Payment in Gold

Chapter 1: Nimeuh's Camelot

The Watch-Building, a wing of the Citizen's Center in Camelot, the capital of the kingdom. Imposing edifice of solid sandstone, barracks and prison and the end of Merlin's life as he'd known it. Which he'd been aware of all his life, ever since he was old enough to understand the difference between boy and girl.

Then again, the end of Merlin's life had been one month ago, when Hunith smiled – dark-eyed and hollow-cheeked - through the final fever and closed her eyes for the last time. I'm so proud of you. Promise me…

Merlin mounted the stairs and entered the polished lobby of the Citizen's Center, where a stocky mid-level officer with a long gray-auburn braid pointed him to a door marked Registration.

"You're a day early, you know," the officer behind the desk snapped, her iron-gray hair in a tight bun at the collar of her steel-blue uniform jacket. Sharp eyes looked him over. "We won't feed you til tomorrow, either."

"No, ma'am," he said respectfully, his throat dry. "I've not come to register. I've come to – choose my opponent. For the citizenship-trial."

The whole office – two junior officers copying and filing, a loose-robed citizen filing paperwork, a skinny middle-aged slave cleaning the back windows – froze into silence. Three women, four including the desk-officer, and one man.

The ranking officer rose, head and shoulders shorter than him. Eyes now razor-dangerous. She snapped, "You think your magic is strong enough to make you a citizen?"

Respectful, always respectful to a female, citizen or officer. "I have the right to find that out, ma'am," he reminded her carefully. The only right that remained to him, actually.

"No male has tried for citizenship in – twenty years at least," she said. "The last time a sorcerer was granted full rights was – a century, maybe?"

"Public suicide," one of the junior officers suggested sarcastically, and the officer's demeanor changed.

"Yes, I suppose so," she sneered, as Merlin flushed.

His long-term options were grim – military, or slavery. His short-term options were worse, maybe – take it on the run, until capture and execution. Or suicide, in a wide range of ways. Starvation, of course, wasting away on a steady diet of conjured food. Or he could conjure a rope or a knife or poison, though he hadn't the coin to pay another slave to do it for him. A few, he'd heard rumors as he'd grown up, had chosen to do it publically, at these trials, their meager magic not enough to save their lives.

"Well, if you're sure," she concluded, coming out from behind the desk. "Follow me."

Out of the office, down a narrow corridor, down an even narrower flight of stairs. Then another. Then another, the light and fresh air both diminished, the farther they descended.

"You're late, you know," she threw over her shoulder. He huffed to himself – first early, now late. "The girls on the docket for tomorrow have already chosen."

She waved a hand in explanation down a long noisy smelly corridor opening off the stairway. He glimpsed a twin line of cells, iron bars separating prisoners' bodies, but not the noise or the stench. All male, of course. Females were fined or – in extreme cases – simply executed. Male criminals were kept for the coming-of-age trials.

The stairway ended before she led him through one of the arched doorways. Another officer, with heavy jowls and close-cropped hair - the only signs of her gender being certain areas where her uniform fit differently than a man's would - rose to salute.

"You got a new one for me, captain?" the warden rasped.

"Nope. This one thinks he's got a shot at citizenship." Both women cackled.

And only the thought of Gaius waiting in their tiny apartment kept Merlin from turning himself in, right there and then.

"So what've you got left, Warden?" the captain asked.

The other woman plumped half her square-shaped rump on the battered desk and tilted a sheet of paper toward the soot-darkened chimney of a desk-lamp, checking inventory. "Last two cells on the right," she said. "C'mon, kid, I'll show you."

Grabbing a torch from a wall-sconce, she led Merlin down the row of cells. Men of every age and physical type, from sullenly silent to defiantly loud, watched him, and he did his best to ignore them all.

