How Sharper Than a Serpent's Tooth
by Meredith L. Patterson
Originally appeared in The Doom of Camelot, from Green Knight Publishing, 2000
He discovers the thing in his mother's bedchamber, in the hope chest where she keeps all the trinkets which remind him of his father. It is nothing like the arm-rings and daggers which she sometimes gives to him to play with, though; this thing is a stiff loop, half as long as he is high, faded gold-brown and withered like a strip of poor leather soaked in water and let dry on its own. He traces around its length with his fingers, searching for the knot which holds it together, but it is more cunningly fastened than he can figure out. He follows the narrow loop at the top down to the base, around, and up the other side: still nothing.
It's a trick, he thinks, like the cup-and-balls or the linking rings that the jongleurs had at May Day. The neverending strip of leather. Mother will know how it opens.
This soon after Nones, she will be in the solar, embroidering, or reading her Book of Hours. He piles everything but the leather-loop back into the chest, lets the lid fall, and skitters away down the corridor, bootsoles quieter than rats.As he rounds the corner into the west hallway, he can hear voices, his mother's and a man's, inside the solar. The echo of the stone muddies the words, and the man's voice is unfamiliar: coarse, unfriendly, Southern.
He peers into the room, squinting in the sharp light of late afternoon. His mother sits in the lone chair. A knight in an embroidered cote stands before her, holding a sheaf of parchment.
"Arthur has my eldest in his court already," Queen Morgause tells the man, who places one hand on his hip. "He has no need of my twins, even if they are of squiring age." The man raises the papers — Will he strike her? the boy wonders — but his mother waves a hand. "Do not argue with me, son of Ector. I would that you could bring pleasant memories back with you." Her lips continue to move in words he does not recognize, but there is no sound.
Parchment leaves flutter to the ground, and the man falls to his knees before her, face buried in her skirts.
Behind the wall, the boy sucks in a gasp. Both heads rise and turn to face the door. The man's eyes are those of a panicked animal. Then his mother's voice calls, "Who's there?"
He swallows once and steps into the chamber, his tread still silent as dust. In his clenched fist, the leather-thing feels clammy to the touch.
His mother laughs, the way she does when he or Gaheris manages to tag her 'out' at catch-as-catch-can, and just as he thinks he will not be in trouble, the man stammers, "Izzat — "
She glares down at the man and shoves him away from her lap. "Ymlonyddwch!" she snaps. In the midst of righting himself, the knight freezes entirely, shoulders cater-corner to the floor, his question still scrawled across his face.
"What do you bring me, Agravaine?" she asks, moving with delicate steps around the motionless man. "Come here, darling, let me see." Her cheeks are so pink, her voice so dark.
He paces forward, leather-thing still in one hand. "I found it in the trunk with Da's things."
For a moment she gazes at the thing with no sign of recollection, then a red smile creeps to her lips. "Oh, yes." She reaches out as if to take it from him, but only brushes her fingers against it. Her face brightens a little more. "I made this, long ago."
"How does it open?" He jostles it, testing again. "Will you show me the trick?"
She shakes her head and laughs, one hand darting to his shoulder. "It isn't that sort of trick, dearest. It's a charm." She leans her head in the direction of the knight. "For men like him. It's called a spancel. If you desire another's love, you must pass this around the body of your sleeping beloved, and on awakening, your beloved will do exactly as you please." Her back arches lazily as she speaks, her voice dropping to a satisfied purr.
"Where does it come from?"
Her hand drops to his hip, one finger along the crevice between thigh and body. "Right here, my lovely. It takes a very sharp knife, under one side and up the other." A fingernail digs in; he cringes back, but the discomfort follows him. "Then up the side," she says, sounding as if she speaks through clenched teeth. Her nail slices up toward his shoulder, and he gasps, pressing his hand to the trail of warm pain it leaves, startled to find that no ribbon of skin and shredded clothing hangs from his ribcage. As she begins to chuckle, both of his hands clench in convulsion, one against his side, the other tighter around the spancel. Against his palm, he feels a wet pounding sensation: ka-thump ka-thump ka-thump, a hot, clammy heartbeat.
