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"My lord," says General Dorrand, and Reylen freezes where he stands. He makes a quick mental calculation: there's a body at his feet, and there's a dagger in his hand, and he knows exactly how this looks because it looks like exactly what it is, so what can he do to control this?
He drops the dagger to the floor, where it lands in the spreading pool of his victim's blood. He widens his eyes. He turns to the general.
"Dorrand!" he says. "Thank the stars it's you. Councillor Pirk..." He gestures at the body on intricate parquet floor; it's going to be hell to get the blood out of the joins, he thinks. "I--"
"You killed him," Dorrand says.
"No! You know me, Dorrand. How could you think this was me?"
"I know you," Dorrand says. "That's why I think you killed this man." He frowns. "Are you with Vorath?"
Dorrand's sword is still sheathed at his side, but his off hand tilts the scabbard like he's readying himself to draw. If he does, Reylen isn't sure he'll win; General Dorrand might be very near exactly twenty years his senior but he's still the greatest living swordsman in all Talis, even if he's not the most exciting of them. He's tall and strong, severe and sharp-eyed, and Reylen, for all his training, for all his skill and his ability, might die where he stands.
He makes another calculation and when he's done, he straightens his back and he lets the feigned horror on his face fade away to nothing.
"No," I'm not with Vorath," he says, because if nothing else he won't be called a traitor.
"Then who do you work for?"
Reylen has one more choice to make, and it might well be his last. So he chooses to tell the truth.
If he dies, he could choose no better executioner.
---
His name is Reylen of Lorand, son of the Duke of Lorand. Everyone in Starsfall knows his name.
He won't inherit the duchy when his father dies; it will go to his eldest sister, Ettia, the sensible one who's been educated all her life to take her father's place. Reylen, on the other hand, is the youngest of five, and the only son, but his terribly rich father has provided for him more than amply. To the world at large, he's dissolute, a symbol of all Lorandine excesses. It's a reputation he's worked hard over the years to cultivate.
Reylen of Lorand is thirty-two years old. He's handsome and he knows he is - a little above average height, a little more muscular than the average aristocratic sot, and his shoulder-length hair that he wears tied back with a gold-threaded ribbon, is a vibrant Lorandine red. And when he draws his sword, in the club or at a tournament, he's skilled in the way that all Talisani noblemen are. They forget that from the age of five, he was fostered with his mother's brother. They forget she was Vorathi, and her cousin sits on their high throne. All they remember is his smile, and his purse, and his glass of good red wine, and who his father is.
He met Dorrand at a party, when he was twenty-three years old and the general forty-three. Dorrand wore a black leather jerkin with a row of tiny silver buttons that marched up underneath his smooth-shaved chin like a regiment of shiny soldiers, while all the other attendees - Reylen included - wore bright silks and plush velvets all fastened up with gold. He wore his long, greying black hair in a braid that hung down his back all the way to his waist, and all Reylen wanted to do was wrap the length of it around his wrist and make him bare his throat to him. In Vorath, he could have claimed him that way, by sucking a bruise into his neck. He'd been had like that himself, once, before his mother died and he'd cut off his braid and gone home to Lorand, but Talisani etiquette ruled that out completely.
"I've heard a lot about you, general," Reylen said when he approached across the salon, and he felt a kind of thrill inside as Dorrand's grey eyes fixed on him. He was taller than expected by at least the span of both of Reylen's hands, though he supposed he'd heard he towered over everyone, and he had his sword hanging from the belt at his waist. It's the same one he's wearing now, nine years later, though Reylen knows it's not the only one he has - it's plain, and simple, and had killed more men even then than there were people at the party. It's well known but didn't come to him from his family; Dorrand is the third son of a minor baron with a tumbledown hall, though he's made himself much more than that, and no man has ever been more dedicated to his country.
"I've heard a lot about you, too, my lord," Dorrand replied, though he didn't make what he'd heard sound good. He looked him up and down and said, "Is there something I can help you with?"
"Can I get you a drink?"
"I can get my own, if I'm thirsty."
"Some food, then?"
"I've eaten."
"A woman?"
"No, thank you."
