Текст книги "The once and future queen"
Автор книги: Paula Laferty
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Текущая страница: 29 (всего у книги 33 страниц)
“I know.” Arthur kissed her forehead, clutching her shoulders, and she leaned her head into him, still catching her breath but not shaking. Not in pieces. And relieved. He didn’t hate her.
Merlin caught up to them with Gawain on his heels. “What were you doing out here?” he demanded, his smoldering eyes locking onto Lancelot.
“Training. Running,” he said. “I thought the risk was where you lot were. Those men were bewitched and set on the queen.”
Vera sat bolt upright, ignoring the sweat that threatened to drip into her eyes. “They were?”
Lancelot nodded. “They were hell-bent on getting to you. I was just in the way and—” He gestured at the dead men littering the ground around them. “Did you see their eyes?”
She had. The unnaturally ravenous, black eyes.
Lancelot knelt down and wiped his bloodied blade clean in the grass as he spoke. “The Saxon?” His eyes darted between Merlin and Gawain. “Does that mean he’s here?”
Gawain climbed down from his horse. He didn’t answer. Instead, he strode purposefully from dead body to dead body, pulling their shirts aside at their chests and moving on after only a few seconds.
“What are you doing?” Lancelot asked, voicing the question for all of them.
Gawain ignored him. He went to the next man, the one Vera had seen behind the inn, the one she spent all her energy to keep from killing her. Gawain stayed at his side longer. He mumbled quiet words with his eyes closed and his hand hovering above the man’s bare skin. A breeze rustled the nearby trees, and Arthur’s horse stamped uneasily in the dirt—and then an unnatural squelch came from the man’s body like a stuck boot being pulled from the mud. A bloody clump zoomed into Gawain’s hand. He wiped it on his trousers, turned it, and held it up to Merlin. “A trigger hex.”
“What is that?” Vera asked.
“It’s a multi-layer bewitchment,” Gawain said. “This man was the trigger, embedded with a vial of your blood. It bound him to you. Once the embedded person sees their target, they have the scent and track the target like hunting dogs. He infected the others.”
“That’s possible?” Lancelot asked in disbelief. “Mages can do that?”
“It’s mostly theoretical,” Merlin said. “And it’s strictly forbidden. I’ve never seen it used so effectively in practice. They are imprecise and terribly dangerous.”
“How did he get her blood?” Arthur asked.
Merlin shook his head. “I’d guess it was some sort of arrangement with Viviane. Collateral, maybe?”
“Does that mean the Saxon has been here recently?” Vera asked.
“There’s no way to know.” Merlin reached for the vial, and Gawain readily handed it to him. He incinerated it right there in his palm. “After a trigger hex is set, it will last until it’s cleansed by a mage or the embedded one dies. Now that we know he’s used them, Gawain and I can scan for more.”
The fallen men here weren’t evil. Just bewitched. Lancelot stared at the last farmer he’d cut down, the one whose eyes cleared and who was left in confusion as his life ended. He sighed heavily and rubbed at his brow. Blood trickled from a cut above his elbow.
Aided by Gawain’s magic, they moved the bodies to the edge of the wood while Merlin prepared to ride ahead to the town. He’d check for more hexes and go on to Oxford to prepare the mages for their arrival.
He looked at Vera from astride his horse, his expression resolved with dread. “There’s no turning back now.”
Vera wasn’t sure what she could say to him. “Thank you for saving us.”
He breathed a sigh. “I would never abandon you, Your Majesty.”
She expected shame to rise at his loyalty and more so at the path that Vera had condemned them to with her choice, but it did not.
As Merlin disappeared down the road, Arthur walked his horse in a wide loop to help calm the beast and Gawain hovered near Lancelot.
Lancelot’s expression broke from the drawn anguish that had been fixed there since the fight ended. He chuckled. “You want to heal that, don’t you?” he said, glancing at the cut on his arm.
“Very much,” Gawain said. He launched into it immediately.
Lancelot grinned over his head at Vera. “We’re lucky. Healing gifts are extremely rare.”
Gawain’s face reddened in the midst of his focus. “Mine aren’t good for much more than cuts and scrapes,” he said as he rubbed the wound the way he had with Vera’s. But he glanced up at her for a breath before he added, “There are greater healing gifts out there, but I am fortunate.”
“It’s the gift he was born with,” Lancelot said as Gawain shut his eyes in concentration and hissed, “Shh!”
