Best-Laid Plans

Getting back into the dungeon was not as hard as anticipated. The knocked-out guard had survived his "bump on the head" but been fired: his corporal really had been grumpy to be woken up. He had been convinced the unlucky employee had been drunk, tried to sneak out of his shift in the chaos, and hit his head on a shield stumbling through the armory (the assumption had been supported by the copious amounts of alcohol found hurriedly stashed under the dice table). Were all guards this stupid? Arthur hoped not for Camelot's sake.

(And if a dark part of his mind whispered that, with the way he'd felt that night all the way back to his rooms, it wasn't entirely impossible that the insidious tendrils of mind-bending magic from the thing reached all the way to the guard station, all the way to the castle walls, even beyond...well, Arthur wasn't in a habit of paying attention to the darker corners of his mind, anyway.)

One...clever ruse involving a goose and some marmalade later (and Arthur would never recount where he obtained either one or what happened afterward beyond those details), Arthur slunk back into the dungeon with extreme reluctance. This plan was stupid. How the hell was he supposed to get an imprisoned sorcerer to trust him? He had trouble with regular people on a good day, and that was when he had something to offer. Since he couldn't give away his identity, he really had nothing to give the thing.

Well, except the obvious, but that would be short-lived, and the creature would have no reason to believe him anyway.

Then again, it didn't have a choice, did it? And the obvious solution was usually the best, according to his scheming sister. She had imparted that piece of advice with a hair flip and a slow smile that had given him chills. Arthur tried not to think about how both of the women in his life scared him so much.

As he entered the gloomy space, Arthur became aware of a niggling sensation of discomfort and...what was that feeling? Guilt. That was it. But what did Arthur have to feel guilty about? He had done nothing wrong.

He stopped short as he passed the first archway. This wasn't his guilt. The sorcerer was making him feel this way, just like it had made him afraid the other night. Why would it want him to feel guilty? What was its game?

Grinding his teeth and pushing down the intensifying twist in the pit of his stomach, Arthur pushed on into the torchlit chamber. He started to feel a little light-headed, losing a bit of his fighter's grace as he walked. The bars of standing cages looked like threads of spider silk hanging down from the ceiling in the stagnant, heavy air of the place. Against the far wall, just as before, was a hunched figure.

It looked up, and Arthur felt a spike of terror, a distant echo of that panic from before. The sorcerer got to its feet with a jerky stumble. Arthur noticed that it had more heavy gray chains than before, dragging from both ankles and pinioning its wrists together, making it difficult for the thing to rise.

"Who's there?" it inquired with an audible voice crack.

Arthur licked his lips. "A–Victor."

The gut-twisting guilt subsided a bit. "Oh! I thought I'd scared you off the other day. Night? Whichever. Sorry about that, by the way. Some of the guards like to...mess with me, and I got a bit worked up. Based on their reaction, I get that you aren't one of them now." It smiled wryly. "I was hoping you would come back to talk!"

Arthur paused. So it felt guilty. If that was possible. Were all the emotions its own, projected? Was the fear from the other night...well, it didn't really matter how it worked. What mattered was what Uther could do with it.

The sorcerer had its head cocked to the side like a bird's. Arthur realized it was waiting for a response. The stance set his teeth on edge: now that he knew what he knew, Arthur couldn't miss all the small signs of inhumanity. Lashing out in reckless (and consciously self-defeating, but Arthur had a visceral reaction to being made uncomfortable or put on the defensive) spite, he ground out, "I don't chat with sorcerers."

The boy in the cage frowned. "Well, maybe I don't chat with arrogant prats."

Arthur snorted.

Wait, what? This was not an even remotely funny situation! He was talking to a mass-murdering creature, and yet the retort was so unexpected in this place that it had surprised a half-laugh out of him. It sounded like something Gwen would say. He missed Gwen.

Annoyed at his own weakness, Arthur bulldozed onward. "Like you have a choice. I'm here to make an offer, and you will listen. I can get you out of here."

Immediately, those foreign, invasive emotions bubbled again under Arthur's ribs and in the base of his throat. This time there was not one overwhelming, frenzied feeling but a confusing, eddying whirlpool of many, only a few of which he caught. A dove's flutter of doubtfulness rippled over the barely-noticed blunted obsidian knife of dulled despair. Most powerful of all was a concentrated burning sensation blossoming behind the base of his throat.

