Chapter 393
The people were angry.
Not all of them, naturally, and not always at me, but anger had a way of spreading after tragedy. Grief needed somewhere to go, questions demanded answers, and when twelve thousand dead became twelve thousand names rather than a number on Agravain's reports, it was difficult to tell a mother that there had been a perfectly reasonable explanation for why her King had not been there when her child died.
There had been.
But that did not make her child any less dead.
For several days after the war ended, I had watched Albion begin the slow and painful process of deciding what exactly had happened to it.
The fighting was over, the dormant Sentinels were being recovered, the wounded were being treated, and reconstruction had already begun wherever there was something left to rebuild, but none of that answered the question that seemed to hang over everything.
How had this happened?
Or, perhaps more painfully:
How had this happened here?
Albion was supposed to be safe.
That had been one of the promises upon which I built it. Not a promise spoken aloud in some royal proclamation, perhaps, but one I had made through every action since taking these islands for myself.
Here, mutants did not need to fear the government coming for them.
Here, people did not need to choose between heating their homes and feeding their children.
Here, criminals learned to fear the law rather than ordinary people fearing criminals.
Here, monsters stayed outside.
Until they didn't.
The Sentinel War had broken something.
Not Albion itself. I did not think anything so simple could destroy what we had built here, but the certainty surrounding it had cracked.
People who had once looked toward Camelot and thought themselves untouchable had discovered that even a kingdom ruled by a god could bleed.
Some accepted that.
Others did not.
Agravain had provided me with reports on public sentiment after I asked for them, though I had very quickly discovered that reducing millions of grieving people to percentages was not especially useful.
Albion remained overwhelmingly stable. There had been no serious unrest, no mutinies, no great movement demanding the Crown be abolished, and the majority of people appeared to understand that my absence had not been caused by indifference.
I had been preventing an invasion from Hell.
It was difficult to construct a more legitimate excuse.
That did not mean everyone accepted it emotionally.
Some asked why Albion had been left without enough protection should I disappear.
Others asked why Asgard had waited until the end of the war before intervening, though that anger was mostly directed at Loki rather than me.
There were mutants asking why the Sentinels had ever been allowed to exist in the first place, humans asking why their homes had become battlefields because of a war originally aimed at mutants, and grieving families who cared very little whether the machine that killed their loved ones had originally been designed to hunt someone else.
Then there were those who simply blamed me.
I couldn't truly fault them for that.
A king accepted responsibility for her kingdom.
That responsibility did not disappear merely because the reasons for failure were understandable.
What interested me was not the anger itself.
It was how quickly some of it began to sound the same.
At first, Agravain assumed I was imagining things.
He stopped assuming that after the Veiled Hand produced its first report.
"The wording is not identical," he explained as we sat inside one of the smaller council chambers two days later, "but the arguments are being distributed through a remarkably consistent network. Several newspapers began questioning the Crown's ability to guarantee national security within twenty-four hours of one another. Three supposedly independent civic organizations have since begun using almost identical language concerning 'institutional dependence upon a single individual.'"
I looked down at the papers before me.
Individually, none of it was particularly interesting.
One article argued that Albion could no longer rely upon my personal strength as its primary deterrent.
I didn't agree with that, but I allowed such discussions all the same.
Another claimed the Sentinel crisis demonstrated the need for stronger civilian institutions capable of functioning independently of Camelot.
Also not an unreasonable argument; again, I didn't agree, but I understood the sentiment.
A third questioned whether concentrating political authority in an immortal monarch was sustainable when that monarch could vanish into another dimension without warning.
Rather rude.
Still not treason.
"I fail to see why the Veiled Hand cares," I said.
Agravain's mouth tightened slightly. "Because all three publications recently received financing from separate organizations that ultimately trace back to the same collection of foreign trusts."
Ah.
That was more interesting.
"And the civic organizations?"
"The same."
I leaned back.
"How clumsy."
"Not especially. It took considerable effort to establish the connections."
"That isn't what I meant."
Agravain understood.
Whoever was behind this had apparently forgotten that I had spent years waiting for them to do something interesting.
There were many people in Albion who disliked me.
That was hardly surprising.
I had taken an entire country apart and rebuilt it according to my own ideas. Even if the overwhelming majority benefited, there would inevitably be people who preferred the world as it had existed before.
Especially those who had benefited from it.
Bankers.
Property magnates.
Investment executives.
Old families whose fortunes had multiplied through systems I had dismantled almost immediately after taking power.
