The Quality of Mercy - 2/4

[nyxelestia]

Title: The Quality of Mercy

Rating: PG-13

Summary: Uther starts to notice a few things about Arthur and his manservant. Which remind him a bit too much of a Queen and Sorceress from his own past for his comfort.

Pairing: Arthur/Merlin, Igraine/uther, Igraine/Nimueh/Uther, Nimueh/Uther friendship...Uther puts himself out quite a bit...

Warnings: threesomes, violence, swearing, sex, bit of general mindfuckery

Spoilers: Season 1

Beta:jusmine984

Notes: Something I thought I should clear up - these are not chapters of a fic - they are parts of a massive one-shot. It's split into four parts due to size, and across four days because formatting on LJ is a bitch and I've got a castle-load of homework due soon.

~*~

( Part 1 )

Uther walked by the guards, turned the corner, and went down the hall with confidence and ease. He owned this castle – and no one here ever forgot it.

He stopped outside Morgana’s door, and shifted his posture so if he heard footsteps, it would look as if he were about to knock on her door.

Then he listened.

“…to the stairs,” he heard Merlin say. “The guard’s sword got her leg, and they didn’t attend to it.”

He heard a whimper.

“Hush, Mary,” Morgana said, soothingly, and Uther found it rather ironic that someone so unnatural could have a name so holy. “Now, hold still…”

“This is a bit more advanced than what you did with the puppy,” he heard Merlin say.

Some silence, some shuffling, and then, “Thurhhaele!”

That Tongue, that language, sounds all too familiar, even in Merlin’s voice.

There seemed to be some sounds, like the wind in rain, before Morgana gasped in delight, and there was the sound of a little girl squeaking at what she saw.

“There,” Merlin said, gently, in a tone reminiscent of what Gaius would use to treat children. “Leg’s all better now. Want to try with your hand?”

A long pause, then the little girl’s voice came through with, “What was that spell again?”

“Thurh-hae-le,” Merlin enunciates for her.

“Thurhhaele,” the girl said, and it was a little less secure, but with just as much determination, before she gasped and cried out, “It worked!”

“Shh!” Morgana hushed her. “The guards are patrolling the castle. Arthur can only keep them from searching my rooms until noon – you two will have to be gone, by then.”

“We will be,” Merlin said, assuring her. “We’ll find her father, and get them both to the Druids. The family that took Mordred in should be happy to help her.”

“Who?” The little girl asked.

She certainly talked more than most sorcerers on the run. Then again, she was barely a decade old.

“A Druid boy we helped save a long time ago,” Morgana said. Was this the boy he’s caught her helping? Or were there more?

“Will I get to come back?” the little girl asked. “Because all my friends-”

“Not for a long time. I’m sorry,” Morgana said.

“When?”

“When Prince Arthur is king,” Merlin said, and Uther almost couldn’t hear it, for how soft it is. “He will bring magic back where it belongs.”

“Oh,” the little girl said. “Will that be a long time?”

“Yes,” Merlin said, while Morgana said, “I don’t know.”

Uther wondered what Morgana meant by that.

“Here,” Merlin said. “I’ll show you another spell.”

“You know a lot of spells,” the little girl said.

Laughter from the two adults. He knew he should be walking in there.

“Frícath ac me!”

His blood froze at those words – he remembered those words, all too well, and visions of floating flowers and twirling dresses danced before his eyes.

He wondered what danced in Morgana’s rooms, now.

There was clapping, the smooth and elegant clapping from Morgana, and carefree and delighted from the little girl. A witch who was on the run. Who Uther should be calling out, right now, letting them know he knew they were in there, because he could get to them (has to, somehow), despite the door being locked-

The little girl laughs.

Now all he can see is Arthur, maybe that little girl’s age, laughing in delight as he and Uther practice shooting crossbows behind their back. They have the same color hair and eyes, the girl and Arthur, and Uther ponders having the little girl’s hair dyed before her execution.

If he could just get his blasted mouth to move and call them out.

He doesn’t, and just listened as Morgana said, “Okay, Merlin these bracelets are probably worth more than a year of your salary – put them down.”

“Setlath,” Merlin said, an inherent windy-whisper in those words through his voice, and a few clinks of what must be his ward’s jewelry.

