With the beer and Morgana warm in my arms, I relaxed and slept deeply. Too deeply to hear the horses approach at a muffled walk, or the rustle of a body at the stone casement. I woke only to Morgana’s tortured shriek, rolling out of bed to grab blindly

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for my sword, hearing the door crash in, the shouts of my brothers.

Something moved against the dark on the other side of the bed, briefly silhouetted against the pale casement. My legs bunched and sprang. I swung the sword at arm’s length, felt it bite deep into solid flesh that sagged away from me and fell.

Thuds and screams from beyond the curtain.

“Mother!”

“Modred, it’s me!”

His dim form plunged past me to scoop Morgana in his arms.

The light was poor, but I saw her head and arms fall back limp.

“Mother!”

“Artos!” Bedivere’s voice. “Artos, where are you?”

“Here!”

“Liar.” Modred dropped the body and turned on me with a snarl. “Liar.”

His knife slashed wide at me in the gloom. Then, without breaking his momentum, he bounded to the casement and cleared it light as a cat, head first.

I heard the hard ciang of iron on iron, swung the curtain aside to see it all in the dying glow from the firepit. Bedivere against the wall, sword at guard, ringed by three men moving in on him. Even as I lunged forward, Bedivere sprang through one man’s guard and struck. Another turned on me, raised his sword but paused fatally.

“Stop, stop. It’s the ki—”

I drove the blade through him. “Bastard!”

“Hold, in Christ’s name, hold1.”

It was Brocan the Parisi. He dropped his weapon. Bedivere forced him to the wall, point against Brocan’s throat.

“We didn’t know,” the stunned young knight stammered. “God’s my witness, we didn’t know the king was here.”

“That was careless,” Bedivere hissed. “I saw these pigs leave. Struck me an odd hour for Parisi to depart.”

I lit a fat lamp and held it up, a sour sickness in my mouth. Cunedag had died in his bed. Urgus hung head down over the edge of his pallet. Halfway to the bower, Drost sprawled with his blood soaking into the earthen floor. Only Modred had escaped.

“Keep him still; Bedivere. One move and he’s yours.”

“I’d enjoy it,” said Bedivere.

In the bower, the wounded Parisi lay at the foot of Morgana’s

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bed, groaning weakly as I turned him over. Very deliberately, I placed the sword against his throat and shoved.

Morgana lay as Modred dropped her, eyes open and staring, the wide wound under her heart. Numb, not letting myself feel, I closed her eyes and straightened her arms.

“Is she alive, Artos?” Bedivere called.

“In a minute.”

I began to shake. The trembling increased till I shuddred like a man with terminal fever, teeth chattering with the uncontrollable spasm. Through all this a name whispered itself again and again, persisting even though I tried to push it away.

I took Morgana’s bronze knife from its sheath and waited for my body to stop quivering. After a time it did.

Good. The rest of this night must be spun out in cold blood.

I went back to the other room, lifted Drost’s body and laid it on his pallet. The house was silent enough to hear Brocan’s ragged breathing.

“Morgana?” Bedivere asked.

“No.”

“The boy there?”

“Drost? No. He was so beautiful when I met him. Three years old. He taught me the world could be music as well as matter.”

I stood up and pointed at Brocan. “Bring him here.”

Bedivere flung him forward. Brocan stumbled to his knees in front of me, doomed and contrite. I believed him as far as that went. Whatever his mission, my death was no part of it. Not that it mattered now.

“We meant no—we didn’t know—”

“On your back, Parisi.”

When Bedivere pinned him, I took his wrists and sliced them neatly across with Morgana’s knife. He stared unbelieving at the wounds as 1 tore two strips from a blanket and held them in front of his eyes.

“You’re bleeding to death, but you can still stop it. Name

who sent you.” Now it was done, Brocan got hold of himself. “I’m not afraid

to die.”

“That’s your concern. We can wait.”

The wind sighed beyond the broken door. We squatted by Brocan, waiting impassively. The blood collected in little pools at his sides. The color drained from Brocan’s face and the sweat started. And the fear—not of death but something worse.

“You must not let me die unshriven.”

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“That’s your choice,” I said. “Who sent you?”

“Let me have a priest.”

“That would take time you don’t have. Say a name, you may not peed one.”

Brocan twisted his head to Bedivere. “You’re a Christian. You can’t let me die this way.”

“Not much time,” said Bedivere. “You’re sweating already.”

“Oh, Christ …”

“Men are different.” I held up the blanket strips. “Some can last longer, some less. Perhaps it’s too late already. One name, Brocan. Say it. You’ll suffer no more than banishment.”

Brocan groaned, no longer able to hold his head up.