You're so special, his mother's voice whispered into his mind, like a breath of clean air, conveying not only love, but respect and dignity. You're so different. You can change the world, my little son. Someday. Only believe. They wouldn't have told him that if it wasn't true. Hunith would not have gone into debt to buy Gaius – an educated slave with a little magic, rare and even at his age, expensive – as a tutor for her son, if she didn't believe it, herself.

"Here we are," the warden told him, as they reached the end. "Pick of the litter."

He didn't want to look at the prisoners. If he wanted to live free, he had to kill to prove his magic worthy of citizenship. And if it wasn't, his opponent would kill him – and earn a pardon.

"Hey, Warden!" someone called. "Fresh meat?"

"What's he done?"

"He's just a kid!"

"Well?" the warden said, not responding to the inmates.

He darted a glance into the dim recesses. "The big one," he heard himself say. The one who looked like he could snap Merlin in half – then at least it would be quick - right next to the one who looked mean enough to enjoy the show.

"All right." The warden didn't move, still eyeing him expectantly. Then she reached across and slapped his chest. "Yep – you're a boy, kid. That means you pick two opponents."

Merlin stared at her. In the twenty years since another boy had done this, chosen to test his magic in a bid for the rights of citizenship, details had become hazy. Maybe Hunith hadn't known – two! – but surely Gaius did. Gaius, who'd bowed his head as a boy himself decades ago for the permanent slave's mark rather than test his own magic in the stadium. Maybe Gaius had thought the idea of two opponents would put Merlin – or Hunith – right off the whole idea.

"Um," he said. "The one right next, then." The big one and the mean one. Ye gods, he was doomed. Public suicide, indeed.

"Alrighty," she said, starting back down the row to the waiting captain. "Bright an' early, tomorrow, mind," she said. "Or you'll be on our fugitive-list, and the longest hold-out we've had is – what?"

"Three days," the captain answered in a bored way. "Well, three and a half, before he bled out."

Merlin shivered, and stumbled, and the sound of their laughter – the prisoners' laughter – followed him all the way home.

…..*….. …..*….. …..*….. …..*….. …..*…..

"I am bored out of my mind," Gwaine announced, pacing the grimy stone floor of their cell.

Percival leaned against the back wall, his arms crossed over his chest to hide the fists his hands made, feigning a patience he no longer felt. "Should've thought of that before you killed that jackass in the mess hall," he said mildly.

Gwaine flipped his hair away from his face. It was too long, Percival had warned him, three weeks ago when they'd been tossed – figuratively, of course, no one tossed Percival – in the lowest level of the city's prison. Lice, he'd warned Gwaine. At least.

I won't live long enough for that, Gwaine scoffed, beginning to pace for the first time. That, or I'll kill the lousy bugger who gets close to me – get it? Louse-y bugger?

Not funny, Gwaine. Well, maybe a little.

"Well." Gwaine paused at the wall. "You shouldn't have killed his mate. I could've taken them both."

Percival snorted. "His mate was ready to sever your spine with a fork," he said.

Gwaine turned and his devilish grin showed white through the prison murk. "I've never been in a food fight that turned lethal," he remarked contemplatively, and probably didn't see Percival roll his eyes.

In the far corner of the cell block, they weren't the first to know of the new arrival, but both of them had an instinctive awareness of changes to their surroundings – as any veteran of the border wars did – quick hearing, and curiosity honed by the deadly dull of prison monotony.

The blocky warden sauntered into view, carrying a torch, followed by a skinny, scared-looking kid with patched clothes, hunched shoulders, and a thatch of black hair.

"New inmate," Percival guessed immediately.

"That one's no criminal," Gwaine disagreed, even as an inmate from the next cell over hollered, New meat! "He can't have the guts to –"

"Gwaine, he's choosing," Percival said suddenly, pushing himself upright. There had been only two girls who'd come this low into the bowels of the prison, searching for the slowest and weakest opponent to face at the trials – tomorrow, if they hadn't lost count of days in this hellhole.

"You're kidding," Gwaine said in disbelief. "Are you sure it isn't –" The warden interrupted his question, slapping at the youngster's chest to prove his gender.

