How to Survive Promotion in the Middle Ages (11/11)

[themadlurker]

Please see Masterpost for fic headers and author's notes.

Back to Part Ten



Rupert, Earl of Northumbria was feeling, for the first time since his arrival at Camelot, distinctly peakish and not at all confidant in his bargaining position.

"I must assure you, sire, my lord," he said, stumbling over the words and throwing in an extra bow for good measure, "that I had not the slightest idea of any deception. Always a most loyal - a most honest - servant of Camelot - and of your highness - your majesty."

Rupert eyed the guards around him nervously. He had been escorted very politely from the tournament grounds by a number of guards who, having missed their chance to catch two fleeing Northumbrians that day, were not taking any chances on a third. At least one of the guards had taken the opportunity to prod him - accidentally - in the ribs as they moved along.

"You say you were not involved in this conspiracy," said King Arthur. "And yet they came here disguised as your own kith and kin. You must have had some idea."

"We're hardly even family!" Rupert hastened to say. "I'd never even met the boy until we set out. The last time I saw Lady Lavinia was when I was ten years old at my sister's funeral. She looks the same now as she did then, only a little older, of course. And they met us at the road from Sir Rothby's manor, what else was I supposed to think? You can't cross-question extended family, it isn't polite."

"Did you recognize the woman posing as your nephew?" Arthur demanded.

"I told you, my lord, I'd never seen the boy before," Rupert said frantically. "I don't even know what Sir Rothby looks like - or I didn't until I met him - her - I don't even know if that is his face!"

"What I asked you," said the King slowly, "was did you recognize the sorceress after the enchantment was lifted and her true face was revealed?"

"What do you - how could I?" Rupert extemporized. "That is, it was a very long way from the stands, and they did have their helmets on for so much of the time, it was hard to see..." He had an idea, just a suspicion, of who she might have been, based on what some of the guards had been murmuring as they apprehended him, but he wasn't about to admit to anything in these circumstances.

"Her name is Morgause," said Arthur, confirming Rupert's worst suspicions, "and she has tried to kill me, deceive me, and even led armies against me more times than I can count. This is the woman you brought into my court as a protected - as an honoured member of your household. Can you think of any reason why I should not hold you accountable for her treasonous acts?"

"But I didn't know!" Rupert protested. "I didn't know who she was, or what she was planning. You must believe me, sire."

"Yet you defended her slanderous accusations against the Queen," King Arthur said harshly, "and encouraged the impostor to make a mockery of this court with her lies. Do you expect me to believe you had no idea what else she was planning?"

"None at all, I swear it," said Rupert. "What else can I do, other than assure you that I am entirely innocent in this, that Northumbria has never had any designs..."

The king watched in deep contemplation as Rupert floundered for words.

"I might be more willing to believe in your loyalty," Arthur said at last, "if it were not for the unfortunate state of confusion that seems to have arisen over the fealty owed to the crown of Camelot by the noble families of Northumbria."

"Confusion?" asked Rupert. "I don't understand how that can be connected to-" and then he spotted the faintest flicker of a smirk across the King's features.

Aha, thought Rupert. So everything did come down to politics in the end. Still, it was better than being executed.

"I am very sorry to hear you talk of such confusion," Rupert said. "I had thought our discussions were tending most promisingly towards a reaffirmation of Northumbria's fealty on very similar terms to those that existed in your father's time."

It wasn't what he had hoped: a lessening of tribute, or even its end, would have bought him a great deal of respect at home; a little more autonomy might have brought recognition from the neighbouring kingdoms. Ah well. Politics was rarely a joyous occupation.

"Surely," he continued, "if anything has emerged from our visit to your court - these unfortunate incidents aside - it is the warm friendship and connection we feel towards Cam- toward the rest of Camelot."

"You would be willing to renew the vows of fealty your father made to my father, as a gesture of your goodwill?" the King asked, his smirk now barely hidden. "And you will allow one of my councillors to examine you and all your party for any signs of magical devices or enchantments?"

Rupert bowed, deeply enough to hide any stray annoyance that might have made its way into his own expression. "It would seem to be a fitting conclusion to our visit here, and I'm certain that such an examination will seem a very reasonable precaution to all our people." Or Rupert would have choice words with them about the importance of diplomacy.

