Chapter 10: Killer

Freya wouldn't look at his face, couldn't look.

She could sense the fury building in his body, tension mounting, without having to see the exact expression in his eyes. His long fingers clenched into white-knuckled fists; she could barely swallow, her throat was so dry.

Hate radiated from him once again, white-hot and deadly as the day he'd come to Emmett's Creek, but he was no longer brittle from illness and fatigue. She'd seen him pounding nails on the very roof above their heads, seen him working the bellows of Elyan's forge stripped down to trousers and leather apron. Physically he was more than a match for her husband, she thought.

And she couldn't move. Couldn't let him go to face Padlow.

"Move away from the door," he said. His voice shook slightly; he was fiercely eager in his demand. She fully expected him to toss her aside, knock her to the floor, but she shook her head, feeling tears squeeze onto her cheeks.

"I can't," she gasped quietly. If Padlow should hear them and try to enter the room – she shuddered. "Please, please don't go."

Merlin reached for her shoulders; she tensed for the violent shove, but just as quickly he released her. He turned, growling in his throat like a cornered wolf, paced the floor to the other side of the room, turned swiftly again and was as close to her as thought before she could draw breath. She was startled into looking up into his eyes – deep blue pools of emotion ready to sweep her away into their depths.

"Why do you block me?" he said, his voice harsh. "Do you think to protect him?"

She gazed back at him, stiff with sudden shock. Padlow's safety, something that should have been a concern for her as his wife, had not even entered her mind. He'd never been seriously injured; she'd never seen Padlow lying still and unconscious, except when he was drunk. She'd never touched him to wash wounds, never tried to comfort a nightmare, never caught him as he fainted from the end of his ability to endure pain.

"You," she answered, wondering at herself. Stuttered again, "You – you are not a killer. He will not let you survive if you fight with him – you must kill him if you would live. And here – now–" She shook her head, trying to make him understand. "You are not a killer," she pleaded. Trying to swallow the sob building in her throat.

He moved suddenly, startling her again, brought his face and body so close she could smell the cheap soap Shasta bought for customers' use, see the pulse beating in his neck. His eyes bored into hers. "Move," he grated.

"I cannot," she said.

Before she realized what she was doing, she had placed her palm flat on his chest. And he retreated at the gesture, obeying her touch. The realization shivered through her, heart and soul.

"I will not help you kill him," she added. "You – you are better than that."

He didn't seem to notice her brokenly incoherent attempt at explanation. "This is not something you can stop," he told her. "If not here and now, then later, and elsewhere." His jaw clenched as he studied her for a moment, then turned to pace restlessly again, a wild thing caged against his will. This tightly strung expectancy was different in him than the almost lazy carelessness she'd grown used to in the past months.

It reminded her of what Shasta had once said, about Merlin wearing himself out following Padlow to kill him. And that prompted another recollection, of Alice saying it was a pity whatever had happened to make Merlin the way he was. Something Arthur knew, too, about why Merlin hated so fiercely.

She'd suggested, when helping to clean the marks on his wrists, that Padlow had wronged him. Me? Merlin had said. No. He's done nothing to me. Someone close to him, then? Padlow had done – or at least Merlin believed he had done – something so bad, or wrong, or cruel, that Merlin had followed him a long time, had become a revenger, had waited here in Emmett's Creek for months, for the opportunity to settle the score. To exact his revenge in blood. Like Shasta had said, he hadn't come merely to scrap with Padlow.

"What happened?" she said in a low voice, not moving from her post in front of the door.

He wheeled, staring not at her but at the door behind her, which was disconcerting. "I'm going to kill him," he stated simply, his voice trembling with intensity.

Even now, she realized, he was barely holding himself in check. Because she was standing in his way? Easy enough to pass her – except he wasn't willing to hurt her. Even to be rough with her. Beneath the rage and the hatred, he was still instinctively kind. Gentle, when he wasn't intentionally rough. She didn't understand.

"But why?" she said.

He looked at her again, his eyes still so dark as to be almost black. "You really want to know what your husband is capable of?" he spat out.

