Alayna held her hands palms up in a gesture of peace.
Kiera stood, afraid that every innocent move she made screamed of guilty intentions.
Dodinas inclined his head for her to step to the left. "Now you," he told Alayna. "Keep down till you're away from the edge." His voice, though a whisper, rasped harshly.
"Sorry," her mother said, in truth sounding more put out than sorry. "But nobody could see—"
"Move." He pushed Alayna, not roughly, not gently, into the lead. "The girl stays by me. This way. And remember: You are being watched."
Kiera followed her mother, and Dodinas followed her. And he had yet to put his sword away. As they moved downhill, the trees blocked the remaining light from the sky and the underbrush became denser and harder to make their way through.
Off to one side, there was a crackle of brittle branches, then a muffled cry, quickly followed by a low-pitched whistle something like, but not quite, a warbler. Then, once again, silence. Thinking about that, wondering who—someone she stood a good chance of knowing—had just gotten killed, Kiera slipped on a patch of leaves.
Dodinas caught her by the elbow. "Keep moving," he whispered into her ear.
They stopped at an outpost, to wait while somebody was sent for. The sentry was someone's squire, no older than Kiera, and his eyes shifted nervously from mother to daughter, until Kiera wondered what would make the strain unbearable for him, what little inadvertent thing might make him lose control. She looked away, lest staring be it, and tried not to breathe too hard. Then again, he might consider calmness suspect. She and her mother could die here tonight, and no one who cared would ever know it.
Two knights approached, and Dodinas stepped aside with them.
The longer the three knights argued, the more audible their whispers became. Nobody, it seemed, wanted to be responsible for deciding what to do with them.
"Listen—"her mother said, stepping forward.
Four swords whipped out and pointed at her.
Alayna took a step back, her hands raised before her. "Peace," she said. "All I wanted was to suggest you ask Sir Mordred what to do with us."
"Easy for you to say," one of the men muttered.
Since when were Mordred's men afraid to talk to him?
They continued their discussion in muted tones, watching Kiera and her mother warily. Whichever side won, Dodinas left abruptly—Dodinas, the only one they knew.
Kiera watched as he went back up the hill without a backwards glance for them.
"Come," one of the others said impatiently, but at least they kept their swords sheathed.
They stopped in front of Mordred's pavilion, presenting arms to the guards who stood before it. And that too was something new, that Mordred felt he needed guards. There's always somebody listening, he had told her. What, exactly, was he afraid of? Spies from Arthur, or something less tangible?
Once again the whispered arguments, though this time they didn't last long. One of the men who had accompanied them unceremoniously tugged Kiera and her mother, then pulled back the tent flap and pushed them forward. Kiera felt Alayna put her hand on her shoulder at the same time she heard the man say, "My Lord."
Mordred turned.
But it wasn't as in her vision: He, of all the knights in the camp, was unarmored, and his expression was only mild surprise—quickly turning to annoyance.
"My Lord," the knight repeated, stepping into the torch light, "these women..." He saw the scowl on Mordred's face and grabbed a handful of fabric by Kiera's shoulder and another by Alayna's waist, and started to pull them back. "I beg your pardon, my Lord. No doubt it can wait till—"
"They stay," Mordred said, waving the man out. He followed him to the tent flap, then stayed a moment to make sure he had truly left before turning to Kiera. "Bloody hell, I told you—"
"Mordred," a woman's voice interrupted, "that is no way to talk to a young lady."
CHAPTER 16
Kiera jerked, startled. Her attention had been centered on Mordred, and she had not noticed the tall, dark-haired woman.
The woman arose from the edge of the field cot where she'd been sitting, and smiled. "You must introduce us." Her diaphanous black gown sparkled with each graceful move. She took a step forward, and Kiera found herself taking one back. "Mordred," the woman repeated, "who are these charming people?"
Kiera felt the tent's guide rope rub against her shoulder; she couldn't get any farther back without making a big step over the rope or walking around her mother.