Lancelot’s grin broadened. He tilted his head down and touched his forehead to Gawain’s, as close to a hug as he could manage with his arm occupied by healing magic. Gawain’s cheeks reddened. He fought not to smile and lost the battle, staring up at Lancelot with an intimate sort of adoration.
And in that instant, Vera understood what she’d been missing all along. That wasn’t just friendship. The night at the Yule festival when Vera thought Lancelot had been off in the field with a girl, hadn’t Gawain been right there on the edge of the light, too? The way she and Lancelot ran less after that. The way Gawain and Lancelot were nearly always together.
Holy shit. Now that she’d seen it, it was obvious. And a selfish pang followed. Lancelot was her best mate. She wished he’d told her.
Vera rode back to town with Arthur on his horse, and Lancelot rode with Gawain. She made herself resist looking over at them every few minutes. It was the least she could do; this wasn’t a story she was meant to know.
The soldiers were ready when they arrived. Tristan took it in turns to bear hug them on their return. Vera pulled away from the embrace quickly.
They needed to get moving. Arthur wanted an audience with the mages as soon as they arrived in Oxford, the sense of peril more imminent a threat than ever before. Gawain hung back with Vera while she mounted her horse. She could never tell if he wanted to talk or had simply chosen the area near her to stand.
“There’s more to what you know of Mordred, isn’t there?” he asked.
“He kills Arthur.” She said the words so quietly that, at first, she thought Gawain hadn’t heard her.
He stared away at the others and said, “I’m glad we’re taking action to thwart him.”
“What if it’s the wrong action?” Vera asked.
“Because Mordred may have set hexes to come after you?”
“Whatever I know, it must be vital. It was selfish not to do Merlin’s spell work if it would have given you that advantage. That has to be the most strategic course of action.”
“I disagree. Lancelot told me what happened with Merlin this morning,” he said. “Merlin is far too intent on what is locked within you, Guinevere.” He fixed her with a piercing stare. “There is more in you than memory.”
The skin on the back of her neck prickled. “What do you mean?”
Gawain stared into the distance for a long time before speaking. “I’m glad you refused and that you’re safe.”
“That doesn’t answer my question,” Vera said. “You do that a lot, you know. And I am well aware that it is deliberate.”
He gave a quiet chuckle and then a long sigh. “Don’t underestimate what you might have to offer.” His words were slow as if he was choosing them carefully.
Vera thought back to how he’d referred to Grady as an inhuman specimen, yet here he was, facing a dire situation and answering it with compassion.
“Why are you protecting me?” she asked.
Gawain looked Vera squarely in the eyes. She’d always been so distracted by how deeply set they were, how he often looked up at people with that unnerving scowl. But he had very kind eyes.
“Because the mages have a part in this, and we must be accountable for it,” he said. “And because you are my queen.”
Vera stared down at her toes, touched by his loyalty. She was stunned when he spoke again.
“But most of all, because you are my friend.”
Vera shifted in her saddle, unaccustomed to how armor stiffened her movements while riding. Lancelot was right: she should have worn it more to practice before it was necessary. After the ambush this morning, they were all in armor, even Gawain. It strangely suited him. Save for Vera, their entire traveling party had been on the front lines of war. She was the only one out of place.
Tristan drew even with her. His dark silver armor shone, and when the morning light hit it from certain angles, the dents and nicks revealed themselves, things he certainly could have fixed. He’d chosen to wear the marks of battle. He looked at Vera sidelong, trying not to let her catch him.
She smirked. “What?” she said, like she would any other day. In an unspoken agreement, they were pretending as if boundaries had not been crossed last night.
“I never thought I’d see you in armor,” he said. “You look incredible.”
She couldn’t keep from glancing in Arthur’s direction. He rode with the younger of the two soldiers, a man with a severe yet boyish face and a nose that had clearly been broken before. He glowed under Arthur’s undivided attention, though Arthur glanced away just long enough to catch Vera’s eye, inclining his head to her with a smile before he returned to the conversation.
He wasn’t avoiding her, but after she and Lancelot gave him the full story of what happened with Merlin, he kept his distance. Tristan, however, stayed close. He rode at Vera’s side, as charming as ever. When he made particularly affectionate comments, he’d cast furtive glances in Arthur’s direction, checking for the king’s responses. Vera chuckled as she realized Tristan was still trying to woo her. She couldn’t imagine she would change her mind about being with him, but she admired his persistence.