She took a deep breath, straightened her spine, and admitted aloud, "I do know what he's capable of."

His eyes narrowed, his gaze glanced down her body, returned to her face. "Almost." The word was spoken in a voice so low she could barely hear him. "Rape? Yes. Torture? How about that? Murder?"

Her heart seemed to stop, to gasp for another beat. Murder? she tried to say, but though her lips moved, no sound came out.

"Theft?" he continued. "Extortion? Balinor knew he was a cheat and a liar, knew he was robbing honest, hardworking folk blind. So one day, your – husband – came to call. To threaten. And when he left, four bodies were lying on the kitchen floor."

Freya was bumped forward by the door.

"Just me, child," Gaius' low voice let Freya know it was safe to let the door open. But even if Padlow, Burton, and the reeve had all tried to push in, at that moment she was too numb with shock to have kept her position.

Merlin's burning eyes never left her face, as the physician slipped into the room. "There were flies in the blood when I came home," he continued. "Blood – everywhere. Pooled under my father's body from a dozen wounds. Smeared across my sisters' faces where my mother had touched them."

He turned from Freya and Gaius, the heels of his hands pressed into his eyes, fingers clutched in his hair, his body bending with the weight of his anguish. In a haze of sympathetic pain, Freya sensed the old physician looking from Merlin to her, in shock himself.

"Always so much blood," Merlin whispered hoarsely. "If I had stayed–" A cry burst from his throat, rising in pitch and intensity. "They were babies – they were babies! And he broke their necks like–"

He whirled violently, one long step bringing him close to Freya again. Gaius put one rounded shoulder in front of her as if to protect her, but Merlin ignored him, shoving his finger in her face.

"You asked me once, did I remember my first fight. They took me to them, lying there on the undertaker's table, all white and clean. But I kept seeing the blood – everywhere. I was falling – drowning – couldn't breathe. But if only they hadn't–" Gaius reached forward to lay a comforting hand on Merlin's shoulder – "Don't touch me!" he choked, leaping back. His finger curved into claws, trembling visibly. "Why? Why must they always touch me?"

His body folded to the floor beside the bench, his forehead pressed into the wood, eyes closed, hands flattened on the seat to either side of his face. The gulp of breath sounded raw in the silence of the room, and he let out a sob that might have been a harsh laugh.

"I've spent years telling them it wasn't my fault. They don't believe me."

Freya's heart was pounding like she'd just run the length of Main Street. Her mouth was dry, her chest heaved with breathing around the tears. She moved forward, slid onto the bench. "Who?" she said softly.

Gaius remained motionless by the door; tears streamed also down his wrinkled face, though he made no sound.

"My father. My mother. My two baby sisters. If I had been there that night – if I hadn't – run away…"

Freya's hand hovered momentarily over his dark hair – did she dare? – then gently, softly, touched him. He shuddered with the depth of his feeling; she smoothed his hair, careful not to press his face into the bench, felt the curve of his head and the tension in his neck. Felt even the wetness of tears on his cheek. Briefly he turned his head into her palm, as he'd done when she soothed his nightmare.

She thought, now, that she knew the origin of his nightmares. Knew why he had reacted to Reeve Whatley's touch with a blow, why he'd slapped Shasta's hand away from helping him, why he'd fought Gaius and Percival so fiercely even half-conscious. She glimpsed the days and months of hurting and hating that had turned into years – how many? How long?

"Will your hate and your pain die with Padlow?" Gaius asked softly.

Merlin's head came up at that, hands made rough by hard work scraping away all trace of moisture from his face. "It will never die," he stated, and his voice had lost the fire of his passion. He remained crouched on the floor, staring blankly at the wall behind Freya, hands bracing himself on the bench.

"Your mother," Freya ventured. "She would not want her son to become a killer."

He turned to look at her, eyes stark, but not completely soulless. An inkling arose that he wanted her to understand. "I am next of kin," he said. "It is my responsibility. By law I am allowed to take his life as payment for theirs."