People who had once considered it perfectly natural that a man could own hundreds of homes while another slept beneath a bridge.
I had never expected them to love me.
Charles Whitmore certainly didn't.
I hadn't thought about him in some time.
That did not mean he had stopped thinking about me.
"Whitmore?" I asked.
Agravain nodded.
"Among others."
There it was.
Years ago, they had gathered in expensive rooms and complained about everything I had taken from them.
Their influence.
Their monopolies.
Their ability to use necessity itself as leverage against ordinary people.
They had watched rents freeze, evictions stop, private systems brought beneath Crown control, and fortunes that had once seemed untouchable suddenly become considerably less useful.
Naturally, they had plotted.
Naturally, I had known.
I was not particularly offended by either fact.
People were permitted to hate me.
They were even permitted to gather in private and complain about how wonderful life had been when they possessed more power than everyone around them.
For years, that was largely all they had done.
The Veiled Hand had watched them.
Listened.
Followed their money.
Placed people among their employees, their advisers, their accountants, and eventually even among those they trusted enough to invite into their private discussions.
I had learned a great deal.
I had simply never found sufficient reason to act.
Dislike was not a crime.
Neither was stupidity.
Apparently, however, patience had finally paid off.
-----
Charles Whitmore had waited years for Arthuria Pendragon to fail.
He would never have been foolish enough to describe it that way aloud.
Not anymore.
The first gatherings had been emotional things, filled with men and women who had lost fortunes, businesses, and influence almost overnight and had believed, with all the confidence of people accustomed to being obeyed, that the new order could not possibly last.
It had lasted.
Years passed.
Albion prospered.
The banks did not collapse in the manner they had predicted.
Ordinary people somehow continued working even after being given enough money to live comfortably.
Businesses continued operating despite employees gaining protections that would once have been dismissed as economically impossible, and, perhaps most offensively of all, the people seemed to like it.
Their predictions failed one after another.
Arthuria did not bankrupt the country.
She did not lose control.
She did not become an isolated tyrant hated by her subjects.
Each crisis merely seemed to strengthen her.
Until now.
Whitmore sat at the end of a polished table in a private residence far outside Camelot, listening as one of the younger men present summarized the latest polling figures.
"Support remains high," the man admitted, "but confidence in the Crown's ability to guarantee security has declined considerably. More importantly, the decline is strongest among families directly affected by the Sentinel attacks."
Whitmore lifted his glass but did not drink.
"Naturally."
Across the table, an elderly woman frowned. "Then we are accomplishing very little."
"We have been operating for less than a week."
"And she is already back."
"Which is irrelevant."
That earned several looks.
Whitmore placed the glass down.
"For years, our problem was never Arthuria Pendragon's popularity. Popularity changes. Our problem was certainty."
He let the word linger for a moment.
"The public believed she could not fail."
No one interrupted.
"They believed Albion could not be attacked because she would stop the attacker. They believed their economy could not collapse because she would repair it. They believed their enemies could not hurt them because somewhere, eventually, the King would appear."
Whitmore smiled faintly.
"The Sentinels have corrected that misconception for us."
One of the others shifted uncomfortably. "Twelve thousand people died."
"Yes."
The answer was colder than the room.
Whitmore noticed the reaction and sighed.
"I am not celebrating their deaths. I am explaining their consequences. We did not create the Sentinels. We did not send them here. We did not cause Arthuria to disappear for seven weeks. But those things happened, and pretending they did not would be every bit as foolish as pretending the opportunity does not exist."
There were reluctant nods around the table.
That was better.
None of them needed to enjoy what had happened.
They only needed to understand it.
"The argument must remain reasonable," Whitmore continued. "No attacks upon the dead. No absurd claims that Arthuria deliberately abandoned the country. No questioning whether Hell represented a genuine threat. Anyone attempting such nonsense will merely make us appear deranged."
"What, then?"
"We ask questions."
That was always more effective.
"Why was there no contingency for the King's disappearance? Why was so much military power permitted to leave Albion at once? Why did Asgard watch for seven weeks? Why does an entire modern nation depend so completely upon the presence of one woman?"
The woman across from him leaned forward.
"And from there?"
"Institutions."
Whitmore smiled.
"Accountability. Parliamentary oversight. Independent control of national finances. Restoration of private-sector participation where the Crown has accumulated excessive authority. No one wants the old world back."
That was a lie.
Most people around the table wanted precisely that.
They were simply intelligent enough not to say it.
"What people want," Whitmore continued, "is reassurance that this can never happen again. We merely need to ensure that the solution places power somewhere other than Camelot."
