The hall was loud the way feast halls always are, with the sounds of cutlery and conversation, the grease-smoke of torches, men laughing too hard at their own jokes... the list went on. Yet, I heard none of it.
All I could focus on was Tristan of Lyonesse as he pulled out the bench across from her and sat down.
There was silence at the High Table for a moment or two as everyone turned to face me, clearly awaiting my reaction. I had none. Not for them, anyway. Soon, they turned back to their conversations, and Tristan’s action was forgotten for the time being.
I hadn’t forgotten it, though.
I watched him lean in to say something to her, watched her turn toward him until the gap between their shoulders was perhaps only four inches. Maybe even three.
She smiled, though it was a small and cautious thing. But it was there, all the same, and it was directed at him. Something in my chest went very still.
“Tell me about Tristan of Lyonesse.”
Mordred didn’t look up from his wine from where he sat just beside me. “Knight of the Sixth Seat, age eight-and-twenty. He comes from Varos, which is a province in Lyonesse. Upon his arrival here, he presented letters of introduction from the House of Varos, as well as references from two noble families in the eastern provinces, both confirmed.”
“What more do we know about him?”
“I’m afraid not much more than that, sire.” Mordred set the cup down. “I am quite certain he received formal training somewhere, as his footwork suggests a formal school, not self-taught... but we haven’t traced his lineage back further.”
“And that’s all you know about him?”
Mordred paused. “He speaks four languages. And, from what I can recall, he’s never lost a joust.”
“That’s the official record.”
“That is the official record, yes.”
I reached for my cup, swallowed down a few gulps of mead I didn’t taste, and set it back down again.
“Find the rest of it.”
Mordred’s eyes slid toward me with the mild curiosity of a man who was filing away a question he wouldn’t ask aloud. He nodded once.
Across the hall, Tristan said something that made her laugh. A real one this time, something surprised and then quickly swallowed.
He goes where we cannot go freely.
The dragon’s voice was barely a vibration, but I didn’t answer it.
Instead, I watched Tristan refill her cup without being asked, and something inside me burned.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
-LANCE-
I sat in the chair by the window and watched the last of the firelight die in the grate, but I didn’t move to feed it.
Outside, Camelot settled into its nighttime sounds: the changing of the guard, boots on stone, someone laughing two floors below. They were normal sounds, orderly sounds, the sounds of a fortress that ran because I helped make it run.
Tristan.
I turned the name over repeatedly, unable to clear it from my mind. Sir Tristan of Lyonesse, with his poet’s hands, his beautiful face, his accent, and that way he had of leaning toward a person like they were the only soul in the room. I’d watched him cross the Great Hall toward her table and felt something lock tight in my chest.
He had no reason to sit with her. She was a prisoner. A spy. By all accounts, she was an enemy. The sensible move, the obvious move, was to eat with his fellow knights and keep his distance from her just the way everyone else was.
Clearly, Tristan wasn’t sensible.
I thought about the way he’d pulled out the bench across from her, then how he’d settled in like his doing so was nothing remarkable, like it was the most natural thing he could havepossibly done. I thought about her face when he sat down: I’d been watching; I wasn’t going to pretend otherwise. I’d witnessed the small loosening around her eyes, the way her shoulders dropped a half-inch from where she’d been holding them. Surprise had immediately taken hold of her, the same way it had with the rest of us, but soon that surprise had melted into something different.