Avalon Rising (2 page)

“What about the captain of the rogue aeroship
MUERTE
?” Gawain adds.

I shake my head. This I do not know.

Gawain shifts to the side of his chair, glancing out at the snowy land as he speaks. “We call him the Black Knight because of his suits of iron and dark silks. Some say he was once a demigod, soulless and without the ability to feel, who now walks the earth as a man seeking the Grail for his own purposes. They claim he wants to sell it to the highest bidder.” Another twist of his mechanical arm. “All he needs is to find it, and he’ll do whatever it takes to have it in his possession. Even if it means tempting a man with but a pint to learn Avalon’s coordinates.”

Coordinates. Coordinates the world believes were hidden inside Camelot by a demigoddess who wanted Arthur to find it. Like the song children sang in the village, when children were plentiful in Camelot. Coordinates the Lady of the Lake told me lie within a realm of my mind I cannot yet explore. But there’s no way the Spanish rogues could ever know that.

They might be close to finding out somehow. But besides that, I cannot lead the knights to Avalon until I receive word that the Spanish rogues have been defeated. Nor can I go until I’ve replicated Azur’s
jaseemat
so my aeroship can fly all the way to the Great Sea of the Mediterranean in Greece, but the endeavor is impossible. When Azur heard of my task to build an aeroship powerful enough to soar above the skies, he was quick to tell me stories about inventors in Jerusalem—accomplished and trained, and certainly never handmaids—whose attempts at such a feat by utilizing the mechanical arts and the ingenuity of advanced aeroships were massive failures. They fell from the sky and into horrifying legend. Modern aeroships can only fly as high as the boldest falcon.

The whole thing is impossible, and so I rebuilt Caldor, the detailed carving taking up an entire evening. A means to distract myself when the task of finishing such an aeroship becomes too overwhelming to bear.

Gawain’s face goes somber. “It was just one pint. We were so close to Avalon, and the Black Knight had a different sort of chalice in his grip. One just for me. And it drew me in.”

I lean closer. “You knew how to find the Grail?” I whisper. Cannot be.

He opens his eyes to mine. “No,” he says. “That’s why they took my arm.”

Winter mornings are best for sword fighting.

Most knights agree, Gawain tells me.
Habit.
On the quest, his infantry would be up an hour before dawn, the best time to get used to a new day before risking hot summer weather that would render a knight lethargic by noon. And so began the practice of riding at night and sleeping come sunrise. Conveniently enough, this is also the only time my father is guaranteed still to be asleep. Dawn was hours ago, but the courtyard might as well be a graveyard, host to the phantoms of Camelot, and never the few left here.

I don’t complain about the cold. It was difficult enough to convince Gawain to teach me my way around a sword. He’d suggested archery, but I refused. I couldn’t bring myself to rebuild my miniature crossbow. It reminds me too much of Morgan’s war and the lives I stole. Of the witch herself seizing it from my grasp and sending in into a nearby tree. The exact moment I thought I was going to die.

“Check for frost,” Gawain says, rolling his shoulders and pacing the courtyard. His own blade is easy in his grasp. It was the first thing that struck me once he agreed to teach me: he’s just as good with a weapon in his left hand as his right.

I run the blade across my skirt, smoothing Merlin’s prized sword until it’s shining and dry. A silent weapon, the sole reason we decided on swords rather than firelances or fusionahs whose blasts would echo for weeks in the ruins that is Camelot. Anyway, Merlin’s pistolník went missing when he became the ghost for the mechanical dragon Victor.

Gawain gestures to my stance. “Hold your blade high. Like I showed you. Both hands on the hilt.”

My knuckles go white with my grip. Gawain walks casually toward me and lifts his own blade over his head, letting it slam down on mine. I jump and swing Merlin’s sword against Gawain’s. He frees our blades and steps back.

“Good. But don’t flinch. Your footing makes you awkward; you look as though this is the third or fourth time you’ve ever held a blade.”

I glare at him. “It is.”

He cocks a lighthearted smile and sends his weapon through the air, the point straight at me. Instinctively, I lift my sword vertical, and our weapons clash. We both hold. If I hadn’t moved, I would have lost an ear. My mouth goes agape.

“Faster next time.” His eyes gleam.

I find my breath again. The clock tower chimes six o’clock and surprises me, and I glance over at the still-missing numbers near its top.

“Don’t turn away from your enemy,” Gawain warns.