He raised his brows. "A man, then?" he asked, and Dorrand clenched his jaw; apparently, he'd struck a nerve. "Me?"
The general's reputation preceded him. He was disciplined and skilled, strict but even-handed with his men, but disapproving of the lavish Lorandine lifestyle to which so many in Starsfall seemed to aspire. Dorrand's men wore black with a royal blue armband, with the Talisani star-crest embroidered there in silver thread, and that was the limit of their extravagance. And most of them spoke well of him - Reylen had known a few of them. But he was solitary, living alone in the city barracks' towerhouse, and reportedly took no lovers at all. Reylen thought he'd like to change that, as much for his own amusement as for his cover.
"I don't want to sleep with you, my lord," Dorrand said, but Reylen didn't particularly believe it. Even so, he didn't push, not then; he shrugged and said, "Well, that's your loss, general," then he rejoined the other guests.
He's sure Dorrand's storm-grey gaze hardly left him for the rest of the night.
---
The second time they met was much like the first: it was a party Reylen attended by choice that Dorrand attended for propriety. Reylen was sure he'd have preferred to refuse the invitation, but refusal would have been impolite and Dorrand, though hardly given to the enjoyment of parties, seemed to take protocol quite seriously.
Reylen staggered into him pseudo-drunkenly and sloshed his ever-present glass of wine all down Dorrand's doublet. Dorrand swore under his breath and Reylen dabbed at him pointlessly with his already somewhat wine-stained handkerchief. He stepped closer. And, while, no one else was close enough to hear, he told him, "There's your excuse to leave, general. Don't say I never do anything for you."
Dorrand didn't reply; he just eyed Reylen oddly, carefully, then gave him a terse nod and strode away. He was likely already back in the barracks tower by the time Reylen poisoned Baron Blackwood. He was a general in the army, not captain of the city guard, so he didn't return when then alarm was raised.
The next time was dinner at the home of state councillor Pirk. Reylen and Dorrand were seated across from one another, at opposite sides of an elaborate carved dining table too wide for polite conversation; Dorrand spoke with Pirk and his haughty wife, doing very little to contain his disdain for either of them, while Reylen spoke rather vigorous Vorathi with Ambassador Kyr and his eldest son, Fror. It turned out Kyr had known his mother, if briefly. He'd been in Starsfall since long before her untimely death. With the political distance that introduced between their countries, once Vorath and the Talisani duchy of Lorand were no longer linked by marriage, his embassy had become more important than ever.
The candlelight made Fror's long hair gleam like spun gold and he smiled as easily as nearly all Vorathi do. He paid attention when Reylen spoke, and he laughed, and he squeezed Reylen's thigh, high up, almost scandalously forward, but that has always been the Vorathi way. When Reylen leaned close to Fror's ear to whisper something to him that made him laugh out loud, Dorrand was watching disapprovingly. That pleased him almost as much as Fror's reaction.
Then, after dinner, after a little music and mingling, after they'd all admired the councillor's collection of pretty but dull liturgical art, Reylen slipped away with Fror. He straddled his lap on a bench in the dark courtyard garden, one hand in Fror's trousers and his mouth at his neck. Fror was his own age or a few years older, tall and ruddy and golden-blonde, and he'd have let him mark him, claim him, fuck him every day until the bruise faded away like Vorathi law would give him rights to, and Reylen teased him with the idea of it, his mouth over his pulse, as he wrapped his hand around his cock. Then, behind him, someone coughed.
Reylen turned. "General," he said. "Did you want to join us?"
"Not especially," Dorrand replied. "And you might want to be more discreet about your liaisons, my lord."
"I might, but that doesn't sound like nearly as much fun." He squeezed Fror's cock and made him groan. Even in the moonlight and what little lamplight escaped from the councillor's house, he could see the colour rise up into General Dorrand's face. He clenched his fists at his sides, then he turned and walked away. Reylen watched him go. Then he left Fror exactly where he was with just a flash of a not terribly apologetic smile. The truth was, Fror reminded him of all those years he'd spent in Vorath, where his mother had died. And he had something else with which to occupy his night.
Dorrand was probably back in the tower when Reylen smothered Councillor Pirk's chief aide. The alarm wasn't raised till the morning, but the assumption was natural causes.