"A sorcerer?" Percival said, stunned.

"A suicide," Gwaine predicted.

"You pick two opponents," the warden ordered the boy, her voice carrying clearly to them in the back of the cell.

And, wonder of wonders, the skinny kid gestured to them – clearly, unmistakably, the two of them. And retreated without a second glance.

Percival moved to the front of the cell to watch them go, the boy's gait still holding the awkwardness of adolescence. He didn't look back, hardly raised his head, his shoulders hunched inward against the verbal abuse the prisoners rained on him; he even tripped as he reached the door to the stair.

"Ha, ha!" Gwaine celebrated exultantly at the back of the cell. "Can you believe it?" He leaped forward to punch Percival's shoulder as hard as he could – without much effect. "You are me are gonna taste sweet, fresh air tomorrow! Then, back to the corps like nothing happened! We'll be damn heroes!"

"Gwaine," Percival said seriously. "First, we have to kill a kid."

His roguish friend sobered. Slightly. "His choice." Gwaine shrugged.

"He's not going to stand a chance," Percival observed, and felt himself not at all diminished to admit to a pang of sympathy for the doomed boy.

"We'll make it quick," Gwaine promised him. "He won't suffer. Okay?"

Percival sighed. "Okay."

…..*….. …..*….. …..*….. …..*….. …..*…..

Gaius was dying.

Both of them knew it, accepted it, and avoided referring to the subject. The old slave had been dying slowly for a month now, since Merlin's mother had breathed her last. Gaius was only hanging on, Merlin thought but did not say, to see Hunith's son to the day of his coming-of-age. As much from affectionate and grateful loyalty to his mistress, as from deep and genuine concern for her son.

Tomorrow. If he kept the dual promise he'd made – long ago, and renewed many times, to both his mother and her old slave – he would find himself standing in the civic stadium, fighting for his life.

His magic. His freedom.

The first male citizen of Camelot in a century, or dead.

And he knew from his visit to the prison, that afternoon, it wouldn't be an easy victory. Some perverse instinct had sparked, as he stood in the narrow aisle between filthy cells – a visceral reminder of what was in store for him, maybe - had chosen, that it wouldn't be easy. But if he reneged… he'd be branded a slave for life, and sold to the highest bidder, along with every other boy who reached manhood this year.

"Dinner, Gaius," he said, crouching by the old man's pallet, balancing the thin board that served as a dinner-tray on his knee.

His mentor, his tutor, his friend, turned but slowly on the pallet he'd left only briefly for a fortnight, now. Gaius' body was crooked and brittle and heavy, his eyes sunken, but brightened on seeing him.

"Merlin," he rasped. "You're home."

"Yes." He didn't bother mentioning he'd been home for an hour now, letting the slave sleep while he prepared their evening meal. Which Gaius hadn't been able to do since Hunith's passing, and which neither of them had remarked on either. Merlin had taken over every one of the slave's tasks, gradually and quietly.

After all, if Merlin did not stand in the stadium, if he was to spend his life as a slave, better get used to the tasks of serving, now.

"Can you sit up a little?" he asked, reaching to provide the old man a stable handhold. "It's only bread and broth – but we shouldn't spill." Precious it was, and the last. Merlin had sold the last things worth even a copper coin from their tiny apartment in the city streets only this afternoon. And he'd spent the last copper – and a good portion of his modest pride – begging even a stale loaf from the baker.

Which was why he was questioning his long-standing promise. Among other reasons he'd discovered that morning – one big and one mean, in that prison cell - freedom and magic were worth little if you starved, and there was nothing left. Survival meant little, if it was only for a day.

"I might do – for a chicken." At the old man's words, Merlin looked quizzically at his friend, whose rheumy eyes were fixed on the dusty rafters. "A roast chicken, with sage and black pepper and a touch of garlic. Leeks. Skin crackling brown…" Gaius coughed weakly. "New potatoes with thin golden skin melting off…"

Merlin's mouth watered, and his stomach growled with sudden temptation.

