The Guinevere Deception

by Kiersten White

  On the far side of the arena was a small door, inconspicuous and nothing like the great gate that would open to spew spectator and combatant alike onto the main street of the city. She could be wrong—in which case all her efforts were wasted—but this seemed like a door for someone who wished to go unseen. Someone like the patchwork knight. She found a crate in the deep shadow of a leaning stone building and sat there.

  She was very good at waiting. She had once spent an entire day lying perfectly still on the forest floor, unmoving, to lure a doe to her side. It had worked. She smiled, remembering the velvet nose as it nudged her face. Less pleasant was what she had needed the doe for.

  She paused.

  What had she needed the doe for?

  The memory seemed to stop, cut off. As though she had turned a page and found the next one blank. She pushed at it, but nothing revealed itself. There was a dull ache behind her eyes. Maybe the confusion knot had done more than she had counted on.

  The roaring from the arena reached fever pitch, and then quickly died. The sun had set. The day’s fighting was through. She did not know the results, but she did not need those. She only needed the knight. The voices faded, drifting away. Everyone was returning home. And no one had come through this door. She had guessed wrong. Disappointed, she moved to stand and stretch her cramped muscles.

  Furtive footsteps made her freeze and twitch back into the shadows. A woman wearing a shawl over her head hurried to the door. She stumbled, and the bundle she carried in her arm spilled free. Crying out softly in dismay, the woman knelt and gathered the things as swiftly as she could.

  But Guinevere saw. Burlap-wrapped packets. Some fruit. And, inexplicably, several smooth stones.

  The woman knotted the bundle together as tightly as she could. The door opened. With a quick bow of gratitude, the woman passed the bundle to the knight. He tucked it into a bag at his side and then walked past Guinevere without seeing her and swiftly turned down a narrow alley. The woman went back the way she had come.

  Whom to follow?

  The knight. Guinevere shadowed him as he snaked through the back alleys of the city she had not yet been introduced to. These did not smell as pleasant as the main areas. The homes were closer together. They were not necessarily older, but they were not as well maintained. The wooden structures seemed less stable, and jammed in wherever there was a hint of space.

  The knight had not removed his helmet or his mask. He kept to the alleys between and behind houses. No doors opened into the spaces back here. The windows were shuttered. He and Guinevere might as well have been alone.

  He paused next to a crumbling foundation. Then he reached up and removed his mask. She was too far away to see. She could not hurry forward without risking discovery. She looked to the side to see if there was a better vantage point, but when she glanced toward the knight again, he was gone.

  Cursing herself, she sprinted to where he had vanished—and nearly tipped over a sheer edge of cliff that greeted her. It was the end of Camelot, the side shorn neatly to the black water a hundred feet beneath. She swayed, dizzy and sick, and caught a single glimpse of the patchwork knight, climbing straight down the side as though he were an insect.

  The new queen cannot be seen.

  It vexes the dark queen. Because the new queen should not matter—should be less than nothing—but the leaf said that the queen was not the queen, and that is intriguing. Her resources are better spent on Arthur, but so little is intriguing anymore. Even death has lost its sheen. So if the queen-not-queen is something new, she will discover what.

  The queen’s bedroom is protected the same as Arthur’s, petty knots, base tricks. They insult her. They are not a magic of life, creation or unmaking. They are a human trick. A border. A barrier. Humans and their walls. She has humans to take care of those. They will do their work in time.

  But she can feel another space. More windows. Her moth throws itself against them, beating its life against the glass. Inside, a heartbeat. Not the queen-not-queen’s heart. Someone else’s.

  And that heart is racing. That heart is—

  Magic. There is magic in that room.

  The moth expires. The true queen, the dark queen, the queen of stone and soil and tree, is pleased. Camelot has gotten very complicated. Complicated is close to chaos.

  And chaos is her realm.

  That the castle was directly uphill seemed a cruel punishment for Guinevere’s failure to catch the patchwork knight. She trudged up the streets. Candles illuminated shops being closed for the evening, families shuttering themselves against the night and the things that held sway in the dark dreamspaces it brought.

  The curfew bells had not yet rung. When showing her around the city, Brangien had mentioned them. Anyone found in the streets after the bells was escorted to a holding cell for the rest of the night. It prevented mischief and crime, but it made Guinevere’s life more difficult. And sad. Weaving a cloak of shadows was one piece of magic she relished. It did not bite or sting like the cleansing fire, or ask pieces of her like the knots. She had done it every night to escape the convent. When she slipped into shadows, flitting from pool of darkness to pool of darkness, each one claiming her as its own, she felt almost at home in her own skin. She loved the night. In the quiet stillness, she suspected, even a city could feel like a forest.

  What had dead Guinevere loved? What would she think of this wondrous mountain city? What would she think of her handsome, valiant husband, who wandered his lands constantly to maintain peace and justice, building a kingdom where all were welcome, so long as they fought for Camelot?

  Would dead Guinevere have loved the castle? Would she have missed her home? Would she have had a simpler relationship with Arthur? Perhaps one day they would have grown to love each other. Perhaps she would not have minded this endless, wretched hill.

