore—”
“Yes,” Sabre interrupted. “I do. There are rules. Even here.”
“You’re not—you think I care? You should swing, and you will,” Devon hissed, hauling off and smacking Sabre across the face. “I was so. Furious, when I saw them take you down. You deserved to hang and you will, you fucking whore, when your boyfriend’s not around to protect you. And you can stop me with the cane, as if I fucking care, but you can’t do anything about him. You think you’re not in prison, here, because you’re a sick fuck who likes being hurt? See how much you like it after the hunt, whore. When you hear the prize I caught. I’ll be in the front row this time to watch you die, and I’ll make it last and no one will stop it this time.”
With that, Devon pushed Sabre, hard, and stormed toward the door. He wrenched it open and thundered down the hall. He’d leave by the back, Laurent was sure of it.
He pushed the alcove door open and said, to Sabre, “Well, I suppose that noble bearing of yours was going to show up, sometime. Would you like me to put him on the gray list, then?”
“Am I allowed it,” Sabre asked, staring at the door where Devon had disappeared.
“I am the lord of this house and a noble, so, yes.”
“He said he was going to hurt Adrien, and that I’d hang.”
“He was mad that he didn’t get to come all over your face,” Laurent said, studying him.
Sabre glanced at him. He looked, for the first time, a little regretful. “Oh. I’m sorry, maybe I shouldn’t have…but my father was no coward.”
“And you’re not worthless, or sick,” Laurent said, heading over to close the door to the hallway. “The things people say, here, to you. They don’t matter.”
“This mattered,” Sabre said. He exhaled, slowly, and met Laurent’s gaze. “You told me to keep something for myself. That’s what I’m keeping. My father.”
Laurent sighed. “What Devon said about your father, it doesn’t make it true just because he said it.”
“I’ll take his abuse, even if he’s not really that good at it. But that was too much. And I...my lord.” Sabre went to his knees, stared up at Laurent with wide, bright, pleading eyes. “May I go to the hunt? Devon threatened him, you heard him—”
“Hush, pet,” Laurent murmured, and laid a hand on his head. “I’ll have someone keep an eye on Adrien—I’ll go, how’s that, I can get a favor from the lord at the House of Gold. You can stay here, help Rose with the second act of her play. But you needn’t be anywhere near any of these people, all right?”
“No one can protect Adrien but me,” Sabre whispered. He bowed, pressed his forehead to the floor in the most submissive pose Laurent had ever seen from him. “Please, my lord. Please let me go. I’ve lost everything else.”
Laurent sighed. “You’re taking lessons from my sister on dramatics, I see. And you’re certainly better at it when you’re not acting.” He went down on his haunches, laid a hand on Sabre’s bowed head. “I know what you’ve lost, Sabre. And I won’t let you lose Adrien, too. I know he’s been a true friend to you, and you need to trust me that I’m better equipped to deal with this, all right? I’ll bring Charon. Yves was invited, there will be three of us—”
“Please, my lord,” Sabre begged, to the floor. He was trembling. “I don’t think anyone can save him but me. And I think he knows it. Devon, I mean. He said that, about hanging, so I wouldn’t go.”
Laurent sighed and stroked his hair, quiet for a moment. “I won’t put you around Emile if I can help it, Sabre. You really are just going to have to trust me, okay?”
Sabre lifted his head. His eyes were calm, clear. “I trust you more than anyone, Laurent.”
“Good boy,” Laurent said, ruffling his hair, even though it wasn’t really an answer. “Now, come with me and let me show you how a dominant uses a belt on a willing painslut who needs it.”
“Yes, my lord,” said Sabre, who followed him on all fours, crawling with as much grace as Yves, who must have taught him how...and if Laurent were thinking a little more clearly, he might have noticed that, and had the faintest suspicion about what was to come.
