Page 8 of The Laws of Nature (Heirs of the Empire #3)

DAMON

E venfall on Alios Day. After his wedding to Lyr, Damon finds himself in the rowdy garden of a Luxol tavern with his long lost uncle Markus.

It’s dusk, still stickily warm and the garden wild with Alios festivities.

. The heavy air is scented with charing meat from a wide open fire pit.

Music plays and people dance, coloured fabric flutters in the air, strung about the garden in rainbow colours.

Bright birds flit between the trees. Green calcis birds and orange firewings.

Lukas entertains his Lordling by whistling until he persuades a calcis bird to perch on his hook.

Damon is surprised he is successful. That trick might work on the birds in Azuria, who are mostly runaways from cages in rich manor houses, and who might remember the tricks they have been trained to do for fruit and grain, but these birds are wild, native to Luxoria.

Lukas, however, is as stubborn as he ever was and eventually one bird does as it is bid.

The Lording seems delighted, petting the bird under its chin.

“Pretty,” he says, sounding dreamy. “So pretty.” He turns to Lukas.

Elric is silly on love, high on it. It makes Damon’s heart feel heavy with pride to see that his brother could inspire such feeling.

Lukas is drunk, which makes the feat with the bird all the more impressive. He is spilling out of his tattered shirt, half-slumped against Elric. “So pretty,” he echoes, turning around and kissing Elric messily. Somehow still keeping the bird on his hook as he does it.

“Ferra had a bird like that,” Damon says to Lukas as he emerges from the kiss. “Do you remember? She called it Verilissia.”

Lukas nods, lifting his pipe. “I always thought that a strange name,” he says, inhaling then blowing out moonleaf smoke.

“I think it’s Ambolk,” Lyr says. He’s on Damon’s lap, driving him half mad in the tiny lace chiton, all sweet soft skin, brushing against Damon as he smiles across the table at the bird.

“Ambolk for green.” Damon feels like he is burning with need to get Lyr somewhere private, tear that chiton from him and bury his face between Lyr’s thighs until Lyr cannot speak for screaming.

“Green woman,” says Elric, pushing Lukas back with a hand on his face. “Veril means green in Ambolk and in Magaar. Verilissia means green woman.”

“You really do speak Ambolk?” says Damon.

His brother’s lover is constantly surprising.

He seems to try so hard to give the impression that he has no thought in his head excepting those about kneeling and begging for Lukas’s cock, but when that facade slips, there’s something inside him that is honed sharp as a blade.

Damon understands what he is seeing when Elric’s dizzy mask slides away. The kind of sharpness that was required for survival.

Elric shrugs and waves a hand as if Ambolk is nothing but a trifle. “You know I do. ”

And Damon does. Elric tried to read the runes on Lyr’s back.

Written not in Ambolk but the archaic Ur-Ambolk.

A more ancient dialect. Although Elric, for all his linguistic skills, had failed at that.

Claiming they would need an advanced scholar to unlock the puzzles of Lyr’s skin.

Puzzles that Damon hopes will help them piece together the strange things that have happened to all of them.

Why Lyr was sent to Damon by the witch that kept him prisoner.

Why a strange man helped Elric and Lukas retrieve Lukas’s sword and escape a Lunatum luxoli house.

Damon is sure the Hare will be able to do it. But seeking the Hare means going back to Attar. And the dangers that will face them all in the Jewel of the Empire. Both Damon and Lukas will surely be killed if they are discovered there.

Somewhere across the garden some minstrels start to play, opening with a loud discordant flourish that sets the calcis bird flying back to the trees.

“Do you remember when Atticul killed that bird and we beat him for it?” Damon says to Lukas, suddenly struck as the memory hits him.

“He did not kill it,” says Lukas. “He lied. He set it free from its cage and told Ferra he’d snapped its neck. He wanted to make her cry.”

“He set the bird free?” says Damon. He isn’t sure if he never knew that or is only misremembering the story. “But we beat him for it.”

“He made Ferra cry, so we made him cry,” Lukas says, smirking.

Damon nods. All of that seems like so long ago. “We were given no supper for a whole moon’s turn for that. We had to go and do penance with Doroth Zain.”

“It could have been worse. And it was a delight making Atticul sob that he was sorry,” says Lukas, clearly enjoying the memory.

“Do you remember they punished Tobi for it too?” says Damon. “He had not even been present. He was stuck in that shrine all that day as Selim’s page.”

