Cards on the Table, Stains on the Walls

It took a while, but boredom finally got the best of Arthur. He lasted about three days of trudging along interminable backcountry lanes until he finally terminated the silence on the banks of a stream after a long, sweltering day of walking. The lane they were following was ill-traveled but orderly, lined with larger stones and filled with light yellow, sandy soil like that of the riverbank, with patches of coarse, stubborn grass poking through at odd intervals. The sky was a brilliant, clear blue overhead, the clouds having long since fled westward from the burning sun that was now almost directly above. It reminded Arthur of the oculus he'd seen in a temple once when his father had sent him on a (friendly) (well, friendly-er) diplomatic mission to faraway Greca. The silence and infinite, rounded sky turned the landscape into an open-air cathedral, and Arthur had never liked being judged from on high. While they crouched by the bouncing waters to refill their leather canteens Arthur eyed his companion sideways for a moment, then shook off his internal debate and wracked his brain for some casual conversation-starters. How would he start it off? Oh, wait, crap.

"Hey, what was your name again? I didn't quite catch it the first time," Arthur ventured. His voice sounded too loud and cracked after the past few days of quiet, harsh and rusty in the still, open air.

Luckily, the other boy didn't seem to take offense. (As if Arthur cared. Which he didn't.) "Merlin. It's all right, I've been told I'm rather forgettable." The corner of his mouth twitched upward.

Wait, was he offended? Arthur couldn't tell. He wasn't used to being sassed by servants (other than Gwen, of course. She was the exception to most rules). But the boy was smirking, so he couldn't be that annoyed. Not that Arthur cared about a sorcerer's impression of him; he was just bored.

After a bit of an awkward pause, Arthur offered hesitantly, "Well, I'm Victor. Like I said before. In–in case you didn't catch it before. I'm Victor." He mentally kicked himself. Smooth, Arthur.

Without moving his attention from the slowly filling waterskin, Merlin replied matter-of-factly, "No, you're not."

"Yes, I am! I would think I would know my own name," blustered Arthur, caught off guard and trying to recover.

"You would think that, wouldn't you? But it's definitely not. You're someone, but you're not Victor."

"Well, that's the name I'm giving," Arthur huffed, closing his flask with a deft twist.

"I'm not calling you by it, Not-Victor. Ooh, that's what I'll call you! How're you enjoying your journey so far, Not-Victor? Shame you can't remember your own name, Not-Victor."

Arthur snorted. "What are you, eight years old?"

The sorc–Merlin finished filling his own canteen and stood up, closing it a little more clumsily than his companion. "Oh, like you're so much more mature than me! You can't be more than a few years older. What are you, sixteen? Seventeen?"

Arthur's hackles, smoothed a bit by the pleasant if confusing exchange, raised again. "Wait, how did you know that?"

Merlin stopped walking, brow furrowing. The expression made his facial tattoos seem to squirm. "How did I know that? I guess I've got this sort of sense for things, now that I'm away from cold iron? I don't know, it's not like seeing, or hearing, but I, like, know when there's living things and there's this glow, but it's not a glow, it's not like light...ach, how do I even describe this? It's like trying to describe the taste of water."

"Well, if it's about your magic, I really don't care," Arthur rejoined with cold venom, closing off at the reminder of Merlin's strangeness. He couldn't resist a dig, though. "I suppose, with your penchant for clever naming, you're going to call it not-seeing?"

Merlin chuckled, unfazed. "Hey, maybe I should change your name to Not-Witty. Short for Whitney, obviously."

~o8o~

They made camp on the fourth night under a wizened, rotting beech in a somewhat forested area. They passed a few cleared patches that had Arthur convinced there had been a town here at some point, but the few shacks were so ramshackle and rotted that Arthur didn't trust them not to collapse overnight. The beech wasn't much better–it was always a big risk to sleep under a tree while camping, especially one that seemed to be on its last legs, but the dark sky threatened rain and Arthur would prefer to risk losing a limb or two under the tree boughs than risk losing his lungs to pneumonia. The asset's–sorcerer's–Merlin's–coughing earlier that day had been just a tad worrying, not that Arthur would comment on either the cough or the worry while not under extreme duress.

