Tristan knocked on the door to his father's study and waited. Voices rumbled inside the chamber, the words themselves obscured by wood. They broke off, and then the door popped open. His father's secretary peered up at him, his quill perched behind his ear. He looked like he'd lost his hat and kept only the feather. Tristan did his best not to laugh.
"Who is it, Percy?" Arthur called. Percy glowered up at Tristan suspiciously.
"Prince Tristan, Your Grace."
"Bring him in then." Tristan threw Percy one of his better smiles and slipped passed him into the room beyond. It looked like it always did. The shelves were stacked with books, a fire crackled away from the hearth and Pendragon pretended to sleep on his perch on the windowsill. He recognised the other people in the room too, a senior lawyer, a scribe and the highest ranking guard they had. He could guess what they had been talking about.
"I can come back later, father," Tristan offered after greeting everyone else in the room with a respectful nod.
"No," Arthur sighed. He rubbed at his temples looking tired, "I think we've done all we can do." He turned his attention to the others and thanked them for their help. Taking the hint, they cleared up their things and left with arms full of papers.

"You should come to the next meeting," Arthur smiled as the door clicked shut again, "you'll learn something." Tristan nodded.
"Make much progress?" he asked, scanning the bookshelves in case anything caught his eye.
"No," the king sighed, "we can't seem to agree on anything." He started to pick up the scattered sheets of paper littering his desk, patting them into a neat pile. Tristan turned back to face him.
"What's on your mind?" Arthur wondered, fixing him with a searching look, "not like you to be indoors on a dry day."
"I've been thinking. Would you mind if I went to see Grandfather? And the baby?" He hesitated, "I know you guys aren't exactly seeing eye to eye and the minute but..." Arthur held up his hand to cut him off.
"You can see your grandfather whenever you want to, Tristan," he said earnestly, "it was never my intention to keep him from you. You're old enough to make up your own mind about what has happened and what you want to do about it."
"Thanks," Tristan muttered, "I know I just...don't really know what to think. I've just missed having him around."

---

"If you're going down there, Your Highness" an exhausted looking guard whispered to him, jabbing his thumb down the corridor towards Mallos' room, "please for Aura's sake, do not wake the baby." The poor man looked on the verge of tears.
"Urm...okay?" Tristan replied, trying to be reassuring, "I'll be as quiet as a mouse." He paused at the end of the carpet to remove his boots and tiptoed across the polished wood in his socks. It was silent as he approached the door. Tristan reached for the door handle and turned it slowly. Mercifully the hinges didn't creek as he pushed it slowly ajar.

And then a ball of rolled-up paper hit him on the nose.

What the hell.

The silence had disguised the chaos unfolding inside the room. The sheets of paper on Mallos' desk were folding themselves up and throwing themselves at the waste paper bin propped against the opposite wall. They weren't very good at it. Drawing pins covered the floor, shining in the dimming candlelight, they seemed to have arranged themselves into a particularly aggressive game of draughts. Tristan started in alarm when one of his grandfather's black shirts swooped at him out of the shadows like some deformed ghost.

Mallos himself lay curled up and oblivious on the bed. The baby slept soundly beside him, her head in the crook of his arm.

Taking care not to step on any of the pins, Tristan picked his way across the room and perched on the vacant side of the bed. Tentatively he reached out and gave Mallos' shoulder an insistent shake.
"Urm...Grandfather?" he ventured, with a second shake, "I think you might want to wake up?"

Tristan
_{the only thing left are the stars}