She did heal quickly, but not quickly enough to join the next patrol. They left exactly a week later. Cottia stayed behind with the Queen.

Guinevere decided to go walk around the lower town. Cottia accompanied her, along with a few guards who trailed behind them looking slightly bored and rather stuffed. The streets were crowded, and loud. Cottia stayed close behind the Queen as she picked her way through the crush. She seemed to know the lower town very well.

Sophie waved at her from the entrance of an alley as she passed, and looked impressed. Cottia shrugged and smiled sheepishly. It was her job. She couldn't help that it happened to involve wandering around in the company of the Queen while wearing a dress that most of the girls there would kill for. It wasn't like it was fancy, but it was made of very nice fabric and cut so that it looked well on her.

Gwen stopped at a stall and began to chat with the woman running it. Cottia huddled behind her, trying to keep out of the way of the traffic. The soldiers had taken up stations a little distance away.

"So you won this time, freak, but it isn't over yet," hissed a voice behind her, barely more than a breath. Cottia turned around sharply, but there was no one there. A big knot of people had just passed, and it was useless looking for the speaker in that crowd. She hadn't even been able to tell what gender it was.

"How do you know so many people?" she asked the Queen later, when they were back in the castle.

"I used to live in the lower town. I had lots of friends, and I didn't lose touch with them just because I got married," said Gwen, looking surprised.

"You lived in the town? What for?"

"I didn't want to have a room here. I liked the walk, and anyway, I had to keep house for my father until he died. My mother died when I was a kid."

"But -" Cottia had the feeling that she had missed something. "Like, didn't you have servants to do that?"

"Of course not!"

"But you're the Queen. So you must have been rich enough to -"

"Oh!" Gwen smiled. "Didn't anyone tell you? I was the Lady Morgana's maid. I'm not from a noble family."

Cottia blinked. "What?"

"I fell in love with Arthur, and he fell in love with me. We never expected anything to come of it, but then his father died and he was crowned king and his uncle and Morgana betrayed him, and well, things just worked out well. I was surprised. No one made much of a fuss. We'd expected a war."

"What, just because you used to be a maid?"

"Nobles don't marry commoners. For one thing, it disrupts society, and for another, usually commoners don't have the education to fill an administrative role. I was lucky. My mother was a maid in Sir Leon's household and was quite educated, and she passed a lot on to me. And ironically, Morgana used to talk to me all the time about how to be a lady and how to manage a kingdom. So I had the rudimentary knowledge that I need to be queen. But it's been hard."

"That's cool."

Gwen looked curiously at Cottia. "Come this way," she said, taking her hand and leading her down a darker corridor. They went through many dusty rooms and hallways before reaching a pair of imposing double doors. Gwen shoved hard at one of them. It creaked open. "We don't use this part of the castle much anymore," she said apologetically. "But this is the portrait gallery."

It was a long room, about three times the width of a corridor, lined on both sides with big tapestries and paintings. Most were of people dressed in hideous and elaborate costumes. A few were groups of people, or battles. Gwen lifted a lantern off a big table and lit it from the torch outside the door. She led the way past the shadowed portraits. The floor squeaked beneath their tread.

"That's Arthur when he was a boy," she said, pausing momentarily in front of a smaller canvas. The face that looked out at them was determined and cheerful. He was in full battle gear. "He said that was painted when he was twelve."

They went on. Cottia couldn't help noticing that Gwen's floor-length dress was sweeping up little piles of dust. The Queen halted so suddenly that she nearly ran into her.

"And this was Morgana," Gwen said quietly. Cottia looked up.

The girl had been painted on the castle battlements, with the forest and the fields behind her. She was wearing a much simpler dress than the other, older, portraits. It was just a green dress with minimal embroidery and long flowing sleeves. There was one strand of emeralds clasped around her throat. She looked down at them with full, narrowed green eyes under straight black brows. Cottia was reminded faintly of a cat on the prowl. Her hair was pure black in the same way that Merlin's was, and braided back neatly. She looked proud and dignified and very sure of herself. Her face gave no hint of what she was thinking. Cottia stared. It was like looking into a mirror. A mirror that turned grey eyes into green and blond hair into black.

"She was a good person, and a kind mistress," Gwen said quietly. "I still miss her sometimes, as she was before she became bitter. She was about your age when this was painted, I think."

"Did she die?"