Starvation could be delicious, after all.

"And corn, fresh from the shuck and dripping salted butter."

"You haven't eaten cob-corn in years, old man," Merlin reminded his friend lightly, trying to swallow tears and hunger, both.

"And berries for dessert," Gaius whispered, now looking at him. "Swimming in cream. Raspberries, blackberries, dwarf strawberries. Blueberries."

"Please stop," Merlin said, but he smiled.

Gaius reached a trembling hand to pat the side of Merlin's leg, where his cuffs were ragged and his ankles bare above his cheap leather shoes. "You keep the broth and the bread," the old man told him. "And conjure me a feast."

Merlin's breath caught, tangled around his heart's painful attempt to keep beating. "Gaius…"

"Don't argue with me, there's a good lad. We know what we know, don't we, and there's no changing it." Gaius sighed, a whimsical smile deepening the wrinkles. "Mine is over, and yours just beginning – let's celebrate with a feast. I want to go out in style."

Merlin focused on setting down the tray of the meager meal that was now his alone – no amount of coaxing would convince the stubborn old slave, he was sure. Just waste what time they had left. It made him feel unbearably lonely.

"Can you sit up, then," he said, around the lump in his throat.

And focused his magic, conjuring first the furniture. A grand table, sturdy and beautifully carved and draped with a white silk that glittered - though only a foot from the floor, so they could enjoy the sight, since he'd be sitting on the floor next to the old man's pallet for their meal. Formed as easy as imagination under his palms and fingers as he described its shape in the air.

Then the food, crowding the table with every delicacy he could remember glimpsing through front windows of eating-houses, even passing street-vendors. Whitefish fried in olive oil and dill-weed, potatoes baked and scalloped and mashed, green beans and white beans and yellow beans swimming in butter sauce, cake and potpie and tangy tarts, seed-buns and scones and pudding. A great pink ham, thick slices curling down from the bone, a pyramid of cob-corn with a pat of butter in the shape of a sailing ship melting all over them. Even the berries and the cream. And in the middle of it all, a boar's-head complete with tusk-framed apple, just to make Gaius laugh.

He did, a little. A huff of a chuckle, while Merlin's stomach clenched with hunger – though he hadn't added the scents of the feast, because he wasn't a complete idiot – and loss.

"That's my boy," Gaius whispered contentedly. "Magic beautiful and artistic, as well as powerful."

"I wish –" Merlin's throat closed.

For all that, it was still worthless. Conjurations of edible substances could affect all the senses – but provided absolutely no nourishment whatsoever. Which Gaius knew very well.

"I know, lad. Just fill my plate."

The smell, the taste, the feeling of a full belly, was all mirage. In the morning it would be as if he'd eaten nothing but air. Even the furniture would dissipate, as always, though he no longer tried to conjure a comfortable bed for the old man who could not climb in and out of it without pain.

Merlin obeyed the request, ringing the threadbare pallet on the uneven plank-floor, weathered gray and gapping, with gleaming dishes - silver, gold, and copper like he'd seen in shop windows - while Gaius struggled up to one elbow to sample a bite of this and that. Complimenting Merlin, correcting his misconception of the taste of rosemary – which he'd never actually tasted – in the stew.

While Merlin dipped his stale bread into the wooden bowl of weak broth, which would keep him alive for one more day.

Then he could die at seventeen, instead of sixteen.

Or, well, near enough. The birthdays of girl babies were recorded to the minute with city officials, and if she so chose, a girl could postpone her citizen-trial, could wait to prove her magic and her worth to the queen and the kingdom until the very moment she'd breathed seventeen years' worth of air, though not many did because of the social stigma of the delay.

Boy babies, not so lucky. One day, they got. Tomorrow, every boy child who'd been born the same year Merlin had been, would present themselves at the Citizen's Center - a cold, hard irony of a name. There they would be branded slaves and sold, or tried for a soldier. Which was just a more violent form of slavery.

