CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE
-ARTHUR-
I sat in the Great Hall with my crown on my head and my back straight, watching three hundred people pretending not to watch me.
What a waste of time.
That was the first thing I thought when I’d been informed of the size of the gathering that had assembled.
A Trial of Purity was, by law, a public proceeding.
The nobility had the right to witness justice rendered; it was one of those ancient customs that had survived every king who’d tried to quietly bury it, and I was no exception.
When a trial was formally invoked before six witnesses and entered into the court record, the announcement went out, and the court came.
All of it. The fifteen noble houses of Logres were required to send representatives or face the implication that they had something to hide.
The knights of the Round Table were expected to attend as a body, because Galahad was one of their number and the accused had been held in his care.
The only exception was Lance, but at the moment I’d stripped him of his title and his seat so he wasn’t technically a knight of the Round Table any longer.
The herald had to be present to maintain the official record along with the guards, the Archmage Mordred, and the courtiers who lived and breathed on the social oxygen of moments like this one.
And the servants. Because servants always found a way in.
Three hundred people were now crammed into the Great Hall, all of them here because Galahad had been clever enough, or fanatical enough, to invoke the trial before six witnesses in a corridor where anyone might overhear, which meant by the time I’d been informed it had happened,
it was already in the record books and already beyond my reach to suppress.
That was the part that stuck in my throat like a bone: I, the fucking king, had had no fucking choice in the matter.
So, now there were courtiers, knights, ladies of the court, and servants, pressed into wall niches, all of them trying to get a better view. Fires burned in every hearth, torches flamed in every torch holder until there was nothing left but gold and lies.
Mordred stood at my right, where he’d positioned himself two paces back. His eyes moved across the room in slow, methodical arcs, taking in everything and everyone around him.
They hadn’t come for justice. That much was plain.
They’d come because a Trial of Purity was rare: the kind of proceeding that happened perhaps once in a generation.
Not only that, but they all wanted to bear witness to the spectacle because the accused was Merlin’s daughter and because the accuser was Galahad, whose reputation for holy conviction made him either a saint or a lunatic, depending on which side of the political divide you stood on.
They’d come to watch her condemned or they’d come to watch Galahad humiliated.
They hadn’t come expecting anything in between, and they certainly hadn’t come expecting anything that would require them to think.
I had, at least, gotten ahead of that much.
I’d told Mordred privately to administer the testing and to find her clean.
The forms would be observed, of course, but the verdict was already written.
Galahad would get his little theater, but he’d walk away with nothing, I’d keep my prisoner, and the whole tedious business would be over before noon.
That was the plan at any rate.
“The prisoner, Sire,” Mordred murmured.
The doors at the far end of the hall opened, and she was escorted in by the guards.
She wore a blue gown I hadn’t provided for her, and I found myself wondering who had.
The fit was slightly off, no doubt owing to the fact that she had lost so much weight while in Galahad’s “care.”
Her silver-white hair was unbound, which I found irritating in a way I couldn’t fully account for, perhaps because she looked like an offering.
Her eyes moved across the hall, and I could read the confusion in them from forty feet away.
She hadn’t been told of what would go on this morning.
I’d made sure of that. I’d let her walk in without armor and without preparation: not to humiliate her, but because I wanted to see what she did with it.
She scanned the room, clocked the size of the audience, clocked the arrangement of the guards, and then went very still.
When she found me on my throne on the dais, she held my gaze for exactly three seconds before she looked away. Her jaw remained level, and her hands didn’t shake.
Good.
Because she was about to need as much self composure as she could muster.
Mordred stepped forward and cleared his throat as the hall quieted.
“By the invocation of the Trial of Purity, this court convenes to—” His voice carried, but it wasn’t loud. In truth, Mordred was never loud; yet, his voice reached every corner, every pressed-back servant, every bored courtier who’d come for spectacle.
“This court convenes to weigh a charge brought forward by Sir Galahad, Knight of the Round Table, against the prisoner known as Guinevere of Annwyn, Daughter of Merlin.”