By law, Freya knew, he could also take the lives of the murderer's family as well, since a family had been murdered. She remembered the hate once directed at her…

Gaius winced at Merlin's bald statement. "It might be legal, but that doesn't mean it's right. That doesn't mean it'll ease that black shadow off your soul…"

Freya felt the tears start to her eyes again. "Please," she whispered. "Please don't do this."

He turned his face away from her.

…..*….. …..*….. …..*…..

After a moment, Merlin pushed himself to his feet. He wished he hadn't lost control and revealed his past, but he couldn't change that now – at least neither Gaius nor Freya was likely to spread it around town as gossip. If there was any time for that. Deliberately he shut that part of himself and locked it away.

"You better keep her here," he addressed the physician. "They'll likely be watching the tavern." Gaius nodded, his gray eyes infinitely sad. "Arthur was heading out to Cedric's place today, if you end up needing him before tonight."

"Padlow was asking where Freya was," Gaius offered hesitantly, as though unsure himself what the right thing to do was – though Merlin didn't have to ask if the old man had lied for her. "Also said he knew there were two strangers in town looking for work, wanted to know what I knew about you. Thought it was amusing, you helping to put this roof on – said he might have some odd jobs if you both wanted to come out to his place sometime. I'd guess he's trying to make it look like he believes that story, but he never said a word about Arthur being an agent. That part seems to be still a secret."

Merlin nodded. Likely they were working on the same assumption Burton had revealed the night he and Arthur had ridden into town. The night – she smiled. He glanced down at Freya, and found himself rubbing the rope burn scarred into his left wrist. She wasn't meeting his eyes, was playing with one corner of her old brown shawl. He took Gaius 's sleeve, drew him out of the office, glancing quickly down the corridor to be sure they were still alone, and shut the door behind him.

"It's important that she stay hidden," he told the old physician dispassionately. "They think that Arthur and I are trying to blackmail them with the knowledge of their excesses in tax collecting, or to pirate the business for ourselves. They may think that Freya was helping us with information, at the least. They certainly will want to question her; they may want to punish her."

Gaius nodded, his lips pressed tightly together. Then he said, "Padlow will check the tavern for her also, and I'd guess that Burton and Reeve Whatley might help search, but there's only so many places in town that she could be. I'll keep the doors locked, and he won't want to break in unless he knows she's here, so if she stays out of sight she should be fine. Although, he is within his rights to take his wife back home with him, so if they discover her…" He trailed off, a worried frown line between his bushy gray eyebrows.

As much as Merlin ached – with an anxious, almost physical pain – to get his hands on Padlow, he doubted his ability to handle all three on his own. He could wait for Arthur – or ride out to get him from Cedric's farm – but he'd lose his chance of killing Padlow himself, then. Maybe if he called Padlow out in public, where the reeve couldn't interfere, and if Percival or Elyan was present to prevent Burton from making the fight two against one…

"Just make sure she stays here, and do you best to see he doesn't find her," Merlin told Gaius. "Once she's involved, it's far more complicated, and likely she'll be hurt. Someone will come to tell you when it's safe."

He turned to leave, but Gaius caught his arm. The old physician's expression was more intense than Merlin had ever seen. "An agent is here," he said. "The law is involved. He can see to it that justice is done. Why not let go your revenge?"

Merlin felt the influence of the old man's words, but forced a short, incredulous burst of laughter. "Have I not just torn myself open to show you what he's done? Am I not justified in seeking his blood? He or I will die before tomorrow morning."

He pulled away roughly, and left the office before the physician's words could start to persuade him.

…..*….. …..*….. …..*…..

For a moment Freya listened to the murmur of Merlin and Gaius talking outside the closed door. She still felt slightly numb.

She remembered her mother, thin and coughing, always coughing, her translucent skin tinged yellow, til the morning Freya woke to the inevitable silence. She'd gone to a kind-hearted neighbor for help, a woman as angular as Shasta was round, who'd sent for the undertaker and kept Freya drinking tea at her kitchen table til the preparations had been finished. She couldn't begin to imagine what Merlin had seen in the silence of his home, the horror and anguish.