Merlin kept watch (heh. Arthur felt bad for finding that just a tiny bit funny) with his freaky unnatural life-awareness thingy while Arthur foraged for dry branches under the leaf litter like a common grunt. As darkness had fallen a chilled wind had picked up, promising to turn the unseasonably hot day into a frigid night. The sky, or what he could see of it through the silhouettes of jutting branches and wilted leaves, had turned a brilliant orange for the setting sun. It was early October, and Arthur felt like he could smell the autumn in the air. He'd been surprised by the lack of color on the trees, actually. He came from a land of evergreens, but he'd spent a decent amount of time travelling. This area was fertile, yet the changes had only just begun to paint themselves along the edges of maple and aspen leaves, and it was looking like they would wilt and fall before any full transformation could take place. At least the deep orange sunset, now reddish and darker, reflected off the tops of leaves and provided a sort of illusory fall.

Arthur trudged back to the clearing, ducked under a branch, and settled down with a grunt in the leaf litter, then rearranged himself to sit cross-legged. After a moment of enjoying being able to rest his aching feet he leaned forward to sweep a clear spot in the dirt for a campfire. He'd covered their tracks pretty thoroughly and set false ones, so he was pretty sure they'd thrown off their pursuers enough to make this a worthwhile risk. Merlin sat against their sheltering tree, one lanky leg pulled up to his chest by his arms and one kicked out straight, eyeless face turned directly toward Arthur. Arthur suppressed a shudder from some deep, primal part of himself, allowed his gaze to wander down to double-check the witch-bind, and then focused on the practical. Merlin's clothing was looking the worse for wear. Arthur supposed his own was, as well. He'd studied up on his Esseti geography: assuming they were walking about 50 kilometers per day, it would take them maybe nine days to cross the border into Sinhasana, which was friendly to Camelot and would provide transport home. If they wanted to get through nine days undetected, they would need some new clothes, and anyway the packs they'd grabbed from the abandoned house in the lower town were running dangerously low on food. Luckily, where there was a stream, there were towns.

A few hours later they had a crackling fire going. Arthur sat by it, sewing a makeshift hood made from the fabric of an extra winter coat onto the collar of the coat Merlin had actually been wearing. If they were both going to go into town, they would need something to hide Merlin's face. Arthur steadily punctured the thick fabric again with the needle and thread meant for stitching up wounds. It was calming: in, out, repeat. Watching the needle dive back through, he let his mind wander. In a rare stroke of luck, there had only been one wound to stitch: he'd caught a glimpse while they were changing the dressing on a sluggishly bleeding gash just above Merlin's right hip. It was actually an older wound, presumably torn open by the running. Merlin hadn't even noticed. Treating it in silence had been awkward. Awkward like right now.

The flames cast weird, flickering shadows across their faces as Merlin scooched closer to the warmth. For a moment, Merlin's tattoos looked like a nest of worms about to writhe right off his face, and then the moment was gone and they were just inked lines. He settled across the circle from Arthur and licked his lips. "So," he said with a light chuckle. "How's your day going?"

Arthur snorted just a tiny bit. "Nice small talking skills."

Merlin grinned. "Thanks. I like to think of myself as a suave, debonair social savant."

Arthur snorted louder. "Oh, definitely." They lapsed once again into subdued silence, watching the flames (or at least turned toward them, in Merlin's case).

Wait. Arthur frowned. "Where'd you learn a word like savant? You don't strike me as a courtier's kid."

Merlin's smile grew wistful, his body language becoming just a bit less guarded than Arthur had seen before. "Yeah, no. I'm your average country clodpole, but my uncle used to be a famous doctor working in the castle. Picked up a few things. Then he almost took a job in some other country, but Mum came down with the pox and he decided to come home instead. Ended up tutoring me for a while. I can even read!" Suddenly, his face crumpled, and he looked away. Arthur felt a pang of dulled grief. Oh. He'd probably just realized that skill wasn't really relevant for him anymore. Maybe he hadn't really processed how much he'd lost. Arthur wondered how long ago it'd happened.

Anyway, huh. He was educated. Maybe Arthur shouldn't take the other teen as lightly as he would some other bumpkin with magic.

