"Mum!"

Dropping his bag on the floor, Merlin throws himself into her arms, laughing and crying both in sheer delight at seeing her again. It seems she's not changed a day since he last saw her, except he recalls her being far taller than him. Now he comes up to her shoulder. He buries his face against her and clings tight.

"Oh, my little bird, you've gotten so tall," his mother laughs tearfully, running a hand over his hair. "Look at you, you're near a man grown. And you, too, Leon. You'll be as tall as your father one day."

Leon flushes up at her words, fumbling as he picks up Merlin's bag.

"I see you got my message," Evaine laughs as she sweeps over to embrace his mother warmly; Merlin shuffles to the side, ducking beneath Mother's arm. "And a good thing, too. Your boy looked wretched the whole way here."

Merlin ducks his head, somewhat abashed. He had sulked for most of the journey to Camelot, but he felt he had a certain right to do so. He was about to walk into a pit of vipers barefoot, after all. The city of Camelot is beautiful, the white walls of the citadel shining bright under the sun, visible from a league away, but it is also loud and crowded, and Merlin feels as though the buildings are closing around him sometimes, used to the open expanse of Silverpine. But upon coming into the de Galis house, his nervous anger had evaporated, seeing his mother waiting for him inside.

"Merlin, I want you to meet someone. My uncle Gaius," Mother says, turning towards the old man standing beside her; Merlin hadn't even noticed him in his joy. "He's the one who sent you your book."

"So you're the Merlin I've heard so much about. It's good to finally meet you, my boy," the old man says in a kindly voice, hands folded in the wide sleeves of his robes. "I trust you've been studying?"

"Yes, sir," he replies. His magic book is currently at the bottom of his bag; he's cast a simple glamour over it so nobody would really look twice at it if they decided to search his things. "Are you going to teach me?"

Gaius hums. "Your mother and I have been speaking about that. It's a dangerous thing to learn here, you understand? As the Royal Physician, I am required to live inside the castle, which makes it even more so, and I'm afraid that my study of the subject was limited to a rather small field," he explains; Merlin blinks. Royal Physician? "So I would make quite a poor teacher indeed. But I will help you where I can, my boy."

He nods, somewhat disappointed but not overly so. He knows that finding anyone knowledgeable enough to teach him properly is a nigh impossibility, at least in Camelot. But at least he has one other person who understands the feeling of magic; it's not something that can be put into words and anyone without magic can't truly grasp the sensation of it. "Thank you for the book, Gaius. I'll keep studying," he says politely, bowing his head.

The old man nods sagely, a small smile creasing his face as he rests a hand on Merlin's head, his aged skin thin and soft. "Good lad."

The next few hours are spent settling into the townhouse. Gaius takes his leave, having to attend to his duties, but to Merlin's relief, his mother stays, and he chatters on to her about the past six years and living in Silverpine. She's set herself up as Gaius's apprentice, living in the castle with him, and she explains to him some of the finer points of living there, how to behave if he didn't want to draw trouble. Merlin frowns but listens all the same.

When he's upstairs with Leon, unpacking their things, Merlin glances out the window and sees a crowd of people gathering in the square. "Hey, what's going on?"

Leon peers out the window and swallows hard, his face paling. "Oh, Merlin..."

A chill wriggles into the pit of his belly. "What is it?"

The older boy glances at him with a terrible kind of sympathy in his gaze, and Merlin doesn't ask again. Instead, he backs away from the window and heads downstairs, slipping past the servants. Mother is in the dining hall with Lionel and Evaine, the adults speaking in low but laughing tones. He opens the front door and steps out onto the street, following the people towards the square, slipping between the milling bodies.

There's a raised platform in the middle of the square, with pike-wielding guards surrounding it to keep the crowds back. As he watches, two guards enter the square, pulling a woman between them, no older than his mother, with her ankles and wrists shackled together, clinking as she stumbles along. They pass so close in front of him he could have reached out and touched the guards' chainmail. Her chains drag against the cobblestones. Cold iron. The chill of it skitters across his skin, and he shies back, pulling his limbs in tight.

The guards pull her up onto the platform. She doesn't fight them, doesn't plead or scream or rage. Her face is empty of everything but resignation, as if all that had once been her has been scraped out and scoured away.

"Citizens of Camelot," a man's carrying voice intones from the balcony above. The King.

Merlin doesn't look up, only gazes at the hollow woman standing there on the platform.

The King says somewhat else, something about sorcery being outlawed and saving the kingdom from the evils of magic. He could very well have been reciting torrid love poetry for all Merlin could hear him over the sound of his own heartbeat and the blood rushing through his ears. The woman's face doesn't change; she doesn't move but for the rise and fall of her breathing. Tears began to slip down her cheeks, leaving faint lines in the grime on her skin, dripping from her chin to leave small dark spots on her kirtle.

The last words fall into him like an anvil dropped into a still pond.

"...sentence of death."