Mordred was watching her, too. "The Lady Alayna De La Croix," he finally said, "and her daughter, Kiera. I don't believe either of you has ever met my aunt, Morgana?"
That explained it. The smile was familiar because it was Gareth's—at least, the mouth was. Kiera didn't think anything could touch those eyes. She curtsied, taking the opportunity to look away. Morgan le Fay, people called her, Morgan of the Fairies. But then, people also called Kiera a witch, and that wasn't true. Still, she couldn't meet those disconcerting eyes.
Morgana stepped forward; and for the first time Kiera realized that what she had thought was a loose collar around Morgans neck was actually a black and brown snake—an adder. It stuck its long forked tongue out to taste the air between them.
"Let them breathe, Morgana," Mordred said.
Mordred's aunt stepped back, her smile wry. This is to humor Mordred, her expression said. She never shifted her gaze from Kiera.
Mordred was looking from Alayna to Kiera. He asked one, the other, or both of them, "Did Arthur send you here?"
Her mother finally stopped graping at Morgana. "No. Mordred, of course not. I needed to talk to you."
Mordred watched her warily.
"Mordred, this is madness." Kiera guessed this was probably not the best way to begin, but her mother continued, "You cannot win this fight. If you kill Arthur, you will have started a blood feud the like of which this vengeance-hungry country has never seen. Even should you survive tomorrow, you will be poisoned or pushed down a set of stairs or stabbed in the back within the year. What can you do, kill all of Arthur's supporters, and their entire families, everyone you're not sure of? Who will you have left to rule? Assuming you don't get run through tomorrow."
Kiera suspected her mother's words were pushing Mordred in exactly the opposite direction she intended.
Mordred gave a smile disturbingly similar to his aunt's. "You always have a way of putting things in perspective, Alayna. But—it so happens Arthur and I are not fighting tomorrow. We have been negotiating. Arthur has agreed to give up Cornwall and Kent. All that is left for tomorrow are the formalities."
"You're dividing the country?" Alayna's voice was breathless. "Arthur spent his whole life uniting Britain, and you're dividing it?"
"Until his death," Mordred said with a shrug. "Then it will all be mine."
"I love happy endings," Morgana purred. "Don't you, Buttercup?" She stroked the adder's head with one finger.
Buttercup hissed and once more tasted the air.
Very quietly Alayna said to her, "Please stay out of this."
"Oh, now you sound like Vivien," Morgana told her. "You haven't been talking with Vivien, have you?" She looked Alayna up and down and said, smirking just a bit, "No, you would not have been. Vivien is the Lady of the Lake, Nimue's grandmother. Nice old granny—you would like her. She doesn't wear interesting trousers the way you do, but she does like to go around telling everybody they're always wrong about everything." She smiled sweetly. "She was here just a short while ago, trying to persude Mordred to give up the only keepsake he has of poor, dear, dead Nimue."
Kiera saw that Mordred still wore the ring on its leather thong. She looked back at the beautiful Morgana, who was watching her. As was her snake.
"In fact, kind Vivien has offered to take Mordred away from all this," Morgana said. "To misty Avalon. What do you think, Kiera—should he go?"
"That's enough," Mordred warned.
Morgana cooed, "I'm
only looking out after your interests, my dear boy. Of course, Vivien has magic of her own, but she wants that ring. Naturally, she would use it to help Arthur. But if you would let me show you how to use it, you would not have to settle for Cornwall and Kent. We would be done with Arthur so quickly, his friends wouldn't know what happened to him; they wouldn't know what happened to them. You would hold the destiny of Britain in your hand now. We want the same thing, my boy. We should work together."
Mordred lifted his eyebrows. "Should we?"
Morgana held her hands out, palms up. "What have we come to, that you don't trust your own Auntie Morgan?" She smiled, all teeth. "You know you're my favorite nephew."
"At this point, I'm your only nephew," Mordred pointed out.
She laughed quietly. "Yes."
Kiera looked to Alayna. Her mother, who had always been timid around talk of magic, said, "Mordred, please—"
"Alayna," Mordred said, sounding reasonable, "I am not going to do anything rash. Arthur and I are meeting tomorrow with the already agreed upon terms. Unless there is treachery from Arthur's side, this is where this matter ends."
