The Price of Freedom (Heirs of the Empire #2)

9. Lukas

9

LUKAS

L ukas returns to the main part of the camp feeling itchy and strange. He’s irritated how the Lordling slut Elric Underlia seems to be able to get under his skin with his stupid flirting and his way of asking questions with those big green eyes so wide and interested that Lukas finds himself saying more than he would to his closest confidants.

Red Wolf is beside the fire. Lukas stops a little distance away and looks at him. Lukas thinks of what Elric said about how he looks at Red Wolf. Does he look at Elric so differently?

Lukas approaches the fire. Red Wolf has a cup of ale in one hand and a small pipe in the other. He looks up at Lukas, “Good evening, dearheart. Have you stowed your little prize away?”

“Tied him to a cartwheel,” Lukas says sitting down.

Red Wolf hands Lukas the pipe. Moonleaf. As Lukas draws the cool, herbal smoke into his lungs, Red Wolf says, “How cruel you are, Lucky.”

“I had to make sure he didn’t run in the night,” Lukas says. He sits down and removes his hook and the leather sleeve that covers the end of his handless arm. It feels good to remove it. He checks the scarred skin at the stump end of his blunt wrist. He pulls a tin of salve from his belt pouch and says, “Where are Inga and her Lamb?”

“Gone into the woods together. Left first watch to me.”

Lukas pauses. He opens the tin with his teeth as he looks at Red Wolf who is grinning in the firelight. “Do you think Inga lets Little Lamb fuck her?”

Red Wolf nods. “I don’t doubt it for a moment.”

Lukas shudders. “I don’t know what Abul was thinking with that match,” Lukas says as he rubs the cooling salve on his sore skin.

“Little Lamb is very devoted to my sister,” says Red Wolf. “Perhaps she likes it that way. I don’t doubt he would die for her.”

Lukas can believe it. Inga is an enigma. Perhaps she is finding her own path to happiness with Little Lamb sharing her bed, or whatever she has found to pass for a bed out here in the Fanosti grasslands. Red Wolf smiles, “And talking of such delights, perhaps you would like to wrap your lips around my cock.”

Lukas gives Red Wolf a sour look. “You made it quite clear earlier that you were unsatisfied with my lovemaking.”

Red Wolf laughs. As Lukas finishes with his salve, Red Wolf takes Lukas’s left hand, brings it to his lips and kisses it. “Only with your inability to fuck me seven times a night as you once did.”

Lukas laughs, “Did I?”

Red Wolf gasps as if he is hurt. “How could you forget? If not your mouth then,” he uncurls Lukas’s fingers, “you still have this hand.”

Lukas pulls his hand back. “I don’t think so,” he says. He stands up.

As he does so, Red Wolf says, “You know sometimes Lucky, it feels like you left something of yourself behind in Lunatum.”

Lukas walks around the fire and settles down. He looks back at Red Wolf. “You think so?” he says icily. “Something with five fingers and a palm, perhaps?”

Red Wolf makes a strange sound like a rough laugh. “More than that. It is my hope, my dear Lucky,” Red Wolf says, stretching his long legs out toward the fire, “that you find it again when we arrive there.”

Lukas doesn’t reply. He stretches out on the hard ground. He thinks of Elric. Elric’s silly confident charm. He feels a strange connection with him. Hard to explain. Perhaps in another life, he would have had a lordling like Elric Underlia as a lover. In a life where he’d grown up in the Rose Palace. They would have known each other. A royal bastard and the sweet son of the Warden of Pluma-Ferris.

They would have been a good match if Zai’s laws allowed sly matches.

Elric has the same kind of brash, seductive charm as Red Wolf, but there’s something different about it. Ever since he returned from Lunatum, Red Wolf has always made it clear he sees Lukas as spoiled by what Lunatum had done to him. That he misses the old Lukas. Red Wolf always seems like he is doing Lukas a great favour by still wishing to lie with him, despite how Lukas is broken.

Because Lukas is broken, not just on the outside, but deep within himself too.

Elric, Lukas feels sure, does not see him that way.

But Elric is wrong.

The following morning the sun is bright as the party set off.

It’s a fine day. Sheep and goats graze, tended by the occasional shepherd. There are a few rocky outcrops like the one they camped beneath and occasional dense clumps of trees, but most of the land is a featureless glistening green to the far horizon.

As they pass one of the knots of trees and bushes that dot the grasslands, Red Wolf finds some plump dark berries and shares them with the rest of the party. They’re sweet and sharp and they stain everyone’s lips dark red.

As they walk on, Lukas finds himself staring at Elric’s stained lips. Stark against his pale skin. Coloured dark they look quite sinful. Lukas has kissed that mouth, he thinks, but looking at Elric now, he wonders how it would feel to sample it further.

