Gareth spoke first. Just as always, he was measured, careful, with that peculiar quality he had of sounding like a man who was reading from a text he’d already memorized. He said that Galahad should be rebuked, but further action risked the appearance of persecution.
Tristan, rather unsurprisingly, wanted Galahad gone entirely: not only stripped of his title, but sent back to the monastery, and the oratory closed. He said the words without looking at Lance, which told me he already knew Lance would agree with him if asked. Actually, everyone knew as much.
Agravaine and Gawain said nothing, which meant they’d wait to see which way the weight fell.
Arthur had his hands flat on the table, but he was just listening, giving nothing... at least, nothing yet.
Soon it was my turn.
“I believe the oratory should remain open,” I said. “And we don’t alter Galahad’s title.”
Tristan started to object. I talked over him, not loudly, just continuously, which was more effective. I kept my gaze trained on the king because he was the only one who mattered.
“Galahad’s rebuke will be public. The court is now watching to see whether the king acts from principle or fromappetite.”I let that word sit for a moment. “Strip his title and close the oratory, and we’ve answered that question in a way we can’t take back.” I looked at Arthur.
Tristan said something about the optics of tolerance.
“I’m not arguing tolerance,” I said. “I’m arguing patience.”
Arthur’s eyes moved around the table in the habit of command, to read every face before you speak. I watched his gaze reach Lance.
I turned to Lance directly.
“Du Lac,” I said. “You’ve had time to think on it. Do you agree that Galahad’s title and his seat should stand for now?”
The chamber went quiet in the silence that comes when everyone in a room knows that something is happening beneath the surface of the thing being said.
Lance’s jaw worked once.
I watched it, watched the precise cost of it moving across his face like weather: the moment of resistance, the words that wanted to be spoken, the years of habit and the new weight of obligation pressing against each other in the space behind his eyes. He was a man accustomed to certainty, to the clean line between what he wanted and what he did.
This was neither.
“The title should stand,” he said, and his voice came out level. It would have passed for uncomplicated to anyone who hadn’t been watching him as carefully as I had been.
At that, Tristan subsided, but he gave Lance a look that said he was studying him, looking for the reason Lance had just gone against everything he stood for. There was suspicion in Tristan’s eyes, a narrowing.
I made a note in the ledger I kept only in my head, the one I’d been maintaining since I was fourteen years old and first learned that information was the only currency that couldn’t be stolen.
The leash held. Lance’s compliance was clean, with no detectable lag, and the resistance was genuine: I hadn’t wanted it otherwise. A man who capitulates too easily isn’t useful; he’s just another variable that could tip without warning. I needed to know whether Lance’s cooperation came with a spine still attached or whether I was dealing with something that was already hollow.
His spine was still intact; he was still resisting. Just... now constrained. Exactly how I wanted him.
-ARTHUR-
Galahad’s hands were folded on the table in front of him. He was composed, and his hands were almost theatrical in their composure, the way only a man who’d rehearsed his innocence could manage. The bruise Lance had left on his jaw had started to yellow underneath the blue-purple, and his eye was still swollen, though he could now open it. His attention was directed precisely at me, and that steadiness cost him something. I could see the effort in it.
Lance hadn’t looked at Galahad once since he’d taken his seat, even though he’d agreed with Kay that Galahad’s title shouldn’t be stripped, something I found very strange considering Lance had been arguing for exactly the opposite only the evening before. I supposed after having a night to think on it and the conversation the two of us had had, Lance had realized how my hands were tied and he’d come around to my way of thinking.
Kay, meanwhile, had been watching me all morning in that way of his, the kind of expression that looked like patience but was actually calculation.
After the knights had had their say (or those who wanted to have their say had) regarding what should be done with Galahad, I delivered the final verdict.
“Three weeks ago,” I said, “I gave Sir Galahad autonomous authority over the prisoner’s custody. That authority was granted contingent on two conditions. The first was that any significant change in the prisoner’s condition be reported to me directly. The second was that all actions taken under that authority remained within the bounds I outlined at the time of the assignment.”
My voice was level. I kept it level the way I kept my hands level when I was in pain; that is to say, I was deliberate and practiced.
“On the night of the thirty-second day, the prisoner’s magic broke its binding. This is a significant event by any measure. I wasn’t informed by the knight who had been charged with her custody.” I paused. “I was informed by the disruption itself.”