But she could clearly see him sitting at a farm kitchen table with a man who looked exactly as he'd look in twenty-five years, a woman whose eyes smiled as she served chicken and dumplings, and two big-eyed little girls who watched their brother adoringly. She could see Merlin relaxed, pleasantly tired after a profitable day's work, joking with his father, accepting his mother's loving touch unselfconsciously, winking across the table to make his sisters giggle. She could see that warm sideways smile spreading easily and often.

Surely that wasn't gone forever. Surely that family hadn't been destroyed completely. Surely Merlin's kindness and gentleness could still overtake and overthrow the hatred and violence.

She knew he could still smile.

Then Freya heard Merlin's voice raised, clear through the door, "He or I will die before tomorrow morning."

She was on her feet when Gaius returned. The way the physician looked at her pityingly, then shut the door behind himself, told her much. Merlin would not have left her to walk back to the tavern alone; she was supposed to stay here with her old friend. To hide like a child under the quilt until the storm passed.

"We can't let him go," she declared to Gaius. "He'll kill Padlow or die himself. We can't let that happen."

The old man took a deep breath, let it out slowly. The little worried wrinkle was deep between his eyebrows. "What can we do?" he said. "It's out of our hands, now."

"Gaius? Gaius!" came another call from beyond the closed door. The physician peeked out before admitting the newcomer – his wife, Alice.

She hurried into Freya's view, flushed and without any extra garment to ward off the cold. "Ah, Freya," she greeted her quickly. "Gaius, I came to tell you first – Padlow is back. He's early. I was just on my way down to the tavern–" She stopped when Gaius began nodding, then noticed that neither of them looked surprised. "He's been here?" she said, her question laced with dread.

"He's been here," Gaius confirmed. "Looking for Freya and asking questions about the two strangers."

Alice tucked her arms together over her chest, at a loss to know what to do. "Well, now it's up to the agent, I guess," she said. "Best thing we can do is keep Freya out of harm's way." She squinted at Freya more closely, her eyes sharp. "Have you seen Merlin this morning?" she asked suddenly. Freya opened her mouth to answer, but Alice's gaze transferred swiftly to her husband. "He's been here too, hasn't he?" she guessed.

"And he finally told us about his family," Gaius sighed. He glanced between the two of them and admitted, "I've known that story for months. Arthur told me on our way back from Camelot."

"The agent?" Alice said, confused. "I didn't know they knew each other, before."

"Oh, they haven't exactly been friendly," Gaius said. "But they'd run across each other years ago. Merlin was underage, you see, at the time his family was killed, and his reaction to that tragedy meant no one in the community would foster him into their own family. I guess a neighbor found Merlin there in the house with the bodies a few days later, and took him in overnight. But when they went to view his family before the funerals, it seems Merlin went a little mad. Knocked out two of the undertaker's teeth and broke the arm of the neighbor who was caring for him. They had to let him go, but sent word to the authorities, who sent Arthur. Arthur found him out at the farm, trying to work his father's land by himself."

Alice stopped Gaius with a hand on his arm. "I'm not sure what good it does us to know this," she said, troubled. "Maybe you'd better keep the rest to yourself?" She sent Freya a glance, then drew her husband further away, into the back room that might have been a kitchen in a house.

Freya didn't have to hear any more. Even if Merlin had fought with Agent Arthur then, well, he was working with him now. Somehow he had come to be a revenger, and then – somehow he had learned Padlow was responsible. And had followed him here.

Alice and Gaius were still speaking in low, urgent tones, paying no attention to her.

She had put her hand on Merlin, and he had yielded. Might she not be able to stop blood from being shed? She hadn't laid eyes on her husband yet, but she believed she knew him as well as any – she just hadn't wanted to admit what she knew.

There was violence in Padlow just as in Merlin, but a sneaky violence done in the dark and behind closed doors. Not as Merlin's was a violence proclaimed for all the world to be wary of, that he was not ashamed for, that he openly accepted the consequences for, asking only to be left alone. She couldn't remember anyone ever meeting Padlow in an open fight.

