Post Emrys and post Lady but takes place before Prisoner. Also: I'm calling this Parliament, but I know almost nothing about the actual parliament, so just put down the many, many inaccuracies to the affects of alternate history.
"Lord Pendragon, surely you can see the danger in allowing him to roam free."
Arthur's hand twitched to his pocket more as a reflexive response to feeling threatened than as an actual desire to shoot Agravaine.
Well, an actual desire to shoot him fatally.
In front of witnesses.
Until he had sufficient evidence to convict him of treason, that is.
Was it just his imagination, or did the gun actually grow warmer at the thought?
Seeing as it had been given to him by the guardian spirit of a lake and was capable of making itself unnoticeable to the guards responsible for making sure everyone was free of weapons, it wouldn't surprise him in the slightest.
"In the years he has helped us, he has given us no reason not to trust him. Why suspect him now?"
Agravaine leaned forward. "Before, we believed you had some sort of geas on him. Now . . . "
Arthur wondered if Emrys was capable of turning the man into a toad. He looked like one when he smiled. A great, fat, oily toad that they could stick in a jar and toss into the river and watch as it was swallowed by the Pit.
"He remains the most powerful ally we have. We cannot afford to alienate him with unfounded accusations. We need him."
"We need his power," Agravaine corrected.
"It's the same thing."
Agravaine pulled a small, green device out of his pocket. It looked like an overgrown scarab. It wasn't glowing, but there was a pulse about it. Something dark and dead peeking out the edges. "Not quite."
"What might that be, Lord Agravaine?" Lord Aredian inquired.
"A device of rare potency." He smirked. "Our alchemists aren't completely dependent on Emrys, you know. With this mechanism - " He lifted it up and displayed it proudly, turning slowly. "With this mechanism, we will no longer be subject to his whims. His powers will be ours for the taking."
"Interesting."
"And how," Arthur choked out, "do you plan to get it on him? How do you plan to control the power once you have it?"
Agravaine waved him off. "Those are details that should not be widely shared. Who knows if he's watching right now, with his unnatural powers? No, I'm afraid you'll simply have to rest assured knowing it's taken care of. Ah - if the measure passes, of course."
It did.
The gun burned in his pocket, and Arthur's fingers twitched.
The part of town he went to didn't have a name. The street was called Rising Sun Avenue; there two more like it nearby, but it was a pocket more than a full fledged area of town. There were dozens like it all over the city - streets that were more rubble than they were standing after a Sidhe attack, alleys where alchemy bled into magic, shadows where secrets and vice huddled together. If Citadel Square was the heart of the city, and the people were the life's blood in the veins of streets, then these places were infected wounds that smelled like rotting flesh.
Sometimes literally.
He wasn't recognized, of course. He was the minister of defense, and if he'd worn a fine coat and stood in the Square and given a speech, none of the people here would have doubted his identity, but in a long coat torn by storm dogs and stained with blood that was only mostly his own, no one gave him a second glance.
