CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE #4
We all were compromised in our own ways: every person in this castle was moving through some variety of fog.
The only one operating with clear, cold, unclouded self-interest was the man who was standing in front of me with a smile that promised nothing good.
I turned away from him when Kay spoke again.
“One more thing.”
I stopped but didn’t turn.
“I want your protection.”
That made me face him.
Kay stood with his hands still clasped behind his back, his expression unchanged, but something in the set of his jaw had shifted into something rawer.
“If Arthur falls,” he said, “and the court fractures, they will look to you. They always look to you.” There was a pause as he let the words settle. “A word from you could turn every knight in that hall against me before I’d finished my first sentence. You know that.”
I did know that.
“What are you asking?”
“I’m asking you not to become my enemy.” He held my gaze. “You owe me that much now.”
The efficiency of it was almost beautiful. He’d rendered me unable to lead, unable to rally, unable to act.
Kay hadn’t built a trap. He’d built a cage, and I’d walked into it without a single blow being struck.
“If I agree,” I started, “you keep all of this from Arthur: the truth about Guinevere and this... scheme of yours?”
“Obviously.”
Kay’s eyes stayed on mine, unwavering. “There’s one more thing, Lance.” I looked at him, eyebrows raised and he c0ntinued with a clipped nod. “I require your legitimacy.”
“Why?”
“If Arthur falters and must be... managed or removed, my intellect won’t rally the knights. They listen to you, not me.”
He didn’t need military prowess; he had none. His sharp mind and patience were formidable assets, but armies marched for symbols and honor, not calculation. He needed my standing, my reputation.
What he said about the knights was true. They would follow me into battle because they trusted my leadership. Kay could scheme and strategize, but I’d earned their admiration on fields of blood and in moments of valor.
If Arthur ever fell, they would all look to me.
Silence crushed between us, a damning weight. I’d become a pillar in this twisted structure, a vital piece in Kay’s game whether I wanted to be or not.
“You could have been a king yourself,” he continued, his voice sharpening with old bitterness. “With different circumstances, worship could have been yours, but it wasn’t.”
“I never wanted to be king. I still don’t.”
He nodded. “Making you work for me instead of for Arthur,” he started, lips curling slightly as if he tasted irony, “it’s its own kind of solace.”
Arthur’s loss would be Kay’s gain, and my submission was a step toward that unspoken end.
The trap had the well-engineered finality of something built over months. Maybe longer. Maybe since the first morning Kay’s sharp eyes tracked me across a training yard and noticed the direction of my attention.
“Fine,” I said.
Kay nodded with the air of a man concluding a routine administrative matter. The morning light fell across his face, and he looked exactly like what the whole court believed him to be: Arthur’s fussy, bitter, politically irrelevant half-brother.
“One more thing,” he said, not turning back.
“This conversation didn’t happen. If you tell Arthur I approached you with any of this, I’ll deny it, and I’ll release the information about you and the girl to the full court rather than to Arthur alone. You’ll be ruined publicly rather than privately. Thus,
I would suggest you choose your silences carefully.”
I paused. “I always do.”
Then he walked away, and the training yard was suddenly very empty.
I put my hand flat against the stone wall and breathed through my nose.
Then I picked up a practice sword and started on the post closest to me.
The wood was already scarred from a thousand previous sessions, but I hit it anyway.
The impact traveled up my wrists, through my forearms, and into the ache that was settling behind my shoulders.
I kept going until the wrappings on my palms soaked through with a mixture of sweat and blood, the yard filled up around me with knights arriving for their morning drills, and the sun climbed above the eastern wall.
The light came flat and gold across the packed earth.
I stood in the crowded yard, surrounded by the sounds of swords clashing and shouted commands, considering my predicament. Accepting Kay’s deal had been a necessity, a maneuver to buy time.
A squire rushed past, offering a salute. I nodded automatically, maintaining a semblance of normalcy.
Kay was now my captor, and his ransom had no price of gold. It was power, my power, my standing, held at knifepoint, each decision calibrated against the invisible scale Kay now wielded.
I wasn’t spying; I hadn’t stooped to that. I would feed him crumbs, glimpses of Arthur’s routine, inconsequential details, enough to keep Kay’s leverage intact but never more. Yet the real danger was more insidious.
Good instincts were now burdens. If I warned Arthur, Kay could snap the trap shut. My loyalty was my gag, chaining me to silence. Choices were calcifying to compromise at every turn.