Finger two. “Then there was the night you returned to your quarters at an hour I will describe as...unusual. Not only was the hour decidedly late, but you appeared to be a man who was making deliberate choices about the weight of his footsteps.” I kept my voice conversational. “My chamber is two doors from yours, in case you had forgotten. And I make it my business to know the sounds of the men who live near me and near the king. I get to know their patterns, and I watch for their habits, their anomalies.” I let that land. “You were an anomaly that evening.”
“Kay—”
“—I haven’t finished.”
He closed his mouth.
“After the particular night in which you returned quite late, during breakfast the following morning, you sat down, and your expression was doing two things at once. It was both alive in a way it had never appeared to be alive before, but there was also... fear there in roughly equal measure. You wore the expression of a man who has done something magnificent but knows it may cost him everything.” I saw his face go very careful and very still. “And then, during training later that same day, you put your hand on Lioran’s shoulder, which was routine enough, unremarkable to anyone else in that yard.” I paused. “Except that your hand lingered there another second or more. Perhaps less. And she—”
“—that’s not—”
“—she flinched.” I said the words quietly. “Not away from you, but this flinch was of a body that knows another body... intimately. A body that remembers joining with another body.” I tilted my head. “Two people who have recently been unclothed together cannot entirely pretend they haven’t been. They become stuck in one another’s orbit, and if an outsider is looking for the right cues, he will find them.” I paused. “And I believe it was that night or the next that you never returned to your room at all.”
Lance looked at me for a long moment. His voice, when it came, was controlled, though barely.
“That’s all conjecture based on your own opinions. None of it consists of anything that would be considered proof.”
“You’re correct,” I said. “It isn’t proof when taken separately, instance by instance.”
I let him have that for exactly three seconds.
“However,” I continued, “I have recently been appointed as the king’s Seneschal, in case you were unaware.” His eyebrowsrose in surprise. “Yes, the role was applied to me only very recently. And in case you had also forgotten the role of Seneschal, it means my function is to see precisely what others miss, and you were not nearly as invisible as you believed yourself to be.” I cleared my throat and prepared to lay this largest bit of evidence on his doorstep. “As Seneschal, I have the authority to search any and all knights’ rooms. While searching yours, I found a rather small tunic tucked beneath your clothing, wrapped in oilcloth in the chest at the foot of your bed. I thought it a rather interesting choice for a man to wrap another man’s tunic in such a way.”
Lance stared at me, and the expression in his eyes had changed. He was paying much more attention now.
“As you might well imagine, I had the small tunic tested,” I continued. “And I suppose you won’t be surprised to know that the tunic carried a magical signature.” I paused to catch my breath. “Lioran’smagical signature or shall we call her by her true name? Guinevere.”
The silence in the yard was now complete. Even the wind had the decency to stop blowing.
“Now,” I said pleasantly, “you are welcome to argue that each of these things, taken separately, amounts to very little, and if you were to make such an argument, I would hastily agree with you. Observation is not testimony, after all. And a hidden tunic is not a confession, just as a flinch is not evidence.” I paused and gave him a broad grin. “But taken together, layered, and added to your performance with Agravaine when he said something rather... crude about the prisoner and you were quite quick to come to her defense... Well, taken together, all of thatevidencepaints a picture, Lance, and a rather detailed one. The kind of picture a king tends to notice.”
Lance was very still, and his breathing had increased. The pulse in his neck was now racing.
“What do you want?” he asked finally, asking the only question that actually mattered at this stage.
I looked at him, at this man built from the stuff of legend, and could barely hold back my own glee at the change in fortune between us. Here he was, standing before me with his life balanced on a precarious thread I now held between my fingers. It felt inordinately good to play the part of puppet master.
“A conversation,” I answered. “For now.”
-LANCE-
Kay knew the truth. It wasn’t a surprise by any stretch, but a confirmation of something I’d known was coming, something I’d been half-waiting for since the moment I’d forsaken my king and bedded my enemy.
Kay knew, yes, but he obviously hadn’t told Arthur yet, which was a relief on the one hand, but a concern on the other because it meant Kay had considerable leverage against me. Now it was just a matter of figuring out what he wanted and whether the cost was worth it.
“What do you want, Kay?” I asked again.
Yes, it was now time to look at the dimensions of the trap and judge if there was any way out of it.
Kay smiled, and it was a thin curling thing: the expression of a man who had spent his entire life being underestimated and had learned to build kingdoms in that space.
“To protect Arthur,” he lied. “And to protect the throne. To ensure the people who threaten it are managed and the people who serve it are properly directed.”
“Shall we spare one another the lies?” I asked, shaking my head. “You want to control me.”
“No. I want your...cooperation. There’s a distinction.”
“Not from where I’m standing.”
