CHAPTER FIFTY #3
On my Guin. On the woman whose safety I’d staked my name on, whose trust had been given to me at a cost I was only beginning to understand… I would tear him limb from limb.
If I could ever get the fuck out of this fucking cell.
I thought about the binding Mordred had placed on her.
I thought about what it meant to be bound, to be stripped of every defense you had ever built, every instinct you had ever honed, every piece of yourself you had hardened into armor over a lifetime of needing armor.
I thought about what it meant to be in that condition, in that room, with a man who believed his god had sanctioned him.
I thought about Guin bearing the abuse alone.
I had to breathe very carefully for a moment.
There was gratitude to Lance for delivering the justice Galahad was absolutely due.
Though gratitude was perhaps too small a word for it.
Lance had done what I couldn’t. He’d been there, and I hadn’t.
He’d acted where I couldn’t. And while that absolutely ate at me, I couldn’t afford to resent him for it, though some animal part of me did, because it had been my place to be there.
It had been my place, and I was here, underground, counting fucking steps.
“She mentioned you once,” Kay had continued and then he’d paused as he pretended to pick something off his tunic. “About three weeks ago.” He’d smoothed one hand down his knee. “From what I understand, she asked one of the guards about you. She hasn’t asked since.”
He’d stood then, leaving me with exactly what he’d planned to leave me with. He’d said he hoped this information was reassuring and then he’d said goodnight.
I’d watched him go.
I’d kept my expression exactly where it had been since the moment he’d sat down, and I kept it there until his footsteps reached the top of the stairs and the door at the end of the corridor closed behind him and the echo of it finished moving through the stone.
Then I sat very still as I took each piece of information and laid it out the way I would lay out intelligence: separate, ordered, and examined without the noise of what I wanted it all to mean.
The bruises. I had to sit with that word for a moment before I could move past it.
Bruises. As if that were a clean, neutral thing.
As if that word adequately described what had been done to her.
Regardless of how the word made me feel, I believed that part to be true.
I’d known something was wrong three weeks ago when Morgan’s cat had come, and the message it carried had been fragmented, half-formed, enough to understand that Guin was alive but not enough to understand what was being done to her.
I’d built a picture from the sounds that moved through the walls, and I hadn’t liked the picture so I hadn’t let myself finish building it.
I understood now that some part of me had known, and had chosen not to know, because knowing and being unable to act would have unmade me entirely.
It had been the right instinct for the wrong reasons, and I hated myself for it.
Lance attacking Galahad in the training yard?
Yes, that was almost certainly true as it was the kind of detail that didn’t improve with invention.
What was more, such an altercation would have been witnessed, and it would be known.
It was probably just a matter of time before such news made it down here, to the belly of the kingdom.
Lance’s temper was a documented fact, and Galahad’s self-righteousness was the kind of surface that invited violence.
Lance would be punished for it; there was no doubt.
Arthur would have no choice because whatever Lance had done in that yard, publicly, in front of the household knights, demanded a response.
And Arthur wouldn’t be able to let it stand.
No, he was going to have to come down on the man who was still, despite everything, his sword hand.
I turned that over for a moment in my mind as I tried to come to terms with my feelings towards Lance.
Lance had used her; of that, I was certain.
He’d taken what he wanted from her and discarded what was inconvenient after.
I hadn’t forgiven him for that, and I would never forgive him for that.
But he’d somewhat redeemed himself by his actions after he’d seen the evidence of Galahad’s punishment.
That was something. Not absolution, no, but it was still something.
Galahad, though.
Galahad was a different accounting altogether.
Truly dangerous men were never the ones who enjoyed their cruelty.
The truly dangerous men were the ones who had convinced themselves their cruelty was a form of service.
Men like that didn’t stop. They didn’t feel the natural human brakes that eventually slowed even the worst of us.
They kept going, and they slept well, and they woke up and did it again, because every act was an offering.
Galahad had offered Guin to his gods. He’d used her body as the altar.
I filed that information away in the place I kept things I intended to return to. And I absolutely intended to return to this subject and when I did, Galahad would be the one to pay.
