“Why should you think I’m interested in being popular?”
I eyed him narrowly. “Did Arthur ask you to pay special attention to me?”
He tilted his head slightly as he studied me before responding. “He didn’t ask menotto pay special attention to you.”
I let that settle.
It was a good answer, I supposed. Well, inasmuch as it was clean and technically honest, but it was also the kind of answer a man gives when he wants to sleep at night without calling himself a liar. I filed it away next to everything else I’d collected about Tristan of Lyonesse: the way he watched a room before he entered it, the way he remembered small things people said and returned to them days later like a gift. He was warm, genuinely so, but he was warm in a way that was useful to him.
I raised my practice sword.
“Let’s not waste the morning,” I said.
He matched my stance, easy and unhurried, and we circled once before he made the first move. His form was different from Arthur’s in that it was less about power and more about redirection, letting the opponent’s momentum do the work. I adjusted.
We traded passes for a while without talking. The yard noise filled the silence between us, and somewhere behind me, iron rang against iron as a horse objected to something in the far paddock. The morning smelled like turned earth, wood shavings, and the faint animal musk of the leather I was wearing.
“You’re not angry,” Tristan said after I’d slipped his guard and tapped his ribs. “About the king demanding you train with him.”
I frowned up at him. “Why would I be angry?”
“Most people would be.”
“Most people would feel flattered that the king thought them interesting enough to bother with.” I reset my footing. “I just think of it as what it is.”
“Which is?”
“An interrogation disguised as an outing.”
He studied me for a moment with those dark eyes. Then something in his expression shifted, like a man recalculating a distance he’d already measured.
Good. Let him recalculate.
I pressed forward, a short sequence of strikes, nothing too clever. He parried the first two and gave ground on the third. His footwork was excellent. What I didn’t tell him, what I had no intention of telling anyone, was the specific shape of the thought that had landed the moment he’d given me his careful non-answer. If Tristan carried reports back to Arthur, then every conversation we had was a road that led directly to the king’s ear: anunguardedroad. One no one was watching because everyone assumed I was the one being watched.
And that meant I could walk anything down that road I chose.
I let Tristan get a touch on my shoulder, clean enough that I had to acknowledge it.
“Good,” I said.
He almost looked surprised that I’d said the word without resentment.
I reset again as I thought about what Arthur might be wanting to learn about me through these small, careful kindnesses. Was it whether I could be softened? Whether the isolation with Galahad was working? Whether I still had edges worth worrying about?
The answer I wanted him to receive was:Yes, it’s working. She’s tired. She’s grateful for small mercies.
The truth was something different, but I kept that for myself.
“He’s been watching us this whole time,” Tristan said as he motioned with his chin, and I looked over his shoulder where I could see Galahad still standing at the wall. And yes, he was still watching. His expression hadn’t changed.
“He’s always watching,” I said, which was the truth.
I thought about what else to give Tristan that would go directly to Arthur. Something that felt genuine, something Arthur could hold up and feel certain about.
I let my sword drop an inch, just enough to look tired, and allowed my shoulders to carry the weight of the morning. “I miss the hills,” I said, and it was true. The hills of Logres, the wide skies, the smell of a dairy in the cold. All of it true. “I wasn’t made for stone walls.”
Tristan looked at me with something unguarded in his face.Real sympathy,I thought. Well,possiblyreal.