The fourth time they met, it was on the steps of the cathedral, months later, when Dorrand was back from a campaign to the south, in Korl. They brushed shoulders, accidentally; Reylen smiled up, and Dorrand frowned down, and they went along their separate ways, but Reylen was glad to see he'd made it home intact. He found that strangely reassuring.
The fifth time they met was another high society party. The sixth was yet another still, until it had been once or twice a month for a whole year. Then two.
They met at a tournament, late in his second year in Starsfall. Reylen had been present the previous year, but Dorrand had strategically ignored him; this time, when the fencing events began, Reylen's name was also in the lists. He'd been dared to sign up, and he'd never cared to back down when challenged. He supposed he got that from his Vorathi side.
They met in the third round, and no one was surprised when Dorrand beat him soundly. He'd been drinking beforehand, and joking, winking at the crowd and making them cheer, and Dorrand made short work of it, but instead of seeming pleased, Dorrand frowned at him.
"Next time, don't hold back," Dorrand said, once he'd sheathed his sword, as he held one hand down to help him up.
"I don't know what you mean, Dorrand," Reylen replied, with his hand still lingering around Dorrand's wrist. But Dorrand didn't seem convinced.
No more convinced than he is now, at least, with Councillor Pirk dead at their feet.
---
Over the years since Reylen moved from Vorath to his father's duchy in Lorand to the capital at Starsfall, the two of them have met again, and again, and again. Sometimes that's been by Reylen's design and sometimes just by happy accident.
From time to time, he misses Vorath. His life was simpler there, in the city that sprawls in the shadow of the Westward Mountains, though he supposes he knows now that his life was much more precarious. He spent his days at the academy and his evenings at the table with his mother, at least for the half of the year she wasn't in his father's home in Lorand. They lived with his uncle and his family, and the training he'd thought they gave him for his own sake was for quite a different purpose. They intended to use him as a weapon against Talis. He's known that for some time. Since, he thinks, the day his mother died.
Sometimes, he misses Vorath. He's never particularly missed Lorand. Starsfall is his home now, and it's also Dorrand's.
In the third year, or maybe the fourth, he sent Dorrand an invitation to his birthday party just because he knew he couldn't refuse though he would absolutely want to. He let him catch him in the gardens with good old Fror down on his knees; Dorrand sighed and shook his head and walked away the way he'd come. He never said a word.
In the fifth year, or maybe the sixth, he let Dorrand catch him with one of his men in the grounds of the city barracks, not far from the entrance to the tower where he lived. Technically, it wasn't against any Talisani military rules for the son of a duke to be there. Technically, it was against the rules for the soldier to be entertaining guests. Said soldier jumped to attention when his general appeared, albeit with his cock standing at attention, too, out of his unbuttoned trousers. Dorrand ordered him away, and Reylen rolled his eyes and left. But he knows Dorrand ordered no punishments.
In the seventh year, or maybe the eighth, they were both invited to the Earl of Seltrand's starrise celebration. While the others watched the summer stars from the earl's gardens at the riverside, wondering if that night might be the night when a new star fell, Reylen was in the covered colonnade nearby, away from prying eyes. He had the earl's trousers pushed down to his knees and his fingers in his arse, and even Dorrand's sudden appearance couldn't dampen the earl's enthusiasm. As Reylen slicked his cock, Dorrand sighed and left. But he'd lingered just a fraction longer than usual.
Last year, they were seated next to one another at a banquet given by the king. They ate together, and they drank together, and bit by bit they talked together; they'd known each other for the best part of eight years by that point, after all, between Dorrand's military campaigns past Talisani borders, and Reylen had come to understand his quirks. Society at large called him reserved and humourless, but Reylen knew better: you just had to know where to look and you'd see how angry and attentive, and sometimes amused, he really was.
They ate and drank and talked. Then, Reylen excused himself and slipped away from the table. Dorrand found him fifteen minutes later, on his knees in the castle darkened courtyard, sucking the Korlish ambassador's cock. He pulled Reylen back by his hair and told the ambassador, hotly, "Go."