He yelps and flails his arm, trying to throw the thing away, but it will not take leave of his hand. Her smile reveals demon's teeth now, her laughter echoing from the stone corners, and he cups his free hand to his crotch to ward invisible knives away from his suddenly tight hose.
"Mama!" he cries, and wraps his arms around his head, digs his fingers into his ears, anything to shut out the sound and the thought.
The cackling dies faster than smashed hornets, and again he feels hands on him. This time they are soft and familiar, and the voice is his mother's voice, even if he cannot tell what it says. After a moment, he lets his arms slip and looks up at her; she is still his mother after all. His stare meets her gaze, and she looks away. With one smooth rush of gathered skirts, she rises, face toward the wall, and strides back to her chair.
"You needn't think on it any longer," she tells him. "Put it away, and put this with it." Morgause slips a tarnished brass key from the belt of the dark-haired man beside her, who only stares into the air before him. His jaw hangs slack, pulling the lips into a vacant smile.
Years later, the thought rose and submerged in his mind, like a chunk of meat in thick stew, that it was looking too deep into things which had started all these problems to begin with; but other matters bubbled to the surface and took up all the space there, leaving no room for What was I thinking, spying on them?
And besides, he hadn't been spying on them — not his mother and the stranger-knight, not the two in the gardens. Not really. Not as if he had intended to see anything. He had gone away from the castle, away from the other knights returned with their ladies from a-Maying, away from their complicated jests and songs with too many verses for him to remember. In the gardens he could follow a maze of paths without end, chase after birdsongs and crickets' humming as it pleased him.
Or murmurs, for that matter. Also laughter.
That had caught his attention: a high clear almost-shriek, not quite the sort of noise he expected a damsel might make if she were being abducted. Too joyous for that. It came from somewhere below the tree whose branches just barely supported his weight as he scavenged for apples and robins' nests. Not far away, he thought, there was something moving (moving, and a flash of blue cloth over white), but high hedgerows stood in the way, blocking most of his view.
He shimmied down the tree, scraping face and forearms much more than he would have if he had simply jumped — but dropping quickly meant dropping loudly, and the noise would distract whatever hid behind the bushes. As he listened, he began to make out sounds, words, which before had settled into the background hum but now stood out: words like chance and scandal and get thee hence.
He lowered himself to his stomach and wormed his way through a break in the first hedge, then across the footpath to the base of the next. Here, the branches grew thicker, bowing his shoulders and pressing his chin into the wet earth as he crept deeper into the bracken. The voices still came through muffled, though. Peering through the veil of leaves and twigs, he could see why.
Even from behind, he could not help but recognize the man who sat astride the chiseled stone bench in front of him. No one but du Lac had hair so fair or shoulders so broad.
And draped across him, chin tucked over his shoulder, white arms twined around his back, was the King's wife. Guinevere. She whispered into du Lac's ear, pressing her lips to the curve between his neck and shoulder, encircling his body with her bare ribbonlike arms, wrapping flesh in a loop of flesh.
A feeling of sudden atrophy settled into Agravaine's arms, and the palms of his hands felt abruptly hot.
Put it away, put it away, chanted a voice far back in his mind. Turn around and leave it here.
Branches pinned his arms to his sides, though, and his legs could only shove him farther into the hedge (or out the other side, he thought, and that almost kept him from breathing) or snap a bough to give away his presence. He twisted his head to the left and right — no difference. Those pale arms stretched and wove to wrap around du Lac from every direction, new-milk-color fading to dead-flesh-color before him. He gagged, then drew his chin in toward his chest to stare straight down into the soil, and nearly choked on his own breath. Every time she murmured, du Lac let out a groan or a sigh. In Agravaine's ears her Breton lilt took on a liquid Northern tone, rich like the rot of the earth in his face.