To do more than kiss. Lukas’s mind seems to burn with the thought of seeing that stained mouth wrapped around his cock.

Desires stronger than he has felt in a long time.

He wonders what sounds Elric would make as he took it deep in his mouth. He seems like he’d want to do that. He’d want Lukas to hold him and take him so hard that he choked.

Elric and his pretty, clever mouth and sinful desires he is so blatant about. Perhaps he could rouse Lukas to hardness with that mouth and then Lukas could spread Elric’s slender body on the ground, fuck into him roughly, see what sounds he made then.

As they pass close by a little knot of trees, where the calcis birds are chirruping, high in the branches, Lukas is still so deep in his thoughts about Elric, that he is almost surprised when the real Elric comes over to him. Although in truth Elric is never far away because of the rope that joins them. Elric is all swagger with his mouth still stained that pretty berry-red, as he says brightly, “Bastard Prince.”

His expression is just as gleeful. The sun is behind Elric. The light dances through his bright red hair. He is irritatingly handsome.

“What do you want, Underlia?” Lukas snaps back.

“Don’t be like that, Bastard,” says Elric, tone still sweet and bright. “I just wanted to show you the calcis birds.” He points and Lukas looks up to see them, bright green against the trees.

“You think I care to see birds?” Lukas says. He’s trying to sound brittle, but truly, he does adore the little bright green birds. He is sure Elric can tell his snappishness is paper thin.

“They’re pretty, that’s all,” says Elric. “And their song is sweet. Surely even you can appreciate something sweet.” Elric dips his head, tucking in his chin so he can look up at Lukas through the bright fall of his hair.

Lukas can’t help it. He smiles back at him and decides to show Elric something that will make his pretty face lighten even more. An old trick. Something he hasn’t done in years. Lukas purses his lips and whistles, a sweet chirp of a sound that mimics the call of the bright green birds. A moment later, one of them flutters over from the trees and lands right on his hook.

Elric gasps, which is very gratifying, and Lukas grins widely. He steps closer to Lukas, the rope between them going slack on the ground.

As Elric gazes at the green bird, Lukas strokes its feathery neck, dropping his voice low and saying, “The most rewarding pretty things are the ones who do as they are bid.”

Elric gives Lukas a distinctly flirtatious look. “Is that what you like?” He reaches out and touches the bird’s green feathery head.

“Oh yes,” he says. “Pretty things that know their place.” He whistles again and the bird flutters obediently from his hook and flies back to the trees.

Elric watches the bird. “That’s an impressive trick,” he says. “Is it some Darek magical power that lets you command the birds of the trees?”

Lukas laughs. “Hardly. My brother Tobi taught the call to me when he lived in the Rose Palace. Most calcis birds are quite tame. They were brought from Ik-Sundal to be sold as fancy pets to the wealthy of the Empire. The ones you see flying wild are escapees from their golden cages. They live a long time, these birds. They are hardier than they look. You can often find ones that still remember their parlour tricks.”

Elric nods. “Did you have one?”

Lukas pauses. Not sure what Elric means. “What?”

“Did you have a pet calcis bird?” Elric says sweetly. “When you were a royal prince. Did you have a pretty pet bird in a golden cage?”

Lukas answers quietly. “No.”

“Your brothers? Tobi?”

Lukas sniffs. “My sister, actually.” He thinks of her. Sweet Ferra. His beautiful delicate sister. She’d loved that bird. And Atticul had loved to be cruel.

“Ah yes,” says Elric. “Princess Ferra the Lilac Doe.”

Lukas nods, jaw tight. “My sister. Correct.”

“Do you miss her?” says Elric.

“I’ve not seen her for over twenty years,” Lukas says, which is not a lie and not a denial. “She was always very kind to me. Of all my blood kin, I think she was the best of them.”

“She married Chancellor Vindar. The Thousand Eyes.”

“Yes,” says Lukas, “I am aware.” He can’t remember how he knew that. Had Abul told him? Back when he first joined the Mortingales as a green boy, Abul had often given him news about his family back in Attar. He’d not asked for it. But he’d never told Abul to stop.

“They have a son,” says Elric. “Umbert. He’d be five summers now. This will be his sixth.”

Lukas exhales. He knew this too. Umbert had been born only a handful of moons before the fateful raid. Although since Lukas returned from Lunatum, Abul has not told him anything about the Rose Palace. He wonders what Elric might know of his family that he does not.

But thoughts of his old family, his blood family, make him ache. He can never truly run from them. He’s learnt that. “I don’t want to discuss this. Let us walk in silence, Underlia.” He starts to pick up the pace, but Elric matches it so they are still walking beside each other.

He tips his head on one side. Lukas knows Elric will not drop this subject. “You don’t want to talk of your family?”

“The Dareks are not my family. This is my family.” Lukas gestures towards the cart, some way ahead. Red Wolf, Inga and Little Lamb. “I am not a Darek.”