The thing in the cage licked its lips. "Well, it's not like I'm going to be fielding any better offers. What's the plan?"

~o8o~

September's harvest moon was fast approaching, so Arthur spent the next two weeks making preparations. There were supplies to gather. He made sure to get all of his knives and the sword back from Maggie, and he acquired a potent herb via her to put the captain of the guard to sleep in case one of those posted outside of the cells managed to escape and make it to his superior for help. Arthur doubted this would happen, but one must prepare for all eventualities. He strolled down endless echoing, torch-lined passageways (which were back to feeling narrow and in danger of imminent collapse), this time knowing exactly where he was, to plot an exit route through the less-used passageways. He wrote notes to memorize various officials' schedules and then burned the notes once they were memorized (which was cathartic as well as cautious). He bribed the right people. Everything was going smoothly. With three days to go, everything was in place.

Then it all started to go wrong.

It started with a banquet. With so little time left in his stay at the fortress, the ambassador didn't feel any particular need to participate in the small talk of the table. He listlessly stirred his split pea soup while the lords and ladies talked pointedly over his head (he had been upgraded to a position four seats down from the king's end of the table after the Lady Cachonda comment. Arthur suspected the queen: the venerable lady herself was conspicuously absent). He was contemplating the pros and cons of actually taking a sip of the grey-green mush and had just started a mental list when he was taken by surprise by Vortigern Jr., who broke with the blanket policy of ignoring him to ask him something from three seats down the table.

". . .I'm sorry, what did your lordship say?" Arthur queried, cringing. That had been a bad move. He had better start paying attention: it would not do to appear ill-mannered. He would probably have to eat the soup now, too.

"I said milord Arthur has been rather quiet tonight. Not feeling so sharp?"

Arthur flailed for a pithy and unsuspicious response. He stalled by taking a bite of soup-soaked bread. Yes, the cons definitely outweighed the pros, and his concentration on being witty flew out the window. "Simply enjoying this delicious meal. As always, your staff has crafted a truly...unique dish." A few of the lords and ladies coughed into their napkins in nervous agreement.

"Perhaps milord would find it even more appetizing were he to use his knife on his bread instead of his hands."

Arthur was very confused as to where this exchange was going. That was borderline out-and-out rude; the other boy wouldn't risk a comment like that without some hidden purpose behind it. Was it just another slur alluding to the Camelotian custom of eating with one's hands? No, they'd pretty much settled that point at the first dinner. Arthur had seen Vortigern Jr. (his first name was actually Edward, but Arthur simply couldn't think of him as a Ned without bursting out laughing) directing a squad of knights on the practice field. The young man was not fool enough to needlessly bring back an old and petty insult. Arthur decided to fish. "I thank milord for his earnest suggestion, but of course I prefer the practices of my home even while accepting this generous hospitality."

The only sounds at the table were the clinking and plopping of spoons in bowls and the crackling of the hearth doing its very best and still failing to reach the corners and banner-hung rafters of the high-ceilinged room. Vortigern Jr.'s eyes widened in triumph, and he glanced quickly at his father as if sharing an inside joke. Arthur noticed his long, greasy hair trail across the top of his soup as he turned back to say, "What, no cutting remarks?"

There was a gasp at the table, but Arthur wasn't taken aback by the frankness of his speech. He replied with an acid "I'm sure I don't know what milord means," and then he went back to his meal, effectively ending the conversation. He needed to stew over this. "Sharp," "knife," "cutting"...maybe this was about Arthur's throwing knife practice on the fields? It was considered a cowardly weapon. Unless...no!

Arthur retired early, passed a sleepless night on the red-velvet bed (which no longer seemed quite so comfortable), and in the early hours of the morning collected George and rushed to the Lower Town marketplace, only to freeze at the entrance. Creeping horror chilled his blood. Sure enough, Maggie's stall was empty. Standing near an adjacent stall, apparently having been haggling over vegetables until just then with a very befuddled and fearful vendor, was Vortigern Jr. in all his malevolent, greasy glory. He turned to wave at Arthur with a smirk.

Damn. He would have to move up his timetable.