Even with his eyes shut he could see them, all writhing limbs, limbs becoming snakes, snakes becoming worms, worms shrivelling and coiling in on themselves. His stomach heaved, forcing his head to twist sideways, and again he saw them: still human, but writhing still. Presently du Lac lowered her onto the grass; and what Agravaine read on the queen's pretty face was a not-unfamiliar expression of triumph.
Once they had gone, he walked back alone. They had gathered their fallen clothing and dressed one another, laughing, then made their way from the bower singing some melody about summer coming in. Agravaine had waited until the song had quite faded before extricating himself from the hedgerow.
He kicked at the base of the plant, tore off branches and snapped them between his hands, and shredded some of its leaves, all the while muttering helpless curses. When he had satisfied his anger, he gave the bush a final kick, turned, and followed a different path out of the maze of greenery. By then the sky had grown dark. Spots of light moved slowly back and forth, high in the distance — guards on the ramparts, he supposed — but even with those guides he wandered into more than one overgrown cul-de-sac before he found his way to the gates, muttered an excuse to the sentry there, and stumbled inside.
Supper had long been and gone. Someone had already banked the fire in the great hall, and the only sounds apart from popping embers were the snores of men and dogs lying in the rushes.
Now what?
There was no way to sleep, not yet. Every time he blinked he saw them again; closing his eyes any longer than an instant would drive him mad.
Somewhere in the rear of the hall, someone let out a slow sigh; that was enough. He turned, fingernails cutting into his palms, and made for the corridor.
Hallways, stairways, breezeways: he paced on stone, on thatch, perhaps the same way more than once without noticing. He tried door-handles as he encountered them, found most of them locked. At last he gave an indifferent shove to a pair of double-doors he vaguely recognized, and stopped in curious surprise as they swung open.
It was familiar after all. Even in the faint hallway torchlight, he could not mistake the great Round Table inside the room.
Not as if you've sat there very long.
Still, it was another place to go, and so he stepped inside. Every place had its own name — here was Bedivere, here Pellinore, name after name from lays he had heard as far away as the Orkneys. Chair by chair, Agravaine circled the Table, searching for his own name — not easy to find among the multitude.
He found it by spelling out the letters, stopped, and glanced up. Behind one of the chairs, not too far away, a figure rested, both arms crossed, against the upright back.
"Good evening, brother," it said.
Gawain? No, the voice was wrong — too mellow for his brash older brother. Nor Gaheris, his mirror-voice, and not quite right for Gareth either. If not them —
"Mordred?"
Agravaine blinked, stared, and picked out a few features in the dim light. The pale, foxlike face was easy to make out, hovering behind the tallest of the chairs: Arthur's chair.
"What are you doing here so late?" Agravaine asked, words thin against the dead air.
Mordred leaned back, curling his hands over the top of the chair. "Just imagining what it must be like, seeing this place from the king's perspective, with the responsibilities of a king on one's shoulders." He paused, cocked his head to the left. "Unless I mistake myself, something weighs heavily on you, too, brother."
Agravaine nudged his own chair back with a heel and sank into it, arms crossed on the Table. "I don't — know — I mean, not quite — how to put it." He stared down at one wrist, clutching his elbows with either hand.
"Shh," Mordred said, and the whispery rush of it came back from every corner of the room, a dozen soothing tones. "You can tell me. I'll listen, and I won't interrupt."
Agravaine glanced up from his seat. Mordred was still standing, angled across the Table, just watching him, waiting. He actually looked interested. Concerned, even.
And one by one, the words flowed. "I was just — you see — just out walking. It was before supper, I didn't think I'd be back late. And while I was out, there was this sort of — some kind of noise, like a woman — " he left out the part about the tree " — and I thought it was a shout. So I went to find out ..."
On and on, everything that seemed important: the clothing, the hedgerow, the kissing, Guinevere, du Lac. Not once did Mordred look away; again and again his fox-face twisted into a pointed grimace, every time he mentioned one of the more unpleasant parts. And when Agravaine found himself saying, "So, then, that's how it happened" for the fourth time, he cut himself off, then smiled hopefully.