Morgana sighed in relief, just as Uther heard footsteps from around the corner, and immediately knocked, accusations on his tongue.

And with them, he shoved away why he had waited until now to knock.

There was the sound of a moving curtain, a whispered, “Dunnath,” and then Morgana yelled, “Arthur, if you’re here to make a mess of my chambers again-”

“He’s not,” Uther called out, just as two guards came around the corner.

A gasp, and then Morgana opened the door, pleasant, easily, and if Uther hadn’t just heard what he heard, he would never have suspected her of fostering a fugitive.

“I saw your maidservant with Arthur and noted your absence, this morning.”

“Oh,” she said, indicating towards a few herbs and elixirs on her vanity table. “I felt ill after a bad nightmare, last night, and Merlin stayed with me at the time, so I lent Guinevere to Arthur.”

And where does fostering two illegal sorcerers come into your story?

“I just wanted to make sure you were all right,” he said, stepping into the room. Neither Merlin nor the witch were anywhere to be seen. “Especially with a sorcerer on the loose.”

“Yes, because I am really going to be assaulted by a little girl who was arrested for healing a puppy.”

She’d become more open in her criticism, as of late.

Uther looked around, and Morgana sighed. “You’re going to search my rooms?”

“Considering the incident with the Druid boy, excuse me if I do not trust you.”

A defiant look in her eyes, Morgana gestured grandly around her chambers. “I will not pretend to be disappointed at the little girl’s disappearance – hopefully, she is long gone, by now – but I can assure, this time, I had nothing to do with her escape.”

He fought the urge to snort, and looked around her room, focusing on the side where he had just heard their voices coming from.

Nothing.

Not a trace.

Hm…invisibility spell? He had been under many, in his own time, between Gaius and Nimueh.

He kept his eyes on there long enough, then turned back to Morgana, who was also staring at that spot with worry in her eyes, before turning to Uther, her face defiant again.

“Well?” she asked. “As you can see, no children, though if she were to come here-”

“Then you can guarantee yourself a public flogging if you foster her,” Uther said, coldly.

He knew they were here.

He knew it. Heard it, felt it, could see it in his ward’s eyes, his adopted daughter’s eyes.

And yet, he turned on his heel and walked out the door.

Outside, he waited a moment, and kept walking once he heard her sigh of relief.

He hated himself for it.

~*~

“…cannot!” Nimueh hisses.

“Nimueh, please – I would give my life for this kingdom,” Igraine says in an equally low voice, and Uther leans in closer, around the corridor corner, to listen. “And for my child.”

…child?

As he wonders at the possibility of a bastard child he did not know about, Nimueh says, “You can’t die for a child that is not born, yet!”

So, no bastard child, then.

“I do so for my kingdom,” Igraine says. And then, Uther needs to know more.

“Do what for my kingdom?” Uther asks as he walks into his chambers.

“We are discussing sacrifices of royalty,” Igraine says, easily.

The look on Nimueh’s face says that Igraine is prepared to make one too big for him and the sorceress to handle.

“Anything in particular?” he asks, sitting on his bed, holding up his arms as Nimueh’s magic had the shirt pulling itself off his body in an instant.

“Children, to be exact,” Igraine says. “What we may have to do, soon, for me to conceive.”

“So you truly are barren?” Uther asks. Nimueh winces at his blunt word choice. Igraine sighs and nods.

“Between Nimueh and Gaius, any other women would’ve been begotten a child a dozen times over, by now. I have asked Nimueh to look into deeper magics for our heir.”

“And?” he presses, looking at Nimueh, who was making her fingers dance in the air, carefully placing away Igraine’s clothes – few as they were, as Igraine mostly likes to dress everyone else up, her own body just another doll for her. He bites back a smile at watching Nimueh work like this, knowing the sorceress could snap her fingers and the clothes would be righted in an instant.

“I cannot,” Nimueh says, simply. “This is deep magic – I would have to go to someone of the Old Religion, myself. Igraine is not meant to give life, and if she were to, another life would have to be sacrificed. Both to keep the balance in the world, and as a price.”

“And what would the exact price be for an heir, in this case?” Uther asks, narrowing his eyes.

Nimueh swallowed, and said, “A life.”

She looks at Igraine.

Igraine raises a defiant eyebrow.

