“Then again, maybe I’m wrong. I don’t think magic makes us all that different from other women,” Clary said once the first few bites were savored. “We go to work and pay our bills just like everyone else.”
“What do you work at?” Gwen asked.
“Computers.” Clary shrugged. “I’m bored with the job I’m in and looking around for something else. While I’ve been visiting in Carlyle, I went for a few interviews. I’d like to get into social media marketing.”
“And you can find employment wherever you wish?”
“Pretty much. I have good skills.”
Gwen pondered that. Such independence! She’d never earned money herself.
No wonder she felt invisible. How was she supposed to be equal to someone who paid for everything she ate or wore? “How did you learn your skills?” Gwen asked, suddenly aware this was important.
“I went to school,” said Clary. “That’s normally how people learn their trade.”
That fit with what Arthur had said.
Gwen chewed her lip. Could I study at a school? Maybe she could learn how the great, towering buildings of this time were made. “I’ve always had a knack for constructing things—fences and sheds and even my father’s war machines. I understand siege towers and catapults better than most soldiers.”
Clary looked impressed. “You’re an engineer at heart?”
“I don’t know,” Gwen said. “Some people carry a tune or bake perfect bread. I know what makes things stand up or fall down. Is there a school for that?”
“Yes.” Clary nodded. “People pay well for that expertise. It’s a long course of study, though.”
Gwen didn’t say more. This was a ridiculous conversation. She hadn’t been in this world for a day, so any plans she made were castles in the air, without foundation or substance. And yet, the idea intrigued her. She’d always envied the monks their great libraries. Here, she could read her fill and become whatever she liked.
Or could she? What would Arthur do if she spent her days with her nose in a book, too busy to meddle with Camelot’s affairs? Would he be grateful to be rid of her, or would he consider it disloyalty?
Sudden doubt seized her, and she stared down into her coffee cup. The drink was half-gone, for all she disliked it. Sugar only masked some of the taste, but the bitterness lingered. She’d swallowed it because it was expected of her, just like she did most things.
“Is there something wrong?” Clary asked.
“I’m sorry,” Gwen said. “I don’t think I like coffee.”
“Then try something else,” Clary said with a laugh. “There’s lots to choose from on the menu.”
Would it be that easy, Gwen wondered, to place an order for a completely different life?
Chapter 5
Swords rang and whistled in an elaborate dance, splashing shards of light on the walls. Tall windows opened onto a vista of wind-tossed trees, but inside the long fencing gallery, all was pristine order. Except, of course, for the deadly dance of the fae.
Talvaric executed an expert feint, swinging in a circle to cut high. His step was light, barely making any sound—though the force of his blow sang against his opponent’s saber. Barto, Lord of Fareen, was almost his equal, which was saying something. Though of insignificant lineage, Talvaric had made his fortune as a professional.
Barto doubled his attack, striking over and over in a pattern that should have brought Talvaric to his knees. For an uneasy moment, Talvaric retreated. Fear needled through him, exhilarating and rich. It was said the fae had no souls—not since Merlin’s spells had stripped them away at the end of the demon wars. It was also common knowledge that the lack of a soul meant a lack of feelings. That was and was not true. Fae were immortal, but they could be killed. The desire to survive and the fear of defeat remained. That was why Talvaric had taken up the sword as his life. It was a splash of red against an otherwise-eternal gray.
With a pounding heart, he let Barto drive him back another step, then twisted away. He went low this time, aiming for his opponent’s legs. It was a move of cool precision, but Barto escaped with a backward leap. It didn’t matter. With a turn of the wrist, Talvaric changed direction, sweeping the blade upward until it pricked Barto’s chin.
There he stopped, his control of the weapon absolute. Talvaric held Barto’s gaze, waiting for acknowledgment. Talvaric could have taken his head with ease. Slowly, Barto nodded, the gesture releasing a drop of scarlet blood where the sword tip pierced his skin. Talvaric waited until the trickle reached Barto’s collar before he withdrew. They were both panting hard.