Bedivere leaned over him. “Now it should be hard for you to see us clearly. Useless to die for nothing.”

“God forgive me.” Brocan gasped out a name.

It didn’t surprise me at all.

Quickly binding his wrists, I gave Bedivere orders in a tone carefully washed clean of any emotion. “In your witness, tried and convicted of high treason. Put him in chains, then down Severn on the first galley out. Never to return on pain of death. What hour is it?”

“About four,” Bedivere judged.

“Send a burial detail when it’s light.”

“It will be done.” Bedivere kicked the panting Brocan. “Up.”

“My brothers are to be buried with respect. In a new cairn with dieir names cut on the edge of the cover stone.”

“And the lady?”

I had to think a moment. That was the first time anyone ever referred to Morgana by that title.

“She comes with me. When you’ve stowed Brocan, turn out the court. The whole palace, high and low, to meet in the great hall to hear a criminal charge.”

When they left, I went back into the bower and lay down beside Morgana. Whenever the tears started, I willed them back, turning them to cold rage inside. After a time, I wrapped the body in a blanket and carried it to my horse.

Bedivere had already done his office when I approached the palace gate with my burdened horse. Lights flickered from the casements of the audience chamber.

“Who’s there?”

“The emperor. Fetch a groom for my horse.”

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Across the dark courtyard with Morgana in my arms, servants holding torches aloft and murmuring fearfully among themselves. Up the stairs, hearing the rabble of voice from the great hall ahead, dozens of people milling about the chamber and sleepily wondering why. They knew only that it must be important to be waked so long before dawn. The emperor never imposed on them out of caprice.

Fires had been started in the pits at each end of the large chamber, but the great space was still clammy with winter morning, I shouldered through the crowd to the center of the hall, hearing the hushed whispers as I laid down Morgana’s body.

“What’s he got there?”

“Oh no, it’s—”

“Make a ring about the room,” I grated. “Everyone back.”

They hollowed a wide space around me. No one gave particular note to Bedivere, who waited near Lancelot in the first rank, holding a pair of manacles.

“Lord Ancellius, a moment.”

He came, still a bit hazy with sleep like the rest.

“I want to hear from your own mouth that you were no part of

this.”

No. When I uncovered Morgana’s face, his pity and shock

were too genuine.

“None of it, my lord. On my life.”

“Then take heed, Lancelot. Don’t try to be part of it now. Stand back.”

I surveyed the court of Camelot. The flower of Britain.

“My lords and ladies, until today I deluded myself that I ruled a civilized land. The last and best of Rome.”

Gareth seemed to sense the danger in my tone. “So you do, my king. Who says else?”

“I say it, Gareth. We shortly go to war against a man we presume to call a barbarian, and I find myself wondering why. To save what? I Jtneel here by this measure of our enlightenment, and I’m tempted to tell Cerdic he can have it all. Where is the Queen of Britain?”

“Here, Arthur.”

Guenevere had entered and mounted the dais behind me, bleak but composed.

“We would not have you sit, Lady. You are not here in

state.” She didn’t flinch. “No.”

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I peeled the blanket from Morgana’s pathetic form, hearing the reaction of my people. Whether for me or Morgana, I couldn’t say. Perhaps for themselves. I’d brought a truth home to them, as if to say: “This is the sewer that runs beneath our ideals. Have a smell.”

“She was killed tonight, my lords. Of course you may say she was only a Faerie, less than human. But let’s pretend for a moment we’re civilized, that we have at least the justice of Saxons, among whom the poorest fanner has some sort of redress. If a person under crown protection be killed, what is the charge?”

Bedivere spoke it sharp and clear. “Murder.”

The whisper went around the hall, hesitant at first, then more positive. “Murder … murder.”

“No. Justice,” Guenevere snapped. “Royal judgment that must be absolute and above question if there is to be any law at all. My lords, why should I dissemble? This was done by my will.”

Cador’s child had cold courage, I gave her that.

“By my will and for reasons any one of you would approve. I begged the emperor not to let this woman cross the Wall. You saw her and her brood. Did you know there are two hundred more waiting to follow after, to inhabit the land she demanded of our king?”

Her force and resolution put a new stamp on it. My court looked less certain. Aye, .after all, it was true. The woman was a danger.

“My people,” Guenevere stretched put her arms to them. “Have I not been a just queen, just and merciful, for many years? Does one of you think I had this woman killed for the foul personal insult she gave me?”

“No, Lady.”

“No, never.”

“The queen is right!”

“She had ambitions in Britain,” Guenevere went on. “Aims that she didn’t trouble to disguise, she was that sure of Arthur. He speaks of the war with Cerdic, a war to be fought for much this same reason. If Cerdic came into this hall now and demanded the same land, would our answer be any different?”