The ambassador left; in theory, his position in Talisani society was higher than the general's, but in practice... Dorrand, at the head of the armies of Talis, was the one who'd brought Korl to its knees. Reylen, though, wasn't scared of him. He'd killed men himself, and not only with a sword.
"Did you want something, general?" he asked, still kneeling there on the courtyard flagstones.
"I hope your father's proud of you," Dorrand replied.
"Well, he's the Duke of Lorand. He has a concubine of either sex and fucks them in the banquet hall. You care more about where I put my mouth than he does." He tilted his head. "Why is that, do you think?"
"You're a disgrace."
"To who, if not my father?"
"To your country."
"Are you telling me the King of Talis cares whose cock I suck?"
"Then what manner of impression are you giving our ambassadors?"
Reylen shrugged. "Oh, believe me," he said. "Quite a good one." Then he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand for good measure.
Dorrand's face flushed; Dorrand's fists clenched; Reylen took a chance. He crawled forward on his hands and knees and he unbuckled Dorrand's sword belt and laid the sword down on the ground. Then he unbuttoned the fly of Dorrand's trousers and he curled his fingers underneath and he almost expected him to stop him, to step back or slap him or something akin to that, but Dorrand let him wrap one hand around his cock and ease it out. He let him stroke him till he was hard, giving his foreskin a pinch up over the tip then easing it back to expose the flushed head beneath to the chilly night air. He let him lick him. He let him suck him. He let him grip his hips and bob his head and sock him till he came. Then Reylen spat into a nearby grate and looked up at him, smiling.
"I like the way you taste," he said, still down on his knees, and Dorrand fucking scowled as he tucked himself back in.
"How do you live like this?" he asked him, his tone low and harsh, and Reylen shrugged as he refrained from standing himself up.
"With surprising ease," he replied, and he wiped his mouth off on his sleeve. "Don't tell me you didn't enjoy that. I absolutely won't believe you."
Dorrand looked at him, roughly halfway between disgusted and just plain fucking appalled. Dorrand opened his mouth like a sharp retort was forming, but no words made it out. Instead, he turned and walked away, out of the courtyard, and left him kneeling alone.
Reylen let himself into the Korlish ambassador's house that night and rode his cock till they both came while he imagined it was Dorrand's. Then, on his way home, he stopped by Admiral Felz's ship docked in the Starsfall harbour.
No one saw the admiral tumble overboard. They found him floating there dead in the morning.
---
Dorrand avoided him masterfully for the best part of three months after the banquet. Then, they met after the tournament, at the king's ball in the palace.
Reylen had watched each of of Dorrand's matches avidly, once he'd let himself be knocked out of the competition. At fifty-two years old, he's still the best swordsman in the kingdom, but Reylen could see he was distracted. It was in the slightly laboured way he moved, and how points scored against him in the clash of his opponents' blades crept higher up than usual. Others there put it down to his ever-advancing age and complained again about his lack of showmanship. Reylen, though, thought differently.
At the ball, Dorrand stood apart from the crowd just as ever, both physically and figuratively. He was leaning against the ballroom wall, in his neat black clothes with their neat silver buttons, and all attempts that Reylen saw at engaging him fell on his perennially deaf ears. He had no wish to dance, not after two stilted rounds with the king's nine-year-old princess, and then a quick turn with the stately old queen mother. He finished just two drinks in the following hour and stood stiffly, listing slightly, occasionally rubbing his shoulder. Reylen excused himself from his table and dodged his way across the room toward him. Dorrand saw him coming; he watched him come and didn't move to avoid him.
"You're injured," Reylen said.
"You're wrong," Dorrand replied.
"I'm not," Reylen said, and he raised his brows as he pressed at Dorrand's shoulder. Once he'd made his point by making him wince, he stopped.
"Come with me," he said, and he walked away. To his surprise, Dorrand followed; he didn't even have to ask him twice.
The king's apothecary keeps all manner of remedies inside a room there in the palace, just in case. Inside that room, once he'd lit the lamp to light up all the jars and bottles, Reylen had the general take off his doublet and the shirt beneath. He was bleeding through the dressing that had crudely been applied. He winced as Reylen peeled the blood-soaked cloth away.