Night after night she'd spent curled into a ball at the edge of the bed where Padlow sprawled and snored. Meals she'd cooked with criticism and no thanks, day after day cleaned the close, dark hut with no acknowledgement of her efforts. She'd fought her feelings and allowed him his marital rights whenever he'd demanded. She'd accepted his roughness in silence and forgiveness, had given him the benefit of the doubt when rumors and hateful looks and invective were thrown her way.

She'd been wrong, hadn't she.

What now? What now?

Her feet strayed slowly down the corridor, her stomach churning at the thought of waiting there, waiting for one or the other to come, depending on who lived and who died. She did not want her husband's death, but her heart bumped hollowly at the thought of Merlin lifeless – eyes glassy blank, face relaxed unnaturally, his active body still and limp. She had no right to think of him at all, she knew that. But the vitality and potential, the promise of the kind of man he could be, the life he could live…

She reached the front door without realizing it. Alice and Gaius had not appeared, locked in their discussion in the back room. She stood a moment in indecision, biting her lip. She knew nothing concrete of anyone's plans – not Merlin's, nor Arthur's, nor Padlow, Burton, or Whatley's. She didn't know what she wanted the outcome of the confrontation to be, had avoided probing her heart for fear of finding selfishness.

But a death was so final, a killing so irreversible. And perhaps it was in her power to prevent that, at least.

She pulled the shawl around her, and opened the door slightly to let herself through.

…..*….. …..*….. …..*…..

Merlin used the back alleys to make his way from Gaius' office to the tavern, and approached with increasing caution. Eager he might be for the fight-to-the-death, but not stupid. Rushing blindly into it might result in his death, and he was not eager for that to happen.

Not until Padlow was dead, anyway.

All was unusually still for that hour of the morning; he could hear no one stirring about town – no wagons, no shouts of children playing, no noises of trades being plied. The forge was silent. He paused for a moment at the tavern's back kitchen door, scanning the edge of the wooded area visible beyond town. He studied the windows of the other buildings for a moment, eyed the roofs. Morgana had taught suspicion and wariness as a life-saving habit; his hand caressed the leather-wrapped hilt of the foot-long hunting knife habitually at his belt.

Merlin put his ear to the wind-chilled wood of the door and listened, heard low voices murmuring inside the kitchen. He could detect nothing from the tavern's main room beyond, but another moment assured him that the voices were female only. He pushed inside.

Another time it would have been laughable to see how Shasta and Gwen both jumped and turned identically guilty faces to him. They huddled by the double-hinged door between the kitchen and the tavern's main room much as Merlin had just stood at the back door, heads bent close to hear what they might.

"Where's Freya?" Shasta hissed. Gwen's eyes were wide, her smile gone. Breakfast stood unfinished on the small family table.

Merlin crossed to them with soundless steps. "With Gaius," he whispered back. They moved one to each side to allow him access to the door between them; he listened but heard nothing in the main room, not even Percival moving about at mundane chores.

"Padlow's back," Gwen whispered from his right. He nodded but didn't pull away from the door.

"He's looking for Freya," Shasta added from his other side. Her wide face was pale. "He mentioned you and Arthur, casual-like. He's been talking to Burton and the reeve. For sure he doesn't believe you're just drifters looking for work, but that's what he tried to make us think. He's down the street loading supplies from Mike's, but we didn't see Burton nor the reeve. Percival's out front, watching."

Merlin eased the door open, stepped out into the deserted common room. Shasta and Gwen followed, the younger woman clinging to the elder, but they stopped by the bar while Merlin continued to the window, standing to the left so he could see down the street without being seen himself.

Percival was outside, leaning against the vertical beam supporting the porch roof, towel slapped over one shoulder, big arms crossed over his chest, motionless. Past him Merlin noticed Elyan at the open doors of the silent forge, tied into a long leather apron, knuckles at his hips and a hammer dangling from his fingers. Down the street, Merlin could just see a team of tired gray horses facing them, heads level with their knees, hitched to a large wagon waiting outside the dry-goods store. A large canvas, tented upward over a curved frame, covered the back of the wagon and prevented Merlin from seeing more than vague movement beyond, as Mike helped Padlow load his winter supplies.