Mordred pressed a hand to his upper lip, hiding his mouth and chin, and regarded his brother for a long time. "So then you came back here?" he finally asked.
Agravaine nodded.
"Did you talk to anyone else?"
"Just — just the guard at the portcullis. But not about — this."
Now it was Mordred's turn to nod, slowly, cupped hand working in time over his mouth.
Agravaine picked at the threads of a hole in his left sleeve, looking down at the Table again. "What does a man — you know, do — when he finds out a thing like this?"
For a while Mordred watched him, unmoving. "It's quite a dilemma, isn't it. Difficult to handle...in the most effective manner." He breathed deeply, a humming sigh. "It isn't something you can keep hidden, but you don't know what you ought to do about it."
Agravaine shrugged, still fidgeting with the loose threads.
"I think there's only one thing you can do. Arthur must know."
"Will you tell him?" Agravaine glanced up between his crossed arms, not raising his head.
"It's hardly my place," Mordred returned, though his voice remained gentle. "You needn't be ashamed. What you saw, he deserves to know. It falls to you to play the courier, not the tale-bearer. You have a message that should go straight to him."
"But I can't — what if I — " He pounded an elbow onto the Table, propped his forehead up with his hand. "He won't have time to listen to me start and stop. I don't know how to — how to get it all out, how to sound like I'm not such a — "
"Shh. Don't worry so much. There's no call to do it now. Take the time you need. Prepare yourself to speak with him. Think out what you mean to say, and once you feel ready, go to him. Don't hurry about it."
Agravaine frowned, looking for an objection, and found one. "How will I know when I'm ready?"
"If you doubt yourself, then practice a little longer." Mordred sounded so confident, so knowing. "The more practice, the better, by all means."
At last, Agravaine nodded once more. "All right. I'll — do it."
Mordred paced around the curve of the Table, softly and slowly, and rested a hand on Agravaine's slumped shoulder. "It is a great service you are about to perform, dear brother."
Agravaine awoke before sunrise, on his own pallet in the great hall, from the dreamless sleep of those who have already seen more than they ever could have expected.
As he lay there, it occurred to him that if he could just hold perfectly still, time might not pass around him quite so quickly. And for a long moment, nothing moved; no one trod or rolled over on the rushes, or muttered in his sleep, or even snored. One word at a time, he began to piece together what he would say.
"Your pardon, my liege." He smiled. Just like in the lays, a model of courtesy. "I am loath to interrupt thy–-" Thy what? When to break the news to him, and where? Who else should he allow to hear? What if Guinevere or du Lac attended the king all day? What if––
Someone snorted, startling Agravaine upright. He caught his breath, sat back on his hands, and looked around. No one was awake to hear — no one could hear you talking to yourself in your head, he chided — but that only meant no one yet.
Enough time, enough time; there will be no time in the castle once everyone has roused themselves, and that could be in hours or minutes.
And this really was more important than garrison duty.
He gathered his cloak and belt and boots, lifted an abandoned loaf-end from last night’s supper off a nearby bench, and made for the only place he knew he could follow his brother’s advice uninterrupted.
By late morning, he had gone through more possible encounters than he had fingers to count them on, without arriving at a foolproof approach. For a while, he had entertained the thought of sweeping into the castle like a conquering lord, brushing past knights and servants alike to fall to his knees before his king and deliver his gift of God’s own truth. The image thrilled him, and more than once he made a game of it in the overgrown alley of the gardens he had chosen for his meditations: swirling his cloak and stomping the blades of grass like villeins beneath his boots, all the way up to the oak-tree Arthur which considered his message in grave silence. After a few of these practice-runs, though, he discarded it; had the shrubs and saplings been real men, they would have barred his way before he ever came close to the king. It would be too chancy, too easy to come up against obstacles.
And around a man like Arthur, there were always obstacles. Somehow, other men managed to slide themselves into his confidence. Somehow, they made themselves welcome around him, important to him, and how they accomplished that feat was a mystery greater than the living Corpus Christi.
