Excerpt: Various

Eva had been gone for ten years now, and since Igraine had resisted Morgan and Merlin’s every attempt to get her to come to London for the coronation, Arthur was left without a mother. All of which made Ector the next best substitute for getting the boy ready. A few of the women—and some of the men—around him had offered to help, but he hadn’t even considered anyone but Morgan’s. And even then, there was something about the witch that made him a little twitchy.

Arthur was well awake when his foster father came in, sitting up in bed with his knees drawn up to his chest and watching the beginning of the sunrise through the narrow window. Ector hadn’t been expecting that. Some kings in some countries kept a vigil the night before their coronation, but England wasn’t one of them and Ector hoped Arthur wasn’t starting the tradition. He’d been quiet and stiff enough without the exhaustion, after all, and the only times it seemed he’d lit up was when he’d been able to sneak off on some errand with Kay and become a squire again.

Ector bit his lip. Arthur wasn’t ready for this. None of them were.

“Morning,” he mumbled, coming closer to sit on the bed. “You start at dawn.”

Arthur jumped and looked over at his father like he hadn’t realized he was there. He swallowed and pushed back the covers. “I know. I’ll—”

“One thing at a time. Did you get any sleep?”

“As much as I have been.” He shook his head and slid to the floor. His red curls, tousled from what little sleep he’d managed, haloed around his head. He didn’t need a crown—it would only squash the natural one.

“All right,” Ector answered. He’d have to find some way to get Merlin or Morgan to make the boy a sleeping draft. Probably Merlin. Morgan had been a bit jittery herself at dinner the previous night, although that may have been her and Kay sitting down across from one another. He really ought to separate them.

For now, though, he just nodded towards the trunk at the foot of the bed. “Well, two weeks since New Years. Shall we see what they finally produced?”

Arthur nodded numbly.

The coronation robes were not as gaudy as many were—after all, they’d been put together hurriedly, for a boy half the size of the man they were expecting to be crowned in the wake of the tournament, and no one was cutting into Uther’s coronation robes to make them fit his son. Still, that made it something Ector could see Arthur in on some other formal occasion, blackwork and gold wire worked into the blue material across the sleeves and chest in a vaguely vine-like pattern. Still, it was far more formal and complicated than anything Arthur had worn in the past, far tighter in some places and far looser than others. In the end, Ector stepped in to help him lace up the sleeves.

“You don’t have to,” Arthur mumbled.

“It’s either this or watch you struggle, lad.” Ector shook his head. “And if you must know, I did this for your moth—for Eva on our wedding day, although in that case it was her bodice.”

Arthur smiled slightly. “You did Mamma’s bodice up?” he asked. “What happened to not seeing the bride before the wedding?”

“Silly superstition,” Ector answered. “Her mother wasn’t there to help her dress, and we came out all right.” Mamma. Part of Ector was far more pleased than he ought to be to hear him still using it, but the rest of him, well. . . . Does he realize that Morgan’s mother is his too? And if he has, does he realize that he’s got another mother, then, one that’s still alive?

He finished tying the last of the laces and stepped back to take a look at it. Arthur looked somehow older in formal clothes, older and perhaps an important little bit taller as well, less like Kay’s scruffy little brother, who the housekeeper was always after to have a decent bath and a hair trimming. Someone would have to go after him with a comb before the ceremony, but Ector, who had had experience cutting that mass of curls, was determined that it not be him. Add a pair of good boots—high heeled, because Lord knew the boy needed all the height he could get—and the sword from the stone and he’d almost look regal enough for the fuss.

Almost. It was something about the way his lip was trembling when he thought no one was looking.

“It ages you well,” he said at last.

“Mmm,” Arthur mumbled, toying with one of the laces.

Ector shook his head. “I think Kay and Morgan are both seeing to the horses. Morgan seems to have become part of the procession, after all, so that’s one person you’ll have by your side.”

Arthur nodded. He didn’t ask why Ector didn’t just join him. They’d been over this before, after all; the procession was one of kings rather than of the minor nobility, and it was as Uther’s stepdaughter rather than Gorlios’s daughter that Morgan had been able to muscle her way in. Ector knew Arthur didn’t like it any more than he did, since the boy had been torn somewhere between awe and distaste for nearly every king he’d met, but there was nothing to be done. Coronations were difficult to change. “I’ll see you and Kay after, then, Papa?” he asked quietly.

“Papa” was another word Ector hadn’t been expecting to hear. Both Arthur and Kay had begun using Father years before—Kay was growing up, and Arthur always took his brother’s lead on such things—and he certainly hadn’t expected to hear it from the mouth of the high king. Although, Arthur had nearly started crying the first time Kay had addressed him as “sire.”

Ector pushed the door open. “Well, no use waiting, I suppose.”

Merlin was outside, in an alcove just down the hall with a bestiary. He looked up from an illumination as soon as Arthur’s door shut. “Ah, there you are.”

“There’s plenty of time for the boy to get down there, Merlin,” Ector said quietly.

“To be honest, I was looking for you,” Merlin answered, closing the book. “The High Kingship’s coronation ceremony has been thoroughly Christianized, and the services of a Druid who walks the line between the two certainly isn’t needed.” He sounded as though he was quoting the Archbishop of London, and he was clearly unimpressed by the man’s logic. “We would rather have the favor of the distant God who rules all things then the meddling ones who toy with Britian, you see. Not that I was likely to be involved anyway, it’s not like I identified the bloody heir or anything.” He ignored Arthur’s finery and ruffled the boy’s hair absently. “Go on, let me talk to your father, then.”

Arthur rolled his eyes, but he started off. Ector watched him down the hall.

“He’ll be fine,” Merlin said quietly. “Otherwise I would have put other enchantments on that sword.”

Ector snorted—he highly doubted that Merlin could have done anything more than what he had already, and he knew a bit about spellcasting for an earthbound man. “Then why do I feel like I’m letting him walk into the lion’s den?”