The thought came to him, that his mother and father had seen this very wagon pull innocently into the dooryard as though bringing another visitor for dinner and a night's lodging, just a peddler with a wagon of trinkets. His mother would have stood at the open kitchen door, wiping her hands on her apron, the girls half-behind her skirts on either side… Balinor coming to the door of the barn…

Merlin could afford no emotion now; he needed his thinking to be clear.

His gaze shifted to scan the rooftops; the flat top of the blacksmith's forge could only conceal a man if he lay flat on his face near the back of the building. The next to the east was a boot-maker's, with a slanted shingle roof like the physician's office; the opposite side was shielded from the tavern's view. Mike's Mercantile had a high storefront that rose above the actual roof – a good third of the buildings down the street boasted this feature, to make the establishment appear larger, more impressive, more successful. It was an excellent place for a man to lie in ambush, and had featured prominently in several of Merlin's earliest plans. It was impossible to tell if anyone was there before they popped up and took their first shot at you with the weapon of their choice.

Shasta hissed, "What's going on?"

Merlin didn't answer, just snorted a breath through his nose, half in derision and half in disappointment. Padlow was right there on the street past the wagon, out in the open, waiting to be challenged. But he'd bet hundred to one odds on Burton or Whatley or both lying in wait for him or Arthur to make that mistake. Perhaps the two had more intelligence than he'd guessed, but more likely this course of action revealed Padlow's leadership.

His eyes narrowed. A clever murderer. He still itched and burned like fury to get his hands on the man, to rend and tear and watch life ebb from his eyes – but it wasn't going to be simply a matter of calling him out. They could ambush him and call it legal, claiming protection of Padlow's livelihood, and then Arthur would be one against three, even if he showed his writ.

Merlin would have to claim the grievance of his lost family and air his past before the reeve and several witnesses if he wanted even a chance at a fair fight.

He regretted, briefly, that inauspicious meeting of the agent in the Camelot library and Gaius' hastily-agreed-upon treaty. If Arthur hadn't ridden into town, Reeve Whatley and Burton might never have conceived suspicions to pass on to Merlin's quarry, alerting him to possible danger and making him watchful of strangers in town.

Out of the corner of his eye he saw Percival straighten, unloose his arms, and form his hands into fists. Craning into the angle of the window, Merlin couldn't see any change in the scene, but was reluctant to step outside and show himself to any watcher. Percival remained tense, brows drawing thunderously together and fists clenching and releasing. He also glanced from rooftop to rooftop; clearly his thoughts ran in the same pattern as Merlin's.

He risked a quick trio of taps on the glass; Percival, startled, turned his head and saw him. Then his eyes went past Merlin to his wife and Gwen, not two paces behind. His gaze turned back toward Padlow's wagon for the space of two breaths before he took the slow steps that brought him inside the tavern.

A last glance out the window told Merlin that Elyan had no similar reaction to whatever had taken place, but still watched, unmoved.

"Tell me," Merlin commanded shortly once the door closed behind Percival.

The big bartender's gaze remained on his wife. "Padlow's back," he answered slowly.

Merlin made an impatient sound, motioned with his hand that this was old news, tell more.

"He was in a little bit ago, asking after – you and the agent. Didn't tell him anything, but that you were staying on in town awhile, doing odd jobs but looking for more permanent work. Didn't tell him specifics." Percival fell silent then, eyes still on the two women.

Shasta spoke up then. "He made compliments to me and Gwen," she said, and her voice was troubled. "Maybe you've heard somebody do that before – make a compliment sound like a threat."

Merlin had. Along the lines of, Your daughter is very pretty. Accompanied by a leer and a thumb testing the edge of a knife. Merlin understood all too well how a single man with few friends could keep an entire town held in fear. He and Burton with no scruples, and a reeve willing to make excuses and look the other way.