“Tobi was Selim’s page?” says Elric. “I was Selim’s page. It’s very dull.” He’s holding Lukas’s hook, playing with it, winding his fingers around the curve. There’s something almost hypnotic about it, Elric’s long fingers slipping over the metal.

“It’s Umbert now,” says Damon. “Umbert is the page. I saw him there. Poor little wretch.”

“Tobi was punished too because all the bastards get punished together, according to Vindar,” says Lukas, “Little Tobi did whine to be starved.” Lukas takes another pull on his pipe, ignoring Elric, who has brought the hook up to his mouth and is kissing it, clearly wanting Lukas’s attention back on him.

“Tobi,” says Damon, thinking of that young boy who lived in the palace for a year. “How old was Tobi then?”

Lukas shrugs. “Seven summers? Perhaps eight.”

“He’d be almost thirty now,” says Damon idly, leaning down to kiss Lyr on the back of the neck.

Zai, this place, to be able to sit in peace with his lover this way.

Lover? More than that. He and Lyr were married this day.

He wonders again how long he must stay here for sake of politeness, before he can take Lyr off to make their marriage whole in the eyes of Zai.

Trysta, Opeth and Razelii have already gone back to the ship.

Opeth had claimed that they had no wish to intrude on the Darek family reunion, but Damon is sure they are already abed.

The reunion. The appearance of Damon’s uncle. Emperor Markus. The Exiled Emperor.

He had gone to the tavern counter to fetch more ale.

And as Damon looks up, seeking him, he sees he is returning, carrying a jug in one hand and Marko, Lukas’s dog in the other.

Markus was very fond of the little dog and had been delighted when Elric explained to him how she had been named for Markus by someone called Red Wolf, who had considered Markus to be the greatest Emperor Azuria never had.

It had never occurred to Damon that Markus would be revered by anyone.

That there were people in Azuria that thought a sly man ought to have been Emperor.

It is strange, to Damon, to consider that there might be people in Azuria who would ever think that of a man who was known to be sly.

Markus reaches the table and sets down the jug of ale. Marko slips from his arm with a yip and strolls across the table to Elric.

Markus’s handsome companion, Kai, is with him, bearing two further foaming jugs.

Damon lifts his cup for Markus to pour him out some more ale.

He takes a deep pull. It is not bitter argent but it is good.

And very strong. Markus pours more into all the cups, including Lukas’s — although Damon is sure Lukas has had more than enough strong ale —and sits down beside Damon and Lyr, beckoning Marko back across the table to settle in his lap. Kai sits next to him, sitting close.

Kai is of a similar age to Markus. He is more slender, where Marcus has the kind of body that must have once been very well built — built perhaps like Damon himself — but has aged now and softened, although he is still imposing.

Kai, with his brightly glittering black eyes and unusual fine-boned face has something of a look of Lyr about him.

He is also from Klish, Damon thinks, remembering some earlier conversations.

That would explain it, although Damon can’t help looking at Markus and Kai and seeing himself and Lyr, grown old together, still looking at each other with soft expressions.

He wonders if anyone will ever consider him the greatest Emperor Azuria never had.

“Were you talking of Tobi?” Markus says.

“Tobi,” says Lukas after a deep swig of ale that might have emptied his cup. “Yes. Another of our father’s bastards. He came to live in the palace. Not until after you were gone.”

Damon wonders if it is strange to refer to Markus being deposed as Emperor and exiled to Luxoria in such simple terms.

“Ah yes,” Markus nods. “I never met him, but I heard about him. I was still at the Rose Court when Rafus learned of his existence. I believe that Rafus sent a servant from his household to examine the boy, who reported back that he looked distinctly like a Darek. A little like Atticul, I understand.”

“Like a sewer rat then?” says Elric, laughing and merry, a little pink-cheeked in his cups.

Lukas’s left hand snaps to Elric’s neck. “Oh,” he says, leaning close, voice seductive and low, but clearly audible, “you say the heir, second of Azuria looks like a rat? Such treachery, you ought to be punished.”

Elric’s lips part.

Damon feels Lyr shift on his lap. Lukas and Elric will surely be off to their bed soon. Elric ought to hurry if he wants Lukas to be sober enough to perform the way Elric clearly wants him to.

Markus seems completely unaffected by Lukas and Elric playing bedchamber games across the table. But, Damon supposes, he has been living on Luxoria for many a year. Markus has no doubt seen all kinds of things in tavern gardens .

Markus looks at Damon and says seriously. “I heard about what happened to you. What they did to you.”

Damon nods.

“That was a terrible action even for the spite of Azuria.”