A NOTE ON MERTHUR I have very strong feelings regarding this matter, and it's best I say so up front: Merlin and Arthur love each other. However, I think it's entirely up to the interpretation of the viewer (or reader, in this case) to decide what form that love might take. I've written this from the standpoint of platonic soulmates, but there's probably more than enough material in here to suggest pre-slash if that's how you want to read it. They just . . . do it themselves, dammit.

TIMELINE: This takes place one week after episode 2x08, "The Sins of the Father". I had the Dickens of a time figuring out where this might fit within the show, and changed my mind more than once. Ideally I would have liked to place this after 2x11, "The Witch's Quickening", because of Arthur's threat to clap Merlin in irons himself should he ever be forced to cover for his servant again – but unfortunately, that episode clearly took place in autumn/early winter. I needed a point in the season where a heatwave seemed likely, and since Arthur was seen sleeping topless quite often in the mid-season episodes, and the leaves on the trees were dense and green, that was the obvious choice.

DISCLAIMER:

This fic is non-profit and written purely for fun. I don't own the BBC's version of Merlin, or Arthur, or anything that appeared in the series. If I did, I can guarantee it would have ended very differently!

The Sentence

The summer that year was the hottest that any could remember. Foetid, festering, and all the day's light glaring back from the stone like a knife from a mirrored shield. In the open fields, the grass had long since scorched to hay; the streams had dwindled to a drab brown dribble, and farmers brought their fractious flocks inside. Even the stones cried out in thirst.

Arthur knelt in the yellowed grass of the training ground, and slopped up handfuls of water from the bucket at his knees. Some he crammed into his mouth; the rest he let spill over his lips, his chin, and down into the sticky hollows of his throat. Then he closed his eyes and clutched the sides of the bucket, feeling the bright day briefly falter around him. He just needed a moment. That was all.

The unnatural heat had called for some changes to their usual training, and Arthur had decreed that his knights would spend the day reviewing quarterstaff and archery skills – skills that, for the most part, could be practiced without the need for armour. The men had received the news with outward stoicism, but their relief had nevertheless been palpable; none of them, least of all Arthur, had wanted to brave the horrors of chainmail on this clay-oven of a day. Four hours later and they had each retreated to various water troughs and waiting servants, anxious to cool themselves after the extreme rigours of the morning. Arthur knew they would not be reconvening that day.

With a last splash at his face and a quick gasp of air, Arthur dipped down and plunged his entire head into the bucket. The icy shock of it was hard, bracing, blissful. As he reared up and shook the hair from his eyes, he was aware of a new sound breaking the murmured quiet of the afternoon. The sound of somebody clapping.

"Impressive," said a voice a little way to his right. "That might be the best bit of posing yet. Going to take your shirt off, as well? You never know when some kitchen maids might be passing by to swoon over you."

Merlin. Of course. Whilst the other knights had been attended by their over-eager squires, he had been left to satisfy himself with an impromptu dip in a rusty bucket. Typical.

"If I ever expected any sort of swooning from you, Merlin, then I have long since disabused myself of the notion. Have you at least brought me a change of shirt, or did you come down here simply to offer your valuable insights into my performance as a maid-magnet?"

At that, Merlin shot him a disarming grin and scurried towards him over the grass. Arthur couldn't help but smother a laugh: from his vantage point, all he could see of his gangly manservant was the agitation of his knees above and the swatch of semi-bared shin below. His breeches had been rolled halfway up his calves, and his boots seemed to flap around his feet as if they were made for someone twice his size.

As Merlin stumbled to a halt beside him, his toes struck a hardened clod of earth . . . and Arthur watched, incredulous, as the bundle of cloth in the boy's arms slowly uncoiled itself and slid neatly into the bucket.

"Merlin!"

"Sorry, sorry, I . . . it's just that the ground is really uneven out here, what with there having been no rain for weeks, and I think we might actually have moles. You see that hump in the grass, there? Moles. It's not exactly easy to run around on."

"I know, Merlin, I have, in fact, been running around on it all morning. Can you at least put away my bow and quarterstaff, and collect my bolts from the targets? If your delicate little feet can manage it, that is."

Merlin dipped a mocking bow, and bent to retrieve the shirt from the depths of the bucket. As his face came level with Arthur's, he silently pressed a water skin and a young summer apple into the prince's hand. His smile, as young and as sweet as the apple, flashed a brief salute to Arthur before moving out of his sight.

Arthur sat back on his heels, and couldn't help his own smile from rising in response.