"This didn't happen in the tournament," Reylen said, as he began to clean the wound.
"No, it didn't."
"This wasn't a sword."
"No, it wasn't."
"Then what?"
"A pair of scissors."
"Rogue tailor?"
A vague look of pained amusement passed over Dorrand's face, and then it hardened up again. "Vorathi assassin," he said.
"A scissor-wielding Vorathi assassin?"
"I didn't say it made sense."
"This needs stitches."
"Can you stitch it?"
"Do I look like a seamstress to you?"
"You like like you might know a few."
Reylen laughed, but he stitched the wound as Dorrand clenched his fists and gritted his teeth. When he was done, his fingers were slick with Dorrand's blood, and he washed it off and dressed the wound, and found something to give him for that pain that he mixed into a cup of wine and handed to him.
"Drink this," he said. Dorrand only hesitated for a moment before doing as he'd been told, and they sat there after, quietly, as Reylen wondered to himself what exactly had just happened. Somehow, it had turned out General Dorrand trusted him, though perhaps that had just been the blood loss. Still, he'd have to trust him just a little further still.
When the medicine took hold, Dorrand couldn't walk unaided; Reylen slung Dorrand's arm around his shoulder, his own arm around Dorrand's waist, and set off from the palace. He could see the barracks tower from the palace steps and that was where he aimed for, and he helped him up the tall and winding stair. He stripped him to his underwear then eased him down onto the bed.
And when the Vorathi assassin came to try again, Reylen killed him there. He put his hands around his neck and squeezed, and then he threw the body in the river - with a bit of luck, it would wash straight out to sea. Then he went back home, and he thought about the man they'd sent to kill Dorrand, and with flame-red hair and bright blue eyes. He couldn't help but wonder why they'd sent a man who looked just like him.
In the morning, Dorrand would wake with a hell of a headache. But at the very least, he'd wake.
---
The next time they met, Reylen was flirting with the Korlish ambassador again. Dorrand stared. He practically glared. The ambassador, somewhat disappointingly, beat a hasty retreat.
"Are you trying to sabotage my sex life or just insert yourself into it?" Reylen asked, as he passed him by on his way to the wine. Dorrand scowled at him, and he didn't reply.
The lack of reply spoke volumes, but they didn't speak again that night. Reylen went home alone and as he stroked himself, in bed, he thought about General Dorrand.
The next time, they met at the armourer's; while Dorrand was fitted for a new mail shirt, Reylen tested his newly-forged sword and pretended that he wasn't watching from across the room. It was a very fine sword, and very showy, with highlights in gold and accents in sapphires. That showiness was, of course, entirely the point.
"May I, my lord?" Dorrand asked, one hand outstretched as he approached. Somehow he always managed to infuse each my lord with such near-amused contempt that Reylen always found it hilarious.
He held the sword out to him, hilt first. "I'd be honoured, general," he replied, and he stepped back to watch him try it. It looked strange in his hand, the ostentatious sword and the austere swordsman, but the way he moved, the way he'd pivot and twist, he had more grace than he had any right to. He'd seen that before, of course, at the tournaments, but this was different - the way he moved was measured, but with an edge that Reylen realised he'd seen before without ever truly seeing it. People said Dorrand's swordplay was nothing but form and precision taken to its far extreme; it wasn't. They said it lacked adventure and a sense of risk; it didn't. What he lacked was the right opponent. What they saw was what it took for him to win, no more or less.
Then Dorrand stopped, and he looked at him down the length of the sword's shiny blade. Then, he drew his own, and he held its hilt to Reylen.
"Would you like me to really test it?" Dorrand asked, and Reylen nodded. He took Dorrand's sword, plain as it was, as completely unadorned except for the Talisani star-crest at its hilt, and held it in its hand. The king had had it made for him a long time ago, when he'd won his first tournament after winning his first battle, and he'd broken his old sword; he'd commissioned the finest swordsmith in all of Talis, and had it made according to Dorran's own desires. He'd chosen the plain design himself, and he'd obviously spent quite some time sharpening it over the years. Reylen tested the edge. He bled, just a little.
