“How do you figure?”
She shrugged. “A caged thing doesn’t spend itself destroying the cage,” she continued, “unless staying inside the cage is worse.”
I thought about the room when I’d come upon it: the ice on the walls, the frost that was cracking in the window frame. I remembered the blood streaming down Galahad’s face, pooling on the floor below him. Then I remembered Guinevere’s expression of hysteria, the proof I’d taken that she’d simply snapped and lashed out against him. Lastly, I thought about how Tristan had moved through the ice toward her as though the ice recognized him.
The point I kept returning to was that I’d gone into the roomaftereverything had occurred leading to that point. I didn’t know what had taken place before I’d arrived. The truth of the matter was that I hadn’t thought to ask.
The specific texture of that realization wasn’t comfortable.
“I hadn’t considered that,” I said.
Isolde nodded once, as if I’d confirmed something she’d suspected. We rode on as the mist in the valley below began to thin, the sun somewhere behind the clouds doing the slow work of burning it away.
“What you most likely should do, if you’ll permit my giving you unasked-for advice,” she started.
I chuckled. “The only type of advice I’d request is the unasked-for type.”
She gave me a little smile. “I believe it would be best to hear from both of them separately. Go in with the possibility that heraccount is the true one. Or at least partially true.” She glanced at me. “I’m not telling you what to decide, of course.”
“No, you’re telling mehowto decide it.”
“I’m not telling you anything.”
“I like it that you’re telling me, Isolde. Please continue to tell me more.”
She laughed and gave me a flirtatious smile. “If only all men thought in such a way.”
It was my turn to laugh, and once the laugh left my lips, all that remained was her suggestion and the logic within it.
“I’ll do it.”
There was no hesitation in my response, and that surprised me slightly. I wasn’t in the habit of taking counsel without negotiating it first. That just wasn’t how I navigated things. And yet... Isolde’s advice was good advice.
Something in the quality of the silence that followed made me want to account for it.
“Most people would have argued for a position,” I said while looking over at her. “Most likely condemned the prisoner and protected Galahad. You did neither. You simply followed the question.”
“Yes.”
“It’s the fair approach.”
She held my gaze for a moment longer, and as she did, she nodded slightly. “I like to try to be fair in all things.”
“You’ve succeeded.”
We’d turned our mounts a while back and now the castle was growing larger on the horizon, its towers solidifying out of the morning haze. At the thought of returning to all the duty that awaited me, something within me rebelled. I wasn’t ready to return to that overarching responsibility just yet. Not when the wind was now blowing through the trees and the sun was riding the horizon.
And Isolde... well, she was easy to spend time with. The wind off the ridge moved her hair, and I watched her for a moment before I looked away.
“I enjoy spending time with you,” I said softly.
“And I you.”
The road curved down toward the gatehouse, and the portcullis was already raised, the morning watch just changing. The fountain caught the new light of the morning, and I felt a peace roll over me that I hadn’t felt in a few days at least.
-ARTHUR-
I found Galahad, not surprisingly, in the chapel. Inside, it smelled of beeswax and old stone. Two candles burned on the altar, and Galahad knelt before them with his hands folded and his back straight. He didn’t turn when I entered.