  Who had ever thought to build a city into a mountain? It was a terrible idea. No wonder Camelot was impossible to invade. An army would have to rest before they got halfway to their goal. And that was after crossing a lake with no cover or navigating one of the thundering waterfalls. No, Camelot could only fall from within. Which was how Arthur had taken it.

  As though summoned by her thoughts, Arthur appeared from a side street. He swept onto the main thoroughfare, silver crown catching the light of his torch. At his side were several knights. They moved as one in his wake, a scent of smoke hanging from them like second cloaks. Arthur’s own cloak fell back to reveal his hand resting on the pommel of his sword.

  The sword.

  Excalibur.

  She had that same nebulous sense of recognition she had felt about Arthur. He looked over at her, his eyes passing her easily and disinterestedly as they scanned the buildings.

  Then he paused mid-step, turning to look at her once more. His eyes met hers, and he raised one eyebrow in question. Shocked, she shook her head. She did not want the men with him seeing her. As though nothing had happened, he continued up the hill toward the castle.

  But he had seen her. She reached up to the thread. Her knots still held. She could not explain how he had pierced the veil of her magic. But after these long days of being someone else, the sheer relief of being seen by the one person who knew her lifted her spirits enough that she was able to finish the climb to the castle. The stairs winding up the side, however, were too much to ask. She entered through the main gate, the soldiers there not bothering to look under her hood. She would have to talk to Arthur about that. And figure out a way to secure every door in and out of the castle. She did not expect an attack there, but Merlin’s infuriatingly vague instructions meant she could leave no opening unguarded. It would be tedious, wearying work. Far less exciting than chasing a mysterious knight through the city.

  Though she also planned on doing that again.

  * * *

  Guinevere slipped back into her bedroom,
relieved that the sitting room door was still closed. Brangien had not missed her. All her protection knots were in place as well, though she could feel that some of the tension coiled inside her was lessening. The knots would have to be redone tomorrow. How annoying that the physical relief of the knots coming undone meant they had to be remade.

  She bit off the tangled thread from Brangien’s hood, then carefully replaced the clothing she had taken. She pulled on a fur-lined robe. It was difficult not to touch the fur with her fingers. It was not that she did not want to feel what the animal had felt. Rather, the opposite. The brief spark of life and freedom made the walls unbearable. She would have to ask Arthur for some clothing without fur.

  And then she realized—if she could not follow the patchwork knight, she could take something of his!

  Merlin had not taught her touch magic. He did not seem to understand it—but in truth, she did not, either. It was unlike the knots, or the fire, or any of the other tricks in the handful she had at her disposal. For those, she had to concentrate. She had to perform them deliberately, and in certain ways.

  The touch magic simply happened. Most often with people, though it was hard to interpret. A person was constantly changing, even their skin always shedding and renewing itself.

  She did not like it. When it had been only her and Merlin, everything was familiar. It had been jarring in the convent, all the new sensations and feelings and people flooding her. Objects were less confusing. Like the fur, they usually held something of their origins. A sense of what they were, or what they could be. It was not always clear which she was feeling. However, if an object was important, it almost always whispered to her. And if she pushed, she could get more than a fleeting sensation. Though it felt intrusive and wrong to do so with people. She had tried it on one of the nuns and was met with a well of sadness and compassion so deep she could scarcely catch her breath.

  She did not understand the borders or the purpose of the touch magic, and that made her nervous. She liked the security of the knots. Still, she might be able to arrange a way to touch something of the patchwork knight’s. Most preferably his mask, which she sensed was more vital to the knight than his sword or his armor. Anything with a purpose to obscure could not help but reveal in equal measure.

  And she would try to find the woman from the alley, as well. Something about the exchange she had seen nagged at her.

  Arthur was back, though. Her eagerness to see him surprised her. It had been only a day since she met him, but he was the center of her life here already. She slipped past the tapestry and through the passageway to Arthur’s room. She knocked lightly on the door, waiting in the frigid space between stone wall and mountain rock. The cold radiated with an intensity that felt personal. She put her hand against the mountain, but it was too old and too immovable to react to her. It feared only—

  Water. It did not like water. She could feel it in the stone. It cared nothing for the men who crawled on it, nothing for the castle carved into its surface. But the water, the constant, relentless water, would someday unmake it. She felt how it had diverted the river, forced the water to split when it wanted to remain whole. How many more thousands of years the mountain would survive because of it. But not forever. It would be worn down and would disappear. The coldness mourned the future. Even mountains do not want to be unmade.

  “I understand,” she whispered, patting the stone.

  The stone pulsed back with—sullen recognition? She yanked her hand away, surprised and unnerved. She was about to return to her rooms when the door opened.

  “Come in.” Arthur stepped aside and held the tapestry so she would not have to duck. “I was hoping you would visit. I am not sure what Brangien would think if I came into your rooms.”

  “Whatever she thinks, I doubt she would criticize you. She is very fond of you.”