A murmur went through the room, and it was the type of murmur that moved through silk sleeves, embroidered collars, and landed in the ears of people who would remember it and repeat it later in smaller, darker rooms. Such was how gossip spread.
I kept my face neutral, or as neutral as I was able to keep it. But the truth was that I was beyond irritated. Galahad didn’t know his place. And my decision to keep him titled and allow him to keep his seat at the Round Table was now coming back to bite me in the ass.
Mordred produced a scroll, which he unrolled without ceremony.
“Sir Galahad has submitted the following account to the record of this court.”
He paused a brief, precise pause. “That in the course of his custodial examination of the prisoner, he observed persistent and unnatural resistance to purification rites. That the prisoner exhibited signs of spiritual corruption including, but not limited to: unnatural physical endurance,
emotional suppression inconsistent with feminine temperament, and the manifestation of destructive magical force that breached a binding placed by me, Lord Mordred Vesperian, Royal Archmage of Logres.”
Another murmur, but louder this time.
I watched Guinevere’s face across the length of the hall, and she’d gone to stone.
Her eyes were fixed on a point somewhere above Mordred’s shoulder, and her hands were folded in front of her, fingers laced.
The lacing was tight and growing tighter by the second.
That was the only tell that she was uncomfortable.
“Sir Galahad further submits,” Mordred continued, his tone unchanged, “that during a nocturnal session of spiritual examination, the prisoner became violent. That she unleashed the aforementioned magical force without warning, without provocation—”
I watched something move across Guinevere’s face then, something akin to a flinch. It was there and gone in under a second.
“—and that this violence was consistent with demonic possession rather than native magical ability, in that it lacked form, discipline, or intent beyond destruction.”
Mordred rolled the scroll slightly, and I heard the parchment creak in the silence.
“On the basis of these observations, Sir Galahad invoked the Trial of Purity before six witnesses of good standing, requesting that this court submit the prisoner to divine examination and render judgment accordingly.”
Mordred let that sit. Then he set the scroll down on the table beside him with a soft, final sound and turned to face the hall with his hands clasped behind his back.
“Before this court proceeds,” he said, “it is my obligation as Royal Archmage to note, for the formal record, that the account submitted by Sir Galahad contains certain... inconsistencies.”
That quieted the murmur completely, and my attention sharpened.
Mordred’s eyes moved across the room with the same unhurried pace as always, but there was something behind them now. Something deliberate.
“The binding, which I placed upon the prisoner myself, was not, as Sir Galahad’s account implies, broken by a wild and uncontrolled eruption of demonic force.”
He said the words as if he was completely bored.
“It was breached, and that is an important distinction to note. A wild eruption would shatter a binding indiscriminately. What occurred was a targeted fracture at a specific point of structural vulnerability. That is not the behavior of a creature operating without form or intent.”
He paused. “That is the behavior of a practitioner under extreme duress.”
The room was very quiet, but I said nothing, even if I was pleased that Mordred had made the distinction. Whatever small wins we could gain against the ridiculousness of this trial, I was all for them.
Mordred inclined his head toward the prisoner, a gesture so slight it was almost not there at all.
“The prisoner will now submit to personal examination by this office. The examination will determine the presence or absence of demonic influence, assess the nature and origin of her magical ability, and render a formal finding to be entered into the court record.”
He looked at the hall again. “The examination is not punitive. Rather, it is procedural, and it will be conducted with appropriate rigor and appropriate restraint.”
That last sentence was for Galahad, who was standing to the left of Mordred with his hands folded, his eyes down, and his expression so perfectly composed it looked painted on.
I thought about the bruises I’d seen on her.
And I thought about Mordred’s careful, quiet correction that he’d just slipped into the record like a knife between ribs.
Mordred turned to the prisoner directly.
“Guinevere of Annwyn,” he said. “Step forward.”
But before Guinevere could so much as take a step, Galahad moved.
He came from where he’d been standing just before the assembled knights, and he moved fast.
He crossed the floor in eight strides, grabbed her by the arm, and wrenched her sideways and away from both Mordred and the guards before any of them could even process what was happening.
She made a sound, one that was short, surprised, and afraid.