"Yes, at the battle of Camlann. I hardly knew her then. She was so thin and unhappy, even in death. Poor girl."

Cottia managed to tear her wide grey eyes away from the glittering green ones. She looked at the next painting over. "Who's that?"

"That's Uther. Arthur's father. He wasn't a very nice man."

"He looks stubborn," Cottia decided. "And worried."

"Worried? I wouldn't say that. He was very decisive. Although - yes, I suppose he did have a lot to worry about. A lot of things to regret." The sadness that had been in Gwen's voice as she spoke of Morgana was completely absent as she considered Uther. "He had my father killed," she added.

"Why?"

"He thought that my father was conspiring with sorcerers. He wasn't. He'd been tricked into doing some work for one. But Uther didn't care, so he was hunted down."

"What did your father do?"

"He just did a little bit of metalwork for someone who paid him well. He was the best blacksmith in the town." Gwen sighed.

"Well, I suppose you have your revenge for that," said Cottia.

Gwen looked at her curiously. "What do you mean?"

Cottia shrugged. "You married his son. You have his power and all his possessions. I call that a good revenge."

"That wasn't why I married Arthur! I never even thought of it."

"It's still ironic. Isn't it?"

Gwen thought. "I suppose it is. It's typical, though. He brought his own fate on himself, by being so unreasonable to people with magic. He was killed by a sorcerer, and I don't blame him one bit. Morgana did the same thing. She'd seen the future, and that I was going to be queen, and she tried so hard to break me and Arthur up, and then to kill me, that she actually drew us closer together."

0000

That gave Cottia something to think about. Maybe knowing the future really was dangerous. She wished that Merlin was there. She wanted to talk to him about the dream she'd had about the druid camp and the person waiting there for her. Also, it was lonely all by herself in the tower. She looked up from staring unseeingly at the pages of the Red Book, turning her head so that she could see the rest of the room. No one else was there. At one time, that would have been bliss. Now she felt only a hole.

Her duties as the Queen's maid weren't very strenuous. Gwen didn't like to be fussed over. Mostly, she just wanted a companion. Cottia sat in the background while she talked with her council in the conference room, and accompanied her on walks around the castle and town in the afternoon. But this afternoon a torrent of slushy ice was pouring down, and they hadn't gone out.

All this spare time meant that Cottia had lots of time to read. She'd finished the first volume of the second story in the Red Book, and had just finished the first chapter of the second. So the man had given into the temptation of the Ring. That was rather stupid of him, wasn't it? Shortsighted and greedy. Why hadn't he trusted the advice of Gandalf and of the elves? They were thousands of years old and had seen many evils defeated. Boromir hadn't even given them a chance. Cottia was fuming. What an idiot.

There was a soft knock on the door. She sprang off the couch and was standing beside it before she even realized that she had moved. Calm down. Calm down. It can't be him. He can't be back yet, and anyway, he wouldn't knock, would he? She opened the door. It was Sophie.

"Had some stuff to deliver in the kitchen and thought I might as well drop in," she said cheerfully. She looked around. "Good grief, it's like a lab in here. The Doctor would love it."

"I was thinking about coming to visit, but it's awfully wet," said Cottia, looking dubiously at her friend's dripping cloak.

"You've gone all soft now that you have a posh job?" said Sophie teasingly. The smile abruptly left her face. "You might want to be careful about wandering around the town, you know."

"Why? What have I done?"

"Um, you exist. That's about enough for some people." Sophie dropped negligently into a chair by the table after hanging her cloak over it. "We get it too, you know. Everyone who's come through does. It's a stupid prejudice, really, because we're actually less competent than people who are born here. At least they understand the culture and customs and things instinctively. But some of them don't like us coming here. They say we take away their jobs and bring soldiers after us." She rested her chin on her hands.

"That's sort of true," Cottia protested. "But why do they feel threatened? There's a lot less of us than there are of them. And Arthur likes having us."

Sophie pointed at her. "That's why. You're on first-name terms with the King now?"

Cottia blushed. That was a rare occurrence for her. "He asked me to!" she protested. "He said all the bowing and adoration gives him the creeps."

"So is the Doctor. So is Mum. So are a lot of us who have come from the Other Side, and we had nothing then but our clothes and the things in our pockets. No money. No status. We are penniless and homeless when we come here, but just because we have lived in another world we are automatically friends of the rulers of this land. How many of the people born here are on those terms with them, do you think?"

