The Traitor’s Mercy by Iris Foxglove
Chapter 14
Laurent did not want to do this.
And while he could cheerfully strangle Devon Chastain himself, there was something to be said for the clarity of topspace, which he’d easily slid into by putting Sabre under with the flogger. But it made his already alert senses feel like he was buzzing, like the times he’d been given exalte;that strange powder drug that nobles liked, the one that made you feel like your heart was racing too fast, your mind keeping pace with it, so it was like topspace times a thousand. Laurent hadn’t minded it too much back when he’d been forcing himself to be a submissive, as it was the closest he could get, with most clients, to topspace.
He hadn’t touched it since, and yet.
Laurent had a few moments before he had to send Sabre out with the others, and he used them mainly to stroke his hair, murmur a few words and try and gently ease him up enough to pay attention to his surroundings. Being in topspace might be a momentary boon for Laurent, but he would have preferred Sabre not be drifting like he was, right before the hunt.
“I would have thought,” Isiodore de Mortain said, appearing next to Laurent and attired as if he really were going hunting, “you would have had the good sense to keep him at home.”
“Your Grace,” Sabre said, still kneeling, his face pressed to Laurent’s thigh. “Lord de Rue tried to keep me at home, but I didn’t listen.”
Laurent cast his eyes heavenward. This was not going to help. “Pet, be quiet.”
“Perhaps being a good whore doesn’t mean you’re good at managing them,” Isiodore said, and laid a brief hand on Sabre’s head. “Stay alert, Bumblebee. Nothing here is meant to go well, for you.”
He left with another nod to Laurent, who glanced down at Sabre. “We’re going to talk about this, you know. When we’re home. I’ve half a mind to add another thousand crowns to your debt.”
“Go ahead,” Sabre said, so softly, staring up at Laurent with a look so nakedly honest that Laurent felt his world shift, dangerously so. “I don’t mean to leave you, my lord. I lo—”
“No,” Laurent said, putting his fingers on Sabre’s mouth. “Don’t. Not here. This isn’t the place for it. Later, when we’re home, in my bed. When you’re safe.”
Sabre kissed his fingers, and Laurent sighed and tugged on his hair. “Go on. Charon will keep an eye on you, and I will, too.”
“Prince Adrien,” Sabre said, glancing over at the crown prince, who was obstinately standing by the fire and not leaving the room.
“Yes, him too, go on, now.” Laurent tugged the leash, and Sabre rose to his feet. He unclipped it. “Take this to the king, and bow when you present it. Don’t look him in the eyes. Something isn’t right, here.”
Sabre nodded, but before he could leave they were joined by Lord Chastain, who was smiling in a way Laurent absolutely didn’t trust—it was far too sweet, too eager.
“Sabre,” he said, warmly enough that Laurent would think him acting, if Chastain had any talent for it. Which meant it was genuine, and yet another threat to be on guard against. It would do Sabre no favors to be caught by Chastain or his youngest son. Perhaps Marius, a submissive who seemed more interested in Charon, could be persuaded to intervene?
“My lord,” Sabre said.
“Don’t worry about the hunt.” Lord Chastain reached out and took Sabre’s hand, which made Laurent wonder if the man had honestly lost his mind, or if he’d slipped into the fantasy where Sabre really did need his protection, and wanted it. “I know it’s frightening, but it’s only for—” he stopped, abruptly, and his voice went cold as the grave. “What is that, on your hand? I would have thought, if you were to wear a bauble, it might be the favor I gave you. Unless your lord didn’t see fit to give it to you, along with my invitation to be my guest at this event?”
Laurent had given Sabre the ring, of course. And he glanced down, wondering what Sabre had chosen—not all clients gave their courtesans gifts through the house lord, but Laurent had not expected Sabre to earn many of them, if any. But the ring on Sabre’s hand wasn’t some noble’s casual trinket, but a signet ring, with the noble crest of the de Valois family, and a deer. His heart pounded in his chest as Lord Chastain stared at it like it might leap off Sabre’s hand and bite him.
“It belonged to my father,” Sabre said.
“It belonged to a traitor,” Lord Chastain snapped, all warmth gone. “And you would do well to remember who enjoys the king’s patronage, and who hanged at his command.”
“My mother was a traitor,” Sabre said, his voice clear, that same inherent noble pride he’d displayed with Chastain’s son, a few days ago. “My father was always loyal to his cousin, the king. He wore this the day he died, on a hunt. I thought it would bring me good luck. If you’ll excuse me. I heard the bell.”
