Normally, there would be a pointed cessation of all things celebratory, a falling of shadow over the widowed country as the eyes of the king closed. But not for Diarmaid – not tonight. Tonight was too precious, and the death too expected, to mar the glory of victory with the cloak of mourning.
So said the Prince – the King – with a wave, conducting the band into motion again. The talk of the crowd was no longer a quiet murmur of general gaiety – now it had the loud edge of anxiety with it.
“The first thing that the people do with news is go and spread it, anyway,” said Diarmaid, sipping at his glass, elbow resting over the arm holding his own waist. “I've just allowed them to stay here and do what they would go out and do anyway.”
Cole surveyed the crowd, and had to admit it was true. People shuffled from one side of the room to the other in admirable mimicry of the way they would have shuffled from one house to the next, urgent to be first to deliver the news. The quiet crowd around the orchestra had disappeared, too, though this was more the effect of being surrounded in a field of privacy maintained by the Prince's – the King's Royal Guard. Cole kept doing that. The Prince was permanently the Prince in his mind, somehow.
“It's like a great beehive,” the Prince said, letting his smile fall as he watched, “without a keeper – workers, drones and queens.” Turning to Cole, he smiled again. “Only in the beehive, the queen does not take consorts.”
“In a beehive, the Queen is productive,” Cole said, sipping his wine.
The Prince laughed – and not his effete court laugh, but a loud thing, like his father's. “The Queen was productive, but my father taking an official Consort would've rather simplified matters, I feel – at least in terms of my succession,” he went on. “Ah, well,” he heaved a sigh, “it doesn't do any good to lay complaints on a dead man; the only thing to lay is sod.”
“That's a remarkably earthy proverb for you to quote,” Cole said, sipping his own wine with all nonchalance.
“Oh, I know, isn't it?” The Prince chuckled at himself. “I heard one of these visiting barons say it once and it struck me as appropriate.”
“Indeed,” Cole agreed.
The Prince inclined his head in acceptance of Cole's approbation and they both silently watched the fussing crowd. What had begun as shock was already wearing into mild surprise – parts of the party were even turning into the precursor to the required wake, which would no doubt consume the city for a week. For all of his questionable activities, and the criticism leveled on him, the old King had been a good one. The people, if they did not love him, at least didn't often hate him. More than enough good-will for a riotous royal wake; it wasn't every day a king died.
“Tell me something, Cole,” the Pri– Diarmaid said. “What was it like, when you were finally given Executive status?”
Cole shook his head. “Nothing like being King will be.”
Diarmaid digested this a moment, then nodded, taking whatever lesson he would take from it. There was little use in expounding; not because Diarmaid wouldn't listen, but because they might argue, and arguing required privacy no less sacrosanct than Royal Chambers, and while such a discussion might be pleasant, Cole wasn't about to visit the Royal Chambers. He had given his answer on that issue long ago.
That was what this was all about, Cole had no doubt. Five years ago, the Prince saw the potential between Cole and himself, even though then he had been much more the fool he pretended to be. The problem, the issue, the secret Cole barely admitted to knowing himself: Cole had felt the potential between them, too.
It was unsurprising that as his thoughts wandered to the Royal Chambers, so did Diarmaid's. Except, unlike Cole, Diarmaid smiled.
“Oh, please, Esras. We're going to talk, but even you can't think me so crude as to issue such an invitation on the day my father dies.” He frowned.
“For one, Aodhnait would kill me.” He gestured with his wineglass. “As in, literally: she might kill me. I worry about her more than you would think. She so bears the burden of propriety I'm surprised it hasn't crushed some of the smaller Ladies by now. It's really impressive.”
Cole chuckled, and Diarmaid smiled easily. They watched some more.
“Diarmaid – if your aim is to get to me to be at ease, I assure you, it won't work. No one is at ease with the King.”
