Now it was simply a heat behind my chest, directional as a compass needle.
“I just... I just know.”
“That’s not—”
I turned to face him sharply. “—I fucking know, Lance. Leave it at that.”
He went quiet and fell back half a length. It wasn’t usual for me to bark at him, but I wasn’t in the mood to explain myself. Not to him, not to anyone. I heard Gawain murmur something behind us and Lance’s answering silence, which meant Lance was grinding his jaw and Gawain was wise enough to leave him to it.
The valley pulled at me, and in response, we descended.
She’d had help. That much I’d worked out before we’d even left the castle yard. Mordred’s wards on the cell had disallowed her from using her magic, and beyond that, the lock on her cell had been opened from the outside. The guard posted at the dungeon stair had been found asleep, and I’d had half a mind to kill him on the spot. But I hadn’t: too many witnesses.
I breathed out through my nose.
The pace slowed as the ground became softer near the river’s edge. Reeds swayed in the water, and a heron took flight from the shallows, flying across the pewter sky without apparent concern. My knights spread out without being ordered to, reading the ground like good soldiers.
Lance again appeared on my left, clearly not having given up on interrogating me.
“She was a prisoner,” he said. “In the dungeon which was protected with Mordred’s wards. Not to mention the guard posted.”
“Yes.”
“A guard you selected personally.”
“Also yes.”
“Then how...” He paused, took a breath, and began again. I could feel the calculation, the weighing of the words he chose. “She’s just a woman, Arthur. She had no weapons. No allies, at least, that we’re aware of. How does a woman with no—”
“—I don’t know.”
“—no resources simply walk out of a cell that twenty men couldn’t—”
“—I said I don’t know—”
“—and if she had allies, then an ally inside Camelot—”
I reined Cabal sharply and turned to face him. The riding party stopped, and all conversations ceased as every man went still. Even the horses seemed to understand that the quality of the air had changed.
Lance met my eyes. He was the only one who ever did.
“—I don’t fucking know how the fuck she escaped.” My voice came out too loud for the morning. It scattered the birds from the nearby brush. “I also don’t know who the fuck helped her. And I don’t know how the fuck she managed it with a guard on the stair and a lock on the door. And Mordred’s fucking wards securing the dungeon. I know none of those fucking things! What I do know is that she’s gone, and I know she’s moving.” I stopped and caught myself before I said too much, feeling the dragon stirring beneath my ribs. It was pleased by the display, and I hated that. “That’s what I know. So either help me find her or fall the fuck back and let someone else ride beside me.”
At that, there was nothing but silence. I wasn’t sure if I’d ever talked to Lance in such a manner before, and I definitely hadn’t in front of his men. The expression on his face revealed as much, but I didn’t regret my words. Sometimes he needed to know his place.
He held my gaze for two more seconds, then nodded and looked forward, his jaw set. He said nothing. Which was the closest he ever came to an apology.
I turned Cabal back toward the river.
Closer.
The needle in my chest was pointing east, towards a place where the water was bending around a group of willows. I followed it without explaining myself, which was just as wellbecause I was the fucking king, and as the fucking king, I didn’t need to explain myself. Behind me, the sound of uncertainty had a texture, that careful not-quite-silence of men deciding how much they trusted the man they followed.
But they always followed me. And they always would.
The dragon knew that too, and it whispered its satisfaction which felt like what I imagined purring would feel like to a cat.
She is not much farther ahead.