"I am very glad to hear you say that," said Arthur. "It would be unfortunate, would it not, if such conspiracies and stratagems were to divide the loyalties of true friendship?"

It would, Rupert agreed silently, be almost as unfortunate as finding one's carefully laid plans interrupted by an unauthorized presence among one's delegation.

They were already singing songs about it, Gwaine thought in appalled disbelief. It hadn't even been a day. The younger knights and even the youngest squires, some of them no more than nine or ten years old, had been allowed to remain all night in the Great Hall to celebrate, officially, the successful renewal of the treaty between Camelot and Northumbria and, unofficially, the vindication of the Queen's good name, the victory of the Queen's champion over the sorceress, and Lancelot having the prettiest hair that Camelot had ever seen, to judge from some of the impromptu ballads being composed in its honour.

The cheerfulness was interfering with Gwaine's drinking. He'd made some efforts to relocate to the village pub, which might even be quieter at this hour, but drinking Lancelot's health over and over was taking a toll on his own, and he didn't get farther than the next bench.

"Sir Lancelot is the hottest shot, the bravest knight in Camelot," sang one of the squires with great fervour and questionable accuracy, since no one had actually seen the new arrival at archery practice yet.

Not that he was likely to be any worse at that than at swordplay, Gwaine reflected morosely. Lancelot would probably prove to be the greatest archer in the land, and the most popular knight and, now that the whole business with the Queen was cleared up, he'd probably have courtiers falling all over themselves to work their way into his bed. It was sickening. (Though that could have been the third flagon of ale.)

Someone needed to show these... these sycophants that Lancelot wasn't the only knight in Camelot who knew how to swing a sword. What they needed - more than silly songs that were already exaggerating the man's prowess - was to see Sir Lancelot knocked firmly on his arse, preferably on a very muddy field. There was one behind the tournament grounds that would suit the purpose admirably, having the double advantage of being suitably public as well as directly along the path the horses took from the stables and therefore considerably augmented by horse muck.

Then another servant came round with a fresh pitcher of ale and Gwaine forgot why he was worried about anything. He tried a stumbling step off the bench and found that his legs worked again, for a specific, tottering value of worked, and went off in search of Merlin, to tell him that he was his very best friend in the world.

Everything after that went a little blurry, but he remembered singing under Merlin's window, only it turned out to belong to someone else. In the morning he woke up in the old physician's quarters with his face mashed against a hard surface covered in something green and sticky. Every part of him ached, but especially his head. Something prickled at his palm and his attempts to scratch at it revealed a note tucked into his hand saying:

"Let's call it the best of three. And take it from me, if you stand aside for someone better, you have only yourself to blame when you get exactly what you wanted."

Gwaine could make neither heads nor tails of it, and the light was uncomfortably, uncommonly bright, so he left the mystery unsolved in favour of going back to sleep.

The Northumbrian delegation set off at first light, Earl Rupert seeming unaccountably eager to be elsewhere. He made a great show of sending a messenger on before him to remind his steward of the need for haste in dispatching gifts and tribute to the court of Camelot - preferably ones that could be safely across the border before Rupert and his party would be required to leave the safe conduct of the Camelot knights accompanying him on the road home - in case they got lost, the King had said, or met any roaming sorcerers along the way.

The King and Queen themselves saw the party off, despite Rupert's heartfelt assurances that there was no need to bestir themselves so early. It was no trouble, though, the Queen insisted sweetly, and the royal pair stood on the castle steps as Rupert rode off in state, doing his best not to look nervously over his shoulder every second as he did.

When the party had cleared the courtyard, King Arthur muttered out of the side of his mouth, "Is that the last of them?"

"Almost," Gwen replied in the same manner.

A gangling squire, a youth no more than fourteen, who had obviously been misinformed about the hour of their departure, or perhaps simply bewildered by the early start, ran tripping and stumbling out of the castle, one side of his trousers half falling down as he went. He achieved the mounting of his horse by a combination of luck and patience on the part of the animal, who waited until the boy had righted himself from his original leaping sprawl and was, more or less, sitting upright, before cantering off after the rest of the delegation.

As the clatter of his horses' hooves faded from the cobblestones, Arthur's barely restrained smirk broke out into helpless snickering.

"You shouldn't laugh," Gwen said, although her smile showed definite signs of amusement as well. "He was clearly frightened out of his senses."

"Oh, he'll catch up with them all right," Arthur said, "with probably nothing more than boxed ears for being late."

