A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor

"Indeed. Now I think you understand why it is best that we leave. Even the boy himself seems to understand. He has not shifted. He knows he is beneath your company, Asabel," Lancelot said.

"Lancelot… You're making me angry," the girl said, and by the look of her, she really was. Her hands were clenched in tight fists. "I don't like it when you do this. I don't like it when you look down on other people, just based on their rank. I don't like it when you try to leave people to suffer, just because helping might be inconvenient."

The boy looked abashed. "My Lady… Please, that certainly wasn't my intention. I never meant to upset you."

"Well, you have. You attempted to hide this from me, and turn your back on this poor boy. Whoever he might be, he's clearly not well. He can barely keep his eyes open – and look how he's dressed in this weather. He's freezing," she said. "He really will die, if we leave him to spend the night like this."

"My Lady, I'm quite sure he's well enough to take care of himself," Lancelot said. "Your concern is wasted on his like… Undesirable though he may be, I very much doubt that the cold would take him out. Speak, Patrick. Put the Lady at ease, or we might very well come over there."

The silence hung in the air as they waited for him to answer. Oliver only had one eye open a crack, and he felt that fade, just as the girl rushed towards him.

"Oh Gods! Lancelot! Lancelot! That's blood," she cried.

Lancelot sounded similarly as flustered. "By the Gods… Has he been wounded?" Oliver felt something reach for his stomach, barely. It felt like the touch of an insect, faint, and scratchy, far away from him, but they came with a relentless patter, and from the sound of it the boy searched him with a vigour. "Careful, my Lady, the assassin might still be… Damn it, I can't find the wound."

"Poison," Asabel whispered. "Lancelot, you were about to turn your back on this poor boy, as he lay dying," she said, softly, but firmly. "Never. Never again. Never attempt to hide something like this from me. Do you swear it?"

The boy seemed a good few years older than her, but her stern reprimand sent his head hanging. "Forgive me, my Lady… I swear it. But even if he is wounded, it is you that I fear for. To be seen with him, to even be known to have connections to him. It will bring a stir. You're a Penndragon… The politics are—"

"Don't you dare bring up politics right now, Lancelot," Asabel said, silencing him with a firm slap on the head. "It doesn't matter who they are. It could be a peasant, or it could be our worst enemy. When someone is in need, you must help them. Do you understand? If you swear to be loyal to me, then I would beg you to understand that."

"…I will do my best to try," the boy said, faintly, seemingly embarrassed.

They were mere voices at the edge of Oliver's consciousness. His eyes fully closed, his vision swam with figures of gold…

"Wake up," a gentle voice, a command, a tap on his cheek, a trickle of warmth in a cold world. Then more firmly. "Wake up," she said, pulling on his cheeks. "You have to stay awake, do you understand? You have to give your body a chance to work the poison out. You might not come back if you go to sleep."

"To think that the assassins reach even here," Lancelot murmured to himself. "I'd assumed that Lord Blackwell was sending him to the Academy for his own protection, once his father died… But I suppose it would have been better to keep in obscurity."

Oliver felt a hand grip his own. A burst of warmth. His eyes flickered open. The girl was so close, her eyes focused on him with a fierce intensity. Coupled with Oliver's delirium, and the golden swirls that obscured the world, she was likely the most beautiful sight that he'd ever seen. Impossibly so.

She seemed warm like a cosy fire, gentle like a lioness… Lioness seemed to describe her well. Too well. Her hair was a golden brown, like the colour of a lion's coat. It had natural curls running through it towards the end, ever so gently, offering the slightest of waves…

"Oliver!" She said his name as though she knew him. It sent a pang through his heart. In the very grips of death, there he heard 'Oliver', in a gentle and concerned voice. His mind flickered to thoughts of his mother, gently patting him on the head when he was afraid. How long had he caged up those thoughts? He thought of Loriel, and the teasing hugs that she gave when he finished work.

He always acted like those hugs irritated him, but now in memory, they seemed ever so warm… Both women were dead. That was a knife in his heart as he realized that.

He thought of Nila, and her mother, gently binding his wound… He drifted off again, into his own thoughts, his mind flickering back from reality, and his eyes closing.

A hand gripped him tightly again. Warmth. Heat. Brighter sparks than before. Almost something… Almost someone. "Oliver!" She said again.

"That's it. Keep your eyes open. You're doing great."

She gently wiped the blood away from the corner of his mouth with the tip of her thumb. It seemed wrong to see her do that. She seemed like nobility of the highest sort… To have someone like Lancelot – a man who seemed like a prince himself – as a retainer, she must have been. Her expensive dresses betrayed her standing too.

She ruined them in the snow as she tended to him, as though she'd known him her whole life. A straightforward honest goodness.

"These tracks…" Lancelot murmured. "I suppose he was poisoned with his meal, and then he woke up hours later, to deal with the pain. To think that he made it all the way here with poison in his system… For a dog, I have to give him credit."

"Lancelot," Asabel said with quiet authority, firmly telling him off. "Do not speak of others as such."