Arthur decided to push more if the guy was feeling talkative. This was the real question, really. "If you grew up in some backwater village, how did you end up where I found you?"

Mistake. Mistake, mistake, mistake. Merlin's jaw clenched, and his head swung back to face Arthur with an eerie motion. Like a snake's. The tattoos looked like something dark and unspeakable, an oozing, corruptive blackness swallowing up Merlin's face. The fire dimmed, pushed down to embers suddenly as if it had been stepped on by a giant foot. Arthur registered whispers in the forest behind them. They didn't sound like the wind.

"Let's skip the pleasantries, Vic." Arthur didn't like the way he said the name. In his mouth it sounded less like a diminutive for "Victor" and more like one for "victim." Merlin continued, "I assume we're not just walking randomly in a straight line. And I doubt you're working alone. Is there some rendezvous point we're aiming for? And who are you working for, anyway?"

Arthur debated what he could tell and how much he should lie. After a minute, he muttered, "We're going to Sinhasana. It's the closest country not allied with Essetir." He avoided the other question entirely.

Merlin frowned like he wanted to say something, but Arthur cut him off. He wanted to get an answer to something that had been bothering him. He also wanted to distract the other boy: the whispers sounded closer. When asking for the manacles off what seemed like forever ago, Merlin had implied it was the threat of violence that kept him with Arthur, but that didn't seem right. Arthur was trained to sleep lightly, but he did sleep. "Why are you still here, with me? Do you feel obligated or something?" He tried to use a casual tone to belie the tension in his body. He needed to know this if he wanted to use whatever it was to keep the sorcerer there. Discreetly transporting a prisoner was not an easy feat for one person.

Merlin's jaw clenched again and the vein on the side of his neck stood up, but his tone was light. The whispers abated a bit, and the fire got slightly brighter. "Where would I go? At the moment, my only special abilities are contagious mood swings and 'kind of knowing where things are, sometimes.' I would either fall in a ditch before I made it two meters or end up down some back alley with a knife in my gut. Or back where I...was." His tone lost its lilting, joking edge, and his faint hissing accent-which Arthur had begun to overlook-sharpened just a bit. "But let's make one thing clear." He was maybe three meters away, on the other side of the campfire, but he felt much closer. Firelight glinted off of his wide grin. His smile was empty, animalistic. A baring of teeth. "I won't be your victim, and I'm sure as hell not your prisoner." In his loose-limbed posture there was no defensiveness anymore, only warning. Cards on the table. There was no need for Arthur to respond.

After that he should have slept more lightly, more warily than before during Merlin's watch. Oddly enough, he dozed more easily that night than he had any night of this journey so far.

~o8o~

The last few days had been tense. They had exchanged a bit of banter, but now that the adrenaline of escape had finally worn off, both were thinking more about the future and sensing more acutely the animosity between them. It was a clear afternoon, a bit colder than it had been but still not chilly, and they were walking down a back alley in Dwarsweg, a small but bustling township. Since it rested on the river from which the stream they'd been following originated, it was more of a trading town than an agrarian community, even having its own modest market to which flowed all foot traffic from the surrounding rural area. Two of the streets were even cobbled! Civilization! Wow!

Yeah, Arthur was definitely a city-slicker. All these loose cows made him antsy.

Speaking of civilization, or rather lack thereof, Merlin chose then to put in his two cents. "We should go left. If we head that way it should only be a few days' journey to Kutumbam."

"What? Why would we go to Kutumbam?" Arthur responded, annoyed. They were approaching the main street of the town, which had more of a v shape and went a good distance in both directions. "That's a few days further and friendly to Vortigern. We have to go right."

"Well, you won't tell me what's waiting in Sinhasana, but I have no interest in some fool's errand to take out Vortigern–which is impossible, by the way. I have things waiting in Kutumbam."

Arthur snorted. "Like what? What is so important?"

"That's where my mum and uncle escaped to, and I need to meet them. As long as I'm not"–his face showed a painful struggle as he tripped over his phrasing and, almost, a loose stone–"with...Vortigern, you've done your job, right? There's no point in trying to recruit me. I won't throw my life away for this."