"That's not who I meant and you know it," Gwen said, not very sternly. "Rupert looked like he expected the archers to open fire from the battlements the moment he was clear of the castle."

"I can't imagine why," Arthur said innocently. "We often have as many as a hundred archers lining the battlements. There's nothing peculiar about having a mere fifty stationed around the courtyard."

"Yes, but that's when the castle is under siege," Gwen pointed out. "You weren't actually expecting Rupert to attempt some kind of suicide manoeuvre on his way out the door, were you?"

"Of course not," Arthur agreed, "it was just a friendly gesture of goodwill."

"Like the hundred and fifty guards and the half dozen knights you sent along with him," Gwen added. "The poor man looked terrified. He thinks they're going to murder him along the road. Goodwill?"

"Exactly," said Arthur with a self-satisfied grin. "Exactly as much goodwill as he came here to show us. It seemed fitting, don't you agree?"

Gwen just sighed indulgently. "For what it's worth, I don't believe he had anything to do with... with the rest of what happened. He only saw a chance to try to renegotiate alliances to his own advantage, not to overthrow you. He wasn't expecting the assassination attempt. I believe Morgana about that, at least."

Arthur's amusement faded as she spoke, and he said, "I have half a mind to start this day with an execution."

"You can't," said Gwen, sounding appalled. "I promised her two days. And besides, she's your sister."

"I know." Arthur's voice was suddenly grim, the levity completely gone from his tone. "That only makes it worse."

"Could you really do it, though?" Gwen asked softly. "Even after everything - could you?"

"I don't see what other choice we have," Arthur replied. "Or what's to stop her from trying again? And again?"

Gwen laid a hand on his arm. The courtyard had slowly emptied of those few people come to see the party off - mostly grooms and stablehands who had left once their part was done - but a few lingered, going about their work, or simply getting a start on the tasks of the new day. They couple stood and watched the life of the castle stirring in the early morning.

"It can wait a little," Gwen suggested. "You've barely eaten anything yet, and we could get away from the castle for a little, go for a ride in the woods -"

"No," said Arthur, interrupting her but not unkindly. "No, it has to be now. Before I forget what all the last week has felt like."

Morgana had passed one of the worst nights of her life. She dreamed over and over of her own execution. Each time she felt certain the dream was a prophetic one, and woke expecting to find it was morning, and time to die. By the time she slept, and slept soundly, it was nearing day, and the first of the morning twilight crept in around her where she lay.

The room she had been moved to, after the events of the previous day made the King wish to keep her closer under his watchful eye, was a place as familiar to her as the back of her own hand. When someone brushed her hair back from her face and woke her with a gentle hand on her back, Morgana stirred and said, "Gwen?" out of long habit.

It wasn't until she was sitting and leaning groggily against Gwen's shoulder that she spotted Arthur standing behind her and knew that something was not right. She drew back hastily from Gwen's embrace, seeing now that it was not her maid, but the Queen of Camelot, come in to wake her. The clothes were different, that was all; the face and voice were the same.

"Couldn't you have waited until I was dressed, at least?" Morgana asked sharply, the fearful dreams of the night pressing themselves back into her consciousness.

"Do you really believe you deserve any consideration, now?" Arthur asked. He held back, hovering, as if unwilling to come too near Morgana, but unwilling to leave Gwen alone with her.

"If you're going to execute me anyway, I might at least ask for some dignity about it," Morgana said with a forced shrug. "Could you hand me that dressing gown?"

Arthur picked up the gown hanging nonchalantly over the back of a chair and tossed it to her while touching it as little as possible.

Morgana managed enough mirth to roll her eyes at him as she put it on. Then she got out of bed and walked over to the window to see if there were an executioner's block or a stake being readied. The courtyard was empty so far, although the sight alone did not entirely reassure her.

"You kept your word, Gwen, I'll give you that much," she said at last. "No one gets executed until after lunch, am I right? It does spoil the appetite so much - at least, it always did mine, Uther never seemed to mind it."

She looked at Arthur as she said it and was pleased to see him wince. Perhaps, if for no other reason, her life might be spared out of his distaste for the number of executions he had witnessed in his time as Crown Prince.