I look back, but he’s already advancing and swinging his sword. A rush of irritation turns my blood hot from my error in gauging his speed. His blade strikes mine, and his heavy step moves me backward, giving him the advantage. The steel spins around my wrist and nearly peels my grip free.

Hold on—he’s done this before. I know his next move.

I grip the hilt tighter and force his sword away. Our jaws firm, our blades dance, and the steel sings. There’s a split second where I can grab control and push him back. His eyes widen in surprise, and I slam my blade against his, once, twice, again, again. Finally, his sword falls, and I grin.

His arms lift in surrender, the mechanical one slower than his left. “Well done,” he says with a proud smile.

Progress. I gaze past my blade’s disguise to see it for what it really is: a tool, fundamentally speaking. Something I can study, learn, understand. And then, perhaps, one day, master. “Your words made me angry.”

“Then you’ll be better once you learn to fight with a clear head.”

The snow flutters around me. I pull Guinevere’s white furs tight against my shoulders. My ears are frozen. My fingertips, likewise. But my smile at Gawain’s words, confident.

“Lower the drawbridge!” someone calls.

Gawain and I glance at the northern gates as guards peel them back. Someone is riding for Camelot, and my first thought is a mixture of hope and preemptive disappointment. With every reason: the rider is too tall to be Marcus, even if the newest Knight of the Round Table is already rather tall. Nor is it Owen, as this stranger’s shoulders are much broader than my brother’s. The rider’s hair is long and dark, and his beard suggests he’s been away from any kingdom for months. He gallops in on a near-flying stallion, and I make out the tail end of a dragon tattoo on his neck when he turns his head.

From the main castle, Lancelot steps out, visibly fatigued with gray weaving through his hair from running a kingdom on the brink of collapse. He’s lost weight and sleep since Arthur’s death and Guinevere’s departure. Anxious wrinkles line his face like a map.

My father, Lord William, steps out beside him, and the two men converse with somber looks about them.

At the gates, guards call, “Sir Kay!”

“I’ll be damned,” Gawain mutters. “The last time I saw Kay, I was about to lose an arm, and he an eye. Seems my luck was worse that day than his.” He glances sideways at me and inclines his head. “Lady Vivienne,” and then leaves for the main castle. But I don’t hesitate in following.

One recent night at dinner, Lancelot spoke about Arthur’s step-brother, Kay: born to coal miners in a village beyond Camelot’s borders while Merlin kept harm and the wrath of Glastonbury far from Uther Pendragon’s first and only son. Kay was raised with Arthur in the English countryside before Merlin arrived on Arthur’s fifteenth birthday to tell him of his true purpose: grasp the gauntlet wielding the blade Excalibur and run a kingdom destined to find the Holy Grail.

Lancelot told the story through pints of ale and miniature goblets of absinthe, through tears of regret for a betrayed friendship and a torn marriage. It was a story I’d never heard before. Sir Kay, a character in Arthur’s journal of life I’d never read.

And now he’s here.

My breath is a fog as I reach the steps of the main castle. I keep far from the guards and the commotion; as the only lady in Camelot, I haven’t decided if they’ll let my place be amongst them, as Gawain does, despite my role in Morgan’s war last June.

But then my father catches my eye and beckons me to his side. He has finally given in to fashionable gentlemen’s jackets, or it could very well be that his practical cloaks were destroyed during Morgan’s wrath. I catch up with him and Lancelot as they march toward the opening gates.

“You spend too much time in that tower, Vivienne,” my father says as he clears his throat with the proper aura of a king’s advisor.

Lancelot’s eyes meet mine only briefly. “Conduct your work in the main castle, my lady. It’d ease all our minds.”

I shake my head, foregoing the expected curtsy. “The main castle doesn’t have what I need, Sir Lancelot. I’ll stay in the tower.” Neither Lancelot nor my father knows it’s for the aeroship I’m building.

I don’t miss the knight’s jaw clenching at my disobedient words, but he doesn’t dispute me. He saw what world lies beneath Camelot’s surface when he assisted in cleaning up Merlin’s catacombs. And with few knights left to send to Galahad’s infantry or search for the subjects gone too long, the problem I am to him is a low priority.

Sir Kay approaches with deep-set eyes of brutal charcoal, nearly ten years on Lancelot and a strong face in need of a good cleaning.

“Lancelot.” Kay dismounts and hands off his horse to a waiting guard.