“A good match,” Barto conceded. He wiped his neck and looked at his blood-streaked hand with clinical interest.
Waiting servants—two of the many dryads Talvaric kept as slaves—hurried to attend the two males, taking their weapons and handing them soft white towels. Barto wiped his face. Like all the fae, like Talvaric himself, Barto was tall and slender, with dark olive skin and hair so pale it was almost white. The coloring made a startling contrast to the brilliant green of fae eyes.
“You are a worthy opponent,” Talvaric returned, compliment for compliment. “I fought for many years at the pleasure of the queen and rarely saw the like.”
Barto bowed and finished mopping his face. When he dropped his towel to the floor, a servant dashed forward and gathered it up.
“I appreciate the compliment,” Barto said. “I would like to fight in the palace games this winter. There is no better preparation than practicing against our foremost swordsman. Will you compete?”
“Perhaps.”
Barto shrugged. “You have won several times. I suppose the honor of victory begins to pale.”
“Not really. But I wonder if the games will go forward in the queen’s absence.”
“Good point,” Barto sighed. “This business with LaFaye is tiresome.”
Queen Morgan LaFaye was under lock and key, captured by the allies of King Arthur of Camelot. That left an interesting vacancy on the throne, but none had immediately jumped to fill it. If the queen ever got free, she would not welcome a usurper.
“It’s a pity I could not cross swords with Arthur,” Barto said lightly. “He is said to be almost your equal.”
Talvaric narrowed his eyes. “I doubt it’s a fair comparison. His blade is enchanted by the Lady of the Lake. Excalibur has magic enough to cut through even Morgan’s spells.”
Which was why the queen feared it. Excalibur was the only real weapon the mortals had against a fae invasion. Morgan had been on the cusp of attacking the mortal realms when she’d been captured. Now hostilities were suspended while the leaderless fae milled about like sheep.
“I suppose you’re right.” Barto wandered over to the rack of swords suspended on the wall. He fingered one hilt, then another. “Is this the weapon you used in the last contest?”
“The same.”
“And this?”
“I used that one in the match against the Giant of Trevayne.”
“That was quite the contest. I wagered on you and won.”
Contests? Talvaric felt a twinge of impatience. Who cared about sports when the whole of the mortal realms were ripe for plucking? But Talvaric knew better than to blurt that out. Barto was Lord of Fareen, and Talvaric was a commoner with no right to an opinion. Yet.
“Would you care to see my other collection?” he asked.
Barto looked up, curious. “Your beasts? Yes, I would.”
Talvaric led the way through his manor. It wasn’t a palace or a castle, but it sprawled through an endless maze of corridors and wings. Although his property sat far from the fashionable cities, the inconvenience was made up for by privacy. Soon they were traversing a long passageway lined with cages on either side.
The rooms were bright, with plenty of
windows, and clean. The steel of the bars was polished, the floors of the cages always strewn with fresh straw. The pristine conditions weren’t due to Talvaric’s love for animals; it was simply that his collection was expensive and hard to replace.
Each cage held something unusual. Barto’s gaze whipped from side to side, his eyes wide with wonder. “Wyvern. Manticore. Pixie. I’m not even certain what that is. How do you control them?”
“A variety of methods. The dragons are hardest to manage, but I’ve found a way.”
“Dragons?”
Talvaric gave a careless wave. “It’s always easy to impress your friends when you have dragons.”
Barto’s expression hardened, but he said nothing.
“There is a great deal of power here.” Talvaric tapped on the bars of a particularly large cage. “Any magical beast can be a weapon if you know how to control it. And the study and acquisition of such creatures is never dull.”
Barto said more nothing, but peered into the cage. It contained a large black dog with red eyes and shaggy dark fur. It smelled like something dead. “A barguest?” The question was sharp—not quite fear, but recognition of something dangerous. Barguests were best known for devouring lone travelers, especially after dark.
