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She did not know if he sounded proud or sad, and the night around them offered no clues.
“Look!” Arthur drew her attention away from the past that had been bloodied and defeated on the edge of his father’s sword.
She turned outward and the rest of the night was revealed. The city of Camelot knelt before them, and past the buildings and homes and walls, the lake carried sparks of fire. Hundreds of boats were crossing the lake with illuminated lamps. The lamps reflected with rippling beauty off the black water. It was like the night sky, burning with stars.
She could almost love this place, even with the lake.
“They are bringing light to Camelot in honor of their new queen.”
Guinevere watched. Her smile was like a reflection, too. Not quite real. They offered her hope and beauty in return for a deception.
* * *
She was draped in red and blue. A belt of silver hung low across her hips. Her hair was heavy with jewels. It was the last time she would ever wear jewels there, as married women never did. It was also the first time she had worn them, but no one knew that. A fur collar adorned her cape, the ghost of the animal tickling her. If she touched it, what story would it tell?
She did not touch it.
They knelt in front of an altar. A priest recited words in Latin. The words meant nothing to Guinevere; they were as meaningless as the vows she spoke. But Guinevere, dead Guinevere, was a Christian princess, and so Guinevere, false Guinevere, had to be the same.
When they were finished, Arthur led Guinevere to a balcony overlooking the city. The lights had moved to the streets now. People thronged, crowding to get close to the castle. Guinevere smiled, even though they could not see it from that distance. Why did she constantly offer smiles when none were demanded? She raised her hand and waved.
A cheer erupted. Arthur—a hero from Merlin’s stories three hours ago, her husband now—nudged her in the side. “Watch.” He gestured to a man standing nearby, who called out an order. There was a rushing noise, and then the people cheered with such delight and ferocity that Guinevere saw how weak their cheer for her had been in comparison. They scrambled, laughing, lifting each other up to long, winding troughs set over the streets.
“What is it?” she asked.
“Water, usually. We divert it from the river so it flows down through the city and people can siphon it from the aqueducts. But tonight we blocked the water and my men up there are pouring barrel after barrel of wine to toast our wedding.”
Guinevere covered an inelegant snort of laughter. “I shall be a very popular queen indeed. Until they awake in the morning in agony.”
“Pain is often the price of pleasure. There is a feast awaiting us, with all my best men, where you can experience both as you meet their wives.”
Guinevere wished very much for her own aqueduct of wine then. This would be the great test of her hasty instruction, her clumsy costuming in another girl’s life. And if she did not pass, everything would be for naught.
While everyone was watching the wine spectacle, she pulled a few strands of her own hair, tying them in intricate knots. Each twist and turn and loop secured the magic to the hair. To her. Sealing it in. It was a small, finite magic. The only safe kind for now. She reached up as though adjusting Arthur’s crown and wrapped the knotted hairs there. He smiled at her, surprised by her apparently spontaneous gesture. Satisfied, she took Arthur’s offered elbow and walked with him into the castle.
Knot magic was fragile and temporary. Merlin did not use it. But Merlin did not need to. He walked through time, trailing the unknowable future, cloaked in magic. He could ask the sun to change color or command the trees to join him for breakfast and she would not be surprised if they obeyed.
Guinevere—the true Guinevere—was not a wizard. Guinevere was a princess who had been raised in a kingdom far enough away that no one here had ever seen her. She had spent the last three years in a convent preparing herself for marriage. And then she died, leaving a space in her wake. Merlin saw the space, and he claimed it.
He also saw to it that no one knew or remembered the Guinevere-who-was. He erased her from the convent’s memories. That was not a finite or controlled magic. It was a wild and dark and dangerous magic. It was a violent magic, undoing the record of a life and giving it to someone else.
The new Guinevere wanted, desperately, to whisper her own name to herself, but she could not risk its being heard. Guinevere, she whispered. Instead imagining the name as her dress and cloak, she imagined it as armor. But when she and Arthur walked into the feast, she forgot her fear.
This, finally, was something Guinevere could enjoy. She had lived on so little in the woods. She and Merlin ate whatever nature decided to give them. Sometimes it was berries and nuts. Sometimes a falcon would drop a fish on their doorstep. Once, a falcon dropped the fish on her head. Perhaps she should not have teased him. Falcons were such terribly prideful birds. But occasionally nature decided they would like nothing more than a meal of grubs. The grubs would bubble up from the ground outside the shack. Merlin never minded. She went hungry those days.
At King Arthur’s table, there were neither grubs nor petulant falcons. There was food the likes of which she had never seen, and she wanted to try it all.
She had to be careful and measured. The real Guinevere would have been accustomed to such fare at he
r father’s castle before she was sent to the convent. But eating also meant not speaking, which was good. The ladies at this end of the table—wives of the knights, mostly, with a few ladies-in-waiting and some visitors—were content to chatter and gossip around their new queen. They were politely distant as they tried to get a feel for what she would be to them.
What she would be to them did not matter. What she was, was famished. The first course was all meat. Ground venison in wine sauce. Succulent cuts of fowl. All things she and Merlin had never eaten. She tasted everything. She was careful not to touch the food with her hands. Probably the animals would not speak to her, but she did not want to risk it.
There was a pie filled with something she could not place. “Eels,” Brangien whispered at her side. “You may not have had them as far south as you were. We raise them in the marshlands. Whole acres of eels. Living, they seem like nightmares. But baked into pies, quite nice.” She took a bite.
Guinevere did, as well. The meat was chewy, the pie having soaked up the oil. It was an unusual taste. She preferred the other dishes. A piece slid off her knife and she snatched at it to catch it before it fell onto her dress.
Darkness. Water. Sliding and slipping and curling around a thousand siblings, a thousand mates, hungry, snapping, so cold, and the water, always the water—
