Out

The laundry basket made it past the first gate easily. A servant bringing uniforms for the groomsmen, whose place of business was located outside of the castle's immediate vicinity (for odor reasons, he'd heard–the queen was rather finicky) had raised no red flags. As Arthur jogged through the rather expansive township toward the second test, his mind sort of split into two, one side of his brain on high alert for any threats and the other half wandering to relieve the tension, like the semi-meditative state employed on long stakeouts. The guards hadn't recognized the foreign visitor at all, and Arthur found himself in the odd position of for the first time silently thanking his Norse ancestors for being as...energetic as they had been, making his face not a remarkable one in these fractured kingdoms many years later. Or maybe he had the trickster god Loki to thank; with his many forms and disguises, the god would be a fitting patron for Arthur's quest here. However, if his nurse's legends were to be believed, the guy was still chained in a cave somewhere with a snake spitting on his face, so maybe invoking him wasn't the best idea. Arthur wouldn't want to start Ragnarok just yet.

As his musings followed this path, he couldn't help but dredge up another memory from that time.

"And Thor threw off his veil and seized the hammer, and with a mighty bellow he rained blows upon those wicked jotuns like they 'adn't never experienced before, and they rode into Asgard triumphant on Thor's carriage, its goats' 'ooves clattering on the golden streets to show all the Aesir that their 'ero had returned and could protect 'em again from any attack of frost or fire. There would come a day when the golden cobbles would melt and run, when wolves would swallow the light and the gods' chess pieces would be left scattered on empty fields, but the day 'ad not arrived."

Her husky voice trails off as his sleepy eyes start to droop closed. The room is dark except for the soft golden glow of the candles on his night table and silent except for their steady breathing, hers deep with a slight wheeze and his higher-pitched and sluggish. But he doesn't want to go to sleep right now; he wants another story! Forcing his eyes open and ooching up from under the heavy blankets thrown over him, the boy turns on her his most appealing puppy-eyed gaze, the one which seems to break everyone except for his father. "Can you please tell me another one about Loki? The way he tricked those giants was so cool! Would you tell me again about when he stole Sif's belt? Or when he stopped the jotun from building the wall!"

At the time, he doesn't even register the stiffening of her spine. It will take a few years before he will understand the meaning behind it. "My liege, I don't think you understand. Loki may seem to do good things sometimes, but he does 'em purely for his own reasons and ambitions. 'e's the bad guy."

"But why? He helped out Thor and saved errybody," he argues adamantly, exhaustion causing him to slur his words. "Mebbe if they'd helped him out for a change he wouldn't have gotten so mad at Balinor and made that blind guy shoot 'im. Mebbe there wouldn't even have to be a Ragranock. Grangagrock. Rangagrock?"

She chuckles lowly, but there is an edge of increasing fear in her voice, and she checks over her shoulder for dark corners where a minute ago there didn't seem to be anything beyond the comforting globe of the light. "Well, but 'e's selfish and greedy, and all of the good 'e does is to fix 'is own mistakes or to get in the other gods' good graces so they don't throw 'im out for his crimes. He uses magic and trickery instead of fighting with honor. And, well, 'e's a jotun, no matter if he is Odin's blood brother, so he can't be trusted. And he will, in the end, bring about the End of Days."

The boy is considerably more awake now. The sudden urgency in her demeanor scares him. He can hear, behind her carefully chosen words, her terror whirling like a hurricane in a jam jar, under immense pressure and keeping everything poised at the breaking point. "Lena?"

She leans forward to grab his shoulders and stare him straight in the eyes. "My liege, I need you to promise that you won't go tellin' my silly stories around, not to your friends or even your father. I mean, not that you should ever lie to 'im, but 'e'd probably just ask why I was fillin' your head with silly old stories from a dead era." Her smile is too thin and too wide, too panicky. He nods wordlessly, which she seems to accept. "Alright, then, how about one more good Thor story before bed, yeah?"

He shakes his head. "No, thank you, Lena. I'm really sleepy." It occurred to him now, and disturbed him, that he could not remember her face beyond a dim impression of rounded cheeks. Her voice, however, he could hear in his head like it had all happened yesterday.

"All right, my liege, good night. Sleep tight until the morrow." She blows out the candles and exits the room. It rightfully should take him a long time to stop staring into the darkness after that, but he is very small and very tired. He falls asleep immediately.

Huh. Arthur didn't know why his memory had hung onto that evening so vividly. Yes, it was another Purge sign, like the stares and the whispers and the slammed shutters, that he'd only recognized afterward. But still. They were just stories.

~o8o~

Coming down a quieter street, Arthur took a sharp right through the open doorway of a rare one-story building squeezed between two teetering neighbors. Arthur didn't trust the construction of any of the wooden contraptions, even the nicely painted city houses in the well-to-do inner town, but if possible the one-story concerned him more than its neighbors. Well, he just needed a minute of privacy from prying eyes, not rich furnishings. Or plumbing. Or a roof.

Which was good, because it actually didn't have a roof. The mound of damp straw in crumbling dried mud that had previously failed to block out the elements now sat on the floor underneath, being slowly spread and ground into dust with each heel turn. Arthur had unceremoniously tossed all of the clothing out of the wheelbarrow, leaving the sorcerer to clamber out on his own while Arthur ran to the other room to grab the two nondescript stained, grey-brown tunics stashed there in preparation. He tossed one to the sorcerer and was caught off guard, a shiver running down his spine, when the blind boy's hand snapped up to catch it. The tenseness of the moment was diminished, however, when the clumsy oaf immediately fumbled and dropped it.