He had a message. That made him a messenger. Could that be a way? Might he ride up to the gate, grim and short of breath, to snap “News for his Majesty!” to anyone who asked after his business? Then he might deliver his information as soberly as any justly outraged knight could.
It would entail a horse, he supposed. Certainly not out of the question...but somewhat hard to believe, if he rode out from the stables, turned around, and came straight back. For that matter, would anyone believe that any news he might carry would be of any importance at all?
Plan after plan he devised, imagined out, weighed, and discarded: too elaborate, too foolish, too time-consuming. What man could say to a king the things he now had to say?
At Camelot, any man — for everyone is equal when no man sits at the head of the table.
That thought stilled all the others. It was something to fall back on, something an honest knight could remember. Fool or no fool, he had a seat at the Table and no one could deny it, nor deny him the right to words with Arthur. And he knew now what those words would be: My lord, your lady wife and your liege man have done you grievous wrong.
Just like in one of the lays.
For noontide, there's entirely too much dust in front of the castle, Agravaine realized from a long way off.
At first, he expected it to be a large cluster of men, but on closer approach he saw not just men, but men in armor, with horses as well. He froze, fingers twined in the edges of his cloak, and considered turning back for the gardens to wait out whatever was going on. Someone shouted "Ho there!" and he saw steel glinting in his direction. One of the knights whistled and pointed to him, and two others, mailed and helmed, broke from the group, running to meet him with hands on their sword-hilts.
He fought back a whimper as they came closer — I didn't mean to shirk, I swear! he thought — and then one of them slowed. "Go on back, Fergus," came the guard's voice, muffled under steel. "It's Agravaine."
Fergus turned back for the gate. The other knight, still walking, lifted his helmet. His was a face
Agravaine recognized.
"'Sblood," Gareth cursed. "What are you doing out here?"
Agravaine wanted to cross himself against his brother's blasphemy, but there wasn't time. "I had to figure out what to do!" he started, rushing to meet Gareth. "There's something Arthur has to know, it's––"
"Not nearly as important as what's going on right now." Gareth caught him by the shoulder and held on. "Haven't you heard? It's all over the countryside by now. His Majesty has been cuckolded in his own house and home. Mordred caught the Queen abed with Lancelot, of anyone it could have been! He won't say how he knew, but he was ready for them––had ten knights waiting." Gareth's mailed fingers were beginning to cut into his shoulder. "That whoreson fought his way past all of them, with nothing but that damn sword of his. Agravaine, he killed Gaheris."
Agravaine took a step back, tried to clear the sudden thick dry feeling from his mouth, but Gareth went on, not letting go. "Ran him straight through and never once looked to see who he'd killed, from what Mordred says. Lancelot knighted me with that blade! And now he's taken it and run for his miserable life. We're all on guard. Guinevere's to be burned." Gareth's round face flared crimson beneath his helmet, and he paused to catch his breath. His hand dropped, leaving Agravaine standing, reeling, alone.
There was only one word he could manage to form: "How?"Agravaine was surprised to find the room of the Table entirely empty when he crept in after Vespers. It startled him even more when he turned to leave a few heartbeats later and found Mordred waiting for him outside the door.
"You bastard," he growled, and threw himself at his brother. Mordred laughed, a short, harsh thing that wounded just as much as the fist he drove into Agravaine's stomach.
Agravaine choked and fell back against the doorframe, trying to catch his breath. "I thought you'd be here," he said once he'd recovered.
"I know. That's why I wasn't."
Was Mordred even the same person from the night before? Instead of that calm, sage look, there was a smirk. And it seemed as if he couldn't stand still — one moment he paced back and forth across the doorway, the next he stood in place, chin in hand, shoulders rocking almost spastically. "I'm hardly surprised you can't sleep either," Mordred murmured. "Such a fascinating turn of events!"
Agravaine coughed, still getting his wind back. "But you said — you said to — take my time!"
