But Guinevere saw. Burlap-wrapped packets. Some fruit. And, inexplicably, several smooth stones.
The woman knotted the bundle together as tightly as she could. The door opened. With a quick bow of gratitude, the woman passed the bundle to the knight. He tucked it into a bag at his side and then walked past Guinevere without seeing her and swiftly turned down a narrow alley. The woman went back the way she had come.
Whom to follow?
The knight. Guinevere shadowed him as he snaked through the back alleys of the city she had not yet been introduced to. These did not smell as pleasant as the main areas. The homes were closer together. They were not necessarily older, but they were not as well maintained. The wooden structures seemed less stable, and jammed in wherever there was a hint of space.
The knight had not removed his helmet or his mask. He kept to the alleys between and behind houses. No doors opened into the spaces back here. The windows were shuttered. He and Guinevere might as well have been alone.
He paused next to a crumbling foundation. Then he reached up and removed his mask. She was too far away to see. She could not hurry forward without risking discovery. She looked to the side to see if there was a better vantage point, but when she glanced toward the knight again, he was gone.
Cursing herself, she sprinted to where he had vanished—and nearly tipped over a sheer edge of cliff that greeted her. It was the end of Camelot, the side shorn neatly to the black water a hundred feet beneath. She swayed, dizzy and sick, and caught a single glimpse of the patchwork knight, climbing straight down the side as though he were an insect.
The new queen cannot be seen.
It vexes the dark queen. Because the new queen should not matter—should be less than nothing—but the leaf said that the queen was not the queen, and that is intriguing. Her resources are better spent on Arthur, but so little is intriguing anymore. Even death has lost its sheen. So if the queen-not-queen is something new, she will discover what.
The queen’s bedroom is protected the same as Arthur’s, petty knots, base tricks. They insult her. They are not a magic of life, creation or unmaking. They are a human trick. A border. A barrier. Humans and their walls. She has humans to take care of those. They will do their work in time.
But she can feel another space. More windows. Her moth throws itself against them, beating its life against the glass. Inside, a heartbeat. Not the queen-not-queen’s heart. Someone else’s.
And that heart is racing. That heart is—
Magic. There is magic in that room.
The moth expires. The true queen, the dark queen, the queen of stone and soil and tree, is pleased. Camelot has gotten very complicated. Complicated is close to chaos.
And chaos is her realm.
That the castle was directly uphill seemed a cruel punishment for Guinevere’s failure to catch the patchwork knight. She trudged up the streets. Candles illuminated shops being closed for the evening, families shuttering themselves against the night and the things that held sway in the dark dreamspaces it brought.
The curfew bells had not yet rung. When showing her around the city, Brangien had mentioned them. Anyone found in the streets after the bells was escorted to a holding cell for the rest of the night. It prevented mischief and crime, but it made Guinevere’s life more difficult. And sad. Weaving a cloak of shadows was one piece of magic she relished. It did not bite or sting like the cleansing fire, or ask pieces of her like the knots. She had done it every night to escape the convent. When she slipped into shadows, flitting from pool of darkness to pool of darkness, each one claiming her as its own, she felt almost at home in her own skin. She loved the night. In the quiet stillness, she suspected, even a city could feel like a forest.
What had dead Guinevere loved? What would she think of this wondrous mountain city? What would she think of her handsome, valiant husband, who wandered his lands constantly to maintain peace and justice, building a kingdom where all were welcome, so long as they fought for Camelot?
Would dead Guinevere have loved the castle? Would she have missed her home? Would she have had a simpler relationship with Arthur? Perhaps one day they would have grown to love each other. Perhaps she would not have minded this endless, wretched hill.
Who had ever thought to build a city into a mountain? It was a terrible idea. No wonder Camelot was impossible to invade. An army would have to rest before they got halfway to their goal. And that was after crossing a lake with no cover or navigating one of the thundering waterfalls. No, Camelot could only fall from within. Which was how Arthur had taken it.
As though summoned by her thoughts, Arthur appeared from a side street. He swept onto the main thoroughfare, silver crown catching the light of his torch. At his side were several knights. They moved as one in his wake, a scent of smoke hanging from them like second cloaks. Arthur’s own cloak fell back to reveal his hand resting on the pommel of his sword.
The sword.
Excalibur.
She had that same nebulous sense of recognition she had felt about Arthur. He looked over at her, his eyes passing her easily and disinterestedly as they scanned the buildings.
Then he paused mid-step, turning to look at her once more. His eyes met hers, and he raised one eyebrow in question. Shocked, she shook her head. She did not want the men with him seeing her. As though nothing had happened, he continued up the hill toward the castle.
But he had seen her. She reached up to the thread. Her knots still held. She could not explain how he had pierced the veil of her magic. But after these long days of being someone else, the sheer relief of being seen by the one person who knew her lifted her spirits enough that she was able to finish the climb to the castle. The stairs winding up the side, however, were too much to ask. She entered through the main gate, the soldiers there not bothering to look under her hood. She would have to talk to Arthur about that. And figure out a way to secure every door in and out of the castle. She did not expect an attack there, but Merlin’s infuriatingly vague instructions meant she could leave no opening unguarded. It would be tedious, wearying work. Far less exciting than chasing a mysterious knight through the city.
Though she also planned on doing that again.
* * *
Guinevere slipped back into her bedroom,
relieved that the sitting room door was still closed. Brangien had not missed her. All her protection knots were in place as well, though she could feel that some of the tension coiled inside her was lessening. The knots would have to be redone tomorrow. How annoying that the physical relief of the knots coming undone meant they had to be remade.