Uther looks away.

~*~

A week later, Uther declared the search for the girl pointless, as she was apparently long gone, and Camelot’s resources were needed elsewhere.

He knew she was long gone when Arthur looked well rested again, and there are glances of relief between his children and their servants.

“The question is who helped her,” Uther said, one day in the council hall, Arthur still in his seat, Merlin pouring them both wine. “We had her father under guard – and she was not even ten.”

Arthur just gave him a “don’t ask me” look, the royal equivalent of a shrug, and Uther nodded in resignation, as he turned away as Merlin poured Arthur some more wine.

He held up the goblet as if in contemplation, and his face went blank as they shared an amused look between them. Keeping to this form, he said, “Next time, we will need a firmer guard around the dungeons if we find a sorcerer. We will kill them.”

Now their looks were somber. Arthur gave Merlin a worried, over protective look, and the boy just rolled his eyes and smiled reassuringly.

Uther is fairly sure he knew what just happened between them.

~*~

“You are as willing to sacrifice her as I am,” Nimueh says, one night. Igraine is already asleep, and he and Nimueh are stretched out by the fire, Nimueh making shapes with the flames, writing a story that he can only understand out of the corner of his eye, in the back of his mind. The story of a Queen too loved to be forgone just yet.

He sees dresses and flowers intermingled between dragons and swords. A circlet of flaming leaves around a knife of fire.

“Camelot comes first,” Uther says. “Royalty is not a privilege, but a duty, and a curse within it. Igraine knows that Camelot needs an heir more than it needs a queen.”

Nimueh is glaring at him. “And the laws of succession?”

“No matter how clear the lines may be, if it is not a direct heir, there will be conflict. Camelot has just suffered from a war by magic, a war of succession, and a civil war by the lords, themselves. She cannot take any more, not in this generation’s lifetime. She deserves more.”

“And Igraine?” Nimueh asks, tilting her head to rest on Uther’s thigh, who strokes her hair absently.

His throat tightens, as he sees his sleeping wife’s reflection in one of the many mirrors throughout the room.

“Camelot comes first in my duty,” he says. “And Igraine comes first in my heart.”

“So does duty trump the heart? Or does your heart trump duty?” Nimueh asks.

Staring back into the flames, Uther says, “I don’t know.”

~*~

The next time the servant has his attention, it was the next attempt on Arthur’s life.

During the feast, there was a terrifying scream, inhuman and unnatural, coming from outside. Arthur and his knights ran out immediately, swords already drawn, only to see a harpy flying above the courtyard, the citizens running, terrified, from its clutches.

“Form!” Uther yelled at his knights, his own sword drawn, pulling Arthur back from the front line (he was even stupider than his servant, considering how often he risked his life), all of them keeping a wary eye on the creature flying above them.

Arthur gave Uther a hard stare, before whirling on his feet and slipping off to the side, a semi-strategic move.

As the rest of the knights surged forward on the harpy’s downward sweep, he saw Arthur advance to the other side of the courtyard.

Merlin was with him.

Watching with a wary eye, Uther directed the knights to split up, and take the harpy from two sides the next time it swept down.

“…and aim for the neck,” Uther finished it off with.

Arthur and Merlin were both eyeing the harpy, and Arthur was holding the sword in a strange grip, before suddenly taking a running jump at one of the statues, and climbing up it.

“What the hell…?” Uther asked. Before any of the knights could look and try and explain, the harpy swooped down again, and they got ready, a few of them having already managed to get their hands on spears, and between them-

Arthur jumped from the top of the statue, straight onto the creature’s back.

They all stared in shock as the monster screeched, jerking midflight, before Arthur kicked, with aim in his eyes, at a spot on the thing’s spine, and it dropped to only a horse’s height above the stone floor of the courtyard, before Arthur thrust his sword into the back of the thing’s neck, jumping off and rolling on the hard ground as he did so.

From the sword spread blue flames, and the creature screamed in midair, before finally falling to the ground, writhing, jerking, then falling still, and the flames became normal ones.

Uther turned his head.

Merlin’s eyes were glowing molten gold as he stared at the sword in the harpy.