There it was.
The real objective.
Not the abolition of Arthuria.
That had long since become unrealistic.
She was immortal, absurdly powerful, beloved by much of the population, and unfortunately competent.
But even an immortal king did not need to control everything.
Power could be moved slowly.
A regulator here.
An independent board there.
A restored financial institution.
A privatized service.
A few laws ensuring the Crown could no longer simply interfere whenever it pleased.
The old system had not been built in a day.
Neither would it be restored in one.
"Then there is reconstruction," another man said.
Whitmore looked toward him.
"We have positions in several suppliers. Steel, cement, imported machinery. Demand will be enormous."
"Yes."
"We can restrict availability."
The room became quieter.
Not because anyone misunderstood.
That was considerably more dangerous than funding newspapers.
The man continued. "Nothing dramatic. Delays. Contracts that unexpectedly fall through. Foreign deliveries diverted elsewhere. Prices increase, projects slow, frustration grows. The Crown promised rapid reconstruction; it then finds itself unable to deliver."
The elderly woman frowned. "That hurts the people we're supposedly trying to convince."
"For a few months."
"And if someone dies because a hospital doesn't receive material?"
The man shrugged.
Whitmore agreed; it was slightly risky, but within allowable limits.
"Food?"
"No point; the King can always grow more. It would be a pointless waste of our resources."
"Fuel?"
"No, the Crown likely has enough. With Stark's reactors, it's not like we use much fossil fuel anymore, so again, pointless."
"Construction materials?"
Whitmore considered that.
"Nonessential projects first."
"And residential reconstruction?"
A pause.
Then he nodded.
"Carefully."
That was enough.
The discussion moved on.
Foreign financing.
Media partnerships.
Which grieving families might be willing to speak publicly.
Which demonstrations could be supported without making the financing visible.
Which officials might privately favor reducing Camelot's direct authority now that the consequences of depending upon Arthuria had become so obvious.
For nearly two hours, they discussed the future.
Not one of them noticed the servant who replaced their drinks twice.
Not one noticed that the woman's bracelet contained a transmitter.
Not one knew that one of Whitmore's own accountants had spent three years copying every document that crossed his desk.
And none of them knew that, several miles away, every word was being recorded.
Chapter 394
I listened to the final portion of the meeting in silence.
Agravain stood beside me with his arms folded behind his back, his expression giving away little beyond the faint tightening around his eyes that I had long since learned meant someone had managed to irritate him.
Across the room, one of the senior agents of the Veiled Hand waited beside the communications equipment, dressed in the same deliberately unremarkable dark clothing favored by those whose profession depended upon being forgotten almost as soon as they were seen.
Whitmore's voice continued from the speakers for several more minutes, discussing supply contracts, foreign intermediaries, and which reconstruction projects could be delayed without making the interference obvious. There was something particularly unpleasant about hearing men and women calmly decide how much suffering they could safely inflict upon people who had already lost homes and family before the anger created by that suffering became useful to them.
Eventually, the recording ended.
The room became quiet.
Agravain waited several seconds before turning toward me. "Well?"
I rested my fingers against the edge of the table and looked down at the transcript lying open before me.
For years, I had allowed these people to exist.
Not because I feared them, and certainly not because I had somehow failed to notice what they were doing. Charles Whitmore and those who gathered around him had simply been useful. Every bitter financier, displaced landlord, resentful executive, and old aristocrat who believed the prosperity of ordinary people represented some personal injustice eventually seemed to find their way toward the same handful of circles.
Had I removed Whitmore when he first began conspiring, another man would have replaced him.
Perhaps that man would have been more careful.
Instead, I had left the nest untouched and allowed everyone who wished to crawl inside to reveal themselves.
The Veiled Hand had listened.
They had followed money through foreign trusts, watched shell companies form and dissolve, copied correspondence, placed agents among secretaries and accountants, and learned which supposedly respectable political organizations were little more than fronts for men who desperately wanted their old privileges returned.
Every year the network survived, it became more useful to me.
Another name.
Another account.
Another foreign contact.
Another thread leading somewhere we had not previously known to look.
Now, finally, after years of talking about everything they wished they could do, they had decided that words were no longer enough.
"They were free to criticize me," I said.
Agravain gave a small nod.
"They were free to publish articles arguing that I should possess less authority. They were free to finance political organizations, demand reforms, call me arrogant, reckless, tyrannical, incompetent, or whatever else made them feel better about the world they lost."
The Veiled Hand officer did not move.