Diarmaid mock-pouted. “Come, Cole. If anyone can be at ease with the King, it's you... but I suppose you're right. Days of ease have certainly passed.”
Cole drank to that. He admired the taste of the wine with his expression. “And, if you recall, you weren't exactly pleased with me last time we spoke.”
“Don't worry,” Diarmaid said, his smile holding only pretended bitterness, “all is forgiven. You did save my throne.”
“From the rabble?” Cole cocked a brow.
Diarmaid laughed again. “From being thrown away on heartbreak.”
Together, they snorted derisively, each taking a drink of wine in time.
“Not that it was that easy, you know – what I offered you once was more than most men would ever dream of attaining.” Diarmaid glanced at Cole, whose glance back was wary. Diarmaid smiled at it. “And, you know, I thought quite highly of it myself. It did take a while to recover.”
“Oh, so were the scandals I kept hearing about really a treasure-hunt?”
Diarmaid didn't answer with anything more than a smile. Cole took a deep breath – this was it. Cole turned to face him, and he turned to face Cole.
“But it did not take me very long to decide to renew my offer. Only a fool would let pride interfere, and Cole – I don't deny my pride, but I am not a fool.”
Cole felt his nerves pick up; he couldn't help it. When he had first refused Diarmaid, it had almost seemed like a game, or a dream, or some Academy romance. At the ball for graduation, there was Cole, desirous of power, always so casual with his relationships, ever so sure of what he deserved, and Diarmaid, just the same – only already possessed of power. Already offering power. So alike were they that it had been as easy for Cole to condemn the Prince as it had been to condemn himself. Unfortunately, it had also been as easy to be seduced and flattered by the Prince as it was for Cole to seduce and flatter.
There was no mistaking that they were similar, in tune – perhaps not perfectly, but well enough that the liking was obvious even to an outside observer. Cole had the unflattering experience of hearing himself obliquely referred to in the broadsheets. He had fervently kept them from Nika, not because Nika would know – Nika never read gossip anyway – but because he knew they weren't wrong.
Refusing hadn't been as easy as it should have been. But then, there had been Nika, absent from the ball, but present enough to Cole's mind to ameliorate the feeling of having squandered an admirable opportunity for the greater good of love.
Now, again, here was the Prince-turned-King; and Cole, with Nika, absent, but present to Cole's mind...
To offer half a kingdom and be refused was more than enough reason for enmity without the complications of attraction – or lust, if that was the better word for it. Cole hadn't believed – still didn't believe – that Diarmaid, so like him, would forgive the denial of both. Certainly Cole didn't imagine Diarmaid would open the offer again – but it was true that Diarmaid was not a fool.
Cole had refused when his options had been most open, his potential greatest, his personal life secure, because his instinct was for greater things. Tonight, Cole's instinct had prepared him as if for pitched battle, going to the field badly out-numbered, and wounded in spirit, and he did not doubt his instinct.
“Cole – though I don't doubt your man, you know as well as I do it is only your say-so that keeps him in his rank. I like him,” Diarmaid smiled – his smile, though crafted as Cole's, was honest. “He certainly has... 'pluck'. And ability. But you are a leader.”
“Do not dismiss Guy–” Cole warned, and Diarmaid nodded, cutting him off.
“I don't dismiss him. You probably doubt him more than I do, after having seen him on the dais this morning. But it's never been as much about capability as it was about image and patronage. And Cole,” Diarmaid leveled his eyes on him, “you are the happy coincidence of all three.”
“I've demoted myself, Diarmaid – I've started an investigation into my actions. I'm not fit for my duty...”
Diarmaid's smile became indulgent. “And yet you say, 'your duty'. You started the investigation. You demoted yourself. Esras, do me the favor that so few of my courtiers do me, and try to pretend I'm not stupid.”
Cole frowned, and Diarmaid chuckled.
