Chapter Forty-Six: Without Consequence

“So, we meet properly,” said Bayram.

Osmund’s mouth moved soundlessly, but his novels had no wisdom to offer. What was there to say to someone, a prince no less, who’d caught you standing nearly naked in his brother’s tent?

“Ş-Şehzade Bayram,” he stammered, going to his knee in a panic of propriety. The man took a step forwards. What was he doing, why was he coming so close?!

“Come, stand,” Bayram said. His tone was easy, even companionable.

No sooner had Osmund stood than he felt a hard pinch and a tug. He looked down at his bare chest in bewilderment; Bayram’s hand was already retreating from the darkened nub, drawing Osmund’s accursed shirt closed again as he did so. “Dress like that, and you’ll give men ideas,” the other said with a chuckle.

It had happened so fast. Osmund was struck by the sheer disregard with which the man had handled another person’s body. He’d endured all kinds of unkind treatment from those nobles he’d bedded back in Valcrest, but no one had ever dared touch him like that without his consent before. After all he’d been a prince, and princes were untouchable.

“I-if you’re looking for, um, Şehzade Cemil, he isn’t here,” Osmund said numbly.

“Well? No reason we can’t entertain ourselves.”

There was a small trestle table where Cemil did his correspondences, and beside it, a chair. Bayram settled his lanky frame into the wooden seat and looked shamelessly around the room as if he owned everything in it. Osmund tried not to shudder when those eyes crawled over him, too.

“What’s your name?”

He shut his eyes. “O-Osmund.”

“Must be a popular name on the Isles. I’ve heard it somewhere before.” Bayram made a gesture towards a cushion on the floor a ways opposite. “Why don’t you get comfortable.”

Osmund considered the cushion fretfully. The very last thing on his mind right now was comfort. “I-I’d like to stand,” he said.

“When I tell you to sit, you sit.”

Osmund sat. “Good boy,” the man said. Seated like this, the difference in their heights was even more pronounced.

The towering elder prince was in his early thirties, with dark, loose auburn hair that reached the ends of his jaw, and a neat beard. His nose was thin and pointed. If not for his cold, pitiless eyes, he might’ve been handsome.

The Tolmishman tugged at the hem of the oversized shirt, which seemed determined to ride up his thighs against his every effort now that he was seated. He’d bathed alongside others often enough, yet had never felt more naked in all his life.

“You’re a strange creature,” Bayram remarked with half a smile. It was plain from the slant of his body (and of his words) that he’d been drinking. “Cemil always kept a stable of ones like you. That Lala Muharrem looks more doddering each time I see him. You know he was the first palace official to offer his guidance to the odd little bird my brother was? Cemil keeps him around in the name of loyalty. He could have had any of them in the end. Even Nadir.”

Osmund stared. He had no idea how to respond. “Yes, my father favored him after the prophecy,” Bayram went on, evidently not caring what he thought. “Gave him his old seat in Şebyan. A wealthy port city for the spawn of a wild Anshan she-wolf with a mangy runt already at her heels, and for me his firstborn, a scattering of mountain villages where men bugger their goats. My mother was a princess of the North.”

When Osmund remained silent, Bayram said dangerously, “Are you a mute?”

“Wh-why are you here?” The question came flying out of his mouth faster than he could pull it back. It did not feel like a relief when Bayram’s smile remained unwavering.

“Cemil clammed up at dinner. It was rude. As his older brother, I thought I’d teach him some manners. Especially since he presumes himself our next sovereign.”

“He doesn’t have to listen to you, you don’t have any business with him.”

His anger had been aroused by the disrespect shown to Cemil. Now he felt only his own fear. Those eyes; they did not so much as glint. “Come here,” said Bayram.

Osmund’s heart raced. His hands, bunched protectively between his thighs, seized with the arch of his shoulders. “I’m not going to fuck you,” the prince said coolly. “Come here. Don’t make me ask again.”

With great trepidation, Osmund rose to his feet. He walked obediently over to Bayram, who drew back his arm. The prince was so tall that even sitting, his palm connected easily with Osmund’s face.

The slap was sharp, and familiar. Grounding. Stinging.

Unexpectedly, Bayram laughed. “My brother’s whore has a rude mouth. But you accept punishment well.”

“I’m not a—” Osmund swallowed down his shame. “I’m a stablehand,” he said weakly.

“And I suppose you know how to ride.” Bayram wore a gratified smirk at his little joke. He angled his head towards the tent’s corner. “Bring that here.”

Tensely, Osmund turned his neck to see what “that” was. There was only a copper basin of water with an ewer. Afraid to provoke Bayram’s wrath, he fetched it for him, maintaining as much distance as he could. “You’re being discourteous. I don’t bite.” That grin seemed designed to bare his teeth.

Osmund inhaled and closed his eyes, willing the scene to vanish when he opened them again. But it was no use, it was no more effective a strategy than when he’d been a boy. “What do you want me to do?”