"He's very popular. Gwen grew up with half the women in the lower town, apparently. I don't understand. Why does it matter who gets to see them every day and who doesn't? They wouldn't turn anyone away if they needed help."

"It's all about social stuff," said Sophie patiently. "Hierarchies. Cliques. The buddy network."

Cottia rolled her eyes.

"Listen, I'm trying to warn you! I know that the King is trying to make the class barriers a little less suffocating. He thinks that everyone with abilities should be able to use them for the benefit of all. I'm totally behind that. But it's creating some unpleasant side effects."

"Like what?"

"Like the children of common-born knights not being sure where they fit in. Their fathers were farmers or common soldiers who showed themselves capable of being skilled fighters, and suddenly they don't know how to act. Do they play in the street with the other kids whose parents are still just farmers, or do they hang around the castle with the children of nobles? They're caught between worlds just like we are, and when they see someone like you landing here practically dead and within four months apprenticed to the King's personal servant and following the Queen around, they get mad. You see, that's a job they could do, and it wouldn't be undignified to them." Sophie stopped and glared at Cottia. "And on top of it, you have to go and look . . . not like a peasant. You don't look like your ancestors spent all day cutting wood and wrestling with pigs. You look like they spent their days writing poetry and learning embroidery or whatever that thing people do to curtains is."

"I can't help that!" Cottia protested. "What exactly are you trying to warn me about?"

Sophie waved her hands angrily but vaguely. "There's a mob of kids about our age who have it in for anyone from the Other Side, and especially ones who work in the palace. It doesn't help that you bit the brother of one of the ringleaders. She's nasty."

"Is her name Amelia?"

"Yes."

"We've met."

"That'll be where you got that scar, then," Sophie said, leaning forward and examining the scar still just barely visible on Cottia's forehead. "She always carries a knife. She claims to have magic, too. I don't know if it's true. People don't talk about it if they have it. They're too fond of their heads."

"She has magic? She doesn't look the type."

"It's not all weird old people with beards and black robes, you know." Sophie gave her a strange look. "It's only a rumor, anyway. But don't walk around the town alone if you can possible help it. Don't go off the main streets, even if you aren't alone."

"That's ridiculous!"

"Promise me," Sophie insisted. Cottia glowered and, with bad grace, gave in.

0000

It was really raining hard. The sky was so dark that it seemed like midnight had come six hours early. Cottia was used to the soft friendly grey of the snow clouds by now. This was different. The slushy ice crystals rattled against the windows. She shivered and moved away from them, curling up in Merlin's place on the couch and drawing the blanket close around her shoulders. It felt weird to be sitting there.

Sophie had run for home when the storm had started in earnest. Cottia was left alone in the dark room to ponder her warning. Why did people hate each other so much when they didn't even know them? Even Arthur and Gwen were turning out to be totally different than she had expected, now that she had given them a chance. Why did everyone always hate her in the end?

She shook her head defiantly. "It's not like that anymore," she said firmly. "Sophie's here. And so is Merlin. You can trust them. You know you can."

Ice tinkled against the glass. Forks of lightning flashed across the sky. The patrol had been supposed to be in by sundown. Now it had to be well into the night, although who could tell when the clouds blotted out the light? Cottia could not stay still. She paced around the room until she could not walk any more. Then she looked at the door to her room. She really needed to get some sleep.

She wandered into Merlin's room, still wrapped in the blanket from the couch, flopped down and buried her nose in the blankets, and fell asleep.

0000

The fire in the stove had burned down to coals. Merlin stood over it, trying to thaw out his fingers. His jacket and cloak were in the center of a puddle on the floor. The heat poured around him, making his cold skin tingle. It had been a horrible night. He yawned. Cottia hadn't made too much of a mess, he noticed. Everything was almost exactly the same as it had been when he had left it.

He wondered whether to wake her up and tell her that he was back, and decided against it. What was the point? She'd be sound asleep and she'd notice in the morning anyway. He went into his room, carrying a candle, and saw her curled up like a kitten in the middle of his bed. She had a blanket clutched around herself. He stared.

"I'm back," he said, touching her shoulder. She had been crying about something. Her eyes were still slightly pink. That was odd. She didn't cry. "Hey. Cottia."

She stirred and grumbled, eventually opening her eyes. She went very still, gazing up at him fixedly. "Merlin?"

"Yes?"