"And just now?" Merlin demanded.

Percival's expression shifted subtly, like he was trying to communicate something to Shasta without words and without Merlin catching on. Her reddish eyebrows drew down in confused reaction, and a hint of fear.

Outside the window, Padlow's tired gray horses pulled the covered wagon along – and Merlin's attention was completely diverted.

This, then, was the man who killed. The last face his terrified little sisters had ever seen, as his big hands gripped the sides of their heads. The last hand his anguished mother had ever felt – she who deserved nothing but joy and light, to teach her daughters cooking and sewing, to hold their babies and die in peace surrounded by love. This was the man his father must have hated with an intense and helpless hatred as his family was slaughtered before his eyes.

The image swam before Merlin's eyes. He felt the thief's knife as it had entered his own body months later, in a rainstorm by the side of a country road, white-hot. He felt his life ebbing away when he could not move, could not even survive to fight another day, to hunt down the man who had taken his family.

There had been no Morgana to stop her carriage beside the farmhouse, as beside the rain-filled ditch, to order that the bleeding bodies be retrieved from the blood-spattered kitchen, to bind the wounds.

There had been no obedient teenage son gathering firewood or stabling horses to burst in and help overcome the murderer in time. There had been no one to save his father's life.

And now there was only him.

Merlin blinked deliberately. With steely resolve he forced the tears from his vision. Stared with burning eyes at the murderer.

He was tall, Merlin could tell by the way his knees drew up as he sat the wagon's driver's seat. His bones were heavy, his joints thick, his hands massive. His jaw was square, his hair dark and longish, turning a greasy gray above his ears. His eyes were dark and sunken, flitting to and fro, though his head never turned, lips pulled back over long teeth – he was missing one on the left – in a grin at once triumphant and uneasy. As though he'd won a battle but the outcome of the war was still in question. A long hunting knife in a fringed scabbard hung at his hip.

Then the wagon passed the tavern, continued on the track out of town, heading presumably for the miserable hovel Freya had referred to as their home. Merlin could see nothing but the corner of a crate through the tight-drawn canvas at the back of the wagon, an evil and furtive eye watching the killer's back.

What would such a man want with the profit he squeezed from the taxpayers of his region? What would he do with it? What had he done with it?

Merlin moved to the other side of the window to watch the wagon grow smaller and finally disappear behind the rise of the hill. Percival remained with his back to the door, listening but not looking. He seemed ashamed, somehow.

"Well?" Merlin said, his mind more focused on the wagon and its driver than the tavern-keeper's narrative. "Finish it."

"You left Freya with Gaius?" Percival said.

"Yes." Merlin was impatient.

"She didn't stay there."

…..*….. …..*….. …..*…..

Freya gasped with the chill of the wind that cut effortlessly through her shawl.

But it wasn't the temperature of the air only that bothered her; the whole town seemed to be holding its breath, watching the street through wary window-eyes. No one was about, the street seemingly deserted but for Padlow's covered wagon outside Mike's store, not quite directly across the street.

It was the same every year when Padlow returned. The last stop before Emmett's Creek was the governor's storehouse in Camelot, where the tax farmer would sell for hard money the surplus crops given him for tax on the territory's last route. He'd also sell what crafts had been given him in payment – jewelry, linens, lace, quilts, various carpentered odds and ends, even a piece or two of larger furniture – to the artisans whose booths and shops filled the capital. And Padlow would bring the money back to Emmett's Creek, buy what was needed for the two of them to last the winter. It would be a quick stop at Mike's; since Padlow paid cash, there was no need to haggle over the value of trade items. Mike wouldn't prolong the encounter, and might even have had the staples waiting for Padlow already.

She didn't want her husband to see her outside Gaius' office; she didn't know what the old physician had told him, but she didn't want to arouse Padlow's temper against her friend. She started toward the wagon, glancing up and down the street yet seeing no one. Where was Merlin? She'd imagined he'd charge right out and pick his fight immediately.