“I know I put up a convincing front, but I respect your intelligence enough to know you respect mine – however regretfully you do it. Even your efforts to smear yourself only reveal that you shine brighter than anyone thought. I don't doubt your appointments. I don't plan on interfering in your plots. I don't believe, for a second, that you will mistake my intentions.”
Cole didn't. He didn't need to smile or sign or say anything. His face was a block of stone, blank and unmoving.
Diarmaid was going to crack it.
“I met your Midraeic, on the dais today.” He sipped his wine, with all the casual cruelty of rulership. “I admit he is attractive, though not so much my type. Clever, too. Got a beast of a set of balls – you ought to hear the things he said to me, you'd be proud. He's clever, brave and understanding.” Diarmaid fixed a piercing, earnest gaze on Cole. “Understanding, Cole, of what his role was in this whole play.”
He let that hang in the air, but Cole gave no response. He was busy fighting down rage, and sickness, and yet more rage, and despair. More despair than he thought he could feel.
“Do you know what will happen in the dungeons, Cole? Do you know what that does to people? I have met some who have come out the other side.”
Diarmaid paused, and drank his glass, handing it off to be refilled. Fortifying himself. “They aren't quite people any longer – not the same people. Not who they were. You know I've heard review of our torturer; they say he is a cautious man, difficult to anger, caring, even. You would think a cautious torturer would be undesirable, but it is precisely the type you want to run afoul of the least. An incautious, cruel or fiery man will push the prisoner too far, which is, at some point, what every prisoner wants. If they push the torturer too hard, he will kill them, and at least death will end the pain.”
Cole could not move. If he moved, he would break. He could not take breath, utter words. If he moved, he would break. If he broke, everything would break.
“I am not an idiot; nor is your chosen lover. I know that you would not love me; I doubt even that you ever could, if what is about to happen, does happen.” He touched Cole's shoulder, looking into his eyes. “Is happening. But it does not have to happen this way.”
He cleared his throat, and all measure of sympathy, of pleading, of emotion was taken out of his voice, clear gaze coming up hard on Cole's impassive face.
“This Rebellion has weakened us – wolves are circling, waiting to gore their muzzles in our wounds, make us show our bellies for mercy. Ainjir's greatest strength is its divided rule, but it is also our greatest weakness. Ainjir is only at full strength when both sides of her are united, and she is in more peril than anyone is aware. The Six Nations have the scent of our blood, and they bay for it at the gates. We, together, could stop them. Restore yourself to General status, and ally yourself to me; we can rule with unprecedented might over Ainjir, and make her strong again in the eyes of the Six Nations. We could be feared, we could be obeyed, and with you as consort, we could be loved like no ruler since Keadar-Ainjir himself has been. And you will be arbiter of the entire Military – accountable only to me. We could conquer, enrich our borders with seacoast, or if you prefer, become a shelter for refugees and the oppressed, gaining strength in the love of the people. ”
With the fervency of his voice falling away, Diarmaid forced Cole to look down at him, meet his gaze, and made his offer. “Agree to be my consort, and I will stop the torture and deny the trial. If needs be, I will arrange escape. I do not control the Council, but I will use every power at my disposal – though they are Council, I am King. And as long as publicly, the strength of our alliance does not falter... you may keep your lover, away from the Capitol, whole and unoppressed, undamaged by a cruelty beyond which there is no worse offense. All I ask is public loyalty, and what little thanks can be interpreted from occasionally sleeping in the same bed. Cole – it is not much for me to ask, and you will have power beyond your current reach, and you will have your true love whole.”
Diarmaid was no fool. He stepped away, eyes level and clear, all pretense of the 'buffoon prince' gone as the last false snows of winter, swallowed in sharp spring light.
“You turned me down for him once, Cole – he was more important to you than the whole of Ainjir. Now you may accept what your ambition, your fate, would demand you to accept, and all for his sake again. I saw that he understood, on the dais today, that he accepted a fate worse than death, for the sake of what was important to him. Accept your fate, Cole, and save him from his.”