§

The apple was as crisp, as fresh, as the air was torrid. Arthur squinted into the corners of the training ground for a moment, placing each of his knights in their own little conclaves before biting into the smooth yellow skin with a crunch.

It was perfect. Tart, but with a hint of sweetness that lingered at the back of the tongue. Cold, and sharp, and better than any roast partridge or pigeon pie he had ever tasted.

"I never thought I'd see you eating fresh fruit, sire," came a voice, from across the way. Arthur turned to see one of the older knights, Sir Pelleas, watching him with a crinkle of faint amusement on his face. "Did your oaf of a servant forget to feed you your breakfast this morning?"

Damn. He hadn't meant for any of his men to see. "A good soldier will take what he's offered," said Arthur, at last – and tried, without success, not to think of the rat stew. "Never know when you might need your strength."

Sir Pelleas inclined his head, barely concealing a smile. "Of course, sire," he said. And turned away.

Arthur looked suspiciously at the fruit in his hand. Where he had torn a neat, round bite from its side, the white flesh glistened with unshed juice in the sunlight. Why had he accepted this apple with such apparent relish, and worse, why had he been foolish enough to eat it in front of his knights? Although the Pendragons did, on occasion, eat uncooked fruit, they did so in the privacy of their own chambers. To most noblemen, it was a habit enjoyed purely by the common folk. Folk like Merlin.

Merlin. The infuriating boy had pressed this gift upon him, and Arthur had thoughtlessly accepted. To someone like his manservant, this fruit would be considered an especial treat – something to give to a friend, when that friend had spent the morning in physical exertion under a blazing hot sun.

Something to give to their master, even though Merlin would doubtless have liked it for himself.

Arthur frowned, and ate the rest of the apple in silence.

§

Merlin was almost thankful for the wet bundle in his arms. The water had been fresh from the well, strikingly cold in the way only underground things could be in this heat. He had rid himself of his jacket and neckerchief earlier in the day, but still the heat had burrowed into skin as the morning wore on. Already today he had scrubbed the floor of the prince's chambers, polished his sword and armour, made up the bed, and collected several freshly-washed linens from the castle laundry. The deep stone walls of the citadel itself had afforded some relief, but the laundry had been like something from a nightmare. Huge coppers were set to boil the castle linen, sending up plumes of steam as fierce as the breath of the Great Dragon himself; red-faced women stirred the vats with wooden poles, dripping sweat as they leaned into the belching columns of heat. Three had already collapsed, and that was before the noonday sun had even reached its zenith.

Merlin was late because he had stopped by at the stables to check on Lady Morgana's palfrey; the beast had recently stumbled for want of a shoe, and Morgana had taken a nasty tumble as a result. Normally he had only to concern himself with Arthur's horses, but Gwen had mentioned in passing that her mistress was worried about the animal. It was no hardship, taking a few minutes to breathe in the soft musk and warm hay of the stables . . . and so Merlin had agreed to stop by, and ask after it to put her mind at rest.

Guillam had not been in his usual place in the stable yard, and neither could he be found in the stalls, the tack room, or the arena. It wasn't like the stablemaster to be absent from his post, but the past three days had brought out uncommon behaviour in all of them; just look at Arthur, electing to train out of armour! Perhaps Guillam had simply taken one of the stallions out to stud, or was engaging a farrier to take care of the reshoeing. Merlin had shrugged it off, been spectacularly late to tend his master, and thought no more of it.

Now Merlin kicked his way through the shrivelled grass towards the archery targets, nudging aside clumps of earth with the toes of his boots as he went. The soil was packed hard, the yellowed blades motionless without a single breath of wind. Even the birds, usually so bright with their ephemeral chatter, had fallen silent.

"Tídrénas!" said Merlin, under his breath. For a moment, the bent blades of grass at his feet shivered as if with a passing breeze; dust puffed along the ground and chased away the taste of the impenetrable summer air. Then it was gone, and the oppressive heat crashed back down again like a fist.

He was so close, for all that was holy. So close, but the effects never seemed to last. All he could muster were these recalcitrant little dust-devils, and a faint breeze that skirted the ground for a moment before receding into stillness. The cooling wind he wanted never rose higher than the tops of his boots. Once, on the Isle of the Blessed, he had called down thunder and lightning on Nimueh with nothing but an outpouring of grief – but since then, all he had been able to cultivate were these insufficient scraps of wind. He would keep trying . . . but he suspected the heatwave would break long before he came even close to succeeding. Next year, perhaps.

