CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
-GUIN-
I was back in the training yard once more, awaiting the appearance of the king who had requested my company.
As to why he continued to train me, I wasn’t sure.
I figured he wanted information from me and had decided the easiest way to get that information was to put me in surroundings that were most comfortable for me.
Begrudgingly, I had to agree that the training yard was the one place that felt like home.
I’d been given practice leathers that didn’t fit: the shoulders sat wrong, and the belt was cinched too high. I’d rolled the cuffs three times, but they were already unrolling. I was fussing with the left one when Tristan crossed the yard toward me.
I stopped fussing and looked up, noticing the way he moved.
His movements seemed to characterize him as a whole, how he was unhurried, like he’d already decided the destination wasn’t going anywhere, so why should he rush?
A practice sword hung loose in one of his hands, and his dark curls were pulled back at the nape of his neck.
That was when I noticed he had a small scar at the corner of his jaw that I hadn’t noticed before.
“Partner with me,” he said.
“I’m awaiting the king.”
He looked around. “Unless he’s become invisible, I daresay he isn’t here.”
That earned him a smile, one he returned.
“I’ll partner with you until he arrives.”
I looked past him at the other knights and the few who had turned to watch. Galahad stood near the wall with his arms folded, and his expression was unreadable.
“The attention you’ve been paying me lately isn’t going to make you popular,” I said as I turned to face Tristan once more.
“Why should you think I’m interested in being popular?”
I eyed him narrowly. “Did Arthur ask you to pay special attention to me?”
He tilted his head slightly as he studied me before responding. “He didn’t ask me not to pay special attention to you.”
I let that settle.
It was a good answer, I supposed. Well, inasmuch as it was clean and technically honest, but it was also the kind of answer a man gives when he wants to sleep at night without calling himself a liar.
I filed it away next to everything else I’d collected about Tristan of Lyonesse: the way he watched a room before he entered it, the way he remembered small things people said and returned to them days later like a gift.
He was warm, genuinely so, but he was warm in a way that was useful to him.
I raised my practice sword.
“Let’s not waste the morning,” I said.
He matched my stance, easy and unhurried, and we circled once before he made the first move. His form was different from Arthur’s in that it was less about power and more about redirection, letting the opponent’s momentum do the work. I adjusted.
We traded passes for a while without talking.
The yard noise filled the silence between us, and somewhere behind me, iron rang against iron as a horse objected to something in the far paddock.
The morning smelled like turned earth, wood shavings, and the faint animal musk of the leather I was wearing.
“You’re not angry,” Tristan said after I’d slipped his guard and tapped his ribs. “About the king demanding you train with him.”
I frowned up at him. “Why would I be angry?”
“Most people would be.”
“Most people would feel flattered that the king thought them interesting enough to bother with.” I reset my footing. “I just think of it as what it is.”
“Which is?”
“An interrogation disguised as an outing.”
He studied me for a moment with those dark eyes. Then something in his expression shifted, like a man recalculating a distance he’d already measured.
Good. Let him recalculate.
I pressed forward, a short sequence of strikes, nothing too clever.
He parried the first two and gave ground on the third.
His footwork was excellent. What I didn’t tell him, what I had no intention of telling anyone, was the specific shape of the thought that had landed the moment he’d given me his careful non-answer.
If Tristan carried reports back to Arthur, then every conversation we had was a road that led directly to the king’s ear: an unguarded road.
One no one was watching because everyone assumed I was the one being watched.
And that meant I could walk anything down that road I chose.
I let Tristan get a touch on my shoulder, clean enough that I had to acknowledge it.
“Good,” I said.
He almost looked surprised that I’d said the word without resentment.
I reset again as I thought about what Arthur might be wanting to learn about me through these small, careful kindnesses. Was it whether I could be softened? Whether the isolation with Galahad was working? Whether I still had edges worth worrying about?
The answer I wanted him to receive was: Yes, it’s working. She’s tired. She’s grateful for small mercies.
The truth was something different, but I kept that for myself.
“He’s been watching us this whole time,” Tristan said as he motioned with his chin, and I looked over his shoulder where I could see Galahad still standing at the wall. And yes, he was still watching. His expression hadn’t changed.
“He’s always watching,” I said, which was the truth.
