you say?”

“You heard me.”

He gave me his quick smile. “Ask my blood, I’ll pour for you. My life? On the block with yours any day. But not this.”

Yseult was miserable. “Trystan, please listen to him.”

“I’ve listened to him for years. And I love him, but he’s no part of this. What’s he want of you, what’s he said?”

It was going to be worse man hard because he wouldn’t believe it. “Lord Trystan, I’m not speaking as an old friend now. This touches more than the two of you. Mark is a tributary prince and I owe him loyalty.”

He laughed, high and strained. “Don’t come the moralist with me, I helped you to the crown. You need him.” “All right, I need him. Now more than ever/’ He said it with contempt. “My uncle would cut your heart out.”

Yseult slammed her hand down on the arm of the chair. “Peace! I can’t listen to this, I’m Mark’s wife.” “You were mine first!”

“When?” I catapulted out of the chair and down to him. “When was she ever your wife? And you called Agrivaine thick? Look at her, do you think she finds this a pleasure? Whatever she said, whatever you planned, forget it. You’ll not see her again. I can’t have it!”

He knew I meant it now. A tinge of fear crept into his eyes. “You use everyone, don’t you?” “I want your oath.” “No.”

I pointed to his scabbard. “On your sword or leave my service.”

“So it comes to that.” He hesitated only a moment, then reached for the belt.

“No,” Yseult whispered. “Not your oath-sword.” He laid the sheathed sword at my feet. “With regrets, my lord.”

“No, Tryst!” she cried. “That’s your life and honor!” “That’s nothing,” he shushed her gently. “Don’t speak of what you don’t know. What I’ve done for Arthur or where I’ve gone for Arthur or the insults I’ve swallowed because of the oath I swore to Arthur on that stinking piece of iron. Live for him, die for him, and none more willingly, not even Bedivere. But mere’s a rag end of me you don’t get, Arthur. Send me away, I’ll find her. Hide her in the earth, I’ll find her still or she’ll find me. She’ll come because she loves me. Because she needs me and we’ve lost too many years.”

Neither of them felt worse than I did. The point of the knife wasn’t enough for Trystan; he’d take the whole blade and have it twisted in him. “You think I asked for this meeting, Trystan?”

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“What?”

“Tell him, Yseult.”

It was hard and it hurt, but she did it “without flinching. “We have to forget yesterday, forget it all. It’s over, Tryst.”

The room was suddenly quiet. The color drained out of his face. “You don’t mean that.”

She nodded, hands limp in her lap. “I haven’t loved you that

way for a long time.” “He made you say that.” She looked up at him, firm. “No. Myself made me say it.

Finally.”

But he still wouldn’t believe. He clutched at her shoulders, pulling her out of the chair. “Oh, he did. I know him, he’s good at words, better than me. ‘Seult, listen. I’m older, I’m changed. When I was singing for Saxon fanners, I thought of you and how life—how it boils down to very simple things. Men and wives and children. And I knew I wanted these things more than anything else. The sword’s too heavy and the music’s gone sour. Just you and a quiet place and a little rest.” “Yes,” she said. “Rest.”

“And we can have it, you and 1. You said you’d go with me.” She tried to pull away. “Oh, good God, leave me be.” “You love me, ‘Seult.” “No, I~-”

“You love me. It’s all we’ve got. Yesterday—” “I saw you living when I thought you dead.” She touched his hair, pitying. “And for a moment I could not help remembering, but that’s all.” “You love me!”

“No. No! Will you for sweet Christ’s sake leave me beT’ Yseult wrenched away from him and retreated to the casement. “You, Arthur, Mark, all of you. Leave me beV

The force of it stopped him from following her. She hunched over the casement sill, rigid and shaking. “May I sometime hear the last of that honey-sweet poison of a word. Love? Love who? When? Where? I was sixteen. We had a few weeks, we had the boat, and then it was Mark. And, oh, the things my mother carefully taught me to say to him. How to touch him and make him feel like a man, and what did I know of men but you? And then it was him and then you and him and you, and what was I but a torn scrap of meat between your jealousy and his fumbling? “And who would it be this night? You or him, and what must I say? If Mark, I can’t call him Tryst. Or if it’s Tryst, I must

seem dying-eager for his touch when my eyes are closing for the want of sleep. Oh, and always, always the begging question in his eyes and yours alike: Am I better than him? Do you like it better with me than him? Till I prayed the next thing between my legs be a knife to cut out what you want and throw it at the both of you.”

Her fists slammed down on the sill. “Fight over it, tear it, swallow it whole, but leave-me-alone.”