If he was even alive this time next year.

Merlin was pulling the red-fletched bolts from the targets when a commotion behind him made him pause. Sounds of scuffling and of raised voices; then a thump as if someone had fallen. Several of the knights, by the sounds of it – but one voice rose imperiously above the rest.

Arthur.

"Sir Leon, what is the meaning of this? Why is my father's stablemaster under arrest?"

Merlin turned, still clutching Arthur's crossbow, quiver, quarterstaff and shirt to his chest. Across the training ground, a rabble of guards had thrust their way through the loitering knights; and between them, his arms clasped tight in the gauntleted hands of Sir Leon and Sir Ector, hung the dazed figure of Guillam.

He was bleary-eyed, flushed with what may have been sickness or merely terror. The vice-like hands of Sir Ector and the more respectful ones of Sir Leon were all that kept him on his feet; he swayed like a sapling between two strong oaks. Guillam was not a young man, and had of late taken to delegating the more arduous tasks to his stablehands; his old bones would not take breaking in young destriers anymore, he said. But he had always been a strong man, as likely to chase the stableboys with a watering can as lie snoozing through a hot summer noon. The man who hung between the two silent knights now was as frail as the skeleton of a leaf.

"We found him unconscious in his house, sire," said Sir Leon. "When he didn't report for duty these past three days, the king ordered a search. It seems he has been drinking; we found three empty wine flasks at his feet."

"And you are taking him to my father now?" asked Arthur.

"Yes, my lord."

The prince turned his attention to the stablemaster, who dropped his head to his chest in stupefied defeat. "And what say you to this, Guillam?" he enquired. Merlin was relieved to hear that his tone was not unkind.

"Sire, I swear on my life I haven't been drinking away the past three days, like these good knights say I have. I never drank more than small ale or a bit of cider for months now, not since my granddaughter's christening. I never saw those wine jugs in my life, my lord. How could the likes of me afford such fine liquor in a month of Sundays? I can only think that I was ill, and slept through some kind of fever."

Arthur remained impassive throughout this speech. As much as Merlin silently willed him to reassure the old man, to grant him pardon in exchange for his promise that it would never happen again, he knew that the prince could do no such thing. Not when his father had yet to be consulted.

And Uther was unlikely to forgive.

"If you have truly done nothing wrong, Guillam, then you must present your case to my father and trust that he will deal with you fairly. Merlin! You're coming, too. From the looks of him we may need a physician's skills along the way."

Merlin did not need to be told twice. He dropped bow, quiver, shirt and staff to the ground, and hurried anxiously after the prince.

§

The king's council chamber was bedded deep in the heart of the citadel, where neither sun, snow, nor enemy soldiers could penetrate. In winter, the harsh northerly winds were trapped whistling through the outer rooms and hallways, never reaching far enough to bring the threat of cold inside; in summer, the pale stone walls of the citadel absorbed the sun's heat and spread it thin as moonlight on water. The king's council room, the king's private chambers, were protected on all sides by the domains of lesser men.

Today, the room was plunged into cool galenic shadow. The few lancet windows, at best merely gashes in the limestone walls, let in only pallid fingers of light. Ordinarily Merlin would have welcomed the respite – any time spent away from the blistering heat of the kitchens and the courtyard would be time well spent – but he found to his dismay that he felt no relief at the chill. It was, in fact, like a cold hand squeezing all the air from his lungs.

Sir Leon and Sir Ector had dragged the unprotesting stablemaster inside, and there they had dropped him, perhaps unwilling to manhandle the man any more than they had to. Each had horses stabled in the castle yards, and each had always been nothing but courteous towards Guillam in the past. He was a gentle old man – always willing to spare some raisins or hazelnuts for the stableboys, and always ready with an anecdote or two from amongst his thirty years as stablemaster. Guillam always brought Merlin a tankard of ale whenever his royal tormentor had decided to make him muck out the stables, and never once commented on the fact that this task was beneath a manservant's usual job description. He seemed to understand, as so many did not, that this was what passed for a joke in the feeble prince's mind.

Now, he looked truly undone. He seemed entirely unaware of his predicament, and merely knelt between the feet of the two knights like a melted candle.

He's broken, thought Merlin, with a swallow. He's either too far gone to understand, or the injury to Morgana and her horse means more to him than his own punishment. He hoped, for Guillam's sake, that the former might be true.

