“Oh shit,” Dunstan’s brother moaned, a flash of recognition lighting his pimply face.
Lancelot cocked his head and smiled ruefully. “Well said.” He looked over his shoulder at the largest of the three. “If you want to have any chance of keeping your hands, get over here now.” His voice was so commanding Vera almost wanted to hop off her horse and obey, too.
The large boy reluctantly trudged forward. Lancelot stowed the brothers’ daggers in his belt. They’d all shifted enough that Vera couldn’t see, so she edged her horse closer to the road. She wasn’t as hidden but had a much better view. It was nearly dark, and the boys were facing away from her now anyway. As Lancelot turned back to Dunstan, the largest boy stopped halfway between Vera and Lancelot. He bounced on his toes, hanging in the balance of forward and backward movement. Lancelot’s eyes shot up, sensing that something had gone amiss. The boy was about to do something stupid.
He turned and took off at a lumbering sprint down the road toward Vera. She didn’t pause to consider the potential consequences. Vera kicked her horse into a run, urging her out into the road, where she drew up the reins and stopped so hard that her hood fell back. She unsheathed Lancelot’s sword with both hands, wheeled it in a high arc over her head, and brought it down in front of the boy, halting his path forward. He skidded to a stop and fell back on his bottom, staring up at her in unbridled shock.
“I would reconsider,” she said.
The boy mouthed wordlessly, scrambling backward like a scuttling crab.
“Is that the queen?” the boy with acne asked in horrified awe.
Lancelot gazed at Vera with one corner of his lips quirked up. “Yes, it is.”
Vera thought she heard astonishment in his voice but decided she might have been mistaken as Lancelot shifted to glare at the largest boy. He lumbered back and joined the others.
“Sit.” Lancelot spat the word.
Unsurprisingly, they all did so. None of them dared move. They likely hadn’t even dared blink.
“I don’t know what your lives are like,” Lancelot began after an uncomfortably long stretch of glaring at them in silence, “but the mess you have created on this road has not gone unnoticed by your king. It will not continue.” He paced in front of them, pointedly meeting each of their eyes. “You have a choice. Show up tomorrow at the armory, swear your allegiance to your king, and join his forces. You will have a place to live and food to eat, and you will learn to become good men rather than thieving boys. Or, if you don’t show up, you will be found by the king’s guard itself, and you will not be treated with the leniency I offer today. Do I make myself clear?”
They all nodded vigorously, like anxious chickens pecking for worms.
“Good,” Lancelot said. “Now go—before I change my mind.”
The boys scrambled to their feet and took off back toward Glastonbury at a run. They gaped at Vera slack-jawed as they passed her, except for the large boy, who stared at the dirt. Soon, they were formless lumps fading in the distance.
Vera turned back to Lancelot. His stern expression remained, but it fell away when he met Vera’s eyes.
“Yes!” he shouted, thrusting both fists in the air. “You,” he said, pointing at her, “you were fucking brilliant.”
She was so caught off guard that she laughed. “It was a stupid thing to do,” Vera said, “and this sword is insanely heavy. I about dislocated my shoulder.” She held the sword out to him, both arms straining with the effort.
He accepted it, and where she’d had trouble wielding it with two hands, he easily sheathed it with one and mounted his horse as smoothly as if he were putting on a jacket.
“You were brilliant,” Lancelot repeated. He clicked his tongue, and their horses obediently began to plod along. “I shouldn’t be surprised. You always had a good tactical mind.”
“Tactical mind?” Vera stared at him.
He nodded. “You and Arthur were married mere months before the final invasion. You came up with a crucial part of our battle strategy.”
“I—I did that? You’re certain?”
He laughed though he eyed her appraisingly. “Very certain. You wouldn’t call yourself strategic now?”
“Hell no.” That was the last way she would describe herself.
Half a grin took Lancelot’s face, and he eyed Vera appraisingly for a moment. “You’re different than—” He shook his head and clicked his tongue. “You’re different.”
She squirmed in her saddle. “In a good way or a bad way?”
“Just … different,” he said, though he looked hopeful. “S’pose that’s only fair, though. What’s been a year for us has been a whole bloody life for you. What’s it like? In your other time, I mean.”
She wasn’t sure how to answer that. How could she explain the phone she’d forgotten not to reach for about twenty times in the last hour? Where could she even start in describing the future? “I help my parents run an inn,” she said.
Lancelot had loads of questions about how Vera occupied her time. She fumbled through a laundry list of interests, but when she mentioned running, he sat up straighter in his saddle.
