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ChapterEight
Lefric
The twenty minutes we’d all spent in the back garden of Sebald and Avenel’s cottage were nine hundred times more interesting than the entire first hour of the meeting in the palace.
“So, if Good Port agrees to supply the Kostya Kingdom with food this coming winter and the Northern Kingdom provides our cities with fuel, then the Kostya Kingdom can guarantee safe passage for any traders from Inverhaus who wish to do business with either the Wolf River Kingdom or the cities farther toward the eastern mountains, correct?” Sai asked across the round table.
Magnus, Jorgen, and Hati all wore neutral expressions, but I could see from the subtle glances they’d been sending each other since we’d all sat down around Sai’s huge, round council table that they found Sai’s efforts to take charge cute at best. Olympus was trying to be involved, but bless him, he hadn’t yet developed the confidence to share those looks with more powerful leaders.
“Is that a promise we can truly make?” one of Sai’s own councilors—his name was Yegor, I thought—asked with a frown, contradicting everything Sai had just painstakingly worked out in the last ten minutes.
“Yes,” Sai told him with a bit too much frustration. “What harm could it possibly do to us simply to guarantee safe passage for our allies?” He glanced to Magnus, though I couldn’t tell if he was asking for help or commiserating about how hard it was to find good councilors these days.
“It could do a great deal of harm if the wolves are still in the habit of stealing young men from our cities for their nefarious purposes,” a different councilor, one named Markus, argued. He glanced to Sebald, then across Peter and Neil to me, and finally to Jace. “It doesn’t take much to turn a young man’s head and to corrupt him.”
My brow flew up, and I nearly laughed out loud. I glanced to Olympus and was tempted to nudge him under the table. Did Markus, or any of Sai’s other councilors, actually think that being kidnapped by wolves was what had made us desire men? I wanted to tell him that you couldn’t just fuck someone into desiring a man—or a woman, for that matter—if that wasn’t how they were inclined.
Olympus either didn’t catch my attempt to bring him into the joke or he didn’t think the statement was as funny as I did. That concerned me a little. Olympus had been off all day. But I would have to deal with that later, since the conversation moved on quickly.
“I can assure you,” Magnus said, fondling Peter’s and Neil’s hands as they rested on the arms of his chair, “the men of the Wolf River Kingdom have no need to steal or corrupt anyone’s sons. But if those sons, or any other man or woman, are inclined in our direction and come to us of their own volition, we will not turn them away.”
“Some of those young men might actually want to be corrupted,” Jace said with a smug grin, staring across the table at his brother.
Sai sent Jace a brotherly eye roll that said he wasn’t helping.
“Contrary to what you might think,” Jorgen said in a surprisingly amused voice, “we wolves do have other things on our minds besides burying our cocks in the asses of innocent, young city men.” He glanced to Hati, eyes sparkling with mirth, and added, “Even if those asses are as sweet as fresh, ripe peaches in summer.”
Hati started to chuckle at that, and even Olympus had a hard time keeping a straight face as he peeked sideways at me.
Until Yegor said, “You see? It is just as Hadrian told us last night. Wolves are rapacious beasts, and if we give them even an inch, they will kidnap every handsome young lad we have, enslave them, and subject them to unspeakable depravities.”
The mood in the council room shifted to deadly seriousness so swiftly that even Sai noticed it, but Sai’s reasons for being serious weren’t the same as the reasons I was pretty sure the rest of us were suddenly on alert.
“Yegor, I think that’s a bit of an exaggeration,” Sai said. “I’ve been to the Wolf River Kingdom and seen the way the wolves live there, and I’ve become friends with King Magnus over the last few months. They have no need to kidnap young men from the cities, and they certainly don’t enslave them.”
“No?” Yegor looked offended. “Then what are pups, then?” He glanced across at Magnus and sneered. “Are young men attached to older wolves not called ‘pups’ in your kingdom, and yours?” He glanced to Jorgen and Hati. “Are pups not slaves to your sexual depravities?”
Jorgen and Hati—and Jace and Sebald as well—looked downright mutinous. Peter squirmed angrily in his seat, and Neil sent him an anxious glance.
“Peter and Neil are my beloved husbands,” Magnus explained with perfect calm. “They are not and have never been my slaves. Some men in the Wolf River Kingdom, and in the Northern Kingdom, do possess pups, but it is a mistake to refer to those young men solely as slaves, or to describe the sort of bond that unites them with their men as slavery.”
“The young men in question have been observed kneeling beside your chairs,” Yegor said, eyes narrowed. “They have been observed following orders and showing extreme subservience.” He glanced to Sebald.
“Do you not have servants in the Kostya Kingdom?” Hati asked, looking ready for a fight.
“Servants, yes,” Yegor said. “They are free to leave their servitude whenever they choose. Can you say the same for these pups?”
“Yes,” Jorgen, Sebald, and Jace answered at the same time.
That seemed to surprise Sai’s councilors, actually. Which just proved to me that they didn’t truly have the first idea what they were talking about. They were operating from misinformation that had caused a panic. And that was the crux of the problem we all had when it came to negotiating with them about everything and getting anything done.
“Slavery is practiced in Good Port,” Olympus spoke up, staring down Yegor, and immediately drawing my attention to him. “It has been for generations. I purchased Lefric here as a slave months ago, and though I voluntarily freed him, I could have kept him enslaved for his entire life. I don’t understand much about it, but I know that pups among the wolves can claim their freedom when they reach a certain age.”
He glanced at me, but even though he looked strong and confident, I could see him questioning me to see if he’d gotten the facts right.
I nodded, both for him and to add my two-cents’ worth. “I think it’s funny that you’re so set against wolves because of pupdom, while at the same time, you’re tripping all over yourselves to make an alliance with Good Port when their slavery laws are far more draconian than any wolf’s.”
“Good Port has never attempted to steal young noblemen from the cities to warm their beds,” Yegor grumbled.