There would be no treachery from Arthur, Kiera was sure.
Her mother hesitated, then threw her arms around Mordred.
"How sweet," Morgana said exuberantly. Then she added, "Such a relief—don't you think, Kiera?—that she got over Sir Bayard so quickly."
Kiera's heart sank. She had said nothing to her mother about what she had learned of Bayard. She prayed that her mother would misunderstand, would assume that Morgana was simply referring to the fact that Bayard had come here with Mordred while Alayna had remained at Camelot.
But Alayna was giving Mordred and his aunt a quizzical look. "Where is Sir Bayard?" she asked quietly.
Morgana put her hand to her mouth and said, "Oh dear. My mistake. Never mind." She turned her back on them and picked up a small wooden cage that held a brown and white field mouse. "Time for Buttercup's feeding."
Kiera focused her eyes on the ground at her feet.
"Mordred," Alayna said, "where is Bayard?"
Mordred must have known, from Alayna's tone, from Kiera's face, that Kiera had not told her mother what she'd told him. But he made no attempt to soften the news. "Dead. I had him executed three days ago."
Alayna shook her head. "Why?"
"Because he was the one behind the attempted drowning of Kiera. He hired those youths to menace her so that he could make the heroic rescue, and then he killed them to make sure they would never talk."
Alayna looked around helplessly. "Bayard said this? He confessed to you?"
Mordred's eyes shifted. "Yes," he said, and even Kiera knew Bayard had never willingly confessed.
"I wanted..." she started to tell her mother. "I didn't know how..."
Alayna turned on her. "You knew this?"
"No," Mordred said. "She told me her suspicion, but she didn't know—"
"You accused him?" Alayna looked at Kiera in horror.
"Alayna, he admitted it." Mordred tried to take her by the shoulders, but she shrank away.
Her voice was a hoarse whisper. "You had him tortured, didn't you? He admitted under inquisition." She looked from him to Kiera. "You always hated him, both of you." She took a step back as if to make sure neither of them tried to touch her again. "You murdered him. You took the word of a confused girl, without trial, without—"
"You did not mind when I overrode the trial system for Kiera's sake."
"He wouldn't have done it!" Alayna screamed at him. "For what possible reason?"
"For Kiera," Mordred said. "She was the prize: Kiera. As always." He grabbed Kiera's arm and her mother's, standing them face-to-face. "Listen to me," he hissed. She would have bruises from where he held her, but for the moment it was his eyes that hurt, that cut into her and reflected empty gray mist. Could her mother see it, too? "It's time for both of you to grow up. You cannot pretend Kiera is just a little girl anymore. Don't you understand? There isn't enough magic to go around these days, and nobody will leave you alone. Either they will fear you and try to destroy you, or they will try to use you. And if you get in the way, Alayna, you will only get yourself killed. Those are the only two possibilities."
It was true. Kiera knew it was true. Her mother opened her mouth, and Kiera thought she was going to deny it; but when finally she got the words to come, what she said was, "Unless somebody stronger comes along."
Mordred blinked.
"Like Nimue."
He still seemed to be trying to work out her meaning.
Alayna pulled away from him. "Halbert wanted to use Kiera, and perhaps Bayard did, too. But what about you? Why did you befriend us, why did you make us think you loved us, how are you different from Bayard except that you met Nimue and decided her magic was stronger than Kiera's?"
Mordred shook his head and let go of Kiera to hold Alayna, but she flailed at him with her fists, and he stepped back in surprise.
"You have done what you set out to do," Alayna said. "You've killed Bayard, ruined Lancelot, destroyed Arthur. And all it cost was everything. I hope vengeance feels good, Mordred. I hope it is warm and comfortable. So now you can just leave me and my daughter alone." She grabbed Kiera's wrist and dragged her out of the pavilion.
Kiera expected him to deny it, to try to stop them, to follow.
But he did none of those things.
Mordred, tell her it's not true.