"If it makes any difference," Morgana went on, "I've always hated the sound of the axe falling - I know it's not as if I'd have time to dwell on it, in the circumstances, but I'd rather be burned if it's all the same to -"

"Stop it," said Gwen harshly. Her voice sounded rough, although her face showed no sign of tears. "We're not here to talk about killing you. Or to drag you out to your death."

"Yet," Arthur muttered under his breath, then fell silent at a look from Gwen.

Morgana refused to allow herself to hope.

"What do you mean to do with me then?" she asked. "I don't suppose you'd consider letting me go if I promise never to do anything naughty again?"

"If that's what you want..." Gwen said slowly. Arthur looked like he wanted to protest, but Gwen carried on regardless, "Have you thought about - about staying?"

Arthur gaped. "We can't - she's shown she can't be trusted - you want her living in the castle?"

Gwen bit her lip. "But if she can get in anyway, wouldn't it be better, to have her here, where we know - and I think it would be better-" she turned to Morgana and took her hand "-really, better, if you could see how things are now, and that Camelot has changed for the better since you've been gone."

Morgana looked down at their fingers twisted together, her own lying limp and unresisting as Gwen's held tightly.

Morgana drew her hand back and smiled bitterly. "He's absolutely right, you know. You can't trust me. Who knows what enchantments I could perform? I might try to bring the castle down around your ears."

"But surely now that Morgause is gone-" Arthur started, and then stumbled to a halt. "You mean, but you - you were never-" His face was a mask of astonishment.

Morgana blinked with surprise which she covered up as quickly as she could. "No, of course you wouldn't suspect a thing like that," Morgana said defensively. "How could you? Uther's son? Did you think all the sorcerers skulked around in the woods plotting to kill you? I never asked for magic," she added quietly, more to herself than anyone else.

"But you never told-" said Arthur.

"Did you expect me to sharpen the axe for you myself?" Morgana asked, with a pointed glance toward the courtyard.

Arthur was still staring at her, looking astounded and somewhat affronted, but Gwen was nodding along in understanding.

"But don't you see?" she asked Morgana. "Now that Uther's gone, now that it's us, it doesn't matter about all that. We don't care if you're a witch, or a sorceress, or an enchantress -"

"Don't we?" said Arthur in bewilderment. "Wait, do you mean it was you who - with the disguise, and the sword, and, and-"

"We don't care," Gwen repeated firmly. "And so things could be different now. Couldn't they?"

Morgana's head was reeling. Whether it was more at Gwen's quiet certainty or at herself for blurting out what she had kept secret for so long - but then, she was sure, had been sure that they must have figured it out by now. Or perhaps she had simply spent so long by Morgause's side, she had forgotten what it was like to conceal her true nature.

Arthur hadn't actually sent for the guards yet, which was something. Something, but not enough.

"I just want to be left alone," Morgana found herself saying wearily. Then she got a look at Gwen's wounded expression and added, "For now, anyway."

"Where would you go?" Gwen asked. "Not back to -"

"To Morgause?" Morgana finished. "I don't know. Maybe. There's nowhere else for me to go, really."

Arthur, who had been watching them contemplatively, stepped in now with, "What about your father's lands?"

Morgana stared at him. "My father was Uther," she said slowly. "His lands are - Camelot."

"Not Camelot," said Arthur deliberately, "Cornwall. Your father was Gorlois, Duke of Cornwall. I see no reason why you should not lay claim to his lands now, so many years after his death."

Morgana couldn't decide whether he was being willfully stupid or genuinely so. She settled for raising an eyebrow at him, which seemed to cover all options."You know perfectly well that Uther was my father. He admitted as much on his death bed. Half the court of Camelot must know it by now."

"By laying claim to Gorlois' lands," Arthur carried on as if he had not heard her, "you acknowledge that you are his legitimate daughter, and that you therefore have no right to be considered Uther's child, or heir, or any member of the Pendragon family, and you relinquish all rights the Crown of Camelot. As everyone knows, my father was sadly prone to some fits of - confusion - near the end of his days. There is no doubt that you are Gorlois' daughter, or that my father considered you his child only in the purely adoptive sense. It would be best," he added, as Morgana blinked at him in genuine surprise, "if you put all of that in writing, for the royal archives."

Morgana nodded slowly, not sure of what to say. It would be denying her own lineage - but then, it was a lineage that she had loathed and despised ever since she learned of it. And did it matter, really, whether the lands she governed spanned an entire kingdom, so long as they were hers?