Merlin's hand strayed to the mark on his neck, below and behind his right ear. Underage, it meant. Still a boy. A harmless nuisance. Tomorrow, whether he presented himself or not, it would fade, and he'd be a fugitive with a price on his neck – an invisible but deadly mark - to be claimed by any citizen who could turn him in to the Watch.

Gaius saw the gesture. "How did it go, this morning?" he asked, slowly spearing white beans onto the tines of the golden fork.

"Fine," Merlin said, not meeting the old slave's eyes, dipping another corner of his bread-crust into the cooling broth.

"Tell me anyway?"

…..*….. …..*….. …..*….. …..*….. …..*…..

"You're up late."

Gwen, cross-legged in her desk chair and leaning on the massive desk before her, arms hugging the dusty tome in the warm circle of candlelight, jumped guiltily at the voice.

"Yes, Mother, I'm sorry," she said automatically, trying to stretch muscles that had been too still for too long surreptitiously, squinting at the form of the approaching queen through the gloom of the bedchamber.

Nimueh waved one hand and sparks flew from her fingertips to light three other candles about the room. A casual display of the greatest power in the kingdom, and a rebuke, intentional or not. Gwen had to focus intently for several moments to light even one with her magic, even after two decades of study and practice.

"What are you reading?" the queen asked negligently. Though there was, Gwen recognized from long years of watching her mother and her sovereign, to better understand and please her, something else on her mind than her daughter's reading habits.

"History," Gwen answered, intentionally vague. History and prophecy, more accurately, an odd mix and an interest she found she didn't care to try to explain to the queen.

"Ah." Nimueh drifted around the perimeter of Gwen's chamber, giving more attention to the furnishings and clutter. "Which one?"

She winced, but answered honestly; there was nothing to be gained from lying to Nimueh, and everything to be lost. "Taliesin's."

The queen faced her, at that, but the smile that curved her mother's red lips was amused. "You're reading a male writer?"

Gwen swallowed the indignant protest that sprang to her mouth. "It's interesting," she said only, shrugging one shoulder as if the appeal was passing, and academic at best. "They think so much differently than we do, about many things."

Nimueh let out a feminine grunt. "They think wrongly, about many things."

Gwen opened her mouth to argue, just because Camelot had experienced three centuries of matriarchal society, didn't mean that was the only viable option, ever. And what made them think they were proof against the same failings as the ancient kings? Hm. Heresy.

"Blythewin certainly thought so," she commented only. Their ancestor. Recorded as the most powerful sorceress in Camelot's history – and the first of its queens.

"Why not read her history, then?" Nimueh said.

Gwen could tell her mother was getting bored of the conversational topic. She didn't have much use for studying subjects other than magic.

"I have," Gwen said. And what was most interesting about that was, why and how had Taliesin's writings survived, when so much of the male-oriented culture before Blythewin had been destroyed…

"Good, then you need not waste time reading that rubbish when you should be sleeping," her mother scolded lightly, leaning against Gwen's bookshelf, her burgundy wrap clinging to lithe curves Gwen was contrarily jealous of, considering herself plump at best; she had long supposed she took after her father in more ways than one. Nimueh toyed with a sage-scented candle – flicker on, flicker off – without touching it. "The young lords will both be our guests for the citizen-trials demonstration."

Ah, so there it was. The subject which Nimueh really wanted to discuss. Again.

"I remember," she said, trying to keep her voice neutral as a princess should. She leaned back in her desk chair and shifted her position, pulling the silky skirt of her banana-yellow wrap around her legs.

"And?"

It was a choice she'd been pressured to make for several months now. Arthur or Lancelot. And – like her interest in the poet/historian/prophet Taliesin - she couldn't even begin to explain how it wasn't a problem with either one of them, but with her. She didn't feel ready for this, her first sexual liaison, intended to result in eventual motherhood.

