Vera pulled up on the reins and hung back until Gawain drew even with her. He looked up in surprise, which suited his face more pleasantly than his standard scowl. She offered the jug to him.
“What is this?” he asked, peeking skeptically in the mouth of the jug.
Vera shrugged. “Alcohol. It doesn’t taste half bad.”
“You drank this without knowing what it is?”
“Yes.” She laughed but prickled at the judgment in his tone. “Percival brought it. I trust him.”
Gawain continued to study the bottle. A green-tinted light, just a faint aura of a glow, started at the base. It spread from beneath his fingers across the jug’s surface. His eyes were closed in concentration, and his lips moved silently in the shapes of words that were nonsense to Vera. When the last wisp of green glow faded, Gawain opened his eyes.
“It’s safe.” He tipped the jug to his lips and took a deep slug. Then, abruptly, “I met your aunt, Cecily, on my way from the Magesary. She said your cousin’s wedding will be this spring.”
“Oh!” Vera said, playing along as had become her custom. “That’s wonderful news.” She mentally filed the new information about Guinevere’s family.
Gawain stared at her.
“What?” she said.
“You don’t have an aunt. At least, not to my knowledge. I made that up.” Vera’s chest tightened at the revelation and more at the way he looked at her. Like she was being measured and coming up short. “Merlin told me you had memory loss from the attack, but I thought you might be faking it.”
Vera tensed. “Why would I lie about that?”
“To avoid responsibility for your actions,” he said, as if it were obvious. “But you remember nothing.”
“I remember how to mount a horse.” A poor attempt at humor to skirt her discomfort, but Gawain cracked a condescending smile.
“That’s not much. All the same, you don’t have to pretend to remember in front of me. And if you have questions, I can be someone to answer them.”
It might have been a generous offer had it not been accompanied by the affectation of a concrete brick. He was the last person Vera wanted to share anything with. Her guard had been up before. This conversation fortified it.
“I was under the impression you didn’t like me much,” Vera said.
“You were correct,” he said bluntly. “But that was before I realized your mental deficiency.” Vera barked a laugh. Gawain looked at her and blinked. “But not remembering … perhaps that’s a gift. You get to start again.”
“I have to remember.” Merlin had told her the mages knew about Viviane’s betrayal. Gawain should understand better than anyone. “You know that I have to remember.”
He was silent for a stretch before he took another drink, wincing as he swallowed and passed the jug to Vera. “I’m not so sure. Magic’s been behaving peculiarly for some time now … since well before Viviane’s attack on you.”
Her mouth took on a strange taste and her head swam. “How long?” she asked, forgetting not to give him the satisfaction of her interest.
“Since before the wars,” he said. “I don’t have evidence to prove it, but I’d conjecture at least since the Massacre of Dorchester.”
Why did that sound familiar to Vera? And why did she see a descending mist in her mind’s eye as she thought of it? Descending mist, thunder, and a dancer … Then it hit her. It was the story the performers shared on one of her first nights here.
“When the whole town was massacred by a mage gone mad?”
Gawain gave her a slow, sidelong look. “It wasn’t the whole town. It was the efficient extermination of every non-magic person in Dorchester. A dark experiment on population. If people with the gift only bred with others who also had it, the hypothesis was that it would increase the number of magical births.”
“And … did it?”
“No,” Gawain said. “I doubt recovering your memories will make any difference.” He forged onward as if he’d not savagely taken a mallet to Vera’s one goal in her new existence. “By my census studies, the magical birth rate has been steadily dropping for nearly a decade. Its rate has simply increased enough recently that we’ve taken notice.”
Vera sat stiffly in her saddle. She clenched her muscles to shield the way fear descended on her. Oddly enough, that tickled Gawain. His eyes even briefly lit as he chuckled. “You’re wise to be mistrusting. You shouldn’t trust anyone.”
Vera was taken aback enough to find her voice. “What about the king? What about Merlin?”
Gawain merely shrugged. “Certainly not him.” He pointed at Lancelot. “He reeks of lies.”
