"Don't call me that," Lancelot grumbled lightly.
"Call you what?"Mordred asked as they stepped out of the kitchen lugging buckets of scraps that were tossed to the various fowl milling around the yard."Fish boy?How was your night in the aquarium?"
Lancelot dropped his empty tankard in one of the buckets."I hear you've been causing trouble like usual."
"We might have commandeered some livestock from the surrounding farms and made a ruckus getting them into the castle."
"I wasn't asleepthatlong."
Mordred shrugged as they all went inside."We woke up really early, didn't feel like going back to sleep.Gotta get this castle up and running, don't we?Now we have cows, pigs, horses, plenty of damned birds, and more.Even sheep and goats."
In the kitchen, Elaine was holding court, supervising the NPCs who were cooking, baking, and otherwise working to set the kitchen to rights and provide for the residents of the castle.
The intersection of game and separate universe was giving him a headache.Did they really need to eat?Would they gain some sort of awareness with time?So many questions that he did not have the energy to pursue."Where's our esteemed leader?"
"In the great hall with Morgan and Gwen.I don't know where the others have scattered to, but we're expected in the hall in about twenty minutes or so."
"Some of them wandered off to the practice yard," Mordred said."I was helping Elaine with some of her nastier concoctions.She is still entirely too obsessed with poison for my taste."
"Poison and cure are the same coin," Elaine said primly."It is not my fault that many men see one side of the coin far more often than they see the other.You cannot be too fussed, given you were the one who burned the bodies."
Dred grinned, as bright as a well-fed flame."As often as you need, dove."
She returned the smile and then went back to her work.
One of the assistant cooks came up with a large plate of food for Lancelot, another for Mordred, and tankards of more hot ale for all three of them.Leaving Elaine to her mischief, they headed for the great hall, where Arthur, Gwen, and Morgan sat at the head table, heads bent toward each other as they discussed whatever was related to the mass of papers and maps and what might be blueprints spread across the table.
They looked up at the sound of footsteps, and Arthur broke into a smile, standing up and leaping over the table."Lancelot!You finally look well-rested.How was the lake?Did you see your mother?She must have been so happy to see you."
"Apparently there's a castle under there," Merlin said.
Lancelot again relayed the conversation with his mother.
"You do make it easy to forget you completely outrank all of us," Arthur said with a fond smile, clapping him on the shoulder and all but dragging him to the table.
"My status in water has little to do with my status on land.Quit it."He took his seat to Merlin's right, Dred taking the seat beside him.This was not the round table that had given their inner circle its name, but they still kept largely to that seating arrangement wherever they were.Clockwise it would be: Arthur, Guinevere, Morgan, Gawain, Percival, Bran, Elaine, Bertilak, Tristan, Galahad, Iseult, Galehaut, Mordred, Lancelot, Merlin.
Hopefully, one day soon, their circle would be complete again.
One by one the others trickled in, settling around the table in a way that they were as close as they could be, easily able to talk to one another, instead of stretched out along one side as they might be at a banquet so they could all see the performances and the rest of the room.
Galehaut had always enjoyed the banquets.Most castle dinners were not actually exciting, just people eating over the course of a set period of hours as they came in from their chores and drills and whatnot.But holidays and other important occasions, and there were many of them throughout the year, always called for a banquet, and Camelot did not give a half effort for its banquets.Galehaut had loved the excitement, the noise, the singing and juggling and more.They'd danced countless times, until Lancelot grew overstimulated and begged off, and Galehaut had never begrudged him that, had often come with him, relaxed on the shore with a cup of mulled wine while Lancelot swam, or took him to bed and fucked him until they both passed out.
The longing made his body ache down to the bone, but Lancelot shoved the memories aside for what felt like the thousandth time and focused on the present.The final reckoning was coming, and he would save Galehaut whatever the cost.
After getting their attention, Arthur said, "Our goal is Ethelfleda.It is clear that she is vital to Maleagant's goals.If nothing else, she is one of the few on this earth who can face us squarely and not be guaranteed to die.Our goal is to cleave her from Maleagant.Preferably capture, but if death is the only option to guarantee we take her from him, so be it."
Morgan added, "We're going to bait her out.She has made it clear she likes her showpieces, so a show it will be.Guinevere, Elaine, and Iseult will maintain the castle, as ever.We do not anticipate another attack here, not now we've reclaimed it and locked the bastards out, but if they do, then those three are well-prepared."
People had made the mistake before of assuming that three women in charge amounted to no defense at all, but they had every one of them been humbled, and often left for Mordred to dispose of later.
"The rest of us are bound for the Fairgrounds."
"I swear to god if you say the words 'jousting tournament,' I will throw you in the lake," Mordred said.
Morgan smiled sweetly and said, "Where we will be getting involved in a jousting tournament."
"You are the absolute worst, you conniving witch."
