“And the other twelve?”
“Frightened men who didn’t want to swear an oath to a dragon.” He paused. “Useful enough for supply lines. Not for anything that requires them to hold.”
Hailey nodded once, like she’d already suspected as much and was simply confirming it. She didn’t push further. That was one of the things I’d noticed about her: she asked exactly the question she needed answered and no more.
The dragon’s unveiling was something that months of meticulous planning couldn’t accomplish. In his very own castle, Arthur had allowed an ancient beast that was older than his kingdom to sear its way through his flesh while those under his rule bore witness to the event. News spread quickly when it was frightening, and this story had spread like wildfire, regardless of how he’d tried to cage it.
The people of Logres now feared the king.
“He’s established himself as everything we’ve accused him of being,” Vaelen said, pointing at the map and following the route that led out of Camelot into the wild lands beyond. “Every moderate who insisted that he was only strict, only traditional, only overly cautious... they have nothing left to stand on. The ideological battle lines have shifted.”
“That’s our edge then,” Carlisle said, “we move before Arthur can change the story.”
“He’ll try to do just that,” Vaelen said. “His scribes will have crafted their own story about what happened at Camelot and they’ll pose the dragon as something other than what it really is. They’ll say the king offered himself up, bearing the burden so Logres doesn’t have to.”
“He already has,” Hailey said. She reached into her cloak and produced a folded piece of parchment, which she set on the table and smoothed flat with two fingers. “This went out from Camelot two days ago. It’s in at least four of the larger market towns al-fucking-ready.” She tapped the parchment once. “Divine inheritance. Old as the kingship. He’s framing the dragon as a mark of legitimacy, not a liability.”
The room was quiet for a moment as the nearest people leaned in to read it.
“How did you get this?” Carlisle asked.
“I have people in places,” she said, which wasn’t entirely an answer, but she delivered it in a tone that made it clear she wasn’t going to provide a better one.
“But will that definition hold?” Carlisle asked.
I cocked my head to the side as I considered it. “Some of it. With some people. But that doesn’t matter. The image exists, and it can’t be undisseminated.”
Carlisle nodded slowly, like I’d said something he’d already decided. “Then we strike.”
Vaelen lifted his hand in order to stop the momentum. “We position,” he said.
“I’m tired of waiting,” Carlisle responded. “We need to act.”
“You’ll be more tired of a failed offensive that hands Arthur a propaganda victory and costs us the moderate support we just spent weeks gaining,” Vaelen responded.
“He’s not wrong,” Hailey said, and the flatness of the comment landed the way her observations tended to: not as a rebuke, just as a fact she’d identified and saw no reason to decorate. “The lords who just came over to us came over because Arthur fucking frightened the shit out of them. They haven’t committed to us yet though. We push too soon and we find out which side of that line they actually stand on.”
Carlisle’s jaw was clenched as it occurred to me that Merlin hadn’t said a word, but this didn’t surprise me because Merlin seldom spoke at such meetings.
Time passed, and when the discussion of logistics was exhausted including the issues of supply, timing, which noble houses could be won over, along with the endless dispute of whether to appeal to the Church or keep away from it, I spoke up.
“There’s something else,” I said.
The room shifted.
I’d found, over time, that how you presented information dictated whether people were actually listening or simply waiting until you stopped talking so they could argue. Vaelen would listen to me regardless. Carlisle would listen to me if I provided him with an incentive to do so. Merlin? Well, I was quite sure that Merlin already knew what I was going to say before I even said it.
I didn’t know yet where Hailey fell on that map. But I noticed she’d gone very still in the way she did when something had caught her full attention.
“The veil is thinning,” I said. Of course, I’d already said as much to Vaelen, but now I felt it was time to draw everyone’s attention to this problem.
“The boundary between the living world and what lies beyond it is starting to unravel.” I tried to keep an even tone. “It’s deteriorating. It’s been a gradual process over months, but the pace has been quickening most recently. It’s now a problem.”
“What do you mean by deteriorating?” asked Carlisle.
“Anomalies: the reports keep coming in.”
“What sort of anomalies?” Carlisle asked.
