Chapter Text
Arthur took the opportunity to let a curious gaze roam the shop. It was a classical pawn shop, if Arthur ever heard of any. He’d never been to one in Camelot. He was almost sure there might be some even if he didn’t know of one personally. The shelfs were filled to the brim with all sorts of more or less useful things, the more expensive ones, like watches and jewellery, locked away under the glass counter. Arthur eyed the exhibits sceptically for potential reference.
A toilet flushed in the back. Wiping his hands on a rag, the gnarly owner of the shop shuffled back to his stool.
“So, now” he grumbled. “What have you got for me?”
With some difficulty Arthur freed his hand from his pocket and carefully placed a massive golden ring, graced with the mandatory Pendragon ruby, on the glass.
“This!” he said curtly.
The man picked the ring up and pulled a foldable lens close.
“Huh,” he said. “Whom you nicked that from?”
“My mother. I’m not proud of it and I certainly wouldn’t do it if I had any other options!”
It wasn’t a lie. Technically the ring belonged to Arthur since their mother, for unknown reasons, passed the family jewels on to him instead of Morgana but she surely didn’t mean for him to make easy money out of it in a pawn shop.
The shop owner hummed and cast him a curious glance before he scratched at the ruby with his thumbnail.
Arthur hoped earnestly that the man wouldn’t try and scam him. He was in urgent need of any amount of money, a fact he noticed almost too late when he wanted to tip off the lorry driver who had given him a ride from the border but then realised that the man of course had no credit reader on him. He ended up giving the man a small silver pocketknife, which he appreciated. Here in Ealdor, without any electronic devices, everything was paid in coins of different sizes and metals.
After the old man had rubbed the ring with two different liquids and then set it on a delicate scale, he placed it back in front of Arthur and coughed.
“I can only pay you for the gold and the ruby, not for the ring as such. Two hundred shilling. That’s not what it’s worth but I won’t be able to sell it, see? Too... special.”
Arthur swallowed. “Okay, sounds fair!” For some reason he trusted the man. Even if the ring was worth probably ten times as much, at least he didn’t try and trick him, and finding a better offer in a different shop might cost Arthur hours.
He shoved the ring over the counter and watched with a heavy heart as the old man placed it under the glass among other, less striking bands.
Awkwardly the shop owner began to count different coins out of his mechanical register and Arthur carefully stored them away in his breast pocket.
“You don’t, by any chance, have a coat or a cloak or something against the rain?” he asked, peering out the dirty front window to the street where water was still relentlessly pouring from the sky.
“What? A coat? I’ve got dry spells!” the man grumbled, rattling a basket on the counter with black, egg-like objects in it.
“Dry...?” Arthur frowned. “Oh, I’m sorry. I don’t have magic!”
The old man pulled back on his stool and eyed Arthur head to toe. “You’re not from here! You’re from Camelot or such, aren’t you?”
“That obvious, yes?”
That was just great! Arthur didn’t even make it half an hour before he stood out!
“Nuh!” The man shook his head. “You don’t need magic to use a dry spell! What good were they for if only people with magic could use them? Bloody nonsense!” he grumbled.
“Here, you hold them over your head like this and then you break'm. Keeps you dry for up to two hours.”
He cracked the egg and Arthur felt something like warm pudding slide down his body. Alarmed he looked down on himself but there was nothing to be seen.
“I give you this one for free. Good luck, boy. For whatever you came here!”
“Thank you! I really appreciate that!”
He could certainly use any luck there was if he wanted to find Morgana under millions of strangers. Arthur nodded a goodbye and stepped out into the rain.
For the next half hour Arthur wasted his time by walking street after street, shoving through the busy crowds that were filling the pavement, looking out for the familiar face of his sister. He knew it was basically pointless to do that, but as of now he hadn’t come up with a better plan.
Despite the rain, that, thanks to the spell, couldn’t touch him, it was annoyingly warm and humid. In order to blend in, Arthur had picked his old army boots and trousers to wear, along with a linen shirt and a fishing vest on top. The vest had been a brilliant idea since its countless pockets allowed him to keep all his valuables close to his body. Just now he wished he could get rid of it, as sweat was trickling down his back. Also, he was starting to get hungry. Many hours had passed since he had left the manor at dawn, many miles were covered.
On the opposite side, Arthur spotted a street food shop.
Now, crossing the street in this place was a different task! The roads were bustling but not with cars like they did in Camelot. Mainly bicycles and rickshaws as well as the occasional mechanical lorry were going without any predictable sense of direction, it seemed. In the middle of the road was a strange sort of cable car slowly running up and down the endless long main street, people hopping on and off as they saw fit.
