“Depends on me how?”
“With the appropriate title of Seneschal and its associated access, what I currently suspect becomes something considerably more useful to you.”
He was quiet for a moment. The fire popped once in its low, neglected way.
“It’s a substantial title,” he said.
“It’s a necessary one.”
Another silence. Not a hostile one. Arthur’s silences were their own form of conversation, and this one read as a man confirming a decision he’d largely already made; he would give me the title I requested because he wanted to get an answer to this question.
“You’ll have it by morning,” he said.
I didn’t thank him because thanking him would have made the title a gift. It wasn’t a gift; it was a tool I’d argued was necessary, and he’d agreed. Those were different transactions.
I should have stood. Instead, I stayed in the chair, watching the fire, and he stayed behind his table, and neither of us moved to end the conversation. The room had that quality some rooms get late at night. Gravity slightly different. Rules slightly suspended.
He spoke first, which surprised me.
“It wants her.”
I said nothing.
“The dragon.” His voice had changed. The man playing the role of king had come down, not fully, never fully, but enough that I could hear something in his voice. Something tired, raw, and considerably younger than his face would suggest. “It’s been—” He stopped. Took a deep breath, then started again. “I’m accustomed to managing it. I’ve managed it for years. It’s loud. It wants things. That’s its nature.” A pause. “This is different.”
I watched him.
“It screams for her.” The words landed simply, without drama, which made them worse. “Every hour she’s in this castle. Every hour I’m in this castle with her in it. It screams for her and I—” His jaw set again. He picked up the goblet at his elbow and put it down without drinking any of the ale within it. “I can feel it moving. Beneath my skin. Wanting to move toward her even when I’m standing still.” He looked at the fire, and then something seemed to occur to him because he looked up at me again. “You understand that I won’t lose control of it.”
“I understand that youhaven’tlost control of it,” I said, and the ‘yet’ in that statement hung there unsaid.
“Yes,” he said quietly. “That.”
I’d watched the prophecy of kingship land on Arthur like a boulder from the moment he was a young man. Then I’d watched him build himself into the shape it required. And I’d resented him for every gift he hadn’t earned and every gift he had. I’d stood in his shadow for three decades and learned every variation of his expressions. Yet, I’d never heard him admit, in any form, that control was a project rather than a condition.
“And Isolde?” I asked. “Is her appearance here simply a coincidence?”
“Not a coincidence,” Arthur answered and shook his head. “She soothes me.”
“And the prisoner?”
He looked up at me. “She’s not cooperating.” He shook his head and his jaw grew tighter. “She fucking fights me at every turn.”
“And Galahad?”
“Apparently, she’s behaving for Galahad, from what he reports. But... she still won’t cooperate with me.” Something moved behind his eyes. “She looks at me like she’s calculating her next argument.”
“That’s information,” I said.
“It’s irritating.”
“Also information.”
His mouth pressed flat. “Your Seneschalship will cover the knights’ quarters.”
“And their correspondence. And their visitors. And the movement of anyone within this castle.” I let that settle. “It’s a thorough office.”
He looked at me steadily. “What do you assume? What proof are you after?”