Crap. Yes, keeping things simple was important, but he could have used a cover story. He'd had plenty of time to come up with one. Um... "That doesn't work. The rendezvous is a limited-time thing, and I can't afford to waste any dropping you off. You owe me."

They emerged from the alley and temporarily quieted down. This was the market street. Arthur had finished modifying the cloak the night before, and now Merlin pulled the hood further forward to hide his scarred face as they plunged into the crowd. Arthur strolled ahead briskly, stopping first at the butchers' stand for a week's worth of only slightly fly-covered dried meats and then at a fruit-seller's for some grapes and apples to ward off scurvy. He kept his smile friendly and his tone regular. He switched his accent from the generic middle-class one he'd slipped into with Merlin (Camelot and Essetir shared both a language and an accent, but an intonation of class was still recognizable in the vowels) to a more rural, low-class one. He was any young traveler weary from the road. He left no impression but footprints in the dust, and those were soon covered up by the milling boots of other customers.

Merlin, in his dark hooded cloak, was sticking out more than Arthur would have liked but not dangerously so. He looked a bit overwhelmed in the crowd, startling and stumbling whenever someone brushed by him or bumped his shoulder. Of course, it'd been a while since the pair had seen anyone, much less everyone for miles, and Merlin had probably gone a long time away from the masses before their jaunt through the Esseti castle's lower town. Having negotiated the price of a two new tunics and pants down slightly and bought everything they needed for now, Arthur turned back to grab Merlin by the elbow and steer him through the muddle of chattering people into another alley for a brief break.

Apparently, Merlin was still unhappy with the plan (as he knew it). Arthur could see the tightness in his jaw, like he was grinding his teeth. Arthur wasn't used to explaining himself; he was used to being obeyed, and this was non-negotiable. However, in the spirit of pretending Merlin had a choice to ensure his continued cooperation friendship, he continued the argument. "I have responsibilities! You of all people should know what Vortigern is like; another day with him breathing is another hundred people dead. I need to contact the others working against him. We can't afford to stay in enemy territory longer than necessary for someone's mother!"

"I have responsibilities, too–to her!" Suddenly, Merlin was almost shouting, his voice echoing off the walls of the dim alleyway. Someone's window swung shut. Arthur wondered when this had escalated so quickly. He found his own face getting hot with frustration as Merlin continued, gesticulating wildly. "She's the only family I have left, she raised me on her own for years, and I will not just abandon her when it's my job to keep her safe! Spirits know I've done a bang-up job of that so far." His mouth was set in a bitter line, nostrils flared, and Arthur could imagine him glaring mutinously. "If you won't take me, I'll have to find a guide or go it alone. I'll probably end up back where I was, which would be very bad for you. The only other option I see is for you to try to kill me," he hissed fiercely, leaning in close, "and that would be a very bad idea." The air began to thicken and crackle with static electricity, raising the hairs on the back of Arthur's neck. He noticed that a few onlookers had entered the alley and were pretending not to listen in with carefully bland expressions. Panicking just a little bit, he grabbed the sorcerer–Merlin–by the shoulders and pulled him roughly into the nearest open doorway, the door of the (luckily empty) backroom of a tavern. The room was small and dim, with rows of stacked barrels and urns lining the greying plaster walls up to the ceiling and painting dark shadows in the grimy corners. What was visible of the walls and the bumpy wood ceiling had some sort of wavering yellow stain that became less visible when Arthur closed the door, leaving only the cold light coming from a small, high-up window to see by. The square of light fell across half of Merlin's face and his right shoulder like a badly-adjusted spotlight. Or an oculus. Arthur continued the argument in a hoarse whisper.

"You're willing to sacrifice the lives of thousands for one person just so you can live happily with your mummy? You'll risk letting what happened to you happen to someone else?" Arthur decided that the blatant hypocrisy of that statement, considering his own agenda, was unimportant at the moment. "How selfish can you be?"

"Call me selfish if you want to, but my only debt is to the people who give a crap if I live or die. Screw duty and all that military bullcrap. I will protect the people I love above all else, no matter the cost." His voice had also dropped low, dripping with venom. Arthur's chest started to get uncomfortably tight; it was like trying to breathe the thin air at the top of a mountain. It felt like a lit fuse was attached to his heart and things were inching uncomfortably close to an explosion. He knew Merlin's anger was leaking, exacerbating his own, poisoning his mind, and clouding his judgement, but he couldn't bring himself to care.