“Yes.”
“How long have you been building this collection?”
“Hundreds of years.” About the same amount of time as his ambition had been growing. The two were closely intertwined.
Barto straightened, his eyes cautious now. “You call these creatures weapons. That makes this manor a vast armory. Why have you gathered all this?”
Talvaric was forced to concede Barto was smarter than expected. Talvaric could all but taste the tang of his anxiety, and liked it. “I occasionally send my beasts abroad to deal with annoyances.”
“Annoyances?” Barto really was starting to sound like a parrot.
“The goblins of the Crystal Mountains developed an irritating attitude. I sent them a gift. A troll.”
Barto blinked in surprise. “On whose authority? The fae trade with King Zorath’s people! This could start a war we don’t need.”
Talvaric almost wanted to laugh. “Trust me, the goblins are too busy for that at the moment.”
Barto’s mouth dropped open a moment before he snapped it shut. “That’s unbelievably irresponsible.”
Talvaric lifted a brow. “Are you actually angry?”
After Morgan’s capture, some fae seemed to be regaining scraps of their souls. That raised some interesting questions, especially since many fae, including Talvaric, now regarded emotion as a weakness.
“No.” Barto flushed, proving his denial a lie. “But I think it’s time for me to leave.”
“Come now, won’t you stay and drink wine with me? I never like to see a guest depart without showing him the best hospitality I can offer.”
“I—no.” Barto had gone stiff, his shoulders rigid. “I have other commitments to attend to.”
Talvaric didn’t argue. If he’d had the capacity, he would have been amused. The servants showed Barto the door, because no one ever found the door in Talvaric’s manor unless he wanted them to.
Talvaric poured himself a glass of ruby wine, made from the wild snowberries that grew high on the Crystal Mountains’ peaks. That’s where he’d found his dragons and formulated his plans. Rukon had performed his first task well and Arthur had received the message. Talvaric hadn’t been sure the dragon would cooperate, but his added controls had worked. Of course, the message had only been the first step in a long progression of calculated mayhem, but one thing at a time.
Talvaric watched from an upstairs window as his erstwhile guest mounted a fine gray stallion and galloped off across the manor’s rolling lawns. A minute later, he returned to his collection and unlocked the barguest’s cage. The huge, black nightmare backed to the far corner of its cage, cowering like a terrified puppy. Talvaric felt a knot of something warm and tingling in his gut. This display of subservience was the best part of mastering his beasts.
“That male I was with has annoyed me, and I believe he might just squeal to the council about the troll. I trust you have his scent?”
With a nod of its huge head, the creature crouched still more, its nose almost resting on its paws.
“Dispose of him, but bring the horse back unharmed. It looked valuable.”
In a rush of fetid air, the barguest vanished to do his bidding. Talvaric finished his wine and dreamed of what he would do next.
Morgan’s throne was vacant, and someone had to fill it—someone with courage enough to seize the opportunity and brave the consequences. Why not Talvaric? The titled fae might look down their noses at an upstart commoner—but not if he could prove, very publicly, that he was the most powerful of their number.
Talvaric would succeed where Morgan had failed, and destroy the fae’s greatest enemy, Arthur of Camelot. And, he would do it in a way no one could ignore.
* * *
“See?” Clary turned her cell phone toward Gwen. “Wedding dresses look like cakes. Wedding cakes look like dresses. There’s a kind of weird symmetry involving layers and fluff.”
They’d been talking forever, still sitting in the coffee shop. They were becoming fast friends in a matter of hours, and Gwen was thoroughly enjoying the process. “So when will Sir Gawain and your sister wed?”
“When she’s done planning, which could be never.” Clary shrugged. “Tamsin wants what she wants, and Gawain lets her have her way.”
“That hardly sounds like the same man,” Gwen said, shaking her head. “The knight I knew was gruff, to say the least.”