There was no definitive delineation between where one town stopped and the next began. But an hour and a half after they left Faringdon, they crossed a wooden bridge (just broad planks bound together) over a trickling creek, and midway, everything in sight visibly shivered like the air above boiling water. Vera whipped around to Gawain in alarm.
He nodded once, his calm an immediate reassurance. “We’ve entered the Mages’ Cloak,” he said. He pulled his horse even with Vera and murmured, “Oxford is shielded by a network of mage craft in a ten-mile radius surrounding the city. If attackers come, this will stop them. There’s no army here, no lord or lesser king. But there are a lot of mages,” Gawain’s eyes glinted, “and it’s a great treasure to protect.”
Nothing could have prepared Vera for Oxford. She could see from a distance that it wasn’t the Oxford she knew. Where she’d expect dramatic gothic spires pointing to the sky, instead, Vera found the skyline dotted with peaked domes, like clouds specked above the city. As they rounded the bend onto the High Street, her eyes went wide. Most of the buildings were round (“It’s the most magically conductive shape,” Gawain had whispered in her ear) and made of polished cream stones that gleamed in the light of enormous orbs glowing even in the daytime. They floated above the cobbled lanes like centerpiece chandeliers every thirty steps. No matter what direction Vera turned, she saw magic at work.
They passed an open-air amphitheater where a team rehearsed their telling of an epic adventure complete with flying performers, precise and colorful explosions of pyrotechnics, and perfectly amplified sound. On the opposite side of the road walked a full-sized elephant crafted of shimmering stone—for what practical purpose, Vera couldn’t divine. She nearly cried out when a woman with wild hair and her face bent low, poring over the parchment in hand, walked right into the elephant. But she wasn’t bowled over. She passed through the beast’s belly, only a puff of mist disturbed from where she reemerged.
As they traveled the High Street, Vera tried not to blink. She peered in any open door she could as they passed, spotting a round room splattered all over with vibrantly colored paint and two people in the center standing back-to-back. There were no features, gender, or clothing to be recognized because they, too, were covered in paint and were only distinguishable as humans because of the way they waved their arms like orchestra conductors, color spraying out at every gesture.
Further on, she craned her neck to watch a wizened woman laden with scrolls in her arms kick open another door. Magnificent indigo smoke seeped out and swirled overhead, dissipating into oblivion. Bright sparks crackled in the laboratory beyond before the door was promptly closed.
Reaching the end of the lane was almost a disappointment, but Merlin waited there, tense and his expression unreadable. He stood before the most prominent building yet; the round structure behind him had tubed corridors jutting from its base on both sides, extending farther out and back than the eye could see. It towered above them. Vera counted five stories of vaulting windows beneath the dome at the top. In lettering no taller than her index finger (useless compared to the vast building it adorned) were simple block letters stamped above the arched doorway: MAGESARY.
“The council is convened and awaiting your arrival,” Merlin said. He arranged for their horses and bags to be taken to the inn, where their party would stay for the night. The soldiers remained at the ready outside the Magesary, with Tristan joining them. Vera didn’t know if that had been discussed before, but he didn’t act surprised nor affronted by his exclusion. The attack this morning had done at least one helpful thing: there was no doubt as to the urgency of this meeting. Gawain took his place next to Merlin, his movements stiff and face pale. Merlin gestured them toward the arched doorway.
There was no door, no visible barrier there at all. Arthur walked through first with Vera on his heels, but as her body crossed the threshold, she felt a sensation of many hands passing over every bit of her skin, whether exposed to the air or beneath her clothing—even the most concealed and intimate parts of her. She jumped at it and turned in time to see Lancelot raise his eyebrow and give a shudder. He’d felt it, too.
The happy cacophony of sound had gone silent on this side of the door. Merlin and Gawain stepped through the entry, unfazed by the experience.
“What is that?” Vera asked.
“It’s an unmasking,” Merlin said, striding past them to resume his place at the front and lead them across the echoing rotunda. “Any enchantments on a person are stripped away when they cross the threshold.”
Their footsteps echoed on the flagstone floor of the vaulted entry until they passed into a long corridor directly opposite where the sound deadened. There were many doors on either side, but they passed them all, walking until the corridor ended at another door, this one made of granite and reminding Vera of the entry to a mausoleum.