Arthur was smiling at Merlin, and when Merlin’s eyes returned to blue, and everyone else was focused on the harpy, Arthur stepped forward, and stole a quick kiss from the boy (not that they had ever been particularly subtle or discreet, before, and it certainly wasn’t secret), before he, too, joined the knights.

“How did you do that?” Kay asked, wide-eyed.

“Merlin knew a thing or two about harpies from all of Gaius’s books,” Arthur said, offhandedly, as the boy came up.

And the spells to go with it.

“You can read?” Kay asked Merlin, dubiously.

Merlin nodded and scampered back into the castle before anyone could ask any more, and Arthur had all his focus on the harpy, where did it come from, were there more?

Uther spared one last glance for Merlin’s retreating back, before he, too, turned away.

No matter how hard he focused on the harpy, all he saw were flashing gold eyes.

~*~

“Both of you!” Igraine yelps. “Stop this madness, at once.”

Uther wonders how it is he can command armies and the rowdiest of knights among them, and the best friend beside him can practically move mountains with a flick of a finger, and yet this small, petite woman before them both can make them blush like children with such absolute ease.

“We are just trying to look out for you,” Uther says, sitting down on the edge of the bed carefully, but complying to her wish and pulling back the trays.

“Both of you,” Nimueh adds to Igraine, sitting beside Uther.

Igraine rolls her eyes and stands from her spot on the bed, coming to stand before them both, between them, and crossing her hands in front of her barely-bulging-belly.

“Just because I am with child does not make me an invalid!” she yelps, before walking over to the small feast laid out on the table. “And I have not even been with child for long! It will be some time yet before I need my husband and lover to feed me in my bed! I will sit and eat at the table like a civilized human being as long as I am able, damnit, and I will not do otherwise because you two are over protective plonkers who insist on treating me like I’m a robin’s egg!”

As she continues ranting and raving in between eating prodigious amounts of food, Uther and Nimueh look at each other and flush, but grin.

“How long do you think this one will this one last?” Uther asks her, quietly, out of the corner of his mouth without Igraine noticing. She was almost yelling by this point.

Nimueh, having long since perfected the art of speaking without moving her lips under her mistress’s tutelage, responds in kind with, “I give it until she finishes the roast duck.”

It takes all his instinct and training as king to keep himself from grinning.

Nimueh isn’t too wrong – after having eaten quite a bit, Igraine calms down, until she rests idly in her chair before the fire, silent, and Nimueh, the brave soul, gets up and offers an arm to Igraine.

“Bed, milady?” she asks. “It will do you and the child some good.”

Igraine nods, a soft, dopey smile on her face as she says, “Yes, Nimueh, thank you – a nap does sound lovely, right about now.”

As they lay down Igraine to rest, King and Sorceress look up at each other and share an amused grin as they tuck their Queen in.

“I saw that,” Igraine says.

And the two roll their eyes.

~*~

Uther, Arthur, and the knights were out searching through the forests to make sure there aren’t more harpies causing trouble.

A few of them have brought along their servants, and with an offhanded comment from Uther – “If he knows enough about harpies for you to kill it in one blow, he might as well be useful for the rest of us.” – and Merlin was with them, as well, though it didn’t really take much to get Arthur to bring Merlin along.

And Merlin was surprisingly useful. His simple words of their preferred homes – “Caves, with lots of trees and forests nearby,” – proved useful thus far, enabling them to find two so far, though thankfully, that seemed to be it.

It was not unusual for Uther to hold his formality and guard while out with his knights like this, and he used this to his advantage, keeping his distance as he kept his eye on Arthur and Merlin.

During the fights with the harpies, Arthur always kept Merlin well away, physically, from the harpies, but always kept Merlin in sight of them – and away from everyone else.

Every time, when both boys were convinced no one was looking, and that everyone was focused on the harpies, Merlin’s eyes would turn gold in time with the blue flames erupting from whatever weapon Arthur and the knights managed to land on all the right places.

Afterwards, resting, Arthur and Merlin took their own space behind a tree, and really, considering how indiscrete they are, no one was particularly surprised. Uther, completely uninjured (at least his knights know not to risk the life of royalty, if not his son), volunteered to walk a basic patrol while the others took care of their injuries.

Merlin healed Arthur with magic. The boy’s eyes turned gold, again, and he was saying something to himself, and what little Uther could hear sounded almost painfully familiar.