Apparently no one had ever explained to Lord Oscar Chastain just how much steel was in the spine of a submissive, because he seemed speechless as Sabre took himself off to join the “foxes” outside.
Lord Chastain’s hands fisted at his snide. “Devon!” he snarled, as if Laurent wasn’t there, as if he’d forgotten Laurent was a lord, not another thing to be chased, carried off and fucked. “Attend me, there is something we need to discuss before the hunt.”
“Finally,” Devon Chastain muttered, and as Laurent tried to discreetly sneak behind them and listen in...he was stopped by Sebastien d’Hiver, of all people, who looked like a frost creature come to life, cold as a statue with eyes as empty as glass.
“You,” he said, pointing to Laurent with his cane.
“Your Grace,” Laurent bit out, between his teeth, as Chastain and his son moved to speak privately near the door. Devon started to smile, and apprehension dug in tight to Laurent’s nerves and wouldn’t let go. “Is there something you require?”
Sebastien had a disturbing tendency not to blink. He also stepped in far too close, and the apprehension paled for a moment to the dread at being so close to him, though Laurent couldn’t really fathom why.
“That was quite the demonstration you provided,” D’Hiver said, in his odd, flat voice. “Tell me. That one, who just left with the lord of the hunt—what is his name?”
This is what d’Hiver wanted to talk about? Who someone was? Damn and blast, his timing was horrendous. “Are you—do you mean, his son, Devon?”
“Ah, yes.” D’Hiver’s eyes went vacant and he tilted his head like he was listening to something. “We thought the rage was from the whore tied to the post, that’s why we came to see. But it wasn’t him. It was that one, that Devon.”
Who’s we? No. No, he wasn’t asking that. He didn’t want to know, and he needed to be out there, keeping an eye on the man he loved who had just walked out like a man bleeding climbing in a pool with hungry sharks. “He’s...yes, not very fond of Sabre.”
“So much hate, that one. We’d hunt him, I think. Yes.”
“He’s—a hunter,” Laurent said, helpless in the face of d’Hiver’s weirdness and the dread that poured off him like a cologne. “Devon is, I meant. He’s not a fox.”
“Oh you’re all foxes, to us,” D’Hiver said, waving a hand. “Thank you for your assistance, you may go. We thought about hunting you, but then we realized you don’t know who you are, do you?”
“What?”
Of course, when Laurent would have welcomed a few seconds longer of conversation with the Duke, he simply...turned and walked off, muttering something softly and smiling at nothing.
Laurent shivered and went outside, immediately seeing Yves—who was smiling up at a noble but who did keep glancing over at both Sabre and Charon, often—and Sabre, who wasn’t looking at anyone.
Devon Chastain was smiling with something sick in his expression, an eagerness that made Laurent want to drag Sabre back to his room and forgo this whole thing altogether. And there were...so many people, so many more than were here before, in the room when he’d flogged Sabre. Weren’t there? Some he didn’t recognize, and they were laughing, dancing in the snow and—
We have to go, you must follow—look at your feet not out of its eyes, its dead but it will make you see what it—the smoke, don’t breathe the smoke, whatever you do—run, run, it’s staring I hear the horses and—
“...His Highness, of course,” Lord Chastain was saying, to the king.
Emile, standing next to his fearsome black horse, sighed and said, “I will fetch my son.” He disappeared into the house, and Laurent could hear the dominance in his tone if not the words themselves. When Emile reappeared, Adrien was there, pale faced and wild-eyed in the snow.
He immediately left his father’s side and came to Laurent’s. “My lord, you have to get him out, don’t let him—”
“Adrien, you will come here, now,” Emile called, and several of the submissives—noble and not—went to their knees in the snow, simply from the strength of the king’s dominance. For all the power the crown gave to him, Emile was mostly a quiet man who rarely raised his voice. Laurent had heard when he executed his royal guard out of paranoia that they were plotting against him, he never said a word, simply shot them all and left the room in silence. Somehow that was worse than if he’d done it in a rage.
Adrien couldn’t fight that tone in his father’s voice, and he turned and trudged toward Emile’s side with the dread of a man heading to the gallows.
“Now the prince is here, let’s get started,” Devon Chastain called, still smiling his sick, twisted smile at Sabre. “I’m eager for the hunt. Let the foxes go, would you, father?”
Run run they’re coming Solas run don’t breathe the smoke don’t breathe don’t run run don’t look out of its eyes—
D’Hiver’s voice, you don’t know who you are, do you. Calling him a Mislian.