He just couldn't comprehend Merlin's viewpoint. His father had drilled into him for as long as he could remember that duty and honor to his people and to his position were the priorities. There was nothing more important in this world. His father would sacrifice him in an instant–in fact, he had for this very mission–for the greater good of Camelot. That was correct. There was no other way of thinking. It was just right.

(Then again, that shadowy back corner of his mind whispered mutinously...he'd be lying if he said he wouldn't do a good many not-exactly-honorable things to have his mother back again. He pushed that thought all the way to the back of his mind, into the growing pitch-black lake collecting there. It disappeared silently into the lagoon, leaving barely a ripple on the surface, sinking to the bottom and settling gently in haphazard cluttered pile of his worst fears to slowly corrode, to rust.)

Before he could argue back, Arthur felt a hand clap on one of his shoulders. Hard-won instincts kicked in, and he grabbed it with both hands, one wrapped around the vulnerable thumb, using it to twist the body over into an awkward, half-crumpled position. His other hand went for his belt to grab a knife while his eyes flicked to the attacker's other hand, waiting for it to come up to try to free its counterpart, but the attacker's other arm was dangling with unnatural stillness. But that didn't make sense; the cry of pain had come before he'd reached a point where the hold should hurt–Ah. The other hand had clapped Merlin on the shoulder.

Now thinking rationally instead of in the automatic defensive patterns that had been trained into him (defend, contain, evaluate, repeat), Arthur was free to examine the attacker. The first thing he noticed was that he (yes, a he, a tallish young man) was not struggling like most civilians would be in this position. A smart move, since the thumb controlled the body and manipulating it could cause incredible pain or even permanent damage. What was more surprising was the fact that the boy didn't even seem scared. Arthur bent over to take a look at the attacker's face. Brown eyes met his own out of a face framed by longish brown hair, and was it his imagination or was there actually a real, goddamned twinkle in those eyes?

The hunched attacker's upside-down face grinned. Grinned! "Well, aren't you a friendly pair," he quipped. "That really wasn't necessary. I was just about to ask if you two actually wanted some ale. Well, that's a lie. We can totally hear you from the front–thin walls–so I was going to tell you two to get a room. Which I can also offer, by the way, since this tavern is also an inn."

Arthur gritted his teeth. "And who are you?"

The new boy craned his head to toss a world-weary expression at Merlin (who, naturally, did not catch it). "Is he a bit daft?" Turning back to Arthur, he executed a slick maneuver that somehow ended with him back to standing up straight with his hand now in Arthur's in a regular handshake. Okay, that was definitely a twinkle. Arthur wanted to murder this guy already. "I should think it obvious. I work here."

Oh. Arthur fought to suppress his flush of embarrassment. He'd made a scene in public for no reason simply because he'd failed to register someone coming toward him, a mistake he hadn't made since his second month of training. Making a scene could potentially be very bad for his health, too; he was risking what Morgana would call "the sore throat of a lifetime." Arthur decided to blame Merlin's overflowing anger for clouding his senses. That, and the barkeep did seem pretty stealthy. Suspiciously so.

Arthur realized they had been standing there in silence longer than was really advisable. They were making an impression. Not smart. Well, he couldn't go to Sinhasana without losing the asset's cooperation, and he couldn't go to Kutumbam at all. And now they had to ensure that this barkeep wouldn't talk about what he'd overheard–or about whatever Merlin had done to his arm–hopefully without Arthur having to resort to disruptive and attention-grabbing murder.

Wait, didn't his father have spies in this town? It was a major trading hub. He could get in contact with one of them and get money, information on the route ahead, or even another companion or two as an escort. That would make everything easier.

He smiled winningly. "Okay, we'll take a room for the night." Ignoring the confused, birdlike cocking of Merlin's head, he clapped the barkeep right back on the shoulder. "What's your name, by the way?"

The other teen's returning grin was roguish and infectious. "Oh, just call me Gwaine."