I thought about what else to give Tristan that would go directly to Arthur. Something that felt genuine, something Arthur could hold up and feel certain about.
I let my sword drop an inch, just enough to look tired, and allowed my shoulders to carry the weight of the morning. “I miss the hills,” I said, and it was true. The hills of Logres, the wide skies, the smell of a dairy in the cold. All of it true. “I wasn’t made for stone walls.”
Tristan looked at me with something unguarded in his face. Real sympathy, I thought. Well, possibly real.
“No,” he said quietly. “I don’t imagine you were.”
He would carry that back. Arthur would hear it and think he understood something about me. He’d think: she’s homesick. She’s wearing down. I’m winning.
And while he was thinking that, I would be thinking about Corvin somewhere beneath my feet in the dark, and about what I still needed to do, and about how much further I had to go before any of this was finished.
I raised my sword again.
“Once more,” I said.
Tristan was good. Better than I’d expected, though I wasn’t sure why I’d expected anything less. His form was technically sound, but there was also patience in it, a willingness to wait for the opening rather than force one. He didn’t overextend, but he read me quickly.
I had to work for it, and that was something. We broke apart after a particularly rough sequence, me having blocked a strike that numbed my forearm to the elbow, and he lowered his sword and let out a slow breath.
“Your footwork is very good,” he said.
“Don’t compliment me when I’m catching my breath. It’s condescending.”
He laughed, and it was a real laugh, and for some reason, that surprised me.
We circled again, slower this time.
“Your magic,” he said, conversationally, like he was asking about the weather. “What does it feel like?”
I nearly lowered my guard, but I caught myself. “What do you mean?”
No one had ever asked that about my magic before.
Merlin had taught me to control it, to weaponize it, and to fear the parts I couldn’t contain.
Arthur looked at it like a problem that needed to be solved.
Galahad considered it evidence of corruption.
Yet not one of them had ever asked what my magic felt like.
“I mean... what does it feel like?”
I deflected his next strike and bought myself a moment to think.
“Like knowing,” I said finally. “Not thinking. Knowing.”
I adjusted my grip. “There’s water in the stone beneath this yard. I can’t see it. But I know it’s there the same way I know my own heartbeat.”
I stepped right; he followed. “It’s like the water inside me knows things I don’t.”
We broke apart again. Tristan was quiet for a moment, turning his practice sword over slowly in his hands as I watched him watch me.
“What does yours feel like?”
He considered the question, though it didn’t seem to surprise him that I’d asked. What was more, I was pretty sure he’d thought about it before, more than once.
“Stillness,” he said finally, with a shrug.
“Like the moment that exists between heartbeats. You know the pause, just before?”
I nodded as he looked at me steadily. “The instant between something being alive and something having been alive. I exist in that space. I can feel when death is coming.”
A small pause. “Not death itself, but the transition into it.”
“That must be lonely,” I said.
“Yes, it is.”
We worked through two more sequences before he called a rest. I was breathing hard, and my arm still ached from the earlier block. I found a low wall at the yard’s edge and sat on it, and after a moment, Tristan sat a foot away, forearms resting on his knees.
I looked at him sideways as I decided to ask the question that had been sitting in my chest since he’d first crossed the yard toward me.
“Why do you keep doing this?”
“Doing what?”
“Sitting next to me at dinner. Training with me... I mean, I’m sure Arthur put you up to it.”
“Arthur didn’t put me up to it,” he answered with a shrug. “But he noticed it.”
“Of course.” I paused and wondered if asking more was worth a shot... “And?” I decided to go for it.
“And he told me to report back to him about whatever you told me.”
I faced him quizzically. “Why would you admit that?”
He shrugged. “Because it’s the truth.” Then he smiled. “So start thinking about all the things you want me to tell the king.”
I smiled at him in return. “I already have.” Then I took a breath. “My original question still stands... why are you doing this?”
Tristan turned his head and regarded me with those dark eyes. The expression on his face wasn’t pity, even though I’d braced for pity.
“I’m not from Logres,” he said with a shrug.
“I’m not from here at all. What these men think of you...”
he made a small dismissive gesture “... doesn’t concern me because I don’t share their values. You might be a pariah to them, but I’m a stranger. I’m other just based on that fact alone. What’s more, they all fear my magic. I’ve seen as much in the way they give me a wide berth.”
“But you’re one of them.”