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Elyan made his way through the corridors at a decent pace. He wasn’t rushing to get to the Great Hall but the promise of feasting and entertainment were very tempting.
He’d just finished up greeting and organizing a returning Northern patrol. They’d been expecting them a couple days earlier but bad weather had delayed the knights. Despite getting in at midday it had still taken Elyan hours to listen to all the men and organize the reports before he was finally free to head to the feast.
It was not a short walk. Camelot’s Castle was a crisscross of corridors at best and a maze at worst, and even with Gwen's help he still found himself getting lost. For the most part he stuck to the noble hallways, large, ostentatious, straight lines to every important part of the castle and guards stationed at regular intervals to ask if you got lost (not that he’d ever admit it).
Still, sometimes the back way was just faster. Elyan was hoping the short cut across from the temporary barracks to the Great Hall would be as easy to follow as he’d been told. (He was still half convinced Merlin could teleport but Gwen assured (and laughed at) him saying he just didn’t understand the intricacies of the servants' corridors).
This was just a long way of saying that today he was running a little late and thus taking a path to the Great Hall that he didn’t normally use.
Later, he would reflect that everything had aligned perfectly for him to stumble across the world shattering scene.
“Look, let me just- put the tray down, yeah? Wouldn’t be helping either of us if I dropped it, now would it? It’d make a whole bunch of noise and bring the guards in, never mind that you’d have to find a whole new meal to poison. Really, not worth the trouble- so if I could just- yes! Thank you. See, now isn’t that much better? Oh no, so sorry to interrupt, by all means- get back to threatening.”
Elyan paused, between one step and the next, not daring to move forward until the voice finished speaking. Sluggish, surly only from the shock and sheer absurdity of the situation, Elyan’s brain struggled to comprehend what was happening.
That was Merlin’s voice. Wasn’t it? And he was- What? Poison? Tray? Who was he talking to!! Training kicked in and Elyan pressed his back up against the wall and, as quietly as he could, inched across it, moving closer to the corner so he could peek down the other hallway.
“You! You-” a voice hissed, sounding infuriated and agitated. “You will let me poison the wine and then deliver it to King Arthur or-”
“Or what?” Merlin asked, and- and did he sound bored!?
“Or- I’ll slit your throat! That’s what!” the other man spat, voice raising at the beginning before quieting down, as if he had momentarily forgotten he was supposed to be whispering.
“Right,” Merlin drawled, and fuck, he really did sound bored. Elyan, having made it to the edge, chanced a look around the corner. He gritted his teeth at the sight, hand itching to draw his sword.
Merlin was indeed in danger of getting his throat slit. The manservant was pressed up against the very same wall Elyan was peeking his head around. The attacker was muscular in a brute strength brawler type of way, but even with a dagger pressed against Merlin’s throat, the combination of shabby clothes and the couple of inches Merlin had on him cut down his intimidation factor.
As Merlin started talking again Elyan hastily pulled his head back around the corner, not wanting to be seen and aggravate the tense confrontation. Regardless of how calm Merlin seemed, a startled slip of the hand could still kill him.
Merlin, for his part, certainly didn’t seem intimidated. “Ok,” the manservant continued. “So you’ll kill me and then, one, you’ll lose the servant to the King who has the ability to access his private chambers and bring him his food.” Merlin carefully brought a hand up with one finger out before putting up another.
“Two, there'll be blood all over the tray and meal you were going to poison, because slit throats bleed quite a lot, trust me I’d know. Though, three, that might not really matter seeing as you just killed the only servant who could deliver it without suspicion.”
“So really,” Merlin concluded, “killing me just puts you back in the same place you were in before you decided to threaten me in a hallway, (not even a secluded one either, who knows when someone might walk by!) Except, in this hypothetical, you’re actually worse off because you just killed the King’s personal manservant, so security is going to increase and the guards are going to double and really any chance you had at the King goes right out the window,” Merlin said dismissively. “No need for all of this.”
The assassin (because what else could he be?) seemed to hesitate, clearly having a hard time following Merlin’s words. “So-- that means you’ll help me?” he said, in the voice of a man trying to clarify something they couldn’t quite believe they had heard.
For a split second Elyan tensed and then felt immediately ashamed when he heard Merlin snort.
“Oh gods no, no- if you want a shot at harming the King, I’d have to kill you. I’m just saying there’s no version of this where you succeed. You're a mercenary right? Doing this for money?” Merlin deduced with needle precision. “No offense but you don’t scream the ‘doing this for revenge’ or ‘my loved ones are being held hostage’ type.”
“A mercenary then, just doing it for the gold. It’d be good for you if you didn’t hold any loyalty to whoever hired you, because they had to have known you would fail. I mean again, no disrespect, I'm sure you're a very good roadside bandit or what-not, but master assassin you are not. Anyone with the money to hire an assassin would have taken at least a courtesy glance over Camelot’s past assassination attempts and known they were sending you to your death.”