Lancelot’s eyes crinkle with happiness long forgotten at the sight of the dead king’s brother. “Kay,” he says with a brotherly embrace. The name coming off his tongue might as well be Arthur’s. “You’ve had a long journey.”

Kay’s eyes fall to the snow-covered ground as more falls from the sky through a quiet wind.

“A journey months too long, if I’m not mistaken,” Lancelot adds.

“No,” Kay says. “Years. Pour me a drink, Lancelot. I have much to tell you.”

Sir Kay’s booming laughter gets in the way of his reminiscent storytelling that evening.

“We’d just arrived in Corbenic when Lancelot decided the ale from the night prior deserved to make a reappearance!” Kay shouts as his cheeks redden from drink. An array of dried meats and whatever bread we’ve managed to scourge up from the banquet halls lies in front of our company, composed of Kay, Lancelot, Gawain, my father, and me. But only Kay eats.

“A brew of ox piss always does,” Lancelot mutters, wiping away bittersweet tears at the memory.

“You should have seen the look on Arthur’s face—utter horror! He couldn’t believe his finest ale was coming back up with the braised pork!” A loud laugh shakes the table and Kay’s stomach until he must clench it.

Lancelot hides his smile by drinking from his pint. “Piss, Kay. It was piss.”

Story after story about Arthur, carefully collected and lying in front of us in such detail that one might think the king was still alive. Lancelot was the one to confirm Arthur’s death upon Kay’s arrival, and at the news, the older knight’s eyes grew heavy, and his lips quivered. But then he smiled at the wealth of tales that would ensure Arthur of Camelot would live on.

Finally, Kay lifts his pint. “To Arthur.”

“To Arthur,” the lot of us reply.

“To Arthur.” Lancelot drinks quickly and regards the main hall of Camelot, losing himself in its decrepit architecture. Suits of armor stand guard in a castle whose twisted copper candelabras have darkened, and where the silence of cold smokestacks is too loud. The mechanical arts and their influence over the way we lived were destroyed in Morgan’s war, leaving us in an archaic world.

Kay eyes Lancelot carefully, the aura of mourning now passed. “I stopped at Corbenic several nights ago. I remembered Pelles as a man of life and joy, but when we met again this time, he was a ghost of himself.”

Lancelot traces the rings in the wooden table. My father clears his throat. “Le Fay’s attack on Camelot left our kingdoms’ alliance fractured. Pelles mourns his fallen men with the rest of Corbenic.”

I stare at my own untouched pint and clench my skirt in my fists until I’m certain my nails will weave the threads into my skin. The scrimmage Morgan stirred up between our kingdoms was the setting of my first kill; the war that followed and the scores who died showed me how crucial it was for Camelot to find the Grail, that which Merlin said could end death and balance the scales between magic and the mechanical arts. An alchemist’s dream.

Kay leans back in his chair, clutching his heavy leather belt across his stomach and glancing at the desolate rafters. “Shame. It was always a fine kingdom to visit. Its festivals were wonderfully entertaining, how they would twist the mechanical arts into vivid illusions. Your squire Marcus enjoyed it there.”

At those words I straighten, and Lancelot glances wearily at me.

“You know Sir Marcus?” I ask.

Kay searches the table for the one who spoke and regards me as though I’d been invisible this entire time. “
Sir
Marcus?” He chuckles once and turns to Lancelot. “Don’t tell me that whirlwind of a boy has proven his worth already! With all the attention the girls of Corbenic gave him, I half-expected him to follow in your swaggering footsteps, Lancelot.” A sly smile skirts to the side of Kay’s face as though yet another memory has come to mind. “Wasn’t too long ago that I bet three bags of gold you’d be the first to relinquish knighthood for warm, feminine arms, after all. Even if it’d mean banishment from this godforsaken iron-and-stone prison.”

I feel my eyebrows shoot up. Marcus? A favorite to the girls of Corbenic? “Surely, you’re thinking of someone else,” I hear myself whisper, but I’ve been forgotten now. I consider the barn, Marcus’s arms holding me against the wall, my fingers woven in his rain-soaked hair, our swollen lips.
“I’ve never done that before,”
he’d said. Was it true?

Lancelot’s face darkens. “That’s enough, Kay.”

But Kay is much too interested in Lancelot’s philandering past now. “Especially that one maiden who was particularly fond of you. What was her name? That girl at court who disappeared after Pelles’s festival earlier this year? I never knew what happened to the likes of her. Didn’t Pelles say she eloped—”

“Enough,” Lancelot repeats.