Mordred laughed again. "I said for you to, you idiot. I knew it would take you too long to do anything useful with a gift like that."
Agravaine surged to his feet, ready for another round. "But he killed Gaheris! They're going to kill — to burn her — the queen! What kind of gift is that?"
Mordred just crossed his arms, smiling. "You tell me. You gave it to me." Head tucked down, he began pacing again. "In point of fact, I really should thank you, and for that matter, so should Mother. It's exactly what we've been waiting for. I never once would have thought that a bloody idiot like you would have given it to us."
The insults didn't sting; he had heard them too many times before. But the point of it strained his mind, left his head throbbing. "Waiting for what?"
"What Mother put in motion eighteen years ago when she magicked Arthur to begin with." Mordred stopped, glanced over his shoulder, and looked Agravaine up and down. "You really do take after your father, don't you."
"He's your father too!"
At first Agravaine thought he might have actually stunned his brother with that one. For a long moment Mordred was silent, rooted to the floor, shoulders displaying just the slightest rapid twitch. Agravaine moved his elbows in toward his ribs, readying for what he guessed would be a furious punch.
Then Mordred very nearly collapsed in laughter. "If you thought, for one moment," he gasped, holding his sides, "that I had anything to do with — with that weakling — oh, this is too much!"
He's turned away, I could smash his face into the stones, Agravaine thought, but Mordred spun around too quickly.
"If it weren't for my father spitting Lot like a Christmas pig, I'd never have been here in the first place."
"When did — Did that? — I don't remember — "
"Of course you don't remember. How old were you — two? Three? God above, man, you could have been fifteen and I doubt you'd have memory enough to remember. It was during one of those penny-a-score battles; it hardly matters which. Your father picked the wrong side to stand on when Arthur wanted a court of his own, and Arthur put him under. Mother was terribly angry, of course, so she set her eye to the Pendragon, wrapped him up in one of her spells for a night — and that is how I found my way into your miserable little Orkney kingdom."
"But how? It doesn't make — "
"She fucked him, you simpleton," Mordred hissed. "Tied Arthur up in the piece of leather she cut from Lot, fucked him dry, and brought back me to show for it, to come back some day and fuck him for what he did. And now it's done!" His lips twisted to let out a snicker. "All day I've been wondering if she planned you like this too. It's just too perfect!"
Again Agravaine heard the ringing of echoes, driving him back into the corner. "I didn't — I — " His hands wedged themselves between his legs, and he left them there, shaking.
"Yet you called me a bastard anyway? Oh, you blessed idiot...if I had half your talent for never knowing how right I was, I'd have run myself through the moment I knew what a sword was. This is what I was made to do from the very beginning, and just think — you managed to make it all possible." Mordred sucked in a long breath, shook his head, then let it out in a rush. Finally, benevolent as the statue of a saint, he beamed, "How do you like the taste of renown, dear brother?"
Agravaine left Camelot despite the rumors of war. Gareth tried to talk him out of it; Gawaine was too busy with planning and tactics to hear him out. He kept away from Mordred entirely, not that Mordred paid any attention for him to avoid.
I can be right, was his chant as he rode. I can bring some good out of this.
At Dunnet Head he hired a ferryman to take him across the firth to Hoy. From there it was only a day and a night to Birsay and home. If it would even feel like home, once he got there.
Along the way, through the fields and fishing villages, sometimes, he saw men turn to one another and women whisper, watching him as he rode past. It happened more often the farther north he went, and when an old gaffer leaning against a rock wall by the road to the castle proper called out, "Another one for the queen, eh?" he did not know how to answer.
At last the road came to an end, straight into the sea, with Birsay Brough on its rock in the middle of the water, no more than a few hundred feet away from him. Agravaine tethered his horse to a nearby tree, gathered his pouch and swordbelt, and waited.