Arthur smiled as some of the wounds were healed, but not all – and when Merlin bandages up his prince, he might as well have not been healed at all.

Swallowing, Uther turned away, and went back to patrol.

~*~

“How on earth did you manage to fit all this into one basket?” Igraine asks as she lay down on the blanket before the small feast Uther has laid out across it, spilling onto the grass.

“A little help from Nimueh,” he says easily, as he starts cutting her some bread.

She rolls her eyes. “Of course. Now, I know you, Uther – why, exactly, are we out here, eating lunch in a picnic?”

“Can I not simply be taking my wife out for a nice, romantic luncheon, away from the castle walls?”

“You?” she asks, raising an eyebrow. “Not likely.”

He sighs, as he lays out some cuts of the roast duck and cheese on the bread. “Fine. I…I did want for us to have some time alone. Just you and me, no Nimueh in our beds, no Gaius at our table, no lords or ladies to attend to – nothing. Just you and me. Please, just grant me this.”

She studies his face for a long moment as he holds out the bread with meat and cheese, before she smiles, and accepts both the food and whatever she found in Uther’s face.

They sat for a while, before she asks, “Just why do you need for us to be alone?”

He stifles a groan – he knew she wouldn’t let it drop, but still…

And he also has to stifle the urge to bite his lip as he ponders the best way to answer. He knows it would be honesty, but how best to phrase it?

Setting down his food, Igraine seems to sense his intention as she sets her own down, too, and Uther gently takes her hand in one of his and cups her face with his other hand, and kisses her, strongly.

She responds in kind, never one to take anything passively, and she wraps her hand around the back of his neck, pulling him closer, even as he pushes both of them to the ground, laying himself beside her, holding her close when their lips part, resting his head on her bulging belly, just above their child – according to Nimueh, their son.

“That’s why,” Uther says.

Igraine smiles indulgently at him. “Don’t worry, Uther – I am yours. Always – I promise. And a promise bound by hope is the most powerful of all.”

~*~

Arthur could never hide any distress on his part from the king.

He hid it from the people. From the visiting noblemen. Even from his knights, somewhat, all of them only detecting that he has been training them all harder, as of late, but no true idea of why.

But Uther knew not only just how distressed he is, but what was causing it.

And considering all the other havoc both boys have been causing him, lately, without either of them knowing it, he decided he might as well check for himself.

It’s easy enough – he started by walking straight into Gaius’s chambers, one evening, just a bit before he knew the old man would be back for the night.

“Gaius?” he called out, as if looking for him.

“Sire?” he hears, instead, from the extra chamber, the one he and Nimueh used to hide in so often when Igraine went mad.

Fitting that the spare chamber should harbor and hide yet another sorcerer in the service of a Pendragon.

The door opened from its crack width to all revealing, and Arthur was the one standing there, now, this late in the day. Uther knew Arthur would normally have been heading towards his own bedchambers by now.

“Father?” he asked.

He raised an eyebrow, and Arthur answered, without prompt, with, “Checking on my servant – the one that the knights beat on last week?”

Uther remembered that all too well. Arthur had dressed down two knights rather spectacularly for taking advantage of their rank to abuse someone beneath their position and using their training as knights to do so, citing knights’ honor and chivalric code and generally, at the time, making Uther proud of Arthur as the commander of the knights of Camelot.

Even when he found out the real reason behind Arthur’s rage.

“Arthur?” he heard from behind the door, and a moment later, Merlin’s bruised face appeared over his son’s shoulder. “Sire!”

“I think we’ve established that, Merlin,” Arthur said, dryly, before looking back at his warlock with a frown. “And did you not hear a word Gaius said? Stay in bed.”

“I can walk just fine, damnit-”

“It’s called the healing process, Merlin,” Arthur said. “You and Gaius have certainly subjected me to it, enough. Now, back to bed with you, you idiot, this instant!”

“Yes, Mother,” Merlin said with a long suffering sigh, and Arthur glared until Merlin relented and shuffled back.

“How is he?” Uther asked, taking a few measured steps forward as Merlin settled himself into the bed. He could see Arthur’s hands twitching and knew his son wanted to tuck the idiotic boy in, himself, but Uther gave him no leave for it.

“About ready to drop dead from not staying still,” Arthur said, while Merlin said in unison,

“I’m recovering well, sire.”