When they fought, it wasn't like the tournament. The armourers gave them the courtyard and away from prying eyes, Reylen quickly let his fabrication of moderate competence fall aside. They fought, in a clash and clang of blade on blade that made Reylen's pulse race and brought a smile to his face more genuine than he'd felt for quite some time. Dorrand was excellent. Dorrand was better than he was, even without the self-imposed fetters that permitted him to hide there in plain sight. When he yielded, with sweat at his brow and the point of his new sword at his throat, he laughed out loud from the unexpected joy of it.
"You're better than you usually let anybody know," Dorrand said, as they exchanged swords after. He eyed Reylen as he pushed back a strand of black hair shot through with grey that had managed to escape his braid. It was still as long as ever, just greyer than when they'd first met. All age had seemed to do was strengthen him. "This sword is a lot like you are: the unnecessary frills are disguising a sharp edge."
"Well, I have a reputation to maintain," Reylen replied.
"Yes," Dorrand said, archly. "Don't you."
They parted ways. That afternoon, rather impulsively, Reylen sent the sword to Dorrand; to his surprise, Dorrand didn't send it back.
They parted ways but four days later, it turned out Councillor Elanis had invited them both to the grand opening of her new music school. When Dorrand sneaked out of the fifth or sixth live performance, Reylen followed suit. He followed him.
In the narrow back street behind the school, long after dark, Dorrand saw him following and pushed him up against the wall. He looked like he meant to beat him; he kissed his mouth instead, then reeled back with a grimace of disgust. He might even have left then, but Reylen didn't let him. He should have. He knew that. But he pulled on Dorrand's hair and he bit his neck and he sucked there, hard, but without breaking the skin. Dorrand growled. He fucking growled. And when he pushed him up against the wall again, Reylen thinks he would have had him then and there if he hadn't pushed him back.
When Dorrand looked at him, dismayed though whether from his own act or from his perceived rejection was unclear, Reylen said, "Not here." Then he walked away, turned, and said, "Are you coming?" Against all the odds, he did. He followed like a shadow.
They fucked in Reylen's house with him bent over the dining table, trousers down around his thighs and hole slicked up with table oil they spilled all over the floor. They moved on, and they fucked on the stairs, Reylen straddling Dorrand's lap and Dorran's big hands braced at his hips. They moved on; in Reylen's room, they stripped, and Dorrand pushed him down onto his back on the bed. Reylen fucked himself on Dorrand's thick fingers, muscles straining, then Dorrand fucked him with his long, thick cock. It was everything Reylen had imagined. Honestly, he'd imagined a lot.
And afterwards, they lay there together, side by side on Reylen's bed. He wishes he could say he'd never taken anyone else to bed there, but he had done and chances were good that Dorrand knew it. He could almost hear the cogs in Dorrand's mind turning, taking in the Lorandine decadence of the room's decor and his bed with its down-stuffed pillows and fine silk sheets. As a general of the Talisani army, the highest of them all, he could have afforded some if not all of the luxuries that Reylen had - he'd just always chosen not to. Some people said it was to keep himself sharp for the defence of Talis. Others thought perhaps he just followed the Path of the Stars too strictly, and should perhaps have joined the church and not the army. Reylen suspects both play a part.
What Dorrand was thinking was obvious: he was thinking he shouldn't have been there and he should never have done this. And when, inevitably, he left the bed, Reylen let him do it. He watched him dress while he stayed naked. He watched him make his way to the bedroom door.
"I enjoyed this," Reylen said. "I enjoyed you." But that was never going to sway Dorrand into staying. All it did was make him cringe as he fastened his sword back into place around his waist. It was the plain one, as usual, and Reylen wondered where the one he'd sent him was.
"I'm glad you find something here pleasant, my lord," Dorrand said. "I wish I could say the same."
Then he left. Reylen wasn't sure what he regretted most: letting him leave, or bringing him there in the first place.
---
Only six days passed till he saw him again; they fucked in the Duke of Rakis' private library after his daughter's wedding and then went their separate ways again. Dorrand seemed regretful, and dismayed, but that also didn't seem to stop him.