Merlin laid his palm against the center of it. It lit up at his fingertips, and veins of light spiderwebbed like cracking glass. When the network of glowing tributaries reached the edges on all sides, the weight of it evaporated, and as the granite slab slid backward, it didn’t groan against the floor. Its movement sounded like a breeze against tall grass. The door slowly slid to the side, leaving a gap only large enough for them to pass through single file.
The room they entered was unsurprisingly round, with three rows of tiered seating in a semi-circle. Each row sat behind narrow desks.
It was a stone auditorium, and where they entered was the stage, with an audience of mages observing them. Vera’s eyes were drawn to the front row, where four of six seats were occupied. The man who sat right of center held command of the space and these people in an unnamable way that Vera thought must be magic. His energy drew her, and when he made eye contact with her down his hooked nose, he smiled in satisfaction. There was no kindness in it. She averted her gaze quickly and felt his pleasure at her intimidation.
On the hooked-nose mage’s left side sat a man who looked much closer to how Vera had imagined Merlin to look. His silver beard hung down to his navel, and his eyes were clouded with grey pools of cataracts. The backs of his hands had golf ball-sized knots on them. On the hooked-nose mage’s right was a woman who wore a silk turban. There weren’t any lines on her face, though she bore the wisdom of centuries. And beside her, Vera had to focus on seeing the fourth mage in the front in order to notice her. She was a petite wisp who looked quite comfortable with not being noticed.
The rows behind them were in shadow. Vera couldn’t see any of those mages’ faces, but they all rose at Arthur’s entry, an impressive wave of identical cream silk robes winking in the darkness.
“Welcome, Your Majesty.” The woman in the turban spread her arms wide. Her voice effortlessly filled the room. “We are honored by your presence.”
Arthur stepped forward. “Thank you, Naiam. I wish it were under different circumstances.”
She smiled, her head tilted. “You are always welcome, sire. It need not take a disaster for you to visit. Please, sit.” Naiam gestured at where they stood. A row of chairs appeared behind them.
They sat down. With a wave of their arms, Merlin and Gawain changed into their cream-colored robes to match the rest. They stood in the front row. Vera assumed these six were the high council. Following Naiam’s lead, all the mages performed the breath of life in unison before they sat. “I call this special assembly of the full council to order on the matter of a magical crisis.”
Vera caught Gawain releasing a long-held breath and saw his shoulders relax.
The mages had heard the story of Crayford but asked Arthur to recount it—and the attack against them that very morning.
“You’re certain it was a trigger hex?” Naiam asked Merlin.
“Absolutely. Gawain extracted the vial of blood, and I destroyed it.”
“That was unwise.” The hooked-nose mage glowered at him. “There could have been information to be gleaned from it, and you destroyed it without running any tests.”
“The hex lay in the blood itself, Ratamun,” Merlin said. “Do you think there’s any test worth the risk of an untamable spell’s spread? There are maybe three of us in this room who could even theoretically perform such a hex. I was not willing to risk the queen in such a way.”
Vera didn’t chance half a second’s look at Lancelot, who, in Camelot, would have audibly scoffed or shifted in his seat. She imagined he’d like to pummel Merlin for claiming the moral high ground about Vera’s safety after being ready to risk her mind hours prior.
Ratamun snorted. “The queen risked herself when she took ranks with the traitor, Viviane.” Her name snarled from his lips. “A crime which we have continually been denied the right to try or call to account.”
Of course they couldn’t call her to account. Viviane was dead.
Then Vera realized they meant her.
“Queen Guinevere should be questioned and tried,” Ratamun said. A murmur rose from the other rows of mages at his proclamation. Some in protest, others in agreement.
Ratamun had a talent for holding a room, but so did Arthur. He leaned forward in his chair, eyes darkening as he set them on the mage.
“Ratamun,” he said with dangerous quiet. It called silence over the assembly as sure as if he’d shouted them down at sword point. “You sent a mage to my court who undermined the kingdom. The kingdom, I might add, that we built and would have called an impossibility before it was the reality we now live in. Guinevere was bewitched by Viviane, your trusted high council mage, and Guinevere ultimately had the fortitude to stand against her at her own peril. Her crime was against the kingdom and against me. I am satisfied by the resolution, and she has been pardoned. If you need evidence of Guinevere’s loyalty, search no further than the attack on her this morning. I did not call the council of mages to trial for raising up and sending forth the traitor Viviane, and you will not call the queen. Do I make myself clear?”
Ratamun’s snarl was twisting to form an argument.