Is it?
"Mother," she said, "where are we going?"
"Arthur's camp."
"It's the middle of the night. The archers will shoot us halfway through the neutral zone."
"Arthur isn't like Mordred."
That wasn't fair, but Kiera didn't say so. She said: "But they're expecting treachery."
Her mother sat down abruptly and started to cry. "Why didn't you tell me about Bayard?"
I was afraid, because I thought you loved him, she wanted to say. I thought you loved both of them. She bit her lip and shuffled her feet.
Eventually Alayna stood up, pulling her after again. Did she hear the footsteps behind, someone following but not closing the gap? She didn't look back, and neither did Kiera.
As they passed through Mordred's camp, faces peered out of the darkness at them, but nobody tried to stop them. When they passed the last campfire, there were guards, but they looked beyond mother and daughter to whoever followed—Mordred or one of his people. And whoever it was must have signaled for them to be permitted to pass. Someone gave a low trilling whistle, a signal to those beyond the glow of the fire. And still her mother refused to soften her heart. She called out in a loud voice, "This is Lady Alayna De La Croix and Kiera, coming to King Arthur's camp. We mean no harm. Please let us pass. This is Alayna De La Croix." She held her hands up in front of her, palms forward, and Kiera did the same.
The area was level, with short grass and a few bushes. Something small darted in front of them, breaking cover at the last moment, but there was no sign of any soldiers.
Her mother must not have believed that meant no one was there. "We come in peace," she continued to announce. "We seek shelter."
Kiera narrowed her eyes. They were still a good way from the closest watchfires of Arthur's encampment, but they had to be approaching the first outposts by now. Cold sweat trickled down her spine to the small of her back. Her mother was insuring that nobody could mistake them for spies, but at the same time her noise made them into targets the bowmen could track even in the absence of light. Still, they must have come within range of crossbows long since, and if they were to be killed out of hand, surely they would have been already.
"This is Lady Alayna De La Croix. My daughter and I come unaccompanied—"
Kiera's foot caught on a stone and she started to pitch forward. A pair of hands, gauntleted, steadied her.
"Keep walking," a man's voice said. "There is no need to shout anymore—King Arthur has given you leave to approach."
They were led thr
ough the silent camp. Most of the men were already asleep, an early night in case the next day proved a need for battle after all. Those who were still awake watched them with suspicion and curiosity.
King Arthur stood just outside his tent, waiting for them in his nightshirt. "My poor, dear child!" he exclaimed.
It gave Kiera a start to realize he addressed not her, but her mother. In the candlelight from the open doorway, she could see the streaks that Alayna's tears had made on her grimy face.
He embraced Alayna, laid his hand on Kiera's head, and urged them inside. "Thank you, Bedivere," he said to their escort, whom she knew but had been too frightened to recognize.
Bedivere nodded and disappeared back into the night.
Arthur sat her mother down on his cot, then sat beside her. "What has happened, my dear?"
Alayna shook her head, crying again.
"It's Bayard," Kiera said. "He's dead."
Alayna shook her head more violently. "That's not it," she finally managed to say. "That was just a surprise. It's Mordred."
Arthur's hand tightened on Alayna's. "Mordred?" he repeated, perhaps thinking she meant he was dead.
"I don't know what is the matter with him," her mother said. "He is doing things I don't understand. Your Highness, he has become erratic and strange."
Arthur seemed to suddenly realize how tightly he squeezed Alayna's hand. He let go and stood. "Ah! Just the usual then." His face belied the lightness of his tone, and he turned away as though to work a kink out of his knee.
"And your sister is with him, the Princess Morgana. I..."
Arthur raised an eyebrow.
Alayna finished, "I am uncertain of her intentions."
Arthur made a choking sound, but Kiera saw that he was laughing. "Knowing Morgana, she is probably encouraging Mordred to chop my head off when I'm not looking: 'Look, Arthur! What's that behind you?' Then slash!" He made a crosswise motion with his hand.
Her mother sat very straight and said what Kiera was thinking: "That is not funny."