I turned another page of the transcript.
"They were even free to sit in expensive rooms and celebrate every failure I suffered."
None of that concerned me.
A king who could not tolerate criticism had no business wearing a crown. If someone believed I ruled poorly, they were entitled to say so. If they wished to convince others of the same, they were entitled to try. Albion would become a very fragile kingdom indeed if loyalty only existed because criticism carried the threat of imprisonment.
But deliberately interfering with reconstruction was something else.
Creating shortages in towns where people were trying to rebuild their homes.
Sabotaging supply chains so grief and frustration lasted longer.
Taking families already wounded by the Sentinel War and intentionally making their lives worse because desperation might produce useful political pressure.
That crossed a very different line.
"They have now conspired to sabotage the recovery of Albion for political gain," I said.
"Yes, Your Majesty," Agravain replied, and the disgust in his voice was no longer particularly hidden.
I looked toward the Veiled Hand officer. "Do we have enough?"
"More than enough, Your Majesty. Financial records, communications, meeting recordings, foreign transfers, contracted intermediaries, and the identities of the principal participants. We have also identified almost every secondary member connected to the operation."
"Almost?"
"Three remain uncertain. We know they have contact with members of the network, but not whether they knowingly participated in the conspiracy."
I considered that for only a moment.
"Leave them alone."
Agravain glanced toward me, though the agent simply waited.
"If we are not certain, they are not to be touched," I continued. "Watch them. Investigate them. If evidence appears, act upon it. Until then, association is not guilt."
I was tempted to throw them all at the headsman's axe, but decided to spare them.
Maybe seeing what happened to their friends would finally make them accept the new reality.
That is, if no damning evidence against them came up during the operation.
The woman bowed her head. "Understood."
That left the rest.
Charles Whitmore and his friends had spent years waiting for me to show weakness. They had finally watched Albion bleed and mistaken pain for opportunity, believing that the same people burying their dead would somehow thank them for making reconstruction slower if only the resulting frustration could be aimed toward Camelot.
Perhaps I should have been angrier.
Instead, I mostly felt tired.
There were homes to rebuild, people to bury, hospitals still treating the wounded, and an entire country trying to understand what had happened to it. I had neither the patience nor the inclination to spend another several years watching wealthy old men poke at every wound they could find because they wanted their former privileges restored.
I looked toward the Veiled Hand officer.
"Take them."
She did not ask who.
There was no need.
"All of them, Your Majesty?"
"Everyone for whom the evidence is sufficient. Secure their records before the arrests become public, freeze every account connected to the conspiracy, and make certain no one has enough warning to destroy anything or flee. Those currently outside Albion are to be detained where cooperation can be obtained. Where it cannot, seize whatever Albion assets they possess and issue warrants."
Agravain shifted slightly beside me. "And the organizations they funded?"
"Do not close anything merely because it criticized the Crown. Trace the money first. If an organization knowingly participated in sabotage, then deal with it accordingly. If all it did was accept legal financing and publish arguments against me, leave it alone."
The Veiled Hand officer nodded once.
That distinction mattered.
I had no intention of teaching Albion that criticizing its King was dangerous.
I intended to teach a much simpler lesson.
Harming my people was.
The officer turned toward the door, but I stopped her before she reached it.
"And Charles Whitmore."
She looked back.
"Bring him to Camelot."
Agravain raised an eyebrow. "Personally?"
"Yes."
I closed the folder before me.
Years ago, Whitmore and those like him had lost a world in which they possessed almost everything while ordinary people were expected to be grateful for whatever remained. I had taken that world away from them, and apparently he still required an explanation as to why I had no intention of returning it.
This time, I would make certain he understood.
The arrests began less than an hour later.
There was no great announcement.
No troops marched through the streets, no bells rang over Camelot, and no public proclamation warned the conspirators that the Crown had finally turned its attention toward them.
The Veiled Hand simply moved.
Accounts were frozen before their owners knew an operation had begun. Offices were entered under Crown warrants while employees were still arriving for work, and servers disappeared into secure custody before anyone had time to remember which files they had been told should never be found.
Several accountants discovered that quiet coworkers they had known for years were suddenly standing beside Veiled Hand agents and calmly identifying which cabinets contained the records their employers had tried hardest to hide.
A car carrying one of Whitmore's associates toward an airport was stopped before it reached the motorway.
Another man attempted to transfer several hundred million pounds through three foreign banks and discovered that every account involved had already been locked.