At low tide, a page came to the shore on the opposite side to call out a challenge. It was no one he recognized. Agravaine stomped his way through the rocks and puddles of the basin and up the beach, and told the boy — clearly, for once in his life — "Tell my mother that her second son is home." The page dashed off. Agravaine followed at his own deliberate pace.
Queen Morgause greeted her son with an embrace and hot wine when he reached the hall. He raised his goblet and breathed in; it smelled of distraction, so he set it aside. Morgause looked up at him, questioning, but said nothing.
"You have to come back with me, mother." Agravaine stood as straight as he could, and tried to keep his voice from shaking. "Don't argue. I have to set the court and the king straight."
She lifted a finger to her tight lips, not quite smiling. "Whatever do you mean, dear boy?"
He had expected that reply. "We must set things right at Camelot. Everything's coming apart there." He paced forward in time with the words, looming closer with each step. "All the knights are at one another's throats, the queen's to be burned as an adulteress, Gaheris is dead. And it all comes back to you." He punctuated the last with a finger pointed straight at her throat.
Morgause rocked her head back to regard his hand. "You make peculiar accusations, Agravaine, without telling me precisely what they are."
"They're Mordred's doing, against the court," he snapped. "That makes them yours." Now she would gasp, or put a hand to her mouth, or beg him to explain what awful thing had happened in her name.
Instead, she murmured "Oh" through an all-too-familiar smirk. "The old story comes to light at last."
That caught him off guard, but he tried to brush it aside. "Mordred explained it all — what ha-happened with that leather — that thing I found." Did she notice the stutter? Perhaps not...
Morgause pushed his hand aside and plucked at a splash of mud on the front of his cote. "Did he? That was...courteous of him." Her voice took on a light, almost playful tone. "You seem shocked. Do you mean to say you don't think your father's murderer deserves the punishment I've set for him?"
"I don't — I don't want to say what anyone deserves." This didn't belong here. She was supposed to be repenting, not asking him questions! "If Mordred hadn't thought — thought the whole court deserved to know about — if you hadn't thought Arthur de-deserved to be — That's where it all started, and — and someone's got to account for it."
She took up a circular, steady pace around him, forcing him to turn to keep his eyes on her. "And what good does it do your father, to deny your poor mother like this?"
That tight sensation was coming back to his temples, even without the wine. "That's not — the point isn't — Father doesn't come into it! If you'd wanted justice, you could have — but instead you wanted — "
"My own sort of justice," Morgause finished. "Isn't it poetic, letting his own habits come around to find him? The king only received what I owed him, if he's losing the one he loves. And don't you yourself want the same thing for me? Don't you want me to meet the vengeance you think I've earned?"
"No!" Agravaine shouted. "It isn't veng — what I want — it's what honor — "
"The point is, what good do your appeals to honor do anyone now, dearest?" Morgause paused, ice-voice crystalline in the air. "But I can play at this all afternoon, if you like."
From somewhere Agravaine heard his own voice shout, "God damn you, mother, this isn't pretend any more!"
He felt his hands flash heavy with steel, saw her smirking lips form a sudden O, felt a twist in his fingers — and then everything went limp. In his hands there was a sword; in his mother there was a sword. It took her crumpling off the blade for Agravaine to connect the two as one and the same.
His swordpoint dropped, grating across the stone floor with a sound that made him want to chew through his lower lip. He pushed the hilt away and the blade fell across her.
Morgause's green cotehardie pooled black across her stomach, the stain spreading out from the gash between her ribs. The cloth glistened like meat. He crouched beside her, still doubtful, and placed a hand on her.
Nothing moved.
Who will ever believe you now?
The weight of Agravaine's hand pressed the wound open wider. There was still warmth within, coating his fingers dark red. He gazed at the blood, and in that moment saw a path revealed before him. To gain it he had only to slip first his fingers into the slit in her stomach; then his hand and arm; then his shoulders, head, and the rest of him. There he might curl up and hide, where not even she could find him again. Someone would come for her eventually, with him still frozen inside, and secret them away in a box of wood and iron: forgotten dead flesh, like a memento of his father.
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