"Three days, you have abandoned your post. For three days, you have been neglecting your duties to drink yourself into oblivion. During that time, the stables were not properly tended and the horses not cared for. Had you been attending to your duties, you would have seen that the Lady Morgana's palfrey was in need of reshoeing. You would have remedied this oversight before it stumbled during her ride, and almost threw her to her death! It is truly a miracle that she only broke her ankle, and was not killed outright."

There was only silence from the assembled parties in the council chamber. Leon, Ector, Pelleas, six other young knights . . . even the prince himself. In the face of Uther's wrath, none quite dared to offer so much as a breath.

So it was Merlin who spoke. Merlin, who by rights should not even have been present at all. "My lord, if I may?"

Uther nodded, all the encouragement that Merlin was going to get.

"I was present when Sir Leon and Sir Ector brought Guillam through the gate, sire. When questioned, he mentioned feeling unwell and that he may perhaps have been suffering from a fever. He claims never to have seen the wine jugs that were found in his house. Perhaps there is more to this situation than meets the eye?"

Merlin darted a glance to the stablemaster, expecting him to repeat what he had told Arthur at the training grounds. But Guillam only slumped, unresponsive, at Merlin's feet. "I-I wouldn't ever neglect those horses, my lord," the stablemaster stammered. "I love those animals like they were my own children, you know I do. And the Lady Morgana h-has always been good to me. I wouldn't have w-wished her harm, not for anything."

"You are immediately dismissed from my employ," said the king. "For the three days you spent revelling instead of attending to your work, you will spend three days and three nights in the town square, without food, and without shade. Perhaps that will make you think more carefully about your responsibilities in the future."

"Sire, you can't!" The many eyes that fell on Merlin pinned him in place like a dead beetle on a piece of vellum. Merlin swallowed, and felt his mouth go dry as the silence began to thicken.

"You forget yourself, boy," said Uther, in a velvet-soft purr. "I can do with my subjects as I see fit, and I'll thank you not to forget that. My son may find your impertinence amusing, but I can assure you that I do not."

"But he'll die. I know I'm not a physician, my lord, but I am his assistant, and I know enough to see that this man is clearly unwell. I truly believe that such a punishment would kill him in his weakened state. Please, sire; I know you have it in you to show mercy."

"Sire," he heard someone say – and saw Arthur step forward with a respectful bow of his head. "While I agree that the stablemaster should be dismissed, I can't help but question whether further punishment is really necessary in this case. I have never known him to shirk his duties, or show any excessive love of drink in the past. Clearly this was a mistake on his part, nothing more."

Merlin felt a lessening in his chest, the release of some great weight that had been crushing the breath from him these past few minutes. A surge of something hot and golden crammed into the space it left behind – and Merlin listened and hardly dared, even, to breathe.

"All the more reason to suspect his story, Arthur. If the man is not a known drunkard, then clearly he concocted this story merely to explain his absence."

"But why would he do such a thing, Father? He must have known he would lose his position for neglecting his duty, if nothing else. I cannot believe the man would claim such a thing if it were not true."

Uther stood like a pillar of salt beside his council chair, lost more to shadow than to light. It took all Merlin had to glance at the king's adamantine face: the stony brow, the hard crack of a mouth. So unlike his son's.

So unlike Arthur's.

"Men will do much for money, Arthur. He could have been bribed into leaving the stables unattended these past three days, so that some malcontent might have access to the Lady Morgana's horse. He might even have been in league with them."

Merlin hadn't thought it possible for someone as ivory-pale as Arthur to grow even paler – but as Uther continued his ominously quiet assault, that was exactly what he did.

"But what if he didn't, sire?" Merlin blurted. "I mean, he could have agreed to stay away, I'm not disputing that, but . . . but it's not the only explanation. He could have been drugged, and the empty wine jugs left to explain away his stupor. I don't think he even has a clue where he is now, much less where he was supposed to avoid. And it would be easy to mistake this for being in his cups, look – you can pick his arm up and he just drops it as soon as you let go—"

"Enough! You try my patience, boy. If you question my judgement again, then believe me you will face much worse than the stocks for your impertinence. As for the prisoner: it is clear to anyone with half a nose that he reeks of drink. Of far better quality than a man of his station could ordinarily afford, if the jugs are anything to go by. Where did he find the coin to purchase such wine, if not from a bribe? No, he was clearly an accessory to the attack on Morgana, and his sentence stands. Guards, take him to the dungeons until the cage can be made ready."

