I’m right, aren’t I?
It was an uncomfortable line of questioning; even Guy seemed uncomfortable with it. But Mace stood up a little straighter, chin lifted. “Yeah. It is.” He wasn’t going to offer up Morgana’s name with so little in exchange, but neither would he outright deny her. This wasn’t a mission – it was a promise. And even if Mace hadn’t realized just how much protecting the Prince would need, and how far Mordred was willing to go, he wasn’t about to break an oath. If he couldn’t protect her, he would protect the people dear to her.
And pray. And pray.
His answer seemed to unsettle Guy, or maybe it was the way he’d said it. Mace watched his body language with interest. It was…convincing. Mace could easily accept that the younger soldier didn’t have the faintest idea what was going on. But the timing, the location, the immediacy of it all, was still suspect. Sometimes, spies didn’t know they were spies. He narrowed his eyes a little, apparently immune to the charming banter between fairy and familiar, even as Josephine’s features crinkled with amusement. Fine. If they had to play good cop, bad cop to get to the bottom of this situation, Mace could accept that.
“Brochures are so misleading,” the puma purred.
“You didn’t tell anyone where you were going?” Mace clarified, doubtfully. It seemed unlikely that nobody would mention the civil unrest at the Alliance, if they’d known that’s where Guy intended to take a vacation. This “personal reconnaissance” invited further questioning, but before he could formulate them he’d lost the captain’s attention – it had wandered off into the woods. Mace smirked. “The trees protect the King,” he answered, vaguely. In the silence that followed, the creak of branches took on a different tenor. Mace had grown used to it in the months he’d been camped out here, but it had certainly been unsettling the first time he’d noticed it. Guy recovered well enough; it made Mace wonder what he’d seen, on these unremitting assignments. Enough to be useful, surely, Josephine supplied.
“Fine,” he muttered, drawing a deep breath. “The short version is that the King in the castle is a usurper who killed his brother, King Arthur, and framed Prince Tristan for patricide. In some ways it is no more complicated than that.” Mace crossed his arms over his chest, scowling at the surrounding trees. Where he was concerned, it was much more complicated than that. “Half the kingdom is either complicit, easily convinced, or too worried about themselves to take a stand. The other half is here, but “here” is hard to pin down when you have a forest covering your tracks,” he continued, doing his best to deliver the Cliff’s Notes in an objective tone. But his expression was severe when he looked at Guy, his next words sharp with conviction: “Tristan did not kill his father. The only member of that family with such sick ambition and disregard for life is Mordred.”
You really need to work on your recruitment speech, Jo mumbled through their bond. Mace sighed, raised one hand to pinch the bridge of his nose. It had been…a while since he’d spoken to anyone in a tone that wasn’t for training, or disciplining, or expression the kind of astonishment reserved for the always novel stupidity of adolescents. He sighed, waved off the tension as if he were batting flies.
“Look. If you want to spend your overdue leave fighting an unsanctioned war, I won’t chase you off. Staging a resistance takes manpower and training and I’m not in a position to turn away volunteers. But it’s messy, Guy. It’s a civil war split down the middle of a powerful family, and the significance of that…really can’t be overstressed. ” Mace replaced his hands on his hips, seeming to think about it all. “And I should probably mention that anyone who hurts Tristan, reckons with me.”
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