I turn to the knight who apparently was a heartbreaking scoundrel even before Guinevere. He’ll certainly clarify what Kay meant about Marcus. My father clears his throat and sets a scrutinizing eye upon a muddled spot on the side of his goblet.

Kay will not let up. “Mara? No, that’s not it. Blast it all, I can’t remember! She was madly in love with you, swore to make you her champion if only you’d love her back.” Kay turns to dramatics to imitate the poor girl’s memory, his ruddy fingers soft and delicate in midair as he punctuates the words.

Lancelot finally gives in. “Elaine. She didn’t understand the knights’ vow.”

“Elaine! That’s it! Long black hair, curves only a real man would—”

“Sir Kay!” my father erupts, hands clapping over my ears, but I pull free. “Talk like that! It’s undignified!”

Kay blows air through his lips, letting the ruffle declare his indifference, but resettles in his chair. “Very well. To matters of the Grail, then. You said, Lancelot, you’ve sent word to Arthur’s allies concerning Camelot’s missing subjects, but communication with Jerusalem has suddenly stalled, and no one seems to know why. Might I inquire about the wizard? I’d heard that once again the bastard lost his mind to magic—”

“That’s not what happened,” I say sharply. How dare Sir Kay speak against Merlin after all the sorcerer sacrificed for Camelot?

Kay regards me with curiosity, and I realize I’m still wearing a uniform that outsiders would see as inappropriate. “We have yet to become formally acquainted, my lady.”

Lancelot clears his throat. “Lady Vivienne was the queen’s lady-in-waiting before her majesty took to the north.”

Kay casts a suspicious glance at Lancelot. “Yes, so I heard. Guinevere’s left Camelot, hasn’t she? She is wellmissed?”

Lancelot nods, losing himself in the light of the lone gas lantern sitting in front of him. “Very much so.”

Now they won’t bother correcting themselves concerning Merlin’s reputation, and so I must do it myself. “Merlin sacrificed himself so Camelot could defeat Morgan le Fay.”

“Vivienne—” my father mutters.

I couldn’t care less now. My status in Camelot might have already been decided tonight, but I won’t let Kay think me a simple-minded handmaid.

“Without him, le Fay would have claimed the kingdom and gone after Sir Gawain’s infantry, bringing with her mechanical monsters you could never imagine. Her thievery of magic knew no bounds.” And perhaps it’s the cold or the waiting on end with no word, but my nerves are shot, and I don’t want to be thought of as invisible anymore. “I don’t know where Merlin is now, Sir Kay, if he’s alive or doomed, but you owe him a hefty debt. We all do. I only hope I do him justice by continuing with his work.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I see how my father cringes ever so slightly. He allows this only because he fears Merlin’s magic more than his own tarnished reputation, but just barely.

I glance at Gawain, and he nods, an ally in my corner. Kay sees the silent interaction, and when Gawain lifts his pint to drink, the four of us stare at the iron arm holding it to his lips.

Kay faces me again. His smile is one of condescension. “You have a strong will, Lady Vivienne, if you’ve taken up the mechanical arts. Was it your own lady who convinced you to study them? Or the sorcerer’s rhetoric? Perhaps you can fix the hilt on my sword, polish it—”

“We have a blacksmith in the village, Sir Kay, if it requires iron or fire,” I say shortly. “I work in the clock tower.”

“I see.” Kay continues in a louder voice, “I was hoping to turn to these sorts of matters when
my lady
had retired for the evening, but it seems you’re going nowhere. I bring up the question of Merlin because he was Arthur’s most trusted advisor and was to help us find the Grail while serving as a liaison to the kingdoms of the Holy Land. Now, these tasks go unfulfilled, as though Merlin’s protégé is unaware of her newfound responsibilities.”

My face should feel warm, and I should be a mess of insecurity, but I’m not the same girl I was in the spring. “His protégé knows that,” I say, “and she’s worked under the guidance of both Merlin and his mentor from Jerusalem—”

“The alchemist? Azur?” Kay interrupts. He leans forward. “Lately?”

I hesitate. It’s certainly been some time since I last communicated with Azur. “Well, no, but—”

“Then forgive my boldness, Lady Vivienne,” Kay says, his eyes turning to fire. “But I have one more question. What could alchemy possibly do for the knights when some of Galahad’s infantry had already gone missing by the time I finally found him and Percy?”