Arthur had just set foot into the traffic when he witnessed a mother with two small children jumping off the passing tram. When she set the smaller child down, it slipped and fell on the rain-wet cobble stones and by the time she had put the little boy back to his feet, the car with the other child still on it had gone out off her reach. Helplessly looking back and forth between the two bawling children the woman stood in the middle of the busy lane.
Reacting out of sheer instinct, Arthur squeezed between two rickshaws, grabbed the crying girl, maybe four years of age, around the middle and pulled her off the car. Carefully he set her down, where she stopped crying and ran towards her mother.
Beaming and relief written all over her face, the mother petted her daughter’s messy head and then turned to Arthur with open arms.
“Praise the gods! You truly saved me, Mister! I can’t thank you enough!”
“Don’t mention it!” Arthur answered politely with a nod as the situation called for. The woman however saw that differently. Without a warning she grabbed Arthur around the ears, pulled his head down and set a big smooch on his cheek.
“May the gods reward you!” she laughed.
Arthur was completely taken aback. The kiss had been nothing but an expression of joy, that much he understood, but such intimate body contact between complete strangers was something absolutely uncalled for in his book. He forced his face into a fake smile and nodded again before he hurried on to the other side of the street. Making sure she wouldn’t see it, Arthur wiped over his cheek where he could still feel the woman’s lips. He knew beforehand that people in Ealdor were a different bunch altogether, now he had to deal with it!
A thankfully less enthusiastic woman sold him fried vegetables, wrapped in thin bread, out of a window. It looked disgusting but smelled a tad less bad and tasted surprisingly good. The woman knew how to season food.
Arthur ate the mush at a bar table under a canopy, watching people bustling about while the rain pattered on the canvas.
How was he supposed to find a single girl in this ant hill? Close to a million residents supposedly lived in Ealdor City, Ealdor’s only – no, Arthur refused to call this a Metropole! - ... big city. Another half million scattered all over the land in tiny towns and villages. Ealdor was a small country, the mountains in the south making big parts of it not even inheritable.
It also was a poor country. Their refusal to renounce magic made it impossible for Ealdor’s people to take advantage of all the technical achievements that had brought Camelot to its current wealth. They had no electricity, they had no computer, no modern transportation. Instead, they had this here!
Arthur shook his head in bewilderment. He had never seen a city as strange as this one. Buildings were high, rather than wide, build of stone, metal and wood alright but with no concept whatsoever. Seemingly at random, balconies were built, gangways, bridges going back and forth between houses, here and there a whole room was added and stood out like a pimple. That’s what you got if you let magic be the architect, Arthur thought. On top of that, everything was painted in bright, if mostly faded colours, pictures and pattern all over the places, like everyone just decorated the outside of their apartments as they preferred. Chaos. This whole city was a living, breathing chaos!
Sadly, everything also had a certain grime to it and Arthur realised with a shudder that he would have to find a place for the night where he had to rest his head on a pillow that probably matched the rest of the city.
No use. He should think of it like being on manoeuvre with the army.
Arthur swallowed the rest of his meal and wiped his hands with the napkin that had been wrapped around. He needed a plan.
“Excuse me!” he turned back to the woman inside the shop. “Strange question – if my life’s dream had always been to become a Dragonlord, where would I go?”
The woman laughed. “Strange question indeed! To Tintagel of course, up in the mountains. That’s where the dragons are!”
“And how can I get to this place?”
“Well, by train, I suppose. That’s the easiest way for sure!”
Arthur was amazed. Should it really be this easy? They even had trains in this country!
“You have been most helpful! Thank you very much!” he smiled, leaving the woman another coin on the counter. He ignored her delighted prattle and stepped back out in the rain.
The way to the train station should be easy enough to find. There were lots and lots of signposts on every crossroad, chances were, one would point to the right place. Maybe Arthur was wrong, maybe that was not where he would find Morgana, but those were the two things she always had been ranting about when she was upset with Uther again: no longer suppressing her magic and seeing a real-life dragon! If she wasn’t there, he could still come back and comb through this city.
Despite his new tactic, Arthur couldn’t stop scanning the faces around him. What if Morgana just walked past him and he missed her because he had already decided that she were somewhere else?
He had just spotted the first sign, hinting at the station when suddenly Arthur actually saw a familiar face in the crowd. And right after, a second one. He just didn’t appreciate their appearance.
There, on the opposite pavement were two of his father’s bodyguards shoving through the stream of citizens, unmissably standing out in their grey suits.
Hastily Arthur took a step sidewards and slipped into the dark entrance of a shop. The men walked on without noticing him and Arthur left his cover to hurry down the other direction.
Uther was fast. Question was if they were after him or after Morgana. It didn’t really make a difference though, they wouldn’t just let him be if they spotted him, no matter who they were looking for.