The sun that morning, in the House of Gold. The woman who told him—who told him—
Tell them your name is Laurent. I would ask your forgiveness, but if I have done this right, you will forget I ever existed.
Don’t breathe the smoke, Solas!
Tell them your name is Laurent.
Do you see that, there? It’s the symbol of the old gods, the ones we tore down from the sky—
Laurent stumbled at the sound of the gun, heart in his throat, but it was only the sign that the hunt had begun and even though every instinct in his body was telling him to run...he remembered he wasn’t a fox, was a hunter, and whatever this strange surge of memory was, now wasn’t the time to get lost in it.
But as he searched for Sabre’s familiar, beloved form in the snow...he found he was holding his breath, and he could still hear his mother’s voice in his head telling him, over and over, run, run and don’t look back.
* * *
The gun fired.Courtesans raced through the dark woods, their costumes glittering in the fading light of the sunset, but the only thing of Sabre’s that caught the sun was the collar at his neck and his father’s ring. He registered the flash of color out of the corner of his eye, a shadow that could have been Yves, but he didn’t run far enough to tell. He stopped well before the shadows started to blend into a false midnight, turned on his heel, and waited.
Devon would come first.
He came like thunder, his horse a black shadow bursting through the trees, kicking up clods of dirt and tossing its head as Devon spurred it faster still.
Sabre didn’t run. He stood there, quiet as he’d never fully managed to be in the practice courts with Isiodore, watching the horse bear down upon him, the terror a distant thing in his mind. It was like being under, in a way, like going so deep he’d come out the other side.
Devon’s horse was not trained for war. It was trained for speed, agile and nervy, and when it saw Sabre unmoving in its path, it veered in panic and stumbled against a pine. Snow fell from the upper boughs, making the air glitter as Devon was thrown from his horse. He rolled in the broken earth with a ragged cry, and groaned as he struck the roots of a tree, the bark stripped and rough. He got to his hands and knees with his face a ruin of blood, and spat at Sabre’s feet.
“You whore,” he said.
“Hello, Devon,” Sabre said.
“Don’t you try to—” Devon drew his sword, ornamental but sharp enough to cut a man’s throat if it had to, so long as no one put any pressure on it. “Don’t you act like you’re—like you don’t know what you are. What you’ve done.”
Sabre just stared at him. Waiting.
“We knew your mother’s plans would fail,” Devon said, “because she kept you, the prince’s pet whore, mooning after him while his father killed half his own guard—”
Devon swung too wide, and Sabre stepped into range, ignoring the sharp pain of the blade slicing across his arm. He struck Devon full in the face, with all the strength of years of training with Isiodore, and Devon went down like a marionette cut from its strings, cursing thickly through a mouth full of blood.
“My mother failed because she was no better than the king, in the end,” Sabre said, stepping on Devon’s hand. Devon yowled in pain and fury, animalistic and low, as Sabre took the sword from where he’d dropped it in the snow. “If she did love me, it wasn’t a weakness.”
“She hated you,” Devon said. “You and your father, Adrien, submissives feigning a right to power…”
Sabre looked down at Devon, trembling with rage in the snow. “Maybe you’re right,” he said. “But I don’t care. Not anymore.” He turned on his heel.
Devon’s scream echoed through the trees at Sabre’s back, a lonely, wretched howl of a broken creature, as Sabre disappeared into the woods after Adrien.
He passed two nobles riding through the trees, but they shied to the side when they saw the blood on Sabre’s sleeve and the sword in his hand. One of them tried to wheel around, but Sabre ran past them, towards the lighter, open part of the forest Adrien tended to like best, and the tremor of hoof beats faded into a gentle, distant thrumming.
“Asa!” he shouted. “Asa!”
“Sab!” Adrien’s voice was faint, too distant. Sabre took off through the snow, pushing at trees, ducking branches, ignoring the burning pain of his sword arm as blood trailed down his hand.
This must have been what his father felt, that night, as they raced to the throne room. Sabre knew now what the panic and grief in his eyes meant, that fear that he was already too late, that all he could do was bear witness. He pushed himself forward, and staggered over a patch of wet snow and into a pool of dying light.
Adrien’s horse stood against the last line of the setting sun, eyes rolling as Adrien, surrounded by smiling, laughing people in fox costumes, clung to the saddle. There were three foxes, all of them reaching for Adrien, tugging at his cloak, his boots, his belt. He looked to Sabre, panic in his eyes, and one of his captors turned to stare. She wore a mask over her face, and her red hair spilled out the sides, tight curls gone dark in the growing shadow.