Elric wrinkles his nose. “But you are. Blood is blood. You must have lived a sweet life at the Rose Palace. Everyone knows Prince Rafus gave his bastard sons every luxury. Why would any man swap being a prince for this?”

Everyone knows. Lukas wonders what Elric means by everyone. “I was never a prince,” he says to Elric. “Even when I lived in the palace. I was no prince.”

“But you lived as a prince. In the Tower of the Heir in the Rose Palace for years. You could have made a fine life as Prince Rafus’s son.”

“Rafus’s bastard,” Lukas says. And he is sure Elric doesn’t have the slightest idea about what it was like being Prince Rafus’s bastard.

Elric continues blithely, “Your brother Damon is a bastard and he was given Sanglora mansion and a high-born wife.”

Lukas huffs out a breath. Of course, they would have to discuss Damon. Lukas wasn’t even Rafus’s eldest bastard. Not even the favoured Damon, Rafus’s eldest son. Damon was the bastard who was whispered about the way people always whisper about bastard sons. Damon was the one that people risked a charge of treason to hint would be a better emperor than Rafus’s oldest legitimate son, Atticul. Always Damon, never Lukas.

Lukas was less than a moon younger than Damon, but that was enough to make him an irrelevance. Never more important to the Darek family than he was when he left it.

“Damon was given such honours for spreading the horrors of Azurian rule as part of the Imperial Army,” Lukas says, his voice bitter as he thinks of his revered bastard brother. “I am not Damon. I would not do the things he did to earn such favour. And even then, why would I want any of that?”

“You would not want to live in luxury?”

“Luxury built on blood. It should be clear to you now, Underlia, I want nothing to do with my vile kin.”

“You think the Darek’s should not rule Azuria?” Elric has a note in his voice that sounds almost fearful as he says this. Lukas knows he is asking a question that would mean harsh punishment, perhaps even death if he was overheard asking it in the Rose Palace.

“Of course not,” Lukas says back in a snappy tone, making it clear he knows no such fear. “They are despots. Sarelik Darek was a tyrant and so are all his line.”

“So you think your ancestors should not have taken the throne two centuries ago? Do you want to have the Hevelikar return?”

“I do not,” says Lukas. “The Heverlikar were corrupt and evil. The Sarelik Revolution was just. Or it would have been if it remained a true uprising of the people, simply led by Sarelik Darek. But then Sarelik chose to replace the Hevelikar with his own bloodline on the throne. And the Dareks then proved themselves to be even worse for the people than the Hevelikar. They forced the people to worship their cruel God from the Forest of Amber. They used Zai to enslave the people further. They raised the Imperial Army and started bringing their tyranny to other lands. What good does it do to remove a king just to replace him with an emperor?”

Elric does not answer. They walk on. The cart has run ahead of them again. Somehow it seems like Lukas and Elric are the only people here. The sun is warm. The countryside is beautiful.

After some sweet silence, Elric asks, “Did your father treat you poorly?”

Lukas pauses, but he decides to answer. He says, “No. As you like to point out, I was raised like a prince. My father was kinder to me than he needed to be, even when he was criticised for it. He took me in when my mother died. I was seven. She was very pretty. My father likes pretty women a great deal. Back then, it was no crime to behave as he did. Even before my mother died, Rafus acknowledged me as his son. When Damon and I were born, Rafus had no children with his first wife. He delighted in his bastard sons. Damon grew up at his knee. His mother was a whore who died birthing him. As my mother lived, I stayed with her in the servants’ quarters of the Rose Palace, but everyone knew I was Rafus’s bastard. I was part prince in the eyes of some, I suppose. Back then, that was when I really knew the privilege of my bloodline. I ran around the back stairs of the Rose Palace with the other servants’ children, but I was always treated better than the others. Fed better and with bad behaviour unpunished. I could behave as I liked and no one would raise a hand to me. I had a sweet life. But then my mother died and Rafus took me in. He had a second wife and trueborn children by then. My wild life was over. I had to learn letters and spend my days with my brothers. Atticul and Damon.”

Elric whistles. “Your brothers. Prince Atticul — the heir, second — and Master Damon Darekul — the One Man Army.”

Lukas nods, “Yes. Indeed.” His brothers. Smugly perfect honourable Damon and spoilt brat Atticul.

“Two of the most notorious men in Attar.”

“I suppose so.”

“And you, the Rebel Prince, Silverhand. Notorious in your own right.”

This makes Lukas laugh. It comes out as an odd sharp sound, like a bark. Then he says, “You bracket me with them. Do you think me as vain and self-serving as General Damon and Prince Atticul?” Lukas does not normally find conversation about his family enjoyable, but talking to Elric like this is almost amusing.

Elric looks at him. “I suppose that is something I will find out.”