Tedros folded up the newspaper, thrust it back through the window, and used his fingerglow to repair the glass. “Come on,” he said, hopping onto his horse. “We need to find Morgause Street.”
A booming crash echoed in the distance.
King and knight swiveled to see a plume of smoke and dust rising at the top of the hill near the jail, though they couldn’t see what had caused it.
“Something’s wrong. . . . Let’s get to the Forest,” Lance urged.
“Ten minutes. That’s all I need. Then you can feast at Marian’s Arrow while I meet this ‘Lion’ fellow and tell him in no uncertain terms that I already have a knight,” said Tedros, riding towards the cottage lanes.
“Happy to let him have the job if he wants it,” Lancelot growled, following him.
But Tedros was already amongst the houses, shifting and squinting in his saddle to make out the streets around him: Oldherde Court . . . Magpie Grove . . . Marian Mews. . . . He could see people peeping through curtains from inside their cottages; they all had the same spooked expressions, their eyes tracking him. He pulled his hood farther over his head.
“They think we’re the Snake’s men,” said Tedros. “They’re waiting for us to attack them.”
“Or waiting for something to attack us,” said his knight. “Something they know is out here that we don’t.”
Tedros met his eyes, a flicker of doubt passing over the king’s face. “Look! There it is!” he exclaimed suddenly, spying the sign for Morgause Street over Lance’s shoulder. “Gremlaine’s house is that wa—”
A gleaming black blur flew under Lance’s horse, and the animal bucked in surprise, neighing wildly, almost throwing the knight off. Tedros whirled around, following the gleam . . . but it was gone.
“What was it?” Lance panted, trying to soothe his horse.
Tedros scanned the clear crossroads. “Must have been a bat or a crow. Come on,” he said, pulling his horse towards the lane ahead. But his horse wouldn’t move, tugging his head in the other direction. Lancelot’s horse oriented the same way.
“They want us to get to the Forest,” the knight said.
Tedros dismounted and jogged towards Morgause Street, leaving Lancelot and the horses behind.
Rounding the corner, he tracked the street numbers: 232 . . . 240 . . . 244 . . . until he found a two-floor white cottage with “246” above the door in peeling red paint.
This is Gremlaine’s?
The front garden was dead and overgrown with bristly weeds. The cottage’s white panels were spotted with mildew and bird droppings. Both windows were cracked, with tiny holes in them, as if they’d been shot through with marbles. In leaving Camelot, Lady Gremlaine had traded a ramshackle castle for an even more run-down house.
As Tedros approached the front door, he noticed the welcome mat: an embroidered needlepoint of young King Arthur with a halo over his head and the words stitched beneath him in golden thread— THE ONCE AND FUTURE KING
He’d seen these before, sold cheaply in Camelot’s street markets. They were popular with the poorest citizens of the kingdom, who’d lionized the lofty king, and with zealots who saw Tedros’ father not as a man, but as an immortal saint who would one day return from death to reclaim his kingdom. But Lady Gremlaine? She didn’t fit into either category. She worked for his father. She was Arthur’s friend. Even if she did secretly love him, having this in front of her house felt like something other than love. Something creepier. It made Tedros’ stomach lurch.
He caught a whiff of powdered rose at the door. Quickly he put his hand on the knocker, but then he smelled the rosy scent overtaken by a hot, sweaty musk. Tedros turned, frowning.
“Where you go, I go,” groused Lancelot, sword gleaming on his belt.
Tedros turned back and knocked hard on the door.
No one answered.
“Glad that’s settled,” said the knight, starting to drag him away—
Tedros unsheathed his sword, aimed the hilt against the door lock, and smashed it.
“Few months as king and you’ve gone vigilante,” Lancelot marveled.
Tedros shoved the door open and went inside the house, Lancelot hewing close to him.
“Did you stalk my father like this too?” Tedros sniped.
“Mmmhm. Didn’t smell as nice as you, though. You know, with the number of baths you take, it’s a wonder you get any work as king done at all—”
Tedros stopped in front of him. “Lance . . .”
The knight looked up and stiffened.
Lady Gremlaine’s house had been ravaged: the furniture upended and slashed open; closet doors splintered and rugs frayed; lampshades ripped apart, their glass bases shattered; books shredded, pages showered around like confetti.
“Who would do this?” Tedros asked, stupefied. “It’s like an army shot the place through with arrows.”
Lancelot studied a pillow speared with holes, the stuffing spilling out, then squinted around the room. “Only there aren’t any arrows here.”
Glancing inside a closet, Tedros found a safebox, broken open and dumped on the floor. He sifted through the wreckage: first, some old clippings from the Camelot Courier, the top one announcing his father’s coronation, with a portrait of Arthur accepting the crown and a young Lady Gremlaine smiling to the side of the stage, while another clipping featured a picture of a young Arthur and young Gremlaine sitting together, with the caption: “King and his steward hard at work in the early days of his reign.” There was also a copy of the Royal Rot, with the headline: “GUINEVERE WHO? How Lady Gremlaine Is the Real Secret to King Arthur’s Success!” Tedros flung it aside, noticing a ledger beneath it with a handwritten label: Camelot Beautiful
Tedros opened the ledger, only to see all its pages blank . . . except for a business card clipped to the last one:
But there was something stuck to the back of the ledger, Tedros realized—a stack of letters, banded together, addressed to Lady Gremlaine. He peeled them off the ledger and flipped through the stack, his eyes widening.
All of the letters were in his father’s handwriting.
“Tedros, look at this,” Lancelot’s voice said.
Tedros shoved the letters in his coat along with the business card and moved out of the closet to find his knight inspecting the wall. Black marks streaked across it, with a strange wet sheen. Tedros scraped his hand across the marks, then peered closely at his fingertips. Shiny black debris like sequins had embedded in his skin.
“Snake scales . . . ,” said Lancelot ominously.
Tedros thought of that black blur he saw in the street. . . .
Something rustled upstairs.
The two men stared at each other.
“Lady Gremlaine?” Tedros called out.
No answer.
Warily, Tedros ascended the staircase, Lancelot behind him.
On the second floor, they found more of the scaly black marks on the hallway walls and on a square hatch built into the ceiling, presumably a portal to the attic.
More rustling came from the room at the end of the hall.