Arthur worked in silence, quickly changing clothes while sending nervous glances at the door and then dashing to stash the wheelbarrow in a grimy corner. When he looked back at his companion, he almost had a fit when he realized the other had done nothing and was simply holding the bundle in apparent confusion. Did the boy not grasp the urgency of the situation? And Arthur had been thinking him quick on the uptake for a peasant. "Hey! You have to put on the shirt!" he whispered hoarsely.

Arthur realized his mistake when the sorcerer turned to him with a stricken expression, displaying his manacled hands under the draping cloth. "With what arms? Can you get these things off of me?"

Arthur's hand moved to the key in his pocket, and then–

–against all logic, he hesitated.

He knew he had to take off the handcuffs for them to escape. It wasn't even a choice. Yet his intestines tied themselves into slip knots at the thought and pulled tight. Magicians had killed his mother. Magicians had killed hundreds of his father's men. This boy had, it seemed, killed hundreds of his father's men. This boy could kill him in an instant. The air felt dry, and he tasted dust and grit coating his parched tongue.

The boy in question huffed in frustration. "Look. "I'm a blind, undernourished escapee who's never had to navigate anything but the inside of a 6 by 10 cell by hearing; you're healthy, well-fed, several inches taller than me, and WAY too good with a sword. What am I going to do?"

Arthur swallowed the dust. It tasted acidic in his throat. "Magic, idiot."

The sorcerer grimaced, then reached up to give two hard flicks to a snug metal armband Arthur hadn't noticed on his right bicep. It clanked dully. "Witchbind. No magic for me. Now, if you could get that off, we could really get cracking."

Oh. Well, then. Arthur stepped closer to examine the band. It was a genuine witchbind–he'd seen a few before in his training. The dull, cold iron was engraved with rough and primitive-looking but also somehow gracefully looping patterns; the flesh around it was both inflamed and bruised. Arthur reached back for the key and realized he'd brought the whole ring. Examining it in daylight, he saw the large grey key to match the keyhole on the manacles. He also definitely saw a smaller grey key covered in rusty sigils like a child's stick drawings in hard clay: the witchbind key.

Arthur unlocked the manacles. He returned the key ring to his pocket. It hung a little heavy there, he noticed.

~o8o~

Ten minutes later, two dirtied peasants arrived at the outer gates. One had heinously dirty brownish-blonde hair and thin lips pursed thinner by strain; the other had a bandaged face under a deep hood and jumped at every loud noise. Both of them wore ill-fitting and threadbare outfits that would've been considered high fashion in an impoverished town that had been under siege for months. The guards had seen odder.

The gates were huge, imposing things, made of oak and set into dark, reddish stone walls that contrasted with the general aura of lightness leant to the place by an abundance of the indigenous yellow rock from which the castle keep and bailey were hewn. Two sentries were stationed on the inside of the gates, checking travelers' identification papers and occasionally letting someone outside, and two paced the walkway on top of the walls. Arthur didn't know how many were on the other side.

With one hand at the sorcerer boy's elbow, he guided them toward the gate. The guard on the left gave them a bored once-over. "Papers, please."

Arthur gave her a cool glance, matching her bored and generally irked ambience, and pulled their papers out from his waistband. They weren't forgeries but genuine Esseti travel documents. (Uther had a lot of spies.) The guard gave them only a cursory glance before shoving them back at Arthur's chest. "Thank you," he grumbled in his best irritated peasant accent.

The guard rolled her eyes but ignored him. "Two more!" she shouted up to the sentries on the wall. A grinding noise began to emanate from somewhere nearby, and a thin rectangle of light appeared and steadily widened as the heavy doors swung slowly open. Just a few more inches. Just a few more seconds, a few more inches and he'd be home free, he'd be free–

A heavy, mailed hand landed on his tense shoulder. Beside him, he felt rather than saw the sorcerer boy jump out of his skin as the other hand latched onto him. "Wait," barked a gruff voice.

Arthur turned slowly around to face the other guard, who was eyeing them both with suspicion. "Purpose of your trip?" he growled, blowing fetid breath into their faces.

Arthur hid his fear behind a veneer of impatience. "Well, as it says on our papers–"

"No," the guard cut him off, "I want to hear him say it." He pointed to the sorcerer.

For a moment, everything froze. Arthur stared at the guard as the guard stared at the boy and all Arthur could think were all the dirty words he'd learned from Gwen and damn damn damn bloody–

And then he unfroze and punched the guard in the face.

The man staggered backward, clutching his bleeding nose. His partner, no longer bored, gave a cry of alarm and drew her sword. She moved toward the other boy, but Arthur shoved him aside, ignoring his panicky, confused questions, and drew his sword to exchange blows with her. He finished her off and turned around to see the sorcerer standing stock still and facing toward him as the broken-nosed guard surged toward him from behind, weapon drawn. Arthur barely had time to scream a warning, and then he saw what the other boy had been so intently focused on as the sorcerer swung lightning-fast around to deliver a fist wrapped in the heavy chains of his manacles fully to the man's already bleeding face. This time, the guard went down, hard.

The sorcerer turned back to face Arthur, breathing heavily. "Did I get him?"

Then there was no time to think as the clattering of mailed feet and the ringing of alarm bells and shouts filled the air above the city and the gates were closing again and Arthur was grabbing his companion's arm and dragging him in a helter-skelter dash across the cobblestones and through the rapidly shrinking rectangle of light and then they were out.