"I'm not paying you tribute," she told Arthur, "I don't care if it's traditional. You can ask for my help if you start any wars, and I'll consider sending you aid, but you're not going to order me about, or get a lot of gifts and tokens from me just so you can tell everyone how magnificent you are."

Arthur laughed at that. "Are you really trying to negotiate with me about this?" he asked incredulously.

"Don't be ridiculous," Morgana said, "this was never a negotiation. I'm giving up my birthrights, you're getting peace. I think it's pretty clear who's getting the better deal out of this."

Gwen was biting her lip as she looked between the two of them. It looked like barely restrained amusement.

"And you're going to abolish our father's - sorry, your father's-" Morgana corrected herself "-ridiculous law about sorcery. And stop hunting down the druids. And -" she floundered for something further "- and you'll hire a court sorcerer to show the people that magic is nothing to be feared."

Morgana's heart was running away with her in sheer giddy terror at what she was asking, but she couldn't back down now. It was right, and what's more, if Arthur didn't agree, it wouldn't matter if he let her go now, because he could always declare her a traitor someday in the future for using magic; she would still be living with the same fear.

"Is that all?" Arthur asked when she had finished. His eyebrows had crawled gradually up his forehead as she listed her demands but he was dragging them back down into place with visible effort. "Would you like a pony, as well?"

Morgana huffed. "Well, I will need something to ride back to Cornwall on, assuming you've sent the horse I borrowed from Lady Lavinia back to Northumbria." Arthur folded his arms, and she added hastily, "But I'm sure you'll think of something appropriate."

"I'll make some arrangements," Arthur said, and turned to go. "Gwen?" he asked, when he reached the door and found himself alone.

"You go on," Gwen said, without taking her eyes off Morgana's face. "We have a lot more things to talk about, I think."

Arthur looked at the two of them, shrugged helplessly, and left them alone.

Gwen waited till he had gone, then pulled Morgana into her arms, despite her resistance, and simply held her until Morgana softened and hugged her back. Morgana breathed in the familiar scent of Gwen's hair - flowers, and something clean, like soap or clear water - and tried very hard not to cry with relief.

Gwaine's head hadn't stopped aching, and his breakfast sat uneasily in his stomach. It would, perhaps, have been better to try to find the kitchens, but he was afraid that if he tried to find his way around the castle he would bump into someone who despised him, since by now that must include most of the inhabitants. Besides, the food he had found tucked away in a cupboard in Gaius' old rooms had seemed palatable enough, although his digestion was now giving him second thoughts on the subject.

A shadow fell across the stain on the workbench he had been staring at disconsolately, startling him out of his reverie. He hadn't heard the creak of the door.

"If I changed the sign on the door" -it was Merlin's voice, far too bright and cheerful for the end of the world- "from 'Keep out, by order of the King' to, 'Please come in! We welcome test subjects for all our dangerous and experimental medicines!' do you think people would finally stop breaking in here?"

Gwaine tilted his chin up off the table enough to see the source of the voice. Merlin was smiling down at him, although there was a hint of a smirk in there as well.

"I heard you challenged Lancelot to a duel," Merlin said with no faint amusement.

"Ah, right," said Gwaine, to whom the amount of bruising on his backside and the stiffness of his arm muscles now made a great deal more sense. "I dare say I did, at that."

"At three in the morning," Merlin continued, "while drunk out of your mind."

Gwaine nodded regretfully. That, too, sounded entirely too plausible. And explained the first part of the note he had found himself drooling on when he awoke for the second time that day.

"Right after declaring your undying love to person or persons unknown, while standing under the window of the royal bedchambers," Merlin added. "I'm not sure whether it was Arthur or Gwen you were aiming for when you took off your shirt and flung it at their window, but I shouldn't think Arthur will be too pleased with you either way."

Gwaine groaned and returned his head to its former position on the table. Maybe if he pressed down hard enough, it would actually sink through the table, and then the rest of him would have a leg up - so to speak - on passing the rest of the way through the floor.

"'sn't th'rght w'ndw," he muttered into the table.

"Ah, well that'll be a relief to Lancelot," Merlin said. "For some reason he seems to have taken sympathy to your amorous plight. He told me he thinks you're actually even more hopeless than he was about courting Gwen and, believe me, I saw how good he was at that. When things started going well for him, he actually ran away in the middle of the night and disappeared from her life until she was married."

