Ours, it said, once, very quietly.
“Where is Kay?”
“Outside, Your Grace. I passed him in the corridor.”
“Send him in.”
There was a brief pause, then the sound of the door opening and closing, and then opening again. Kay entered without ceremony, as though announcing himself was a waste of breath he could spend more usefully on other things. He was still dressed from the hall. The morning hadn’t given either of them time to change.
“Your Grace.” His voice was dry, careful.
“Sit down.”
Kay sat while Mordred continued to stand at the edge of the firelight with his hands clasped behind his back in the way that meant he was already organizing his thoughts into lists.
I kept my eyes on the courtyard below for another second before I leveled them on Kay.
“No one leaves Camelot,” I said. “Not a single noble. Not a lord, not a lady, not a cousin visiting for the season. If they try, you turn them around. If they insist, you find them comfortable chambers and you lock the door.”
Kay said nothing, which meant he was already calculating how many men it would take to ensure no one left Camelot.
“The gates are to be sealed. All correspondence out of this castle goes through me. Every raven, every rider, every letter carried under a cloak. Nothing moves without my seal on it.” I turned from the window briefly. “Can you manage that by tonight?”
“Yes,” Kay said.
“Good. I want it done before dawn.”
I looked back out the window at the emptiness.
“If there are any noble houses who were missing from the…festivitiesearlier, I want them ordered to arrive at Camelot posthaste. I want every noble from every house interred in Camelot until further notice.” I took a breath. “After what…happened, I need to keep my enemies close and any who might choose to become my enemies.”
“Yes, sire,” Kay said with a quick nod.
“There’s something else,” I said. “Let it be known, quietly but clearly, that any person found discussing the king’s condition will answer for it. That includes servants, guards, and nobility alike.” I paused. “Make the consequence plain.”
The room was very still.
“How plain?” Kay asked.
“Plain enough that no one tests it.”
Another silence. Kay was not a man who was easily rattled, but I heard the quality of that silence, and I knew what lived inside it.
“I’ll also need the herald,” I continued. “Before morning. I want an account drafted of what occurred this morning. Not what they saw, but what I tell them they saw.” I let that settle.
“What should this account say?” Kay asked.
“That the dragon isn’t a curse, and it’s not a sickness. It’s a mark. A divine inheritance, old as the kingship itself, older than Camelot’s first stone. If the church can be persuaded to bless it, so much the better. Find whoever it takes to make that happen.”
“And if they won’t?” Mordred asked from behind me.
“Then find someone who will.”
Kay exhaled slowly through his nose. “The lords who were present in the hall this morning,” he started. “Several of them have already withdrawn to their chambers.”
“Then post men outside those chambers.”
“And if they object?”