“My feet are weary from the long days of travel.” The elder prince slid off his shoes with practiced ease. Oh—he wanted Osmund to wash his feet? That was okay, he could do that. It was almost with relief that he took up the ewer’s handle and lowered his face again so that he didn’t have to look at the rest of him and remember who he was being made to touch.

“My imperial father wants me quiet and obedient in my exile,” Bayram sighed, stretching out his legs as Osmund worked. “Your Tolmish religion hates men who are idle. I’ve studied the Ocentines a fair bit and find their ethic admirable. In our Empire, there is so much waste. Taxes to pay the tax collectors! Entitlements for the blind and the lame! I’ve made my own money, like any living man should, using my own wits. But men of ideas go unrewarded. Only bureaucrats and faithful little soldiers.”

He’d said the last with dripping disdain. Osmund pushed himself to speak. “I suppose,” he said quietly.

“Cemil knows I mean to destroy him,” said Bayram casually, ignoring the splash of water when Osmund’s hand on the brush slipped. “He’ll do the same to me if he succeeds. Whoever becomes our sovereign will be wringing a lot of imperial necks.”

Osmund didn’t want to believe that Cemil would condone the slaughter of his brothers just because they represented a potential dynastic threat. He didn’t want to. But he suspected it might be the truth. “If your master dies, what do you think will happen to you?” Bayram mused aloud. The elder prince suddenly seized his chin and craned his neck up, forcing him to meet his eye. “You’re not very pretty.”

Osmund’s joints became stone. He had no choice but to surrender to the flaying intensity of Bayram’s stare. “They say the love of a man is different than the love of a woman,” the other went on, contemplative. “A wife bears your children, and you must try your best to love her. But pretty young men can be enjoyed anywhere, without consequence. Isn’t that so?”

I suppose, Osmund might have said again. But even the mechanical phrase did not come. “No, you aren’t very pretty. Most would say you’d do well enough on campaigns or in a pinch. But I think my brother has discernment.” Bayram’s hand on his jaw tightened painfully, angling his face up higher still. “There’s something in you that’s hard to come by in most men. Something that longs to submit.”

The weight of his greedy stare was unbearable. Osmund squirmed and twisted, trying to break free. Water from the basin splashed his bare knees as he struggled. “Please let me go,” he begged, voice breaking.

Bayram released him all at once. The basin nearly turned over when Osmund all but fell into it, water soaking through the thin cotton of the oversized shirt. “He must be pleased to have found another like you,” Bayram said cruelly. “A man who behaves like a woman. A matched set.”

It took the impact of that comment a moment to land. “What’s this?” the elder prince laughed. “So much hatred in your eyes all of a sudden.”

Fear was forgotten, self-preservation instincts momentarily overpowered. “Cemil is a better man than you’ll ever be,” Osmund spat, glaring up at the warrior prince who could end his life with barely an effort. “Whatever you say about him, i-it doesn’t change the fact that you’re obviously envious of him!”

The elder prince’s face twisted in an expression of rage, and Osmund’s suicidal courage abandoned him again. He twisted and cried as a hand bunched painfully in his hair and pulled. “I’ll teach you your place!” Whatever punishment would follow remained a mystery.

“What is this?!”

Both heads turned towards the doorway. Cemil was standing at the tent’s opening, his face frozen from shock. Osmund saw him taking in the details of the scene: Bayram, leaning ominously over him, a hand fisted in Osmund’s hair, and the Tolmishman himself kneeling on the floor wearing nothing but a thin wet shirt that was nearly see-through where it clung to his body. For a precious moment, no one moved.

Bayram reacted first, his mask of indifference back in place, standing from that chair as nonchalantly as if he’d been making a simple social call. “Took you long enough,” he complained. His fingers uncurled around Osmund’s blond hair. “Your little wife was growing tired of having to entertain.”

The stunned anger on Cemil’s face seemed all he was capable of still. Only his eyes automatically tracked Bayram as he stepped closer. “Of course, given your circumstances,” his brother continued, “it might be more accurate to say you’re his—”

Cemil moved abruptly. His hand had flown to the handle of his sword. “One more word,” he warned in a low, low voice. On a scale of “serious” to “deathly serious”, he was extremely not fucking joking around.

But Bayram only smiled. “Sensitive as ever.” Osmund didn’t know how he could manage such an easy tone with so much lethal intent on Cemil’s face. “I’ve had my fire magic since birth. You may have become good with that sword, but it’s no substitute for the real thing.”

Rage blazed even hotter on Cemil’s face…but there was something else too. Something that caused his hand to tremble as it clenched the sword’s hilt.

“I propose a duel tomorrow,” Bayram said. “A proper one. No more lies and subterfuge, no more assassins. I’ll give you an honest shot of killing me, and we’ll let our companies bear witness to who makes a better prince.”

“You’ll die then,” Cemil snarled. “Make peace with the heavens. I’ll send you to hell.”

Bayram smiled another polite, unaffected smile. And walked away.