And like that, the tenuous hope that had roared through Merlin was gone. He had tried, and he had failed. Merlin looked helplessly on as the guards dragged the broken stablemaster away – but his eyes returned, almost against his will, to the two men who had remained.

Arthur had dropped his gaze to the floor, and Merlin saw his throat convulse once as he swallowed. He had never given it much thought before – but, perhaps because of the uncustomary shadows that quenched the council chambers, it struck him today. How unlike they were. Not just in the iron-grey hair and the tawny gold; not just in the stoniness of Uther's face and the unconscious grace of Arthur's. They were, he thought, like two sides of the moon.

The light, and the dark. And ne'er the twain shall meet.

§

As soon as the guards had gone, Arthur chased Merlin out into the passageway like a goose-girl flapping her flock before her. Once over the threshold he seized Merlin's arm, and marched him briskly off down the passageway without looking back.

"Are you trying to get yourself dismissed, or are you really that much of an imbecile?" the prince demanded, as soon as they were clear. "By rights you shouldn't have even been there, and yet you dared speak to my father like any nobleman of his court?"

"Well, it never bothered you," said Merlin, reasonably. "And if I remember rightly, you asked me to be there."

"Only in case the man collapsed! I didn't mean for you to start wagging your tongue like a gossiping kitchen maid."

"Well in that case, I'd better spend the next three days hanging about the town square, hadn't I? Because he will collapse, Arthur. Considering the state he's in, the chances are that he will die out there. I wasn't about to stand by and do nothing when a good man's life is at stake."

Out here, with florid daylight gushing through the casements and all the shadows packed back against the walls, Arthur could see the extent of his manservant's distress. The blockheaded boy really was upset about this, Arthur noted with surprise. Not merely sticking his nose into judicial affairs on the whim of some misguided principle, as Morgana so often did, but . . . because he had to. "Stop looking at me like that. If the wind changes you'll stay like it. I know you're a bit squeamish about the more practical aspects of rulership, Merlin, but my father is right – you could smell the drink on him. There was no evidence to suggest anything more than a misguided debauch on his part. And if we are too lax in our discipline, then it will only give others the impression that they can neglect their duties and not face punishment."

"I neglect my duties all the time," said Merlin, "and you don't punish me for it."

"Is that a fact?" Arthur reached out and clipped Merlin upside the head before the boy could react. Not hard, not enough to hurt . . . but enough to make a point. "How about that? Is that better?"

"Much better," Merlin mumbled, rubbing his head. "But I still think this is wrong."

"Merlin—"

"We should at least be visiting the ale houses and the taverns, see if anyone sold him those three jugs of wine. Check his house for anything out of the ordinary. Something doesn't add up about this, Arthur. I know Guillam, I've only ever seen him drink ale except on feast days and holy days. Never anything like this."

"Which I pointed out, if you'll recall. It only made matters worse. Better to let the man spend three days in the square for drunkenness than be executed for attempted murder."

"If it is three days," Merlin countered. "If he doesn't die out there before that."

Arthur hated to see the foolish boy worked up like this – but really, did he have to take on every lame dog that fell into his path? The idiot made his life far more complicated than it needed to be, sometimes. "Look, he won't die. It's a bit of sun, the same sun I've been training the new recruits in all day. You really are a haddock, Merlin, to think a strong man like him can't survive three days doing nothing in hot weather."

"With no food. And no shade."

"Merlin—"

"There's something wrong with him, Arthur. It's as if he's in some sort of . . . I don't know, some sort of trance. He wasn't even given a chance to defend himself."

"I can't help that." But the prince spoke more gently, now. "Look, I know he's a friend of yours – but I can't go ordering an investigation behind my father's back. It would be tantamount to treason. Would you have me commit treason against my own father, Merlin?"

Merlin shook his head, and swallowed so that his Adam's apple bobbed distressingly in his swan-white neck. "No, sire," said Merlin, wearily. "I don't suppose that I would."

Arthur clapped him uncertainly on the shoulder, and headed off down the passageway towards his chambers. It was harder than he would have thought possible, to keep his eyes front and not look back at the disconsolate figure behind him. Harder still not to call Merlin to him, and attempt to take back all that he had said.

§

The square was a pandemonium of noise and heat and light. Hot white stone, hot enough to burn through the soles of your shoes; the thud of hammers on iron, striking sparks of sound into the motionless afternoon air; stink of human sweat and horse dung, festering under the unmerciful sun. Merlin hated it all.

