I crawled out from under the furs and crouched by the coals. “Let me mind the fire tonight.”
Your eyes flicked to me, then back to the flames, uncertain. I reached—very slowly—for the stick you used as a poker, taking it from your hand without touching your skin. “Look, if you collapse from exhaustion, I will starve almost instantly. Or be murdered by brigands or, more likely, your horse. Surely even a madman deserves better.”
I could tell I’d hit some deep-set nerve, some fundamental instinct that caused you to come when you were called, to serve when you were needed. Yet your queen needed you, and here you were, hiding where fate couldn’t find you.
You didn’t lie down, but you unbent enough to lean against the mud wall, swaddled in the muddy folds of your should-be-red cloak. Your eyes narrowed to dark gold slits.
You slept, eventually, brows low and knotted, as if you dreamed and did not like it.
I pulled the furs over you with a tenderness that was almost an apology, although I didn’t know what I was sorry for.
Fate always finds you, in the end.
“How did you know?” Your voice woke me, trembling with some great emotion.
I tried to jerk upright in answer, but I’d fallen asleep in an awkward huddle beside the ashes of the fire, and my muscles had fossilized overnight. I made a feeble flopping motion instead. “Know what?” My voice sounded like two knives scraping together.
“The dream.” You were breathing hard, air rushing through the bellows of your chest. “Last night I saw the dragon, dead before me. I saw the cup. And I heard a voice—a terrible voice. It said—”
“Cloven Hill.” I had achieved an approximation of sitting up, but my neck seemed to have several extra angles in it. “The remains were discovered there by a shepherd’s son who was looking for a lost lamb, apparently. The papers loved it. The skeleton hangs in the Royal Museum now, of course.”
I managed to turn my head the five degrees necessary to look at you. Your face was so pale that the scars were a garish pink. That misshapen pupil was huge and black, almost spilling the bounds of your iris. “It’s true, then.” Nearly a whisper, full of awe. “You knew what would happen before it came to pass. You’ve come from… the future.”
“Ididmention it.” I was rubbing my neck with one palm, to no effect at all, resisting the urge to whoop with awe and triumph only because I thought it might leave me permanently crippled.
You glanced at the corner of the hut where you kept your kit. A bright flash of silver winked beneath the leathers. I hadn’t seen you fully armored since the day I arrived; it struck me now as strange that you’d been wearing it at all.
You said, “Tell me how it happens, then.”
I wished I’d thought to rehearse in all these long, silent days. I wet my lips. “You follow God’s voice north. You find the last dragon in its lair. The battle is long and bitter, but you prevail, and in the dragon’s horde you find the grail. You carry it in triumph to your queen. And then…” The final twist, the heroic last stand. The tragedy.
In my undergraduate courses, I’d taught your death as a narrative tool, an elegant equation about honor and valor and the cost of nationhood. Now, looking into the burnt sap of your eyes, close enough to see the ordinary imperfections of your skin, it did not seem much like an equation.
But you had already strayed far from the path of your story; if I told you how it ended, you would never return to it. You would never slay the dragon or fetch the grail. The country would lose its first queen and its greatest hero, and I didn’t think Dominion—fragile, freshly born—would survive the loss.
Your country needs you.Had Vivian Rolfe seen that version of the future, somehow? Was that what drove her, what gave her such a burning, unbending air of purpose—the terror of a world without you?
“And then?” you prompted, and I found that—though I was a cowardand a deserter—I was not yet a traitor. I would not trade the past and future of an entire nation for one woman.
“And then,” I said, “the queen is healed, and the kingdom prospers forevermore.” It wasn’t a lie.
You did not look comforted. “And afterward?” you pressed. “Does she—Yvanne said this was my last quest. Did she speak the truth?”
My mouth was full of acid, burning the back of my throat. “Yes,” I said, and—God forgive me—that wasn’t a lie, either. “This is your last quest.”
For a moment, you didn’t react at all. Your face was so perfectly still it might have been a painting or a sculpture, the symbol of a person rather than the thing itself. But your features softened suddenly, animating into an expression I’d never seen you wear. Not joy, but the hope of joy, like a lost sailor who hasn’t yet seen land, but believes for the first time that he might.
The sight of it did something odd to my vision. For a moment I could see the way joy would look on your face when it finally arrived. I could see you laughing, head thrown back, throat long and unguarded. I could see a ripe berry popping between your teeth—juice running clear down your chin—my own hand reaching to wipe it away—
“Gather your things,” you said, sharply. “We leave before noon.”
My head jerked back, causing my neck to make a sound like a guitar string snapping. “Oh, thankGod.” And then, after a pause: “We?” I’d anticipated a lot of wheedling and pleading before you permitted me to come with you. I had several very compelling speeches worked up, including one on bended knee and one in verse.
But you were ignoring me, already bent over your work. I hurried to gather my few things before you changed your mind.
When the camp was cleared and the gelding saddled, you mounted with fluid certainty, as if you’d been mounting this same horse for ten thousand years and would do it for another ten thousand.
In the softened light of morning, I could almost imagine him as a noble steed, rather than a bad-tempered mummy. He pranced a little, as if he, too, felt the threads of the story pulling taut around us.
