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‘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.