Two members of the conspiracy happened to be outside Albion when the order came. One was arrested by local authorities before lunch. The other vanished into a country less willing to cooperate and spent several hours congratulating himself on his escape before learning that virtually every asset he still possessed within Albion had ceased to belong to him.
There was remarkably little violence.
These were not supervillains.
They did not possess armies, enchanted weapons, or secret suits of armor.
Their power had always depended upon money, influence, contracts, ownership, connections, and the belief that those things made them untouchable.
Once the Crown decided otherwise, there was surprisingly little left.
Charles Whitmore learned that lesson in his own bedroom.
He woke to someone knocking politely upon the door.
At first, according to the report I received later, he assumed it was one of his servants. His estate possessed several layers of security, both technological and human, and nobody reached the private wing without him knowing about it.
So he told whoever was outside to enter.
Three Veiled Hand agents stepped through the door.
Whitmore apparently stared at them for several seconds before asking how they had gotten inside.
The senior agent simply handed him a warrant.
His head of security stood in the corridor behind them.
He would not meet Whitmore's eyes.
By noon, Charles Whitmore was in Camelot.
He looked older than I remembered.
That was perhaps unfair. Years had passed since I last paid him any real attention, and while those years meant very little to me, Charles Whitmore remained an ordinary man. His hair had thinned, more grey had crept into what remained, and the expensive suit he wore could not quite conceal how much weight age had placed upon his shoulders.
His pride, however, appeared perfectly healthy.
The Veiled Hand escorted him into one of the smaller audience chambers rather than the throne room.
I saw no reason to grant him that dignity.
A table separated us. Agravain stood near the wall while two guards remained outside, far enough away that Whitmore could pretend this was a private conversation if that made him feel better.
He refused the chair offered to him.
"Am I under arrest?"
"Yes."
His jaw tightened. "For criticizing you?"
I almost sighed.
So that was how he intended to begin.
"No."
Whitmore gave a short, humorless laugh. "Of course not. I'm sure there will be some wonderfully technical justification."
"There is."
My voice didn't rise; I felt little anger toward this man... he was just too... disappointing to awaken such emotions in me.
"You have spent years claiming that Albion is different," he said. "That your people are free. That your rule is not the tyranny your critics call it. Yet the moment people begin questioning whether one woman should hold this much power, your secret police appear in their homes."
I waited until he finished.
Then I placed a folder on the table between us.
Whitmore looked at it.
"You believe you are here because you spoke against me," I said.
"Am I not?"
"No."
I placed another folder beside the first.
"You spoke against me three years ago."
Another joined them.
"And two years ago."
Another.
"And last year."
The irritation slowly disappeared from his expression.
I continued.
"You financed articles attacking my economic policies. You donated to organizations advocating restrictions upon royal authority. You maintained contact with foreign politicians who disliked Albion's economic independence. You attended private meetings in which I was called everything from an idiot with a sword to a medieval despot wearing modern clothing."
Whitmore stared at the growing pile.
I smiled faintly.
"The second was more creative."
His eyes flicked toward me.
"You knew?"
"Charles, I knew before some of the people attending those meetings did."
That finally silenced him.
I opened one of the files.
"Your accountant began cooperating with the Veiled Hand three years ago."
His face changed.
"Your assistant has provided us with copies of your correspondence for twenty-two months. Two organizations you believed were operated through foreign intermediaries were compromised before you completed their first transfers."
I turned another page.
"The woman wearing the silver bracelet at your meeting yesterday was transmitting every word to us."
Whitmore looked at Agravain.
Agravain offered him absolutely nothing.
Then Whitmore looked back toward me.
For the first time since entering the room, he appeared uncertain.
"You knew all of this."
"Yes."
"For years."
"Yes."
"And you did nothing."
"Correct."
His brow furrowed.
That seemed to confuse him more than the surveillance itself.
"Why?"
"Because you were useful."
The words landed harder than I expected.
Whitmore's face went still.
"You gathered people for me. Every bitter financier, every foreign intermediary, every man or woman who believed Albion should once again be arranged primarily for their benefit eventually found someone connected to your circle. Had I arrested you years ago, they would have scattered."
I gestured toward the files.
"Instead, they came to you."
Understanding slowly appeared in his eyes.
Not everything.
Enough.
His conspiracy had never been invisible.
It had been contained.
Observed.
Fed just enough privacy to convince everyone inside it that they were safe.
"You used us."
"Of course."
His hands clenched.
"And now?"
"Now you stopped being useful."
Whitmore's anger returned almost instantly. "Because we finally threatened you."