The guards place their hands on the woman's shoulders, bringing her down to her knees, leaning her forward over the block. A black-hooded man comes to stand beside her, holding a great axe in both hands, the blade gleaming so sharp and bright it hurts to look upon directly. The King raises his arm, and the axe comes up with it. The woman's sad, defeated eyes close.

Dimly, he's aware of Leon pulling at his arm, hissing his name. "Merlin! Merlin, come away," he insists, eyes darting. "Please, please, don't look, Merlin, please, come away."

He doesn't.

The King's arm lowers.

The axe swings down.

Merlin turns his gaze around the square and sees only dark grimness in the faces of the guards and knights, jaws set and eyes hard. And in the people, fear, revulsion, even some satisfaction and approval. He can smell the blood, thick and coppery and sweet enough to gag. A gleam of sunlight on bright hair draws him upwards, and Merlin looks at the King of Camelot for the first time, tall and stern in his rich attire, crown gleaming in the weak sunlight. Still, it's only secondary. Merlin is staring at the smaller figure beside the King.

Prince Arthur.

Looking pale and blank, like an ill-made doll, sunlight gilding his hair silvery-white.

Broad, callused hands land on his shoulders, and Merlin lets out a strangled gasp, looking up into Lionel's face. The knight's dark gaze holds a terrible mix of sorrow, regret, and compassion. "Come on, boy," he murmurs, voice rough. With one arm around Leon and the other around Merlin, he guides them out of the square and through the dispersing crowds back to the townhouse.

Mother is standing in the foyer, but he ducks her hand when she reaches for him. A part of him wants nothing more than to embrace her hard, but he has the distant notion that it's an unwise idea to be handled at the moment. Instead, he goes back upstairs to the bedroom and sits down on his bed, putting his back to the corner and pulling his knees up to his chest. How long he sits there, he doesn't know, but he sees the sunlight move through the room before fading away. Leon tries to coax him to dinner; he doesn't move.

Eventually, he moves to lay down instead, pulling the blankets up around him, but sleep doesn't come, and instead, he listens to the sounds of the servants moving through the house and his own heartbeat, imagining he can almost hear the blood moving through him.

It's been dark for hours when his bedroom door whispers open, and a soft hand touches his hair. Mother murmurs his name. Merlin lowers the blanket from his head and turns over, squinting in the light of the lamp she holds. "Come downstairs. Lionel wants to speak to you," she says in scarce more than a whisper.

All the lamps have been snuffed, only the low-burning fire in the hall giving them light. Lionel is sitting at the table alone, his gaze fixed solemnly upon what lies on the table: a quarterstaff of ash, capped in metal at both ends, and a set of small knives, no longer than Merlin's hand, laid out in a gleaming silver row. "In the lower town, peasants are not allowed to own swords," he says when Merlin sits down in the chair Mother pulled out. His eyes are so very dark, like polished black mirrors reflecting the firelight. "Only the knights and guards may possess those kinds of weapons. But knives and staves are a different matter."

Merlin blinks a few times. "You want me to use those?" he asks. Mother's hands rest gently on his shoulders.

"Leon will be starting his training in a week. As his father, I'm not meant to be involved in his training, to avoid bias. I'll have the time." Mother tightens her grip on his shoulders; Merlin can't see her face, but whatever expression she wears, it makes Lionel raise his gaze to her. "Say aught against it, Hunith, and I won't teach the boy," he says in a low voice. "But I was of the mind that he should at the least know how to defend himself in case."

In case anyone finds out about me, Merlin thinks, clenching his hands into fists against his legs. He knows there are ways to bind a sorcerer from their own magic: cold iron, silver chains, even twisted enchantments that cause any spell cast to double back onto its caster.

"No mother relishes the idea of placing weapons in the hands of a child and teaching him to use them. If you are asking for my blessing, you'll not get it." Mother lets out a shaky breath, her hands loosening on his shoulders once more, and Merlin cranes his neck to peer up at her face. She gazes back down at him with sad, loving eyes. "But it's your choice, too, Merlin. I won't take it from you," she murmurs, smoothing a lock of hair back from his brow.

The day's memories drift back up onto him, the silently weeping woman being led to the block, the heavy smell of her blood and human fear. The fearful faces of the crowd, the hard eyes of the knights and guards. The cold, unremorseful gaze of the King on the balcony, his pale-haired son standing blank-faced beside him. Beneath them, an older memory stirs, blurred with years, his mother's words: not executing sorcerers. Capturing them. Putting them in iron binds and conscripting them to the army.

"I want to learn," he murmurs.

Mother sighs and wraps her arms around him, drawing him close against her, and he turns in the chair to embrace her properly. He buries his face in her kirtle, breathing the scent of herbs and woodsmoke. It doesn't erase the lingering blood-smell haunting him, but it helps. "Merlin mine," she whispers, lips brushing the top of his head. "Very well."

Lionel inclines his head gravely. "We'll start tomorrow."