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In reality, Damon knows he will simply agree with whatever Kres suggests. Kres knows much better than he what they need, what can be made use of, and what cannot.
By the time the auditing of items is done, the sun is climbing high in the sky and Damon is hungry.
“And the slave?” Damon asks as casually as he can.
Kres seems unsurprised by the inquiry. They are discussing the spoils he brought home from Jur-Mattan. Lyr is one of them. He says, “I believe he is doing very well, Your Grace. He works hard and is personable.”
“I’m glad.”
“He is not what I would have expected from a pleasure slave,” Kres says with a light curl of his lip. This does not surprise Damon. He has always understood Kres to be an extremely moral man.
“He understands instructions?”
“His Artemian is very good. You would not know he was a heathen. Not from his command of the language.”
Damon walks back into the kitchen, still talking with Kres and there he is, there is Lyr, staring at him, face pale.
“Lyr,” he says. He finds he is smiling.
“Master,” Lyr replies with a nod of the head.
He is wearing the same breeches and has a loose shirt over the shift. Damon has never seen Lyr fully dressed before. Something about the roughspun shirt and loose breeches seems beguiling. The fact Damon knows what the body under those clothes looks like in precise detail enchants him somehow.
“Do you want anything from me, Master?” Lyr says in a soft, shaky voice. He is staring, staring back at Damon. His face has pinkened, his lips are slightly parted as if his breath has roughened. He looks so delightful Damon feels his throat prickle.
He cannot turn away. He will not.
Damon realises he has been standing in place, gazing at Lyr. He turns to Kres. “Excuse Lyr from his duties. I wish to discuss a private matter with him.”
It’s rash and foolish, he knows. But what harm could a walk in the gardens do?
But as he thinks this, Damon sees the cook raise her eyebrows at one of the scullions and he realises there is no chance that his walking into the gardens with Lyr will be seen as anything other than an illicit liaison between a sinful man and his lover.
It is well known that Lyr was a pleasure slave in Pellex. He knows rumours about how he chose Lyr for himself will already be here in Attar. Perhaps embroidered with some colourful details. Perhaps even the suggestion that he did fuck Lyr in the great hall of Blackstone Castle in front of a sea of baying men.
The old rumours, the ones Atticul started about him when he was nineteen, have never really died, even among his own loyal staff. Why should the new ones be any different?
“Lyr,” says Kres behind him. “Take Master Damon and show him the herb garden. It is growing well, Sire. And Lyr can collect anything Nalla needs for tonight’s menu.”
“Yes, Master Kres,” says Lyr. Was his voice always so sweet? “Cook, is there anything you need?”
The cook lists off sorrel and thyme and rosemary and Damon walks with Lyr out of the kitchen.
They cross the stable yard and go through the iron gate into the gardens. The sun is bright.
“Do you know the way to this herb garden you are to show me?” Damon says.
Lyr shakes his head.
“Then I will show you.”
The herb garden is a small walled area to the south behind an ornately decorated patio with a vine-covered arbour and a low bench.
Neither of them speaks until they pass through the low brickwork archway into the herb garden with its raised beds and gravel paths.
Damon’s throat feels thick as he says, “How have you been?”
“I am glad of my role in your household, Master.”