"No."
The answer came sharply enough that he stopped.
I leaned back slightly.
"You still misunderstand."
I pointed toward the files.
"I did not arrest you because you hate me. You were free to hate me."
Whitmore said nothing.
"You were free to want my authority reduced. You were free to publish every argument you could find against the Crown, fund every legal political movement willing to accept your money, and spend every evening telling your friends what a terrible King I am."
I leaned forward.
"You were even free to hope I failed."
His eyes narrowed.
"What you were not free to do was make my people suffer in order to make that failure more convincing."
That struck.
I could see it.
He knew why he was here, and he understood that he was fucked.
I had never been gentle when it came to punishing those I wanted to punish, those I felt needed it, deserved it.
"You sat in that room while families were rebuilding homes destroyed by the Sentinels and discussed how slowly you could deliver the materials they needed without making your interference obvious."
"We discussed market pressure."
"You discussed deliberately restricting supply."
"Within legal commercial—"
"Do not insult me."
My voice never rose.
It didn't need to.
Whitmore stopped.
"You knew what would happen. That was the point. Reconstruction would slow, people would become frustrated, and then you would direct that frustration toward me."
I looked at him for several seconds.
"Your mistake was not opposing me."
The silence in the room grew heavier.
"Your mistake was looking at grieving people and deciding their pain was useful."
Whatever answer Whitmore had prepared died before reaching his mouth.
I sat back.
"The Veiled Hand is currently dismantling your network. Every account used to finance the conspiracy has been frozen. Every participant against whom sufficient evidence exists has either been detained or is being sought. Your records are being secured, your intermediaries identified, and the organizations you used are being investigated individually."
His face had gone pale.
"You cannot simply take everything."
I was not amused at his protest.
"I can do whatever I want—something you have pointed out countless times over the years. I am a tyrant; my word is law."
Chapter 395
I was not amused by his protest.
"I can do whatever I want — something you have pointed out countless times over the years. I am a tyrant. My word is law."
Whitmore stared at me, my words hitting him like a physical blow.
Perhaps he had expected me to deny it.
People often did.
Tyrant was a wonderfully useful word in the modern age. It carried centuries of blood and oppression behind it, and those who used it generally expected the accused to recoil, to desperately insist that they were nothing of the sort.
I had never particularly cared.
I was King.
I had conquered these lands by force, replaced the government that ruled them, written laws according to my own judgment, and retained the authority to change those laws whenever I believed it necessary.
There was no parliament capable of overruling me, no court above the Crown, and no constitution I was required to obey.
The Council of Nobles was just that — a council of nobles. Every other institution was the same: another way for my will to be made reality.
If that made me a tyrant, then so be it.
What mattered was what kind of tyrant I chose to be.
"You were allowed to oppose me because opposition is not treason," I continued. "You were allowed to insult me because insulting your King is not treason. You were allowed to gather with your friends and fantasize about restoring everything I took from you because stupidity is not treason."
Whitmore's jaw tightened, but he said nothing.
"You were watched because I knew what you were, Charles. You remained alive because, until yesterday, you had committed no crime worthy of death."
That final word changed him.
Only slightly.
But I saw it.
Death.
There it was.
The thing he had been carefully avoiding thinking about since the Veiled Hand entered his home.
"Yesterday," I continued, "you knowingly agreed to sabotage the reconstruction of communities devastated by war. You intended to create artificial shortages, delay housing, prolong suffering, and weaponize the resulting desperation against the Crown."
"Nothing actually happened."
"Because I stopped you."
His mouth opened.
I did not let him interrupt.
"Do you believe attempted murder becomes acceptable because the victim survives?"
"This wasn't murder."
"No. It was treason."
That silenced him.
I leaned back in my chair and regarded the man who had spent years believing himself one careful step ahead of me.
"You knew the law."
He did.
Everyone in Albion did.
My laws were not hidden behind endless volumes written so that only lawyers could understand them. They were deliberately simple where they needed to be simple, and the punishment for knowingly conspiring to harm the kingdom during a time of national crisis was not difficult to remember.
"You cannot—"
"Charles."
He stopped.
"Do not embarrass yourself by begging me to pretend you did not understand what you were doing."
His face had become grey.
I felt no pleasure at the sight.
That was something men like him never seemed to understand about ruthlessness.
It did not require hatred.
A headsman did not need to despise the neck beneath his axe.
He only needed to swing cleanly.
"Your accounts connected to the conspiracy are forfeit. Any property acquired or maintained through criminal means will be seized. Anything lawfully belonging to your family and unconnected to your crimes will remain theirs."