Only nine days after that, they met at the memorial for the first Korlish war. The king of Talis and the Korlish ambassador said pretty things about reconciliation, but Reylen's mind was on the general. The bruise he'd sucked into his skin, that peeked out just at the limit of his high black collar, was beginning to fade away again. After the ceremony, he sucked Dorrand's cock and then sucked at his neck, and Dorrand didn't seem to mind. The only explanation was he didn't understand what that mark would mean in Vorath.
Only four days after that, they were seated together at yet another tiring society party. Reylen played the part of the aristocrat's drunken son and once they were alone together, behind closed doors, Dorrand didn't seem to notice he was sober, or else he knew and somehow that made sense to him. They didn't even manage to undress that time - they just thrust ridiculously against each other's clothed thighs - but Reylen left him with a renewed bruise just underneath his collar.
And now here they are, in Councillor Pirk's bloodied upstairs study. His body's at their feet, and Dorrand does not believe that Reylen didn't do it. His instinct is right: Reylen absolutely did it, and he has no regrets.
"Who do you work for?" Dorrand asks, as if all situations and circumstances can be summed up so simply and straightforwardly as that.
He could say he works for no one, because he's made no vows of loyalty to any master. He could say he works for his father, because it's his father who sent him to Starsfall, and his father's letter - sealed with its gold-flecked Lorandine wax - that offered up his services. He could even say it's his mother; if not for her, he thinks he might now be the Vorathi assassin Dorrand seems to take him for.
But, he tells the truth. "I work for Talis," he says. "I work for King Talisander, and I have for the past nine years."
"Why should I believe you?"
"Because when Vorath falls, he promised their gold mines to Lorand."
"And what do you care about gold mines?"
"I don't. My father does."
"Then you're loyal to your father?"
"Not especially."
"Then what? Explain it to me."
Reylen frowns. He clenches his bloody hands into fists at his sides, and he weighs up his options, but the particulars haven't changed and so he forges on.
"They killed my mother," he says, roughly, and he's not sure that anything he's ever said has hurt him more than this does. "Her brother. Her cousins. They killed her to end the alliance. Now I use everything they taught me against them. And somehow, by the stars, they haven't realised."
"Then Pirk..."
"He was on Vorath's payroll. Do you think his collection came cheap?"
He has no time to assess if Dorrand believes him, though, because a maid enters the room and she shrieks out loud when she sees Pirk's body. There's no point in attempting escape because she's seen them and Reylen won't slit her throat just for that unfortunate event. Pirk's guards arrive quickly, footsteps hammering up the staircase; three remain there, not allowing them a word though the two of them could kill them before any man could draw a sword, while the fourth goes for the city guard to tell them Pirk's been murdered. And when the captain arrives, and he surveys the scene, Reylen still has no idea what will become of him. They hang murderers in Starsfall, from the Starswatch Bridge, and the drop's so low sometimes the taller ones' heels kick up the water. He wonders if he'd reach. Perhaps he'll find out.
"General," the captain says. "Can you explain to me what happened here?"
Dorrand looks at the man sharply. "No," he replies. "I can't." And Reylen isn't sure he follows.
"Why not?"
"Because I don't know what happened, captain. My lord Lorand and I were seeking..." His mouth takes on an awkward twist. "We were seeking a measure of privacy when we came upon the councillor."
The captain's brows rise. "Privacy, general?"
Dorrand sighs. He shakes his head. He gestures. "My god, man, don't make me spell it out," he says.
The captain glances between the two of them with the look of a man imagining more than he really ought or wants to. He nods. "So, you saw nothing?"
"Only the knife, which my lord rather foolishly picked up. I told him to put it down again."
"I see." He looks away, down at Pirk's body. "We might need to speak with you again," he says, "but you can go for now. Thank you for your time, general. My lord Lorand." He screws his face up awkwardly. "You can be assured of my... discretion."
So, they leave. They leave together, out into the street behind the house instead of in front of it where a small crowd of onlookers has gathered, and as they walk Dorrand passes him a handkerchief to wipe his bloody hands on. Reylen gives him a tight smile. The blood's tacky now, and the handkerchief only helps up to a point.