“It’s him,” one of the others said. He wrenched at Adrien, who fell from his horse with a soft cry, and drew a blade from his belt. “Kill the whore first. The prince dies with the king.”
The woman reached Sabre first. She was fast, faster than Devon, but Sabre was trained by a man who didn’t care for honorable combat, and he kicked snow in her face, grabbed her hair, and pulled at her mask. She snarled, groping for something at her waist, and Sabre looked at Adrien, who was scrambling back on his hands and knees in the dirt.
“Does she live,” Sabre said.
“What?” The third fox, reaching for Adrien, hesitated, hands out.
“No,” Adrien said. “I saw her body at your feet.”
Sabre grimaced and dragged the sword over her belly. She screamed, high and horrible, and Sabre had to wrench the sword out of her as the man reaching for Adrien turned to tackle Sabre head-on. The sword bent uselessly as Sabre tried to thrust it into the man’s arm, and they rolled together in the growing mud and snow, Sabre’s arms locked around his neck. The woman lay dying behind him, moaning softly.
“Does he live,” Sabre said.
“No,” Adrien whispered.
Sabre’s stomach twisted as he felt the man’s neck crack beneath him. He rose, looking at the last fox, who fell back against a tree, his mouth a black pit of horror in his face.
“Does he live,” Sabre said, again.
Adrien was weeping. “No.”
Sabre lay the man’s body in the snow, when it was done. His shirt was tacky with blood, his hands thick with it, and Sabre almost wanted to crawl into the dark of the woods, disappear into it, cover himself with the shadow of it until he no longer felt like he was dragging his own body along by the throat. He turned to Adrien, and stood over him in the snow. He was panting and bloody and marked in a way he couldn’t think about, yet, and he leaned down to take Adrien by the arm.
“I’m sorry,” Sabre said.
“So am I,” Adrien whispered. He wouldn’t look Sabre in the eyes. “I didn’t. I didn’t want you to—”
“I know,” Sabre said. He looked up. The horse was gone, but there were figures between the trees, now, nobles on horseback, courtesans holding each other, the sound of voices drifting through the dark. “Fuck. Give me your sword, Adrien.”
“It’s decorative,” Adrien said.
“I just killed three people with a decorative sword, Asa,” Sabre said. He unsheathed Adrien’s sword for him and approached the horses, holding Adrien tight by the arm.
“You said you’d kill the whore, Lord Chastain,” Sabre said, raising his voice as he dragged Adrien forward. “Kill the whore before they kill the prince. You should have picked another whore, I think.”
“Yes,” drawled the unmistakable voice of the king. Sabre pulled Adrien another step across the snow. “Terrible luck, Oscar. Look at what a mess he’s made.”
One of the horses shifted slightly, and Sabre stepped around Adrien to keep him at his back. His blood-slick hand slid over Adrien’s arm.
“First he kills my guests,” Lord Chastain said, “then he cries treachery. You should have let him hang, Your Majesty. Him and his bitch mother.”
“And you should have killed him when you helped his mother kill Arthur de Valois,” the king said, “but then, you never were a very observant man.” Lord Chastain moved to turn his horse, and the king’s voice snapped out sharp and cold. “Apprehend him. And his sons, Isiodore. Both of them.”
There was a thundering of hooves as Isiodore turned to chase Lord Chastain’s horse into the dark, and Sabre watched them disappear, swaying slightly in the circle of watchers. Someone dropped down from their horse—Laurent, it had to be—but Adrien was still there, weeping silently, out in the open.
“Your Majesty,” Sabre said. “Your son.”
“Yes, de Valois, I see him. Bring him here.”
Sabre staggered forward. The king came into focus through the trees, somber and watchful, and Sabre pushed Adrien towards him, leaving a smudged, bloody handprint on his coat.
“I don’t believe I’ll require another vow, this time,” the king said.
“No, Your Majesty,” Sabre said, his voice hoarse. “Not this t—”
Lightning cracked in the distance, sharp and sudden as the door to the gallows dropping beneath his feet. Sabre fell to his knees as something struck his back, a white-hot ball of pain that seared through him like fire. He went tumbling into the snow, and behind him, Devon Chastain dropped his gun to the ground, turned his bloody face from Sabre’s body shuddering at the feet of the king, and disappeared into the night.
