CHAPTER FORTY-TWO #2
It didn’t feel as if they were gone, just as if they were pressed back, the way mist retreats from heat without disappearing.
The weeping woman suddenly appeared again at the edge of the light. Then she blipped back out of existence.
Once the light had returned, the hall erupted.
“Drafts,” someone said. “Terrible drafts this autumn.”
Someone else argued.
The explanations for what had just happened continued to roll past nervous and scared tongues: the castle needed repair, the mortar was old, the wicks of the candles were poorly made, someone had clearly been buying inferior tallow again, and heads would roll in the kitchens.
The conversation rebuilt itself around the event with the speed of people afraid for what might really have happened.
And no one said what it really was. No one said anything close to what it really was.
I looked at Tristan, and his olive skin was now white, and that concerned me because with his death magic, I assumed he was the only person who could explain what had just happened.
“Do you know,” I started, but he shook his head, breathing out a long and pent-up breath.
“I have no idea what just happened.”
Percival, beside me, had his hands flat on the table. His eyes were open, but it looked like he was looking at nothing. I watched his jaw work once, twice, and then he reached for his wine and drank half of it in one go.
Tristan said something that was so low, I couldn’t even make out the words, and I found myself staring at my plate again.
But then I lifted my head, and my gaze traveled to Arthur, where he was still standing at the head of the table but hadn’t spoken a word.
He had the same quality of stillness I recognized from the training yard: it was the stillness of a man who was deciding what to do about the insanity of what we’d all just witnessed.
Beside him, Isolde was trembling, her eyes were wide, and she was talking, but I couldn’t make out what she was saying. And it appeared that Arthur couldn’t either because he didn’t respond. Instead, his eyes met mine and remained there.
It was suddenly as if neither of us could look away. I couldn’t read his expression. I only knew it wasn’t surprise, but something more like assessment.
He looked away first.
Tristan was still talking about something in soft tones I couldn’t make out while Percival was busily pouring himself more wine.
The servants continued to move through the hall with lit tapers, and everyone agreed it was the drafts, it was always the drafts in these old buildings, and the uncomfortable laughter came back, the noise came back, and the evening rebuilt itself around the hole that had opened in it.
But I was fairly sure the dead woman was still there. I could see her at the periphery of my vision if I didn’t look directly at the place she was standing. So, I didn’t look directly. Instead, I picked up my fork and I ate.
-ARTHUR-
The dark lasted three heartbeats. Maybe four.
Then the torches caught again, the candles rebuilt themselves flame by flame, and the hall filled back up with the ordinary noise of men who’d startled and then needed to pretend they hadn’t. Cups were set down too hard. Chairs scraped. Someone laughed, too loud and too late.
I didn’t move.
I stood at the high table and watched the room reassemble itself, and I counted what I saw.
Percival had his hand on his knife. Galahad’s lips were moving in prayer, probably, or the beginning of one.
Kay had gone very still in the way he went still when he was memorizing something.
Agravaine looked around for someone to blame.
Lance was... watching Guinevere which was something I tried not to think about.
And Tristan.
Tristan had gone white. Not pale, but white, the color that lives under olive skin when something truly reaches it.
It was there for perhaps two seconds. Then he picked up his wine cup and said something to Guinevere, who sat beside him, and his color came back, and he smiled at whatever she said in return, and it was done.
Anyone watching him from across the room would have seen a man mildly startled by a trick of the torches.
I’d been watching him from six feet away.
I filed his reaction separately from everything else, set it in a corner of my mind, and left it there.
As to Guinevere... she hadn’t flinched. Instead, she sat with her spine straight, her hands in her lap, and her eyes moving across the room in a slow arc that looked, from a distance, like the idle gaze of someone waiting for the meal to resume.
But I knew better. She was mapping the room: doing the same thing I was doing, though from the other direction.
Before I could stop them, my eyes returned to Tristan.
He was the only one who possessed death magic. Therefore, he was the only one who could understand what had just happened, what those glowing entities, those ghosts, had truly been. Part of me wondered if perhaps he had borne them, brought them to the hall, though for what reason I couldn’t say.
But that wasn’t the only thing that bothered me.
What continued to bother me was his access to Guinevere, the fact that he could sit beside her and she accepted him.
Yes, I could have said the same of Percival, but Percival’s sitting beside her didn’t bother me.
Not the way Tristan’s did. Because Tristan wanted something from her, whereas I didn’t believe Percival did.
Yes, Tristan wanted her. And I was beginning to worry that perhaps she wanted him in return.
Why that should bother me I couldn’t say. Perhaps it was just the dragon’s reaction to the situation that I was reading. But, strangely, the dragon really hadn’t had a reaction. It was more or less silent where Tristan was concerned and always had been.
I felt myself sitting back down without even realizing I was. Then a servant refilled my goblet with wine, and Isolde leaned into me with her eyes wide.
“Please tell me you aren’t going to explain what just happened on drafts?”
I smiled, but I couldn’t say anything because I had no reasons to give her.
I had no idea what had just happened, and I wouldn’t pretend otherwise.
Of course, I would have to supply the court with an explanation that would calm their nerves, but I didn’t have to do so now.
I would leave that up to Mordred or to Kay.
They were both good at coming up with excuses.