“Enough,” Naiam said, but she eyed Vera like she had questions of her own.
The small woman spoke up next, with a soft voice that matched her stature. “And you believe it is the dark mage Mordred?”
“Yes,” Arthur said, “and I believe it to be tied to the declining magic within the kingdom, too.”
There was a stirring amongst the mages. Merlin pursed his lips and stared at his feet, displeased.
“Why?” the quiet mage pressed.
“I call on Mage Gawain,” Arthur said.
“Gawain, this theory comes from you?” Naiam asked, surprised yet kind. The way she looked at Gawain, her junior by at least thirty years … Others among them looked at him the same way; the only mage to ever be raised in the Magesary from childhood. He was their collective child.
Not all of them, though. Notably, Ratamun glowered as Gawain straightened in his seat.
“It does. The description of Crayford matches my own experience in Dorchester. But there is more. And—and I first must apologize to the convened council,” but he addressed Arthur as he said it, “because I have concealed much of what needs to be said. There is a bigger matter than Mordred to address regarding the disappearance of magic.” He didn’t allow anyone the time to interject, forging on after barely a breath amidst a titter of discomfort.
“We know that magic isn’t infinite; it’s a type of energy that recycles itself. For the six hundred years of its recorded history, the birthrate and regeneration of magic remained steady.” Many among the council nodded their confirmation. “It changed when the mages began amassing power, especially during the wars.”
The room had been quiet, but all fidgeting, all movement, and most breathing altogether stopped with a palpable gasp. Even Merlin turned to Gawain in horrified shock.
Ratamun broke the stillness. “Any magical deficit should only have been felt among the Saxons.”
A brief flash of triumph crossed Gawain’s eyes, replaced in a blink by his regular sullen expression. “We all know that’s not how the gift works. It doesn’t discriminate against one nation’s people over the others. And then there’s the advent of the Retention Spell. How many mages have died, and their powers destroyed with them? How many were lost with Viviane alone?”
Arthur and Lancelot looked as confused as Vera felt.
Gawain went on. “Crayford is a microcosm of what we’re doing at large. In Crayford, the mage took all the gifts of those he felled. Every known bit of magic in an entire town was sucked dry by one man, and what happened? The earth itself shriveled and died. We are draining the earth of its powers.”
“We should discuss this matter in a closed assembly,” Naiam said, a clear warning, the delicate chimes of her voice now sounding shrill.
“As your ruler,” Arthur said at a nod from Gawain, “I insist on being present for a conversation of this gravity. By the first order laid out in establishing the council of mages, I am entitled to bear witness to your proceedings when it pertains to a direct impact upon this kingdom.” It sounded like he was quoting the order word-for-word, and, Vera suspected, that was precisely the case. Nevertheless, they were shocked to hear it invoked. “Proceed, Mage Gawain,” he said, without turning away from Naiam. Her smile no longer reached her eyes.
“The king must know,” Gawain said. “We’re on the edge of the destruction of all we’ve worked for. He has to know. We can’t persist in claiming that we keep this secret for the kingdom’s safety. We’re protecting our own power at the expense of magic itself.”
“Do I correctly understand that mages get their power from another source beyond training and study?” Arthur directed his question at Naiam, who was clearly hesitant to answer.
“I—it’s complicated.”
Arthur held her stare.
“Yes, Your Majesty,” she said, finding no way out of it.
“How?” One word that rocked everything. Tilted it sideways. No one answered. “Do I need to command an answer from you?” Arthur asked, scanning their ranks with a hard stare.
The ancient and bent mage with a beard down to his middle was the one who answered. “Study and training teach us how to broadly utilize our gifts. There are two ways we might acquire new powers. A gift may be given from one magic being who has some mastery over their skill to another. The second way is … on the battlefield. When an enemy with a gift is killed, if they are stabbed by a mage’s weapon directly to the heart while any life remains there, the mage can absorb their gift with the dying one’s last breath. It was a closely held secret that only the council knew until now, and it was our greatest advantage during the wars. No one we fought understood how our mages were so powerful.”
“The wars were long,” Gawain cut in. “To my count, we have over ten thousand known gifts among the high council alone. That’s just between the six of us. It doesn’t include the other mages in this room, not to mention any of the lesser mages not on the council. I believe this accumulation is causing magic to dissipate. It’s dying because we are hoarding it. And it’s hiding, too.”