He knows they shouldn't talk in the street and evidently so does Dorrand. Though Reylen can't hear steps or see any kind of evidence of it, it's possible they're being followed, so they walk in silence; the captain might well take their word for it, given who they are and what the general has implied about their affiliation, but it's best they're sure. They come to the city barracks. They climb the tower. There's a jug of water on a table by the window so Reylen pours some out into the bowl and cleans his hands while Dorrand lights the lamps around the room. He leaves the handkerchief beside the bowl and turns to Dorrand, who by then is leaning against the thick wooden footboard at the bottom of his bed.
"You lied for me," Reylen says.
"I did."
"Can I ask why?"
"You can ask, my lord."
"Will you answer?"
Dorrand gives him a wry smile. "I've known you're not what you seem for some time now," he says. "The way you fight. Your skill with medicines. The fact your mother was Vorathi." He gestures, arms wide, at the room that they're both standing in. "But if you were an assassin sent by Vorath, you'd have killed me the night you brought me here. Or maybe in your home that night. Or any other night, while my guard was down. You could have put a dagger in my chest and said that I attacked you. No doubt they've all seen the way I look at you, my lord, despite myself. They would have believed every word of it."
He pushes away from the bed. He stands up straight.
"You know, I've been to Vorath," he says.
"At the head of an army?"
"As an envoy. A small party. Adding steel to a negotiation."
"What did you think of it?"
"It's a harsh country. Beautiful. Colder than I like."
"And the people?"
"Strong fighters, but often quick to anger. I had to break a man's nose the first night I was there."
"And more personally?"
"Breaking a man's nose isn't personal?"
"Not to you, no. Not to me."
Dorrand pauses and then he comes closer. He seems almost cautious, though he's just told him he believes him and so what he's so concerned about, Reylen doesn't know.
"Men kept trying to seduce me," he says, and he eases down the high collar of his shirt. "They kept trying to do this to me."
"Did you let them?"
"No."
"Why not?"
Dorrand gives him that familiar wry smile again, the one he can't be sure is mocking him or just flirting with disgust. "Because I knew exactly what it means," he says, and something inside Reylen's chest goes tight.
"You do?"
"I do."
"And you let me..."
"Yes."
"Repeatedly."
"Yes."
"Dorrand..."
"Frankly, it's starting to get painful."
And Reylen laughs out loud, though he still has the smell of blood on his hands, and on his clothes. This is ridiculous, his thinks, farcical, like the plays that Councillor Elanis likes to stage in her beloved theatre. He's been keeping his secrets from the most loyal man in Talis, who's fought wars in their king's name and not just poisoned, or smothered, or stabbed in the dark. What they've always been is two sides of the same coin.
He laughs, and then he pulls him down into a kiss. He feels Dorrand's fingers in his hair as he returns that kiss. He feels a tug at the front of his doublet. They've known each other for so long and now they really know each other. It's been a very, very long time coming. When they part, they don't go far.
"You know, I'm not going to stop," Reylen says, as he traces the yellowing edges of the bruise at Dorrand's neck.
"I know," Dorrand replies. "And you can rely on my assistance."
"For Talis?"
"And for you, my lord," he says, and he might look faintly amused around the edges, if you know where to look for that, but something tells Reylen that he might actually be serious. After all, he can see a sword there, displayed on the wall. He sees gold. He sees sapphires. He knows precisely where it came from, that one gaudy ornament in this so otherwise ascetic place.
"You know, you can call me Reylen," he says, as he starts to work on the row of silver buttons over Dorrand's chest. There's a lot of them. He's very tall.
"I could, my lord."
"But will you?"
"No."
Reylen smiles. "You're as impossible as these fucking tiny buttons."
"So leave it on, for stars' sake," Dorrand says, exasperated. So he does. They'll deal with that later; the important parts are much easier to simply push aside.
There'll be an investigation, Reylen's sure of that, but he's also so that together they'll emerge unscathed. And that's just as well, because he has more work to do before he's finished.
He pushes Dorrand down onto the bed. He straddles his hips and he can feel him there, under him, already half hard and stiffening more. He's hard himself and he's forming plans to take care of both of them; he doubts it'll take much and he doubts it'll take long, but they've got the whole night after.
He's never had a partner in crime before and he can't wait to find out what that's like. But, for now, he has other things on his mind.