Gwen knew her duty. Knew that despite the appearances of youth Nimueh's strong magic gifted her – not a single strand of gray in that dark hair, blue eyes bright, red lips full and firm, not so much as a wrinkle or an extra pound littering her perfect figure – her mother was closer to sixty than fifty.

But. Gwen had always felt lacking by comparison. Her magic was weak, her skin dusky rather than fair, her figure round rather than willowy, short rather than imposing. Nothing to impress the intended sire of her daughter. Which was, she knew, the wrong way of looking at the whole process, but she couldn't help feeling… inadequate?

"I haven't made up my mind," she said only.

Something flashed in Nimueh's eyes. "What is there to consider?" she said, deliberately careless. "With Lancelot as sire, your daughter would be quite striking. Gorgeous, possibly. With Arthur – well, the potential for beauty is there, but the result could be unexpected."

The silence lengthened, as Gwen weighed whether she wanted to address the question of what her daughter might be like on the inside.

"If you're worried about their genetic history, don't be," Nimueh added. "Lancelot's mother and grandmother both had unquestionably solid magic. Arthur's mother Ygraine was my favorite cousin; she's held our western border for thirty years, and his sire was Ygraine's best general."

"Is he still alive?" Gwen said without thinking.

"Yes, I believe so." Nimueh's gaze was sharp, the candle glowing thick and hot without so much as a flicker. "Is it their differing temperaments, that has you undecided?"

Lancelot was always so respectful, behaving with courtesy and reverence for her gender and status, always deferring, never disagreeing. He would be the same in the bedroom. Considerate and obedient and… Gwen was a virgin, still, so she was only going on hearsay, but if conceiving a daughter took a great deal of time, she thought it possible the novelty and physical enjoyment might wear off into boredom? He didn't interest her, beyond his physical perfection; she couldn't see him as a lifelong mate. She would have no trouble, she expected, returning him to a command on the border, after he had sired her daughter.

She might prefer that. Not having any feelings at all complicating a continuing relationship with her daughter's sire.

Arthur, though.

He was polite also, inoffensive, but… She always felt there was more there. That he showed the female society one layer only. He was very controlled – but that made her wonder, what, exactly, he was controlling. Lancelot had no great emotion to control.

Arthur was intriguing. She felt like she might quite like the taming of him, because he was one to be persuaded to accept the taming. Not forced or cajoled or ordered or seduced, but… impressed, maybe. As though he was waiting to trust someone enough to reveal his true self? And what might that be?

It was all so backwards, when she thought of him, but she felt if she earned a genuine depth of friendship and confidence with him, it would give her value as a person, as well. It would mean that there was more to her than gender and status. Would that viewpoint make her a stronger queen, or a weaker one? She didn't know.

"Lancelot is perfectly trained," the queen commented; she was impatient with Gwen's indecision. "Arthur might prove to be more of a challenge – but as princess, perhaps it might be good for you to take on such a challenge. How can you rule a kingdom if you cannot rule a man, after all."

"Like you did with my sire?" Gwen heard herself say, and bit the inside of her lips together. Her mother would be angry – but, a little voice in her mind said, what can she do about it, after all? The kingdom will be mine someday, no matter what…

"Well, you have grown up while I wasn't looking," Nimueh said, but not as if she was displeased. "Hm. I suppose it will do you good to know. Your sire was the royal blacksmith, you know that part… What you probably didn't know, was that he did not have my invitation."

Gwen stared at her mother, uncomprehending. For a male to initiate a mating was death.

Nimueh's red lips curved in a smile of remembrance, amused and cruel. "He was… maybe a bit like Arthur. He saw what he thought was his chance, and took it. And what he might not have ever known, was that - I allowed it." She shrugged one shoulder, the dark red silk delicately draped there shimmering in the candlelight. Gwen clenched her teeth to keep her jaw from dropping open – Nimueh's magic would have protected her quite comfortably from even an unexpected attack. "I thought, initiative and spirit and defiance. Might not be a bad thing for my daughter to have. Of course, it was more than a month after his execution, that I knew for sure he'd sired you."