“Do you mean the boy from your first report out of Camelot?” It was the mage with the quiet voice again.
Gawain nodded. “Grady. His gift only appeared when he would have perished without it. Magic is wiser than all of us. It’s actively hiding, so we can’t take it. But for every Grady whose gift could manifest, how many have gifts that appear too late or that cannot save them? I’d guess many of you saw instances of it during the war as I did—bursts of power as a soldier was in peril, snuffed out before the gift could manifest. How many are lost in a state of traumatic duress?”
“As interesting as your stories are, what do you propose we do?” Ratamun said in annoyance.
Gawain unhunched his shoulders, pressing them back. “We should conduct a sample study of what happens when mages release their power back to the earth.”
The mages on the high council shared stunned expressions.
“Are you volunteering?” Ratamun drawled.
“If I need to do so, then yes, I am,” Gawain said.
Ratamun’s rehearsed disinterest slipped. He hadn’t expected that. “Did you concoct this with him, Merlin?” he asked after a moment.
“No—” Merlin began before Gawain interrupted him.
“I kept my theory from Merlin. This is my work, my specialty. I’m prepared to take on the consequences of it.”
Vera realized that she was witnessing a quiet act of extraordinary courage.
“Let’s not be rash, Gawain,” Merlin said. “What good does dumping power do? It would take years to meaningfully survey and measure any change. There’s no way to know if it has an impact on such a small scale.”
“Yes, there is.” Gawain carefully pulled a bundle of cloth from his pocket and unwrapped it. Vera craned her neck to see. It was his glass instrument, the one he’d shown her in his study. The mages shifted in their seats for a better look.
“It measures the balance between assigned gifts and ones that have become available at any given moment in close enough proximity to this instrument. When someone with a gift perishes without a Retention Spell in place, a liquid-like substance will appear in the tube. If the gifts are distributed by the birth of a new magical child, they will transfer to the bulb. When mages accumulate masses of gifts and die with a Retention Spell in place, the magic doesn’t go back into circulation. Magical births cannot occur. While we live with thousands of gifts locked up within us, those gifts cannot be circulated either. I believe that if we release some of our many gifts—not all, but some—those will be recirculated. My instrument can test that.”
“The magical birth rate first noticeably dipped twenty-three years ago,” the oldest mage said thoughtfully. “And the Magesary was founded four years prior. I don’t know why none of us recognized the alignment before.”
“It’s been slow enough that it was easy to blame other things,” Gawain said.
Vera wasn’t following. Was this the secret she had known? Was this Mordred’s aim? To steal enough magic that Arthur’s kingdom began to collapse on itself?
Naiam stood and said sharply, “We don’t know that this is correct. Hearing it and thinking it makes some logical sense doesn’t make it so. The kingdom wouldn’t even exist without the power of our mages. We protect the magic. Mage Gawain is not old enough to remember. But many of us well recall when our grandparents hid their gifts because they were deemed unholy and could land them a death sentence before the order was founded. I respect Gawain’s ability to remove his self-interests from his studies, but I will remind you: it does not mean he is right.”
“Let me perform the experiment,” Gawain said. “By our best guesses and records, there are twenty births a day in our kingdom. I will release twenty of my own gifts tonight. If my theory is correct, releasing gifts will also put powers back into circulation, the same way a death would. We would be able to read if that part were effective immediately. And then, if we take a reading tomorrow, there should be fluid in the larger bowl.”
The tiny mage shifted in her seat before she spoke. “If all that happens as you theorize, it means—”
“Yes.” Gawain nodded. “It means this crisis is no one’s fault but our own.”
“And your device. You’ve made that using your gifts, have you?” Ratamun said, his anger gone, hunger replacing it. “There’s never been anything that could track power before. Does it work?”
Gawain hesitated. “I believe so.” He didn’t answer the first question and quickly wrapped the device back up, tucking it away.
Ratamun’s chin jutted forward, and he called out louder than the murmurs around him, “I think we should do it.”
The room erupted. Gawain wasn’t bolstered. He clasped his hands tightly, knuckles going white. Naiam tapped her hand on the table, the thick gold ring she wore echoing like a gavel with each strike.
“We will take a vote,” she said as the room quieted. Her eyes were dark, and all the lilting of her voice had gone. “Will you excuse yourself?” she asked Gawain.
Gawain, shoulders tight, stiffly nodded as he rose and left the room, not through the main entry stone that entombed them but into a side chamber directly behind him.