“That hasn’t changed. If he was a dog, they’d say he was unsuitable for adoption.”
“Except for Tamsin?”
“Yeah.” Clary sounded unimpressed. “Meanwhile, it’s all wedding, all the time. Plus, she’s a historian, which means a medieval wedding has to be accurate to the period.”
“Why?” Gwen wondered. “What’s the point of that?”
“It’s a thing historians do. So what was a real medieval wedding like, anyway?”
“Mine was—it was not at all what I had expected for myself.” Gwen had switched to tea and held the cup in her hands, warming her fingers. She hadn’t been cold until a moment ago, but memory changed everything.
* * *
Gwen recalled standing at the window with her nurse, looking out on the summer-green hills. Below, the sound of saws and hammers broke the morning peace. Growing bored, she leaned on the wide stone sill, her chin in her hands. “What are they making?” she asked.
“A great wooden table, I’m told.” Nurse smoothed Gwen’s hair. She was a plump, homely woman who had been with Gwen since infancy. She’d fed and bathed her as a baby and been a mother when the lady of the castle died and Gwen had just turned eight. “The table will be your dowry.”
“A table?” Gwen said with disgust. “That’s a silly thing for a dowry.”
“A special round table,” Nurse said, “so all the knights who sit there will be equals. It will be grand, large enough to seat all of your Arthur’s mightiest warriors, and he has many and more champions, let me tell you. It will fill the whole of his feast hall.”
“That’s a stupid idea,” said Gwen with all the certainty of her sixteen years. “I’ll go down in history as the queen with the silly table.”
“You mustn’t call your father’s gift stupid, chickling. Men don’t like that.”
“It’s my dowry, and it’s a poor design if it’s going to fill up a whole banquet hall. They should build the table like a ring. If they did it in sections, the servants could serve the food from inside the circle. It will take less wood that way.”
“What a clever girl you are,” Nurse said, but she sounded sad. “Don’t tell
your father.”
Gwen didn’t understand why, but the wisdom of her nurse’s advice became clear once she went ahead and shared her idea with King Leodegranz. Her father saw the advantages of her design at once, and the round table was built her way. Gwen was delighted until he told everyone the innovation was his own. The world of men had no place for young girls with ideas.
By the time she married Arthur, the table had been finished and delivered to Camelot and Guinevere had turned seventeen. The wedding itself was a dream—or a nightmare. Camelot was far larger than her father’s lands, the castle grander and filled with strangers. Gwen was expected to be a fine lady, fit to rule at her new husband’s side. She felt like an utter fraud.
It was easy to stand tall and proud during the wedding and the feast afterward. Her gown was so stiff with gold embroidery it might have stood on its own. Her handsome new husband was all merriment, drinking and dancing with everyone. He danced with her of course, but only a few times. Gwen knew that was proper, that the host had to make sure everyone had a little bit of his attention, but she selfishly wanted more. She hardly knew anyone there, after all.
That was when she first met the Mercian prince, who told her she was a beautiful bride and saw to it that her wine cup was filled and filled again. For a lonely young country girl, that kind of attention was balm to her nerves. She hadn’t yet learned to smell betrayal.
If only Arthur had known how naive she was—but he’d been a king since he’d pulled that sword from a stone as a child. He’d won wars, conquered tyrants and had an enchanter at his beck and call. She was good with chickens.
At the end of the long feast, he’d taken her to his bed. Nurse had told her—or tried to tell her—what would happen. Gwen had all but died of embarrassment and covered her ears. But in that moment, after her ladies had put her in her nightgown and brushed out her hair so that it lay like a shining cape almost to her knees, she wished she’d let Nurse speak. Gwen shook like an aspen leaf.
When he came to the queen’s bedchamber, Arthur wore only his shirt. One would have thought removing his fine clothes and crown would have made him seem smaller, but the opposite was true. She could see the deep chest and the hard muscles of a swordsman’s arms.
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