Padlow slouched through the door of the dry-goods store, carrying an open crate of sealed glass jars, followed by Mike with a forty-pound sack of flour. Her husband hadn't changed a bit; his perpetual sneer was in place, his shifty pinpoint eyes still on the constant move. The sneer widened when he saw her, the eyes darted to make sure she was alone.

Mike avoided looking at her, hefted the flour into the back of the wagon and hurried to re-enter his store; the old blind dog was huddled under the board walkway, whining thinly.

She approached reluctantly, trying to watch for Merlin without looking like she was doing it; Padlow dumped the crate onto the wagon bed with a clatter of glass jars.

"Well, there y'are," he greeted her. His eyes were narrow, unreadable. "I hear a lot's been going on this year while I been gone."

Apprehensions tumbled through her like a litter of porcupines. What had he heard, exactly? She shrugged, trying to stay calm. "Not so much," she answered.

He was buying three or four months' worth of food-stock as he usually did; she figured he expected to return to their hut for the winter. What he'd heard hadn't changed his plans, apparently. He would expect to take her as well. And what choice did she have?

Run! her instinct screamed. Percival was at the tavern, would protect her. He would have kept her safe from Padlow these years if she'd asked – but she'd never asked him, not to risk his family and the tavern, also. She took a step back.

Padlow's tough, rope-muscle arm snaked out and grabbed her elbow, squeezed like he would grind her joint in half. "Get in the wagon," he hissed, pulling her forward.

Her hip slammed into the loose-swinging back gate, and her lips felt stiff. "My things are at the tavern," she managed a protest. "I should thank Percival and Shasta–"

"You get in the wagon or I'll hogtie you and pile this stuff on top of you," Padlow threatened, forcing her arm and shoulder upward like he would physically shove her where he wanted her.

Countless times she'd obeyed when she hadn't wanted to, countless times she had submitted to his rough handling to prevent worse occurring. This year she felt a curious reluctance, a lethargy upon her limbs that slowed her response – was it selfishness, or was the warning whisper in her ear something more? It sounded like Merlin – and was that a kind of selfishness, too? Questions tumbled through her mind like gamers' dice, over and over – what should she do?

But one thing she knew – Padlow would do as he threatened, and it would be worse for her when they reached the hut. She turned silently and lifted herself into the wagon; Padlow slapped her backside hard, like he would in hurrying a mule.

Tears of humiliation started to her eyes as she clambered over the crates and bundles already loaded, to find a seat on a small keg of cider. Her heart warned her she had made a mistake, but she could see no alternative that wouldn't end with violence.

Supplies loaded, Padlow lifted and secured the wide plank that served as a back gate for the wagon, and yanked the cords of the canvas tight, so only a small inverted teardrop of daylight remained. His boots sounded on the packed dirt of the street as he rounded the wagon to climb to the drivers' seat.

She wiped her face with the corner of her shawl. She would not allow herself to think of Merlin, or even the agent, would not hope for a change to be effected. It could be weeks til the agent decided to make his move, and it was possible he'd change his mind entirely. Merlin could be killed himself, or arrested – at the very least, he would be furious with her; she couldn't expect his help if she'd disregarded his advice of caution. The best thing would be to prepare her mind and heart for another season of silent endurance, and allow no hope.

Ah, but winter was so long and cold.

The wagon wobbled and bounced as Padlow climbed aboard and slouched into his seat. He kicked the brake loose and hee-ya'd the old gray horses. They lurched forward; Freya could see very little through the small opening, around her husband's back.

She glimpsed Elyan at the open doorway of the smith's forge before the view held only the bare skeletons of treetops, stretching and clawing at the sky. She turned to peer out the small window left by the tied canvas at the back; Elyan had already re-entered his forge. There was no one to be seen at the tavern.

"Might snow later," Padlow observed, glancing at her over his shoulder. "You crying?" He sounded malevolently gleeful at the possibility.

"The wind is cold," Freya said wearily. "My eyes are watering."

"Soon be plenty for you to cry about," Padlow muttered darkly.