They led him to a small parlour, where there was a bath. On closer inspection, Leander could see the steam rising from it which told him that it was hot.
He glanced at one of the guards, a question in his expression, to which the guard nodded.
Knowing he would not be afforded the luxury of privacy, Leander began disrobing immediately, suddenly desperate to clean the days of grime from his body.
One bath would not be enough.
When he encountered the issue of removing his shirt while manacled, a guard approached and removed the chains before retreating again.
Stripped naked, Leander abandoned his filthy clothing on the floor in a messy pile and tested the temperature of the water with his toe. It was delightfully hot. He sighed and settled in, only just now realising how his joints ached from days stuck in a cell with a straw bed hard enough to feel like it was made of stone.
“If you’re here to stay, one of you could at least wash my back,” he finally spoke to his four watchful guards, trying—and probably failing—to speak in a disinterested tone of voice.
None of the guards moved or even acknowledged that he had spoken.
Sighing again, Leander reached over for the bar of soap, wet it in the water, and worked on scrubbing the parts of himself that he could reach.
Leander’s fingers began to prune and the water, which was now brown, began to cool. Despite this, he made no effort to exit the tub. After a number of minutes lying back in the tub unmoving with his eyes closed, a guard coughed. Leander shifted and realised his time was up.
Without shame, he stood and exited the tub. Shivering momentarily, he grabbed a towel and ruffled it through his sopping wet locks and patted his face dry before wrapping it about his waist. Clothes were waiting for him. His clothes. He was to wear the blues of his family, a tailored outfit indicating his (former) rank.
How humiliating.
Once dressed, he was escorted by the four guards down corridor after corridor before entering a room packed full of people.
Glancing around, Leander recognised most, if not all, of the faces that turned to look at him as he entered the room. Conversation died immediately and Leander worked had to maintain a passive expression.
The demigod was guided forward to the centre of the room, where a temporary raised platform had been placed. The crowd stood around it.
He was free of shackles and manacles: it was expectedthat he would simply… just stand there. And he did just that.
The platform was raised just enough that Leander could look straight ahead without meeting the eyes of anyone else in the room.
Small mercies, he supposed.
The King’s Justice was present and began to speak.
Leander heard, but did not listen to, what was said. He simply stood, resisting the urge to worry at the seams of the front of his jacket. Arms fell loosely at his side and he continued to stare at a point somewhere over the head of his father, who watched on impassively.
Leander did not look for friendly faces. The only one he wanted to see was that of his eldest brother, but he knew Flavian would never have allowed Verin to attend this… event. No doubt Verin had been sent on some urgent errand by their father, and maybe it was for the better that he wasn’t present. This was difficult enough without Verin’s pitiful expression bringing his younger brother to shed the tears that were threatening to fall. There was no one else he wanted to see, no one who would bring him any semblance of reassurance.
Praying to Cysan that this torture would be through with, and quickly, he blinked back tears of humiliation.
He would not let them see a single moment of weakness.
Leander was broken from his thoughts when he realised that arms were being raised as the bidding began. He had not heard the starting price. Shame, he had wanted to hear just how much the city thought a fallen demigod was worth.
There were only three or four bidders, the rest seemingly just overly curious onlookers wanting to see the spectacle.
“Four thousand gold sovereigns,” came a new voice from the corner of the room. There was silence that followed this announcement, quickly followed by a low murmur all around the room.
Breaking his self-imposed rule of not showing any interest, Leander’s gaze followed the rest of the room to look in the direction of the new bid. He turned slowly on the spot and his eyes fell on the exiled Crown Prince of Desanne.
Jarryn was leaning against a decorative pillar built into the wall of the room, his arms crossed against his chest and one leg raised against the wall. He looked completely at ease in this situation, which in reality made him look utterly unlike the man Leo had grown to know and care for.
Desanne had abolished slavery long before he had even been born. To have a member of that country’s royal family partake in something that was so fundamentally morally abhorrent in their culture caused Leander’s eyes to blink owlishly and push the corners of his lips downwards in silent confusion.
The bid was a high one. Unrealistically high. At the low-end, an unskilled individual started at twenty gold sovereigns. The highest Leander had ever seen a slave go for was a pleasure chattel, who had gone for little over two hundred. A thousand was unheard of.
