Then again, Guinevere had no idea what—if any—authority the queen actually had in Camelot. It had never had a queen. She would have to ask Arthur about that, as well.
The first, second, and third trunks all held her things. She paused, her hand hovering over them. Not her things, not really. How quickly she forgot. The fourth, a small one in the corner, held Brangien’s possessions. Her clothing was simpler. Guinevere could put it on alone.
Guilt twisted inside Guinevere as she pulled out a dress and a hooded cloak. Clothing was expensive and valuable. This was the bulk of Brangien’s material wealth, and Guinevere was stealing it. But she would return it all unharmed.
Relatively unharmed. She pulled a seam from the cloak, knotting and tying the broken thread in a confusing mess. It would be impossible to untangle. And when she pulled the hood over her head, the knot magic would extend so that anyone glancing at her face would find themselves unable to untangle who, exactly, she was.
Guinevere pulled on the hood, then swayed. A little of herself went into every knot, every piece of magic she did. And she had done more in the last twenty-four hours than she used to do in a week. She really would have loved to crawl into bed and sleep away the evening. But much like faithful Brangien, she had work to do, and she would not neglect it.
She stepped into the hallway and walked with the hurried efficiency of a woman on a mission. She followed their path from this morning, navigating the stairs in the low afternoon light. Hopefully she would be back before nightfall.
There were more people out now, errands being run and business being finalized before they lost the sun. The masses in the streets, gossiping and calling to each other, buying and selling and haggling, meant she was just another person in the crowd. She loitered outside the arena. There had been some women in the seats, but only accompanied by husbands. She knew she would stand out if she were to go inside alone. The roars and cheering told her that the combat was still going strong.
Needing something to fill her time, and not wanting to miss the patchwork knight through an error of her own, she walked the circumference of the arena. Houses were built close to the walls, and she skirted puddles and crates. Arthur’s little shits did their jobs well, though. It was remarkably clean.
On the far side of the arena was a small door, inconspicuous and nothing like the great gate that would open to spew spectator and combatant alike onto the main street of the city. She could be wrong—in which case all her efforts were wasted—but this seemed like a door for someone who wished to go unseen. Someone like the patchwork knight. She found a crate in the deep shadow of a leaning stone building and sat there.
She was very good at waiting. She had once spent an entire day lying perfectly still on the forest floor, unmoving, to lure a doe to her side. It had worked. She smiled, remembering the velvet nose as it nudged her face. Less pleasant was what she had needed the doe for.
She paused.
What had she needed the doe for?
The memory seemed to stop, cut off. As though she had turned a page and found the next one blank. She pushed at it, but nothing revealed itself. There was a dull ache behind her eyes. Maybe the confusion knot had done more than she had counted on.
The roaring from the arena reached fever pitch, and then quickly died. The sun had set. The day’s fighting was through. She did not know the results, but she did not need those. She only needed the knight. The voices faded, drifting away. Everyone was returning home. And no one had come through this door. She had guessed wrong. Disappointed, she moved to stand and stretch her cramped muscles.
Furtive footsteps made her freeze and twitch back into the shadows. A woman wearing a shawl over her head hurried to the door. She stumbled, and the bundle she carried in her arm spilled free. Crying out softly in dismay, the woman knelt and gathered the things as swiftly as she could.
But Guinevere saw. Burlap-wrapped packets. Some fruit. And, inexplicably, several smooth stones.
The woman knotted the bundle together as tightly as she could. The door opened. With a quick bow of gratitude, the woman passed the bundle to the knight. He tucked it into a bag at his side and then walked past Guinevere without seeing her and swiftly turned down a narrow alley. The woman went back the way she had come.
Whom to follow?
The knight. Guinevere shadowed him as he snaked through the back alleys of the city she had not yet been introduced to. These did not smell as pleasant as the main areas. The homes were closer together. They were not necessarily older, but they were not as well maintained. The wooden structures seemed less stable, and jammed in wherever there was a hint of space.
The knight had not removed his helmet or his mask. He kept to the alleys between and behind houses. No doors opened into the spaces back here. The windows were shuttered. He and Guinevere might as well have been alone.
He paused next to a crumbling foundation. Then he reached up and removed his mask. She was too far away to see. She could not hurry forward without risking discovery. She looked to the side to see if there was a better vantage point, but when she glanced toward the knight again, he was gone.
Cursing herself, she sprinted to where he had vanished—and nearly tipped over a sheer edge of cliff that greeted her. It was the end of Camelot, the side shorn neatly to the black water a hundred feet beneath. She swayed, dizzy and sick, and caught a single glimpse of the patchwork knight, climbing straight down the side as though he were an insect.
The new queen cannot be seen.
It vexes the dark queen. Because the new queen should not matter—should be less than nothing—but the leaf said that the queen was not the queen, and that is intriguing. Her resources are better spent on Arthur, but so little is intriguing anymore. Even death has lost its sheen. So if the queen-not-queen is something new, she will discover what.
The queen’s bedroom is protected the same as Arthur’s, petty knots, base tricks. They insult her. They are not a magic of life, creation or unmaking. They are a human trick. A border. A barrier. Humans and their walls. She has humans to take care of those. They will do their work in time.
But she can feel another space. More windows. Her moth throws itself against them, beating its life against the glass. Inside, a heartbeat. Not the queen-not-queen’s heart. Someone else’s.
And that heart is racing. That heart is—
Magic. There is magic in that room.
The moth expires. The true queen, the dark queen, the queen of stone and soil and tree, is pleased. Camelot has gotten very complicated. Complicated is close to chaos.
And chaos is her realm.
That the castle was directly uphill seemed a cruel punishment for Guinevere’s failure to catch the patchwork knight. She trudged up the streets. Candles illuminated shops being closed for the evening, families shuttering themselves against the night and the things that held sway in the dark dreamspaces it brought.