"So it would be fair to say they haven't been having much of a romance since then?" Gwaine asked without raising his head and feeling, if possible, even more miserably ashamed of his behaviour.

"Not as such, no," Merlin said cheerfully. "What I've been having trouble working out is how anyone could manage to do worse. In what part of your ale-soaked brain did you think that a midnight serenade was going to go well for you?"

"I thought perhaps it would give people something new to talk about," Gwaine told the table, "besides the fact that I'm now the most unpopular knight at Camelot. Only now they'll be talking about how I'm a love-stricken, drunken idiot... and the most unpopular knight at Camelot."

Merlin sat down next to him and bumped their shoulders together. He had to do most of the work himself, since Gwaine was stationary. "Oh, come on. It can't be that bad, you're not unpopular with everyone."

"Name one person at Camelot who wouldn't prefer to see me face down in a ditch," Gwaine demanded.

Merlin nudged him again. "You're still popular with me. And there are loads of people I don't like, so you know you're ahead of the running there."

Gwaine just shrugged, although he felt a little cheered by the thought despite himself.

"Go on, let's have a smile from you," Merlin said cajolingly. "I know you know how to do it."

Gwaine shook his head. His cheek scraped against the wood grain of the bench. "It's not that simple. It's just the latest in a long line of things that prove I had no business coming here in the first place. Camelot doesn't need a knight like me. It needs people like Lancelot, who have a kind of nobility that has nothing to do with who their parents were. If he could see me now, I have no doubt my father would be heartily ashamed of me."

"Don't say that," said Merlin quietly, sadly. "Just because things haven't been going the way you expected doesn't mean there's no place for you here. Not everyone has to be a Lancelot. Most people aren't, you know."

"I just don't know why I should even try," Gwaine said. "Nothing good ever comes of it. Everyone loves him the minute they meet him. With me, they can't wait to see the back of me. What hope do I have of happiness here?"

Merlin didn't answer that for a long time and Gwaine, curious, finally lifted his head properly to look at him. There was a strange look on Merlin's face that he couldn't place. Then Merlin stuck his chin out a little stubbornly, leaned forward, and kissed him.

It was just a light brush of lips, perfectly chaste and undemanding. Gwaine blinked in disbelief.

"What was that for?" he asked. A small part of his head told him that he was still asleep and dreaming this. A larger part of his head told him that, if he were dreaming, his head wouldn't be aching this much.

Merlin smiled faintly. "Now you can't say nothing good ever happens to you," he said.

His tongue darted out nervously to run across his lower lip as if tasting the kiss. It made something turn over in the pit of Gwaine's stomach - something he was fairly sure wasn't from his breakfast. No food ought to be able to make his insides flip themselves upside down like that. If it was something he'd eaten doing this, it was probably an early sign that he'd ingested poison and was slowly dying.

But if it wasn't - if it was nothing but the flick of Merlin's tongue across his lips, the way a smile tugged at the corner of his mouth, that could make Gwaine's heart pound loudly in his ears and his blood rush down - well, Gwaine would still be doomed, just in a different way. Gwaine laughed, at himself as much as anything.

"One kiss is hardly enough to change the shape of a man's destiny, Merlin," he said seriously. It couldn't even banish his hangover, much as he'd like it too. It did, perhaps, just barely, give him a reason not to sink through the floor quite yet.

His chest felt lighter than it had all day - not that that was saying much, but it was better than he'd felt in a long time, really. Since he'd arrived at Camelot, or even before. When had he last felt like this? When he'd woken up to find Merlin grinning down at him, improbably, at some remote inn at the edge of civilization, telling him to pack up his things and head back to Camelot? He'd been hungover then too, come to think of it.

"How about a lot of kisses?" Merlin asked. "Do you think that could be destiny-changing enough?"

"Aye, that might do the trick," Gwaine said agreeably. At the very least, Merlin might turn out to be an effective cure for headaches. A little harmless experimentation in the name of medical research couldn't be a bad thing.

"I'll see what I can do, then," Merlin promised. "It could take a while though. You'd have to stick around, spend a few more months at Camelot."

"Oh, at the very least," said Gwaine solemnly. "I wouldn't want to rush your work, my friend."

Merlin nodded with equal solemnity. "It's a tricky thing, destiny. There's just no forcing it."