His eyes lifted slightly at that.
I wasn't punishing his children for having the misfortune of sharing his name.
Then I gave him the part that mattered.
"Charles Whitmore, you knowingly conspired to sabotage the recovery of Albion during a national emergency for the purpose of undermining the Crown and restoring your own political and financial power. That is treason."
I held his gaze.
"The punishment for treason is death."
Silence filled the chamber.
Whitmore looked toward Agravain.
Agravain did not so much as blink.
"There must be a trial."
"There has been an investigation lasting years. I have your accounts, your correspondence, testimony from those involved, and a recording of you agreeing to the crime in your own voice."
I gestured toward the mountain of evidence between us.
"What precisely would you like a trial to discover?"
His lips moved, but no answer came.
"You will be given the opportunity to review the charges against you, to identify any evidence you claim is false, and to name anyone you believe has been wrongly implicated. I will not execute an innocent man merely because doing so is convenient."
That distinction mattered.
Mercy and weakness were not the same thing.
Neither were justice and hesitation.
"But unless you can somehow demonstrate that the man on those recordings is not you, the sentence will not change."
Whitmore finally sat down.
Not because I had asked him to.
His legs simply appeared to have stopped supporting him.
I watched him for several seconds before adding, "You spent years calling me a medieval king as though I should find that insulting."
His eyes slowly rose toward mine.
"You should have remembered what medieval kings did to traitors."
-----
I had never been a fan of public executions. I always found them barbaric.
Yet, despite this, I had never gotten rid of them, not even back in my time.
Because I understood that it wasn't about what I liked or what I approved of. I was a King who cared about my people above all, and my people loved them.
They were used as entertainment — parents brought their children along to see death.
It was morbid, yet I could understand it on some levels.
Death… was unavoidable.
It could happen at any time and would happen to everyone — nothing that lived could escape dying.
Well, almost.
I was one of those very rare exceptions.
Excalibur ensured I wouldn't die. And even when it had been thrown into the Lake, I still remained in Avalon, awaiting the destined time.
But that didn't matter.
Not here.
Not now.
What mattered was my people.
I had originally brought back public executions only because they had been a constant in my time. I didn't think about it.
I just had Agravain bring back law, order, and justice.
And along with law, order, and justice, Agravain brought back the executions.
Part of me, a tiny part, that part that had once been another person, someone who was caught up in all this reincarnation-into-the-Marvel-Universe business, told me that modern people would be against something as morbid as public executions.
Yet that part of me had been wrong.
Dead wrong.
Today, I wasn't in Camelot but had left my white city behind and instead stood in London.
For centuries, this city had been the capital of this land, and even now, it remained the largest city of all.
A melting pot of people from all across Albion and even from beyond.
As for why I was here, that was naturally thanks to Charles Whitmore and his co-conspirators.
They had wanted to use this crisis of faith to weaken my grip over the heart of my nation, my people.
Hoping to divide us.
Such a thing was never going to happen, but that didn't mean their deaths would be quiet. Criminals and traitors had no rights.
They didn't deserve a dignified death. They deserved to be punished, and to ensure that my people didn't fear law and order, my courts were open and public about it.
At the advice of the Veiled Hand, I had allowed the Whitmore conspiracy to become public knowledge.
Grief needed an outlet. It so easily turned to hatred.
This was what Whitmore and the others had wanted to take advantage of.
But now?
I was taking advantage of it.
Below the balcony, the square before Buckingham Palace was packed with people. The entire place was filled with noise, and not the sounds of cries of grief and pain, but joy and righteous anger.
"It never gets any easier to see," the Grand Duchess of Lancaster, former Queen Elizabeth II, said with a heavy heart as she looked down at the people who had once been hers.
"We might act differently, dress differently, and talk differently, but deep down, we haven't changed much since my time," I agreed. "The desire to see justice has never faded, nor has the innate bloodthirst that allowed humanity to rise to dominance."
"Justice is a noble word. I don't think this is justice."
"Maybe not, but it is necessary," I answered her.
"I never took another life," she told me.
"I have."
She couldn't help but shiver at my calm words, but couldn't deny them either.
"I've burned villages, I've led armies, and I've executed traitors in public."
This was something many people of the modern age often forgot about their old gods.
They weren't just saints.
They were conquerors.
"Did you ever have any doubts?" she asked. "About any of it?"
"In my youth, maybe. But as King? No."
