Chapter Eleven -Within the Bossom of Avalon
He kept his weight in the cart. He did not climb down. The wood settled under him with that familiar complaint of rope and timber and years of road; the motion was the one steady thing left to hold. The knights at the gate stopped being shapes and became presence: obsidian armor, black and glossy in a way that ate the light; dark cloaks that moved like a shadow's skin; sheaths that tapped in the wind. At first he thought they were statues set to scare off thieves. Then a throat moved, a finger flexed at a gauntlet. They were alive, and they watched like stones that had learned to look.
The air tasted damp though the sun burned. A downpour might come by evening. He glanced at the old man. The reins shook in his hand, a small, honest tremor. So he was not the only one who felt it-the pressure curling at the base of thought, the slow, pressing dampness that tried to lower the mind like a tide lowering the shore. It made him lightheaded, made the edges of things go soft. He felt a sudden, sharp pity for the old man; frailty looked less like weakness and more like a thin honesty.
Speak nothing, the old man had said. He held it like an order and a shield.
To stop himself staring at the knights and inviting the kind of suspicion that clung in places like this, he fixed his eyes on the banners that rolled down from walls on either side of the gate. Black cloth, a thin blue crescent, splashes of white-the symbol of the city. A blue moon arced against the night-colored field and an inverted white crucifix leaned into the curve. The sigil was solemn and strange, something like a hymn written in cloth. He told himself to read the banners like a trader would read a price: note the shape, record the value, keep the thoughts small.
Perhaps he drifted too deep, because the next thing he heard was the voice of one of the knights, flat and sharp as struck iron: "You may pass."
The cart resumed its ordinary jostle and toss. He wanted to let out a breath that felt like a sigh, the way a man lets wind return to his chest after swimming. But the knights' eyes ran over him with a long, patient weight, and relief turned into a new pressure. It hit him like the weight of a whole citadel dropped on his shoulders. Adrenaline snarled through him; breathing became work; pupils widened until light cut like a blade; the world narrowed to the scrape of his fingers on the cart's planks.
Breathe. Breathe, he told himself, a machine for the body, an order for a mind that was starting to tilt. Hold still. Keep empty hands where they can be seen.
At the gate the iron doors moved with a groan not made by hands. He watched the seam open and felt the pressure fall away as if a hand had lifted. Mechanism or magic-he couldn't say. For a beat he wondered which of those names fit what he'd just felt: the gate's slow, precise opening; the way the weight left his chest like a tide receding. He didn't have the energy to care. Compared to the colossal hand he'd felt at the ruined city-te raw, fathomless press of something enormous reaching through sky and root-this weight was small and mean. The memory of that larger pressure shoved itself behind his ribs like a second heartbeat, a reminder that whatever the gate held was less than some other thing he had survived.
"Are you okay, lad?" the old man asked, eyes on the road but voice threaded with concern.
"Yeah… I guess I'm okay," he said. It was the plain truth. The gate's pressure had been fierce, but not the world-bending crush he had learned to measure himself against. He exhaled until his lungs felt ordinary again.
When the pressure left, the air filled with trade. Smells unfurled-bread, hot and yeasty; spice and frying fat; leather and fresh-cut wood. People moved like a river in front of him, not yet crowding the cart but close enough to feel their current. From his seat he could see enough to mark the city's shape without owning it: high, pitched buildings here and there catching light; a few grand facades that showed a richer hand; narrow rows of stalls with awnings flapping; carts and chariots clattering over the black, chiseled stone. The pavement fit together like smooth plate armor; no dust lay in the joints.
+++
He could not see everything-his view was a slice through a window; the full city was something he would have to walk to understand-but the market was alive. Merchants called in clipped tones, a barter in rhythm; a child darted between legs and vanished like a thought; a man hammered iron as sparks flew; a woman balanced a basket of fruit with a posture he saw and felt as an honest small craft. No knights patrolled the lanes where people bargained; not today. The city's muscle was trade, not parade. It surprised him: he had thought Avalon would be hollow, a city emptied by fear. Instead it thrummed.
For a moment he let something like euphoria loosen his chest. He had missed the ordinary noise of human life-the bargaining, the small jokes, the smells of cooking. The ruined city had taught him to hunger for such small normalcies. Seeing them now felt like a benediction.
Then the old man's voice cut the moment with a flat line: "This is as far as I take you, lad."
The cart shuddered. The words landed harder than the gate had. A cold despair tightened his gut. No money. No name. No trade. Nothing to offer but a face that could vanish in a crowd. For a second shame rounded him-why had he not taken the old man's goods when the chance had been a raw, desperate thought? I could have killed him, the thought flashed, ugly and quick, and for a moment he watched himself imagine it: the cart taken, coin enough for a few weeks, a dishonest start. But even as the memory of the idea came, he felt its futility. In this throng, violence would mean imprisonment or worse. He swallowed the regret and folded it into a private promise: survive without stealing, or pay the cost.
The old man's eyes did not judge. He simply offered. "I live in the trading quarter. Work for me if you'll have it. I'll pay coin and give you a bed. You look lost."
The offer hit him like light through cloud. It was simple: work, coin, lodging. He wanted to be wary-old habits meant never trusting a kindness without a snare-but his hunger and the raw edges of the day made caution into a small, cold luxury.
He felt gratitude like a thing he could hold. "Thanks," he said, voice small and true.
The old man's smile was small and practical. "Come by the southern stall at dusk. I'll put you to work."
He stayed in the cart as the world moved around him. The black stones under the wheels felt like a fact underfoot he hadn't earned but could step onto. People flowed past-buyers, sellers, porters-each a single thread in a tapestry he'd only begun to see. He kept his head low as the old man had instructed, but his eyes drank the market's steady rhythm. Possibility sat heavy and dangerous in his chest, but it was a different weight than the gate's: it was a weight he could carry, perhaps even build on.
Avalon had taken him in at the threshold, and for the first time in long days he allowed himself a small, cautious hope.