Unexpectedly, a hand came out of the next alleyway, grabbed Arthur by the collar and pulled him off the street. He was in defence mode before his back hit the wall, but his attacker let go of him immediately, provoking no fight.
One look at his opponent and Arthur let his guard down.
“What the hell are you doing here, Leon?” he hissed.
“Oh, weird! That’s exactly what I wanted to ask you!”
“I’m trying and bring Morgana back home. Obviously! She clearly has no idea what she’s doing!”
Instinctively Arthur had started answering in a hushed voice, just like Leon did. “Now - your turn! And why are we whispering?”
Leon peered around the corner onto the main street. “You think your father took it lightly that suddenly both his children have gone rogue? Rhys and Benson are here, too!”
“So, you caught me. Why keeping it secret?” Arthur frowned.
“I’m not after you. Come on, we have a room in this motel here, let’s get out of the rain first!” Curling his hand around Arthur’s biceps, Leon stopped in his tracks and looked at him puzzled. “Why are you dry?”
“Dry spell.” Arthur shrugged as if it was the most obvious answer.
“You used magic?”
There was really no need for Leon to be that aghast! He was acting as if magic left a stench on people.
“Nothing to freak out about! They sell it in shops for half a Shilling. Using it is no different than using an umbrella!”
“Yeah. The emphasis was more on you!” Leon murmured while he marched to the backdoor of the motel. “I thought that shit is disgusting?”
“When it’s useful, it’s useful. I’m not an idiot, Leon!”
Leon didn’t comment on that, and Arthur followed him annoyed to the second floor where he opened a door with an old-fashioned key.
“How did you find me so fast anyway?”
“Your credit reader.” Leon smirked.
Damnit, how could Arthur have been so naive? Credit readers were satellite connected, of course they could be tracked, even in Ealdor! Why did he even bring it? He should have left it in his car at the border, just like he did with his ID bracelet for exactly that reason!
“So, then...” Arthur grumbled a little impatiently when Leon closed the door. “If you’re not after me, then we all have the same goal, I guess: finding Morgana.”
Leon made a painful grimace and shook his head. “Our order is to bring both of you home, so that’s what Rhys and Benson are going to do if they get the chance. But not me. Firstly, I don’t see any reason why you shouldn’t decide for yourself what to do, you’re perfectly capable to look after yourself. And secondly, I am going to find Morgana, yes, but I won’t force her to go home either!”
“What...? Oh. Because you’re in love with her!”
“It’s not like that!” Leon pressed his eyes shut.
“Yes, that’s exactly how it is! I’ve seen the way you look at her. For goodness’ sake, she’s only nineteen, Leon!”
“No, it’s not!” Leon called outraged, voice and temper going up, just like Arthur’s had. “Nothing ever happened between us and that’s not what I’m after! But you haven’t been there, Arthur! You don’t know what it was like, the fights she had with Uther, daily, how often she cried and screamed in frustration out in the garden where she thought that no one could hear her! You haven’t witnessed how your father snapped when he found out she had stopped taken her suppressant!”
“For a good reason! It’s irresponsible! If you are born with magic, you must suppress it. You know what happened, how she fried the security system when she was sixteen and had a temper tantrum! She can’t live like that”
“Yes. But apparently, she can’t decide to live someplace else instead either. Everyone’s after her.”
“What? You want her to live here, Leon? Have you seen this place?”
“I want her to be able to decide for herself where she wants to live. And make sure she is safe there, wherever that is.”
“Ugh, Leon!” Arthur rubbed his face. “I don’t know what to tell you!”
Leon cast a glance at his watch. “Wait here! I have a check-in with Rhys and Benson in five minutes. They get suspicious if I don’t show up. When I’m back we’re going to decide on our next steps, okay?”
“Yeah, alright. Fine!” Arthur sighed.
He waited until Leon had closed the door and his footsteps had faded. Then he took his credit reader and carefully placed it in the middle of the bed before he also added his army tag, that he still wore around his neck for sentimental reasons, for good measure. These were the only things Leon would find when he returned to the room. He liked Leon but they clearly weren’t on the same page here! Morgana couldn’t just live here, no way! But the only chance that their father didn’t make her life hell, forced her to marry some idiot or worse, was, if Arther could convince her to come back voluntarily.
Arthur opened the only window of the room and climbed out onto one of those random iron gangways, leading to the neighbouring house. He was down the stairways and out of the door in a matter of seconds. With luck finally on his side, a tram just arrived with a sign at the front, reading Central Station, as Arthur now noticed for the first time. He hopped on and was gone.
By the time Leon returned to the empty room, Arthur was already buying a ticket for an overnight train to Tintagel.