He stood in the mouth of the alleyway between the kitchens and the lower armoury, watching as two blacksmiths prepared the cage in the centre of the square. Most of the cages in the marketplace were open-topped and low-sided, barely reaching a man's waist – but this one had clearly been designed for something far taller than sheep or pigs. Six feet square and eight feet tall, with bars locked across the top in lieu of a roof, it was all too perfect to incarcerate a man.

People stopped in their business and gaped at the ominous new structure being erected in their midst. Two washer women, with laundry baskets spilling from their ample brown arms, speculated that it was to display a captured enemy king; three young knights loitering by the well hollered questions at the blacksmiths, who painstakingly ignored them. And two kitchen boys, barefoot and gap-toothed and with scabs on their knees, stopped to hurl clods of earth against the bars. Merlin hated them all.

Since coming to Camelot, he had witnessed several public executions, floggings, and mutilations, all in the name of law and order. On his very first day in the city, he had blundered wide-eyed and wet-eared into a crowd gathered for a beheading; not two days later he had found himself in the stocks, and casually abused by the self-same kitchen lads who darted like dragonflies about the courtyard today. He had become accustomed to letting the images in through his eyes, the cries through his ears. He had learnt to take them in and then immediately wall them up in some far-off corner, out of sight, out of mind. Before it could be fully impressed upon him that these were people being tortured in front of him.

Before it could become real.

Today, he didn't think that kind of denial would be possible. He had rarely seen someone he knew subjected to one of Uther's merciless pronouncements before, and this time he knew just how little thought had gone into the king's decision. In the past, except where sorcerers were involved, Merlin had comforted himself with the hope that the victims had been afforded a fair trial. Perhaps some of them even deserved the punishments they had been given. Now, he knew the truth.

He did not hear the single set of footsteps that came padding up the alleyway behind him, their noise deadened by the soft leather soles of his boots. Didn't hear the slight wheeze of their owner, as if those feet belonged to old lungs. It was only when Gaius coughed at his right shoulder that Merlin noticed him there at all.

"I know it is distressing, my boy," he said. "Uther is not usually so creative in his punishments, but where his family is involved his anger tends to overrule his sense. Even minor offences often come with a heavy price. I just hope that this one does not prove to be too heavy."

"He wouldn't even look into the matter, Gaius. Guillam told him he'd never seen the wine jugs before today, he told him he didn't remember anything about the past three days . . . but he wouldn't even listen."

"Do you mean Uther . . . or Arthur?" asked the physician, gently.

Merlin felt his eyes grow hot under the imagined gaze of the old man. Gaius was never one to push his ward, preferring instead to guide him like a shepherd with a wayward lamb . . . but sometimes even a nudge can knock a man off the face of a cliff. "I thought he was supposed to be better than his father," he said. "I thought that Arthur was supposed to be Camelot's chance for a better kind of king. Isn't that the whole point of this bloody destiny I've been handed? And I could accept that, prat though he is. I could accept that my life wasn't my own anymore, if it meant something might actually come of it one day. But he won't even help a man who's been in his father's employ for over thirty years, Gaius. A man with a spotless record, who's never done anything wrong in his life. He wouldn't even try."

He felt Gaius' warm, familiar hand settle gently on his right shoulder – the shoulder that Arthur, on Merlin's third day in Camelot, had so badly injured with a blow from a broom handle. "You're disappointed in him. And I understand, Merlin. I know you like to pretend that you stay only because it is your destiny – but he has become more than merely a master to you, and you are more than a servant to him. It's only natural you should want to see the best in him. But you have to remember that Arthur is still only the crown prince. He may be afforded more leeway with the king than most, but even he is not above the law. He must abide by his father's decisions, as we all must."

"It never stopped him before. He's defied Uther when it suited him, when it was for something that he wanted. Or when Morgana forced him into it. So why not this time?"

"You've only been in Camelot for a brief time, Merlin, but I've been here since before Arthur was born. He has fought these battles with his father on many occasions, and he has lost more often than he's won. He has had to learn some bitter lessons, in the past – don't judge him for not wanting to make the same mistakes again."

For a long moment, Merlin met Gaius' faded blue eyes and felt his chest crunch closed like a snare; then he blinked it away and let out a long, shaky sigh. "I'd better go see if Prince Prat needs his armour polishing. Or his bath water fetching. Or, you know, just a target to throw things at. I'll see you later, Gaius."

They parted at the mouth of the alleyway, and stepped reluctantly out into the blistering sunlight. Merlin noticed that both of them, without a word of agreement, took pains to give the glowering iron cage as wide a berth as they could.