After a moment, she turned to Trystan, spent but dry-eyed. “Don’t say love to me, lad. All I’ve had of it is a drunken dreamer and a tired old man. Don’t look for what was. I’m twenty-six, not sixteen. There’s gray in my head; I can still hide it, but it’s there. Mark is kind to me. We’re friends, we’ve learned to get along. He wants me stilt, but 1 can manage that. It’s you I can’t manage anymore. Don’t talk of love, because that takes more time than we ever had. Don’t throw your life at me, because I won’t catch it. I have what / want now, and little enough. I’m safe. I have some peace. And I can sleep alone.”

Trystan slumped on the edge of the dais, stunned. He believed it now, he had to—his dream ended by the dream itself. He barely moved when Yseult bent to kiss his mouth.

“Good-bye, Tryst.”

Naked hurt, the tears running down his cheeks. He wiped them away, groping for the sword, drawing it from the scabbard.

“On this sword by which I swore to be your man, I will never see or send word to Queen Yseult again.”

“So be it,” she whispered.

“So be it,” I said. “Put it on, Tryst. I still need you, that doesn’t change.”

I led Yseult out of the chamber to the hall. She looked ravaged as Trystan. “I’m sorry. He made you butcher him, but you were strong.”

“There are just no tears left. We come to that.” Yseult bowed to me and moved down the corridor. Her shoulders were straight.

In the audience chamber, Trystan stood frozen with the sword in his hand. Beyond the casement, that idiotic bird stilt bellowed in his silly pear tree.

“Tryst, there was a time when I had to make the same choice. A woman I loved or something else. And someone said, there’s fate in all directions.”

“You cold bastard.”

“That’s what I called him, but he knew the shape of time. This could be a beginning for you. Your life’s your own again

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and no post you can’t fill for me. Stay here with Gwen when I go east. Be her lord-milite.”

“Is that all, Imperator?” Trystan rose deliberately and buckled on the sword. “May I go?”

I dropped into my chair, vastly tired. “Don’t throw it away,

Tryst.”

“May I go?” “Yes … go.”

I stayed alone in the chamber, feeling very much what Yseult had confessed: the cosmos could go to hell for an hour or so, or cut out that part of me that ticked like a king and fight over it somewhere else. Just leave me alone one minute.

They came to fetch me far too soon. Something important, I can’t remember what. 1 went and tended to it.

Jolted awake. Heavy rain falling, and through its dull hiss the cries and shouts and the pounding at our door. Gwen made to get up with me, but I stayed her. “Don’t. I’ll go.”

I threw on the first loose robe to hand, a premonition already squeezing my stomach, barely hearing the guards as they hurried down the corridor in my wake.

“Demon-drunk, sir, a madman … got him ringed, but it’s too late. The body’s hacked like a roast.”

I lurched out into the rain, the sour taste of apprehension in my mouth. Two knots of people illuminated by torches that flared and sputtered over the garish scene. The circle of archers with bent bows, and the tense, warning commands of the centurion: “Steady … steady. Don’t shoot unless he makes you.”

The courtyard was a sea of mud. I slogged to the men and women kneeling over the mutilated body, pulled away the sobbing woman who covered the body with her own. She came away in my arms, hoarse with grief and fury. “Murder! It was murder. Pwyll was unarmed.” One of the guards had seen it. “True, sir. Only his belt knife against a sword, and that not even drawn.” The woman sobbed, “I want that dog’s life. Give me justice,

King of Britain,”

I looked down at what used to be Lord Pwyll, its blood already mingling with the rain and mud, then rose and strode toward the circle of archers. The centurion stepped aside for me.

“Do we shoot, sir?”

“Easy on.” I stepped into the circle. In its center, his blue

robe sodden and muddy, the murderer reared like a bear at bay, swaying over his planted sword.

“Trystan.”

The haggard bear raised its head to see what called it, grinning vacuously. “Arthur?”

“Drop your sword.”

“It is you. My comet, maker and breaker of destinies.” He managed to straighten up, raising the sword. “I should have killed you ages ago.”

The centurion hissed, “My lord, let us shoot.”

“No.”

Trystan started for me. “I’ll do it now.”

‘ ‘Get out of the way!” .

The command came out of the darkness beyond our circle. A rider broke through the ring, running his horse straight at Trystan from behind. Little Gareth, leaping feet first from the saddle to pin Trystan to the ground.

“Bring me some irons!” he snapped.

Murder plain and simple, without a ghost of defense. A brother comite murdered on royal ground and my own person threatened. Death or banishment. Even with his personal admiration for Trystan, Kay could ask no less than his death for Pwyll’s Dobunni wives and kinsmen.

I questioned Tryslan in his cell, squeezed him for one ounce of extenuation, but he only hunched on his pallet, stared at his manacled hands and said nothing. Pale and shaking, but not from fear. I’d seen him after too many drunks and battles. Drink and passion burned his body like tinder. He was paying their price.