Uther kept his face still fairly neutral, but when Arthur looked him in the eye, and Merlin looked down at his sheets to tug uselessly at them, he did raise an amused eyebrow for just a moment.

Arthur scowled, slightly, and Uther rolled his eyes as Arthur turned back to Merlin to see Merlin trying to get up again.

“You will deteriorate if you keep getting up like you do,” Arthur said, leaning against the door, his back to Uther, leaving the king with barely a sight of Merlin, but he could still see the boy, nonetheless.

“I told you, I’m fine!” Merlin said. “Contrary to the public opinion you have been spreading around, I’m not some porcelain doll that will shatter with at the touch of a feather!”

Arthur huffed. “No, you’re not, but everything you seem to be holding when you trip over your own feet-”

“-or yours-”

“-usually seems to be, and I must say-”

“I’m fine! I’ll go mad if I’m stuck in here, any longer.”

“You mean you aren’t mad, already?”

They both seem to have completely forgotten he was here, at all.

Uther rolled his eyes and shook his head. He rather suspected that when magic ran through someone’s very veins, deeper than any learned sorcerer could hope, the magic started take over their bodies, leaving normal human beings frustrated at the absolute peculiarities their bodies could come up with.

Then again, it did cause much amusement, as evidenced by the squabbling pair before him, and the memories of Igraine regularly wrestling Nimueh into a chair when the girl would forget to eat for days at a time, her magic supporting her when there was no food in her body to do so.

He froze as he stood by Gaius’s potions table, listening to Arthur berate Merlin’s care of himself, admonishing the warlock and claiming the boy was trying to leave Arthur without a servant.

He sounded just like Igraine used to when she yelled at Nimueh.

“Sire?”

He turned his head sharply at Gaius’s voice from the main doorway.

“What brings you here?” he asked, sharing an amused glace with his king as he eyed Merlin’s once-again-half-shut door, the boys’ hostile and affectionate squabbling clearly audible from within.

“I was just going to ask on the boy’s condition,” Uther said. “Make sure he isn’t taking advantage of his injuries and lazing about, and see how badly my knight damaged him. It seems it is the opposite of that I should fear.”

Gaius grinned. “Don’t worry, sire – when it comes to Arthur, you will never have to worry about Merlin lazing about.”

Uther nodded, simply, and left with only the barest, “Good night.”

He never had to worry about Nimueh and Igraine, either.

~*~

“Hello,” Nimueh says, softly, from the door to Gaius’s extra chamber.

He smiles at her, as she continues with, “Do you think Gaius will ever actually sleep in here?”

“I gave up on that long ago,” Uther says with an eyeroll. “And I tried for the longest time, too.”

“Aren’t you supposed to be out dealing with those rouge witches burning crops?” she asks after a moment, conversation stiff and awkward.

“Gorlois is handling them, right now,” he said. “It was getting too…I needed to get away, before I collapsed from trying to keep my composure. Or, you know, throw a chicken at someone, again.”

She grins at the memory from a week before, sadness still tinting her eyes, as she sits down on the end of the bed, across from Uther, laying her hand over his, as he stares out the window.

“Igraine?” he asks, simply. “The child?”

“I…I’m hoping that if we can ‘save’ some of the execution bound prisoners from below, we…I…can sacrifice their lives for your child’s.”

He swallows. “How dark is this magic?”

“How dark is that murderer’s heart?” she asks.

A blink, two, and he says, “That much?”

She doesn’t respond.

“Will it work?” he asks.

“I…” She sighs, and he turns to see her staring at their joined hands. He doesn’t move his to lace his fingers like he normally would. “The Old Religion…people are born and people die, every day. It is a matter of life and death balancing each other out, but it’s not just that – it’s also the matter of a price.”

“…and a few prisoners already bound for execution, anyway, is no price at all,” he says, hoarsely.

She nods and he shuts his eyes. “What then?”

He looks to see her staring at Gaius of all people, and she says, “I don’t know.”

Upon realizing just she is contemplating, upon gazing at his physician and one of his oldest, truest friends, he can feel the horror freezing his veins. “No…”

“A price on us all,” she says, choking on her own words.

“I will not allow it.”