Initiative and spirit and defiance, Gwen thought dazedly. Everything she'd always thought might displease her mother.

"But," the queen continued. "We may have a third option for you to consider."

"Who?" Gwen's mouth said, her mind still a step and a half behind.

"There's a male on the docket for the citizen-trials tomorrow."

Nope. Still behind. Gwen could only stare at Nimueh. "But – that hasn't happened for –"

"Twenty years." Nimueh nodded in satisfaction. "I remember. You were there too, incidentally, you sat on my lap in our box in the stadium. More interested in my necklace than the trials, though."

Gwen couldn't help a shiver. She'd only barely passed her citizen-trial herself, three years ago, and still hadn't the courage to ask her mother straight out if she'd used magic to aid Gwen in killing the poor street-thief she'd paired with. Skinny and scrawny, eyes bulging with shock and despair, still he'd fought so desperately for his life that Gwen had worried for hers.

"I don't see how that's a third option," she managed. "There haven't been any male citizens for just over a – century."

And didn't that tease a memory from the book she'd just been reading? No time to catch it, during this conversation with her queen mother.

"Yes," Nimueh added, with lazy slowness, her brilliant blue eyes heavy-lidded.

"Who is he? Anyone special?" she asked.

"His mother was a low-level officer, stationed on the border for several years." Gwen wasn't surprised that the queen had researched the anomaly as soon as it was brought to her attention, though probably it was a task assigned to another, the results summarized for Nimueh's benefit. "No record of the sire's identity. She returned to the city for the last third of her expectancy, and petitioned for release from her enlistment when she bore a male. It was assumed that she did so out of humiliation, over the circumstances of the conception, or the fact of the get's gender. However, it seems she purchased a slave a little over a year later, an educated male with some small magical ability. She went into significant debt for a decade to pay off the expense, and lived at a near-destitute level of poverty for years after."

"Curious," Gwen agreed.

Her mother hummed. "Tomorrow will be interesting, to say the least. And if this boy survives to manhood and citizenship… perhaps it would be wise of you to consider him as a sire for your daughter."

Gwen took a deep breath, let out the sigh silently. Because of her meager ability, of course, it would be wise to infuse stronger magic into the royal line again. But Nimueh had assured her that both Arthur and Lancelot could be assumed to pass potential to their children, though neither had any magic themselves.

A male citizen. With magic to match, at least, any adult female in the nation. Though he would be quite a few years younger, and a stranger… But it did make sense that Nimueh would seek to control such a person, at least to the perception of the public, by inserting him into the heritage of the eventual successor of the throne, by keeping a child of his as tenant of the royal palace.

"I'll keep an open mind, mother," she said. Because it would be childish and naïve to refuse based on nothing more than personal sensitivities.

Nimueh gave her a smile of pleased satisfaction. "I would expect no less. Not too late, now? Good night."

"Good night," Gwen echoed. And couldn't help thinking of those for whom this would be their last night alive.

The nameless boy who tomorrow would fight and kill, for the right to live free…

A/N: The inspiration for this fic came largely from a book by Piers Anthony and Mercedes Lackey, "If I Pay Thee Not in Gold". (Which I would say is M-rated, and I don't recommend, unless you're okay with ménage a trois and demon/human intercourse… don't be alarmed, that will never enter my fics! Because I'm not okay with that, it just didn't enter the book in question until the end, at which point I was too hooked not to finish, and skipped those parts!)

In any case, I found the idea of a matriarchal society intriguing (maybe I should add a disclaimer – I'm not a sexist?); much of that framework comes from the book, as well other elements, which I'll probably identify in subsequent chapters as we go… Also I should say, the nature of magic will be a bit different than in-series.

Just fyi, I'm going to keep these 3 povs for this fic: Merlin, Percival, and Gwen. Interesting/unusual mix, huh? Well, we'll see. Updates at least once a week, maybe 12-15 chapters, though it seems I always say that…