“Clearly, you were set up,” Merlin continued. “So it’s really your hirer that I care about, not you. Assassination are just another job, I’m sure. I can respect that. A little blood, a lot of gold- you probably needed this job very badly, a bit down on your luck aren’t you?” Merlin said, voice having taken on a persuasive honey like quality.
“So how about a deal, hmmm? You take that knife away, tell me who hired you, all the information they gave you on Camelot, how you snuck past the guards and anything else related to this attempt and I’ll help you get back on your feet.” Merlin smiled slightly, looking completely genuine and kind.
“A good horse, thirty gold and I know a nice village just out of Camelot’s border that’d be happy to have you start a new life there. Just trade me the information, swear to never harm Camelot or any of its citizens, especially its King , again and I’ll get you all set up with a new life somewhere else. It’s a win-win for everyone, no one has to know about this embarrassing little attempt. It can stay between just the two of us.”
Elyan’s head was spinning as he listened to Merlin’s enchanting voice. He’d heard the young man talk his (and their) way out of (and into) trouble more times than he could count, but this was on a different level. If Merlin had asked him to cut out his left kidney and move to the Darkling Woods, Elyan was half-convinced he’d do it.
Apparently, the other man wasn't nearly as swayed. He snarled at Merlin, “You fucking peasant! Thinking you’re so much better- serving the King- the fuck you think you can help me with!! I’ll gut you here and then I’ll go for that pathetic -” His words were abruptly stopped and Elyan startled, heart hammering in shock as he heard a gargled sound coming from around the corner.
Merlin sighed, sounding more resigned than anything else. “I did warn you,” he said dispassionately. There was another choked sound, followed by a wet gasping cough. “Shhh, shhhh,” Merlin cooed in a half-hearted attempt at comfort. Elyan listened, frozen, as a body was quietly, but carelessly lowered to the floor.
He chanced another glance around the corner. Elyan didn’t know why he was still hiding now that the danger had passed, but some primal instinct prickled in fear at this new side of Merlin. Like he was bearing witness to something he wasn’t supposed to see.
Merlin was crouched over the other man, back to him. Elyan could see, in the now dead man’s head, the hilt of a small, beautifully made dagger sticking out from underneath his jaw. The thrust having gone up through the mouth and into the other’s skull. Merlin was searching through the body, shaking clothes and turning out pockets. He pulled a folded note out of one, something that could have been an important letter had it seen better days.
Merlin seemed to read it over quickly, snorting at the content before tucking it into his own inner jacket pocket. “Only 100 gold, Lot? You’re getting cheap,” he mused, before grumbling, “And not even any advanced pay.”
After another minute or two Merlin let out a little ‘ah-ha’ noise as he pulled a vial out of the other’s belt. Elyan couldn’t tell what it was beyond black, but Merlin studied it, tilting the bottle while holding it up to the light. “Why is it always Hemlock?” he muttered exasperated. With a sigh, he stood up and slipped the bottle into his boot.
Elyan ducked back around the corner quickly, his pulse hammering in his ears as Merlin glanced around. The other seemed to see nothing as he just went about opening up what Elyan could only assume was a storage closet on the other side of the hall. The door opened with a bit of a creek and then all that could be heard were the sounds of Merlin efficiently dragging and shoving a body into it.
A rather sickening squelch indicated that Merlin retrieved his dagger. Elyan risked a quick glance to see him cleaning it off on the dead man’s clothes before tucking it into a sheath on his leg. Elyan hadn't known he knew how to use a dagger, let alone carried one on him.
Body hidden, he closed the cabinet, doing something Elyan couldn’t quite catch to lock it and turned back to his forgotten tray. Merlin collected it off the ground and Elyan saw him hold it up to eye level, trying to look at his reflection in the pitcher's distorted image. He ruffled his hair and readjusted his neckerchief and, while Elyan couldn’t tell what that had changed, muttered a “good enough” to himself.
Merlin then set off down the hall away from Elyan and presumably towards the Great Hall to deliver Arthur’s (now late) meal.
Elyan could picture the scene now: Merlin walking into the Great Hall with a careless grin on his face presenting the late (but somehow not cold) food to his King. Arthur reacting annoyed and calling him an idiot, complaining about how he was always late. Merlin would just laugh and half-heartedly apologize, throwing back quips as quickly as he took them.
Nothing out of the ordinary. Nothing to show that he’d just killed a man and stopped an assassination attempt not even a dozen minutes prior.
Elyan breathed in deeply and let it out slowly, pressing his head back against the stone wall until it hurt and squeezing his eyes closed hard enough to see stars.
Merlin might be able to walk away as if nothing had happened, but Elyan needed a minute for his mind to stop spinning. Hopefully, when it did, the world would make sense again.
He hoped, but he wasn’t really counting on it. This was Camelot after all.