  “She is a good girl. Sir Tristan thinks highly of her.” He sat and she followed suit, trying not to show how amused she was at Arthur calling Brangien a girl. Brangien was the same age as he. But Arthur wore the weight of a nation on his shoulders. Perhaps he had earned the right to feel older than those around him.

  “Are you well?” he asked, leaning closer.

  She had not intended to bring it up, but her body had slumped into an arc of exhaustion, betraying her. “The next few days will be difficult. But once I have the foundations of the protections in place, maintaining them will require less of me.”

  “Please let me know if there is anything I can do.”

  She appreciated the offer, but if Arthur could do this for himself, she would not be here. Arthur had always needed magical protection. He ruled Camelot, but she had skills he never could have.

  “I have a few thoughts,” she said, reinvigorated by her confidence. She was no Merlin, but she had Merlin’s trust. And Arthur’s, too. “First, tell your guards at the gates that women can be threats as easily as men, and they should check everyone who comes in.”

  Arthur frowned as if it had never occurred to him. Even though he himself had fought a queen of tremendous power. He nodded. “I will instruct them. Though, will that not make your tasks harder?”

  “All my efforts will be for naught if an assassin in women’s clothes can walk right through the front gate.”

  He poured two glasses of watered wine and passed one to her. “I would like you to tell me if you are leaving the castle, though. What if something had happened to you? I would not know where to look.”

  Guinevere raised an eyebrow. “You forget your place, my king. You are not to worry about me, I am to worry about you.”

  “Ah.” Arthur’s brow darkened, and he took a sip from his glass. “What else?”

  “What do you know of the patchwork knight?”

  Arthur’s whole demeanor shifted as he gestured with so much animation he nearly spilled his drink. “Did you see him fight? Oh, he is magnificent. I have longed to declare a tournament for him, but the problem with rule of law is that you have to abide by your own silly ideas. If I made an exception for him, the knights who earned their places would be resentful, and those who were not given the same accommodation would be angry. Every day I hope there will be fewer aspirants so we can finally set the tournament. I did not expect the opportunity to fight for me to be quite so popular.”

  “Arthur. You are the greatest king in generations. Of course men want to fight for you. For what you are building here.”

  He ducked his head, rubbing the back of his neck. “Well. There must be a reason you mentioned him specifically.”

  She did not want to dampen his enthusiasm, but it had to be addressed. “He might not be human.”

  “What?”

  “The way he moved. His incredible stillness between fights. If he makes it through, the tournament ends with you on a field watered by fairy blood. If I were an assassin fueled by magic, I would come at you in just such a way.”

  Arthur seemed reluctant with his next words. She thought it was because he did not want to give up his dreams of a new treasured knight, until he finally spoke. “You are wrong.”

  “What?”

  “You are wrong. He is not fairy or using magic.”

  “But I saw him fight! And I followed him after the fighting was done. A woman gave him an odd package, and then he went to the sheer cliff face on the southern side. He climbed straight down.”

  “Really? That is remarkable!” Arthur was again more delighted than concerned.

  “I know no human who could do such a thing!”

  “I have seen men display feats of strength that seemed magical. It is what I believe in most deeply. The ability of men to be greater than themselves. Everything here is aimed toward building on that.”

  “That is all well and good, but—” Guinevere stopped herself. She slowed down, smiling. “That is all well and good. The best. But you cannot say he is n
ot a creature of magic unless you have met him. Have you?”

  “I do not have to. I learned from Merlin as well, if you recall. He could not teach me magic—I have no skill for it—but he taught me about it. We spent so many hours together.” Arthur smiled, then squinted. “Who took care of you when Merlin was with me? He spent months at a time instructing me during my childhood, and then he was at my side here for two straight years before being banished.”

  Guinevere reached for the memory. There were the birds, and the deer, the creeping sly foxes, the rabbits burrowing beneath the earth. And Merlin. But surely there had been someone else? She would have to use that wretched confusion knot more sparingly. She could feel the spaces of her mind, distant and unreachable through a fog. She shook her head. “Do not change the subject. How can you know the patchwork knight is human?”

  “No aspirant is allowed to bring his own sword into the ring. Every sword provided is iron. Even the pommels are made of it. None of the fair folk could hold one.”

  “Oh.” Guinevere leaned back in her seat, all her suspicions and her night’s work wasted. Iron bit fairy flesh. Fairies could not stand to be near it, much less hold it and fight with it. “That was very clever of you.”

  He laughed. “Do not sound so surprised. I know how to use my brain in addition to my sword.”

  “Of course! Of course you do. I am upset with myself, not with you. What about the woman with the package?”

  “Doubtless an admirer giving him a gift in hopes of winning his favor.”

  “Mmm.” It made sense. If only she could have seen what was in the burlap packets. And why rocks? She could not shake the movement of the patchwork knight from her mind, either. It nagged at her. He might not be fairy, but he was different. Fundamentally. Maybe he was something new. Maybe the fair folk had discovered a way around their aversion to iron and the fear of biting death it brought. She was not done suspecting the patchwork knight. But she would do it in private rather than challenge Arthur and make him think she doubted his intelligence again.