"Well, thank god that's over," said Arthur, slumping back into a chair in his rooms a few nights later. Morgana was gone - at last - for now - and Arthur was relishing the peace and quiet. The relative peace and quiet, at least. The royal chambers seemed to be undergoing a gradual invasion as Merlin, for reasons passing Arthur's understanding, had started bringing Gwaine with him everywhere and Gwaine, in turn, for reasons equally unknowable, had suddenly formed a fond and firm friendship with Lancelot that seemingly necessitated his presence as well.

It wasn't that Arthur hadn't tried to throw them out - well, to hint that the royal chambers were best left to King and Queen alone - but Merlin and Gwaine had been willfully oblivious to the suggestion and when Lancelot, whose politeness was unimpeachable, had maded his apologies and tried to leave, Merlin's lower lip had positively wobbled and Guinevere had sighed and that, it seemed, was that. Arthur would never be alone with his wife again.

Not that it was all bad. At least now when Guinevere and Merlin retreated into a seat by the window to giggle together, Arthur had someone left to talk to, or challenge to a quiet game of chess. Moreover it seemed that Lancelot, to Gwaine and Arthur's shared delight, was terrible at chess. There was something infinitely satisfying about proving your intellectual prowess against a man who had tossed you, not once, but twice, into the mud during sword practice that day.

The chess board was currently set up on a small, round table by the fire in Arthur's rooms. The table was a doubly belated wedding gift from Merlin, who had somehow managed to come up with a replacement for his original gift amid the furious activity of the preceding days. Arthur didn't know how he had managed it. It was remarkably similar to the original enormous one, almost a perfect scale model, in fact, just large enough for the five of them to sit around if they didn't mind bumping knees.

When Arthur asked Merlin why he couldn't get one in an ordinary, useful size, Merlin said, "I think it's the right size for now. It'll be bigger when there are more people to sit around it," which didn't make any sense, but Arthur tried not to let that sort of thing bother him where Merlin was concerned.

Tonight they had all gathered round it to watch Gwaine further Lancelot's strategic education. Arthur had chosen his place nearest the hearth, not because he needed the warmth on this mild night, but because Guinevere was already perched against the chair's arm, and sank a little closer into his side every time she yawned with a small, sleepy sigh.

On the chess board, Lancelot moved a pawn, clearly having forgotten that it was guarding one of his bishops. Gwaine did his best to suppress a crow of triumph as he swooped in for the kill.

"It has been a little busy," Guinevere agreed with him through another yawn, "even for Camelot."

"At least it's done, which means we must be in for some quiet now. I don't think I could stand any more surprises this week," said Arthur. "Is there any way of stopping people sneaking into the castle in disguise? It seems like we should be able to do something to stop it."

"Ah, about that, sire," said Lancelot, staring with more than usual concentration at the chess board where his forces were rapidly dwindling to nothing. "There is someone who I recently learned has come to Camelot under an assumed name - although not with any ill intent. I believe she would be most suited to join the knights of Camelot."

Arthur sighed. "As long as I know who it is - hang on, did you say she? No, it doesn't matter," he added hastily, as Guinevere drew back to look at him sharply, "I just wondered if there was anything more to your connection with her than you were telling us." He searched Lancelot's face for any sign of a blush, but as they were all sitting so near the fire, it was hard to be certain.

"Fine, bring her to the open trials tomorrow," Arthur said at last. "We'll see what she's made of. I wish it were that easy finding a court sorcerer. Even if they weren't afraid to come here for the job, how am I supposed to know which ones to trust, or that any one isn't harbouring a grudge against me for my father's sake?"

There was a cough and sudden silence from everyone around him, except for Gwaine, who cheerfully knocked over Lancelot's king before noticing the hush as well.

"Arthur, Merlin has something he'd like to tell you," said Guinevere. From the way Merlin was wincing, Arthur presumed she was standing on his foot somewhere under the table.

"You know, like Arthur was saying, it's been a really busy week, I don't think we need any more..." Merlin trailed off under the combined stares of the rest.

"All right," Merlin said, "but remember you asked about this..."

From all the way down in the silent courtyard and beyond the castle walls, the quiet of the night was broken by an indignant cry:

"MERLIN!!!!!"

THE END

Crossposted from http://themadlurker.dreamwidth.org/64668.html at Dreamwidth.
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