She sat up. The blanket tumbled from her shoulders as she grabbed at him, nearly making him collapse onto the bed beside her. He managed to keep his balance, and hugged her. "It's all right," he said vaguely, aware that she was worried but not sure what about.

She shoved him away and scowled at him. "Why are you so late?"

"The weather is awful." He sat down on the edge of the bed and began to unbuckle his boots. His fingers had been too numb to do it before. "We had to stop and rest. The horses couldn't keep going through the snow. I hope you weren't too worried."

"I wasn't worried," she lied.

"Good. What did you have for dinner?"

Cottia's face went blank. She'd forgotten about it. "Uh -"

"Never mind. I'm starving."

0000

A month went by. There was no word from the expedition from the Other Side. Arthur tried to reassure Cottia. These missions were tricky, he said. Sometimes they could not get in as quickly as they thought they could, or could not find the people. Just give them time. It's not unusual for them to come back late.

Another month went by. A new year began. The solstice passed and the days began to grow longer. Cottia was now part of the family, an accepted member of the royal household. The knights treated her like a little sister, teasing her good-naturedly and trusting her to be discreet when they held councils or talked around campfires.

Her training in both weapons and magic was progressing well. She had a natural talent for swordfighting. Percival and Leon were both quite impressed. They let her train with the dagger they had given her now, and she wore the armor that Merlin had found for her. It fitted her perfectly.

The training in magic was progressing even faster. She had a good memory and could repeat almost anything after being shown it only once. What worried Merlin was that she did not like to use verbal spells. He carefully explained to her that the words themselves had no power, merely acting as a focusing aid for the mind and a signal to other people of what you were doing (and were therefore vital), but she still refused to memorize them.

"If I know how it feels, I can do it," she argued. "I don't need all these weird words. I can't feel through them."

"Then what can you use to feel?" Merlin asked, exasperated. She put her head on one side and considered.

"Anything," she said simply. Her eyes glowed and a red butterfly fluttered out of her cupped hands.

"Then what did you use for that?"

She gave a brief smile. "Do No Wrong."

"That's . . . that's not how magic is supposed to work," he said lamely. "You can't just use random bits of things other people . . . have . . . written down . . ." He stopped as she raised an interrogative eyebrow. "All right, all right. But how exactly does that song equal 'red butterfly' to you?"

"It's the last line. 'Summer sun protects us, everything affects us, to the outside light it's paradise', you know? Doesn't that sound like a butterfly?"

Merlin squinted. "Not really."

"It works for me. It's the right feeling. I don't know why it was red. That just seemed . . . appropriate."

"Well, I suppose if it works, you can keep trying it," he gave in. "But you must try to learn some basic spells. What if you have to work with someone else? They won't know what you're planning."

To be honest, he was constantly amazed at how powerful she was turning out to be. She seemed to have a strong connection to the feel of the world around her, a quality that was essential for true sorcerers. They were called that for a reason: because they were a source of the mysterious force that everyone else had called magic because they did not understand it. For a select and special few, there was nothing strange about knowing that the world around you could change shape at your bidding. Merlin was one of those people. It seemed that Cottia was too. Most people with magic had to study hard and learn to focus their minds in order to do even simple tasks with their minds instead of their bodies. She did not. Sometimes her intensity frightened him.

He tried to convince her that she did not need to study in every free moment. She needed friends. It was true that about once every week, she would spend a few hours with Sophie and sometimes with her older sister Jenny (who was rumored to be the only person in the town who could climb the massive outer walls with nothing but her bare hands and feet), but he was nebulously worried that she seemed to have problems getting on with anyone else. And all the time Alice's warning echoed in his mind. On one hand, Cottia seemed completely uninterested in him, but on the other, she was always trailing after him. He was worried. Apart from any considerations of her feelings, he was becoming fond of her. Just like how he was fond of Gwen, he told himself. She was a good friend who had a practical and educated mind. He could talk to her. She was dependable. And she could certainly come up with a good plan to rescue him from a host of unpredictable dangers if the need ever arose.

The knowledge that soon he would have to force her to leave him burned in the back of his mind. It wasn't safe for her to stay with him for too long. He had seen too much, done too many terrible things in the name of destiny. He wasn't qualified anymore to teach someone like her what was right and what was wrong. He barely understood it for himself now. Arthur had to be kept safe at all costs. Whatever the means, Albion had to be formed.