The better conditions were likely true as well.
Arthur needed her to be functional, compliant.
A prisoner who was visibly broken served no one’s strategic interest, and Arthur’s interest in her had never been simple.
He would have moved her once it became untenable to leave her where she was.
What was more, he needed to keep a strict eye on her, so it made sense that he would choose to have her interred as close to him as possible.
She asked once and stopped asking.
I knew Kay’s methodology. I’d studied it in the years when we were on the same side, when his particular gift for identifying weakness was pointed outward instead of at me.
And what I knew of Kay? He was precise; he didn’t waste information.
Every detail he delivered was chosen, and the choice was never accidental.
But his choice of words was purposeful, and true information could often be wrapped in false implication. That was how Kay worked.
She’d asked after me once: that was entirely true.
In fact, I was convinced she’d asked after me numerous times because that was how Guin was.
She cared, and when she cared, she didn’t stop caring.
But as to the stopping asking after me? Kay wanted me to read that as indifference, as Guin having moved on, as a woman who had been given reason enough to stop caring.
He was good at his work because though I didn’t believe it, because I knew Guin and I knew how her heart worked, the needle had found the seam regardless. And that had been Kay’s intention.
I sat with that for a long time. I didn’t try to argue myself out of it the way a less honest man might. The information had landed where it was designed to land, and pretending otherwise wasn’t useful. Kay had come down here to do a specific kind of damage, and he’d done so competently.
Knowing that didn’t fully neutralize it, though. I gave it its hour, let it sit there in the cell with me and be what it was.
And then I made a decision.
It wasn’t the kind of decision that announced itself. It simply settled into place: quiet, complete, and permanent.
When I got out of this fucking cell, and I would get out of this fucking cell, I was going to dismantle every single thing that Arthur Pendragon had built.
Not because of politics. Not because of allegiance or strategy or the cold calculus of war.
Those things would be present, of course; they were always present.
But beneath them, fueling them, giving them a heat they hadn’t had before: Guin.
I would dismantle Camelot because of what had been done to her in this place, while I was forty feet below the ground and powerless to stop it. But Camelot would suffer for what she’d endured alone.
Camelot would answer for it. Not quickly; I wasn’t interested in the quick version.
Quick was for men who were angry. I was something colder than angry.
I was decided. And what I’d decided was that every stone of this place would remember her name when I was finished, and every man who had stood by while she suffered would spend a long time understanding what it meant to be without recourse.
Galahad would be first. Arthur would be second.
Then we would see.
I took a deep breath and turned my mind back to the guard rotation.
The afternoon watch ended at the sixth bell.
The new man, the one who had come on tonight, took forty-three steps from the door to the far end of the corridor and thirty-nine back.
He was shorter than his predecessor, his stride was different, and he favored the left side of the passage where the torchlight was better.
Fear; it was a fear-based response. He paused for two breaths at the midpoint, and he had a habit of checking the door at the far end twice on his return pass, which meant there was a window between his second check and the moment he resumed walking.
Kay couldn’t take this from me. He could sit on his stool and deliver his curated intelligence and watch my face for the crack that would tell him what I was worth to his particular game.
And he could leave me with implications designed to fester, but he couldn’t follow me into the labyrinth of my own thoughts.
The new guard paused at the midpoint. Two breaths. Then his footsteps resumed.
I counted them. And I planned.
-GUIN-
I sat on the edge of the bed and stared at the far wall as I waited for my shoulders to drop from around my ears. They refused.
The knock came just after the evening bells, and I crossed to the door and opened it.
I was surprised to find Percival standing in the corridor.
He was holding a small loaf of bread and a wedge of hard cheese wrapped in cloth.
His straw-colored curls were damp at the temples, and he looked like he’d walked fast to get here.
“I thought you might not have eaten,” he offered, holding the food out to me.
I stepped back to let him in and closed the door behind him, not bothering to even notice the two guards posted on either side of my door. I didn’t recognize either of them.
Percival set the food on the table and looked around the room as if he were searching for something more to say.
“Your accommodations are far better than before,” he said.
“Yes.”
“The mattress?”
“Functional.”