“Then will it be your life, leaving Camelot without a king?” she asks, sharply, turning back to him. “Igraine? Me, leaving Camelot defenseless?”

He shuts his eyes and hangs his head. “I hate magic.”

A pause.

“I do too, Uther. I do, too. But I know your heart.”

He laughs at that, slightly, wondering if he had one at all as he says, “Duty comes first.”

~*~

“Are you well?” he asked Gaius as the rest of the council left the room.

Gaius smiled at him, turning back and accepting Uther’s offered goblet of wine.

“Yes – just a little tired. Between Lady Agatha’s false labor pains and Merlin’s nightmares, I’m amazed I manage to get any sleep at all!”

“Nightmares?” he asked, almost suspiciously. “Like Morgana?”

“Something like that,” Gaius said, momentarily drifting off. “Merlin…was hit harder…by recent events, than he would care to admit.”

“The knights?” he asked.

Gaius paused, before nodding firmly.

The pause spoke volumes more.

“Are you well from it?” Uther asked. “I know the boy is like a son to you.”

Gaius smiled. “He is, truly – the son I never had.”

“You do realize half the court is convinced he actually is your son?” Uther asked, with a wry smile. “You certainly never bother to correct anyone who makes that assumption, and near as I can tell, neither does the boy.”

“He never had a father,” Gaius said, simply, and Uther nodded.

“Really, though,” he asked. “Are you well? Do wish for me to lighten your daytime duties?”

Gaius laughed. “I may not be as young as I used to be, but…” He paused. “Well, okay, yes, I actually am quite old, but certainly not old enough that some lost sleep will prevent me from doing my duty. Thank you, milord, but no need.”

Uther rolled his eyes. He pondered asking another question after the boy’s health, but knew that even as it was, he was pushing the limits of Gaius’s concern and believability in asking after Merlin of all people.

Instead, he said, “Well, he certainly gave Arthur a good reason to dress down those knights.”

“Oh, yes,” Gaius said, more amusement to his smile, now. Uther is glad to see that, if nothing else. “Merlin’s rather embarrassed about that, actually.”

Uther laughed. “Anyone would be, to be the cause of Arthur’s debacle. If I had not seen the damage inflicted on the boy, myself, I would have pitied knights.”

Though, he had seen the damage, when two other servants carried the boy to Gaius’s quarters, and when you saw that, it was both impossible to feel pity for the knights, though it did make one wonder at the boy’s remarkable recovery, in comparison.

All Uther wondered, now, was why Merlin would use his magic to heal himself, and yet not defend himself.

But then, when he saw the devoted look in Merlin’s eyes directed towards his son so many times over the past few weeks, when he bothered to pay attention, well…he knew the answer.

Did Gaius?

“How is the boy faring in reading?” he asked. “I found he actually knows the Old Tongue.”

For a moment, Gaius stiffened, but it was so brief, Uther would have missed it had he not been looking for it.

“Yes, well…he’s taken quite an interest in books,” Gaius said, congenially. “Of all kinds. He’s taken to Latin, recently.”

“Latin?” Uther asked, incredulously. He wondered if showing the boy the book on Latin, before, had anything to do with it. Oh, just wonderful. “Good lord, he’ll end up better read than half the nobles.”

He had a sneaking suspicion the boy already was.

Gaius smiled. “Hence why I have taken him in towards studies in medicine, sire. As much as I can do my work so well, right now, I am not foolish enough to believe it will be forever. I can only hope that by the time I pass, Merlin will be well learned enough to take over my duties.”

With magic, or science?

“Do you believe he will be?” Uther asked. “Or should I start looking for a town healer to have at the ready should…should anything untoward happen to you?”

He remembered Nimueh’s words from so long ago, and cannot bear to actually think it through, the possibility of something happening to Gaius.

Gaius, however, has a slight glint in his eyes. “One way, or another, I think Merlin will manage.”

And my best friend has been lying to me for close to two years, harboring a sorcerer under my own nose.

Or was that in his favor?

As he continued chatting with the man, Uther wondered just when his convictions ended up standing on pillars of sand.
 

~*~

ETA: Part 3 comes Wednesday. Tonight, I have to take the one-paragraph concept of the laws of supply and demand and stretch it into a 10-page report. The art of bullshitting at its finest! :D

( Part 3 )