A good king had to be willing to do evil. Without it, a good king's kingdom would be devoured by those who weren't bound by such things.
It took nearly an hour for the guards to bring out all the traitors. There were almost three dozen in total — merchants, lords, civil servants, men and women from every walk of life that wealth could reach.
Yet they all shared two things in common: they were all rich, and they were all traitors.
One by one, they knelt upon the platform built for this exact purpose, their heads exposed and their hands bound behind their backs.
And as they did, the crowd jeered at them, cursing their names and spitting.
This act of treason had only been the catalyst. People still remembered the old days. They still remembered the time before my reign.
It hadn't been bad.
England had known peace, had known wealth and comfort.
Advancement in technology kept people from noticing the rot, the hollowing of their power, their rights.
It wasn't until I took over that I showed them just how much they were missing out on. Just how much of their labor was being siphoned away — their just repayment for their work ended up in others' pockets.
Everyone understood that they worked hard to earn another man's profits.
I earn a penny, so my boss can earn a pound.
Such things had been spoken in jest for generations, but only when that stopped did people realize just how true it had been.
It hadn't been easy — the entire financial system was built around it, and changing that wasn't easy… but that didn't mean it wasn't worth doing.
Daily life had lost many of the luxuries of yesteryear. Cut off from the global market as we were, we faced shortages and made sacrifices.
But in the end, people could eat. They could afford a roof over their heads, heat their homes, and send their children to school.
I had lowered the ceiling, but at the same time, raised the floor.
And the people knew it — they knew what they had gained. They realized how badly they had been screwed over in the old system, and that gave rise to resentment.
Their little conspiracy was the perfect storm: old hate, new grief, and pain, all mixed together to cause the scene playing out below us.
"They're like wolves," Elizabeth whispered from my side, her eyes fixated on the crowd.
"Wolves need a pack; without one, they are nothing but dogs," I replied. "A good king must be the alpha of that pack."
She didn't answer. Her expression made clear she did not agree but couldn't argue against it either.
She, who had spent nearly a century on the throne, had reigned but never ruled, had held power but never used it, knew that my ways were not hers.
"Her Majesty!" the crowd roared as I stepped forward to the balcony's stone railing.
I simply raised my right hand.
Instant silence.
It still amazed me, that power, that authority.
I looked from the crowd to the men and women kneeling, and then back to the people who had once been my subjects, but were now my children.
"My people," I spoke, and my words boomed, amplified through my own magic to carry across the square. "It has been a long and arduous few weeks. We have bled, we have lost, and we have suffered."
My tone was solemn, my words heavy.
"It hasn't been an easy time, but together, we made it through, thanks to countless brave souls—sons and daughters who fought for their home. You all held on until I returned from one Hell to another."
Hushed whispers spread throughout the crowd.
"At a time of grief and rebuilding, there were those who, despite everything we have endured, wanted to take advantage of the situation, of your pain and suffering, for their own selfish gain. They saw you not as my people, but as tools, as weapons to be aimed at the Crown."
"So they conspired — conspired to hinder your recovery, to prolong your misery and pain, all for their own selfish greed, all because they missed the good old days when they had it all."
My eyes glanced toward the traitors.
"Such betrayal… of this nation, of your fellow countrymen… of the people who lived next to you, will not be forgiven. Justice must be served, not for my sake, but for yours."
"For every parent who wept for their child, for every child who lost their parent, for every man and woman who lost their home… I am your King, and I will have vengeance on your behalf."
"The sentence for treason is death."
With that, I took a step back, and the headsman, a large, grim-faced man in a black hood, stepped forward.
A few of the traitors began to weep, their bravado and arrogance gone, replaced by the fear of a sinner before God.
The headsman raised his axe.
And with a single swing, it came down.
And then another.
And another.
I didn't look away. I had to watch. I had to make it clear that I was not afraid of doing what was necessary.
This was the price of their crimes.
This was the price of my people's safety.
This was the price of my kingdom.
After the last head fell, the crowd didn't cheer.
They stood in silence, their faces grim, but their eyes burning with a fire that hadn't been there before.
It was a fire of unity, of purpose.
It was a fire of loyalty.
Then a single voice rose from the crowd.
"God save the King!"
It was a woman's voice, filled with raw, unfiltered emotion.
"God save the King!"
Another voice joined in, then another, and another, until the entire square was filled with the sound of their voices, their loyalty, their love.
It was a sound that echoed through the streets of London, a sound that would be heard throughout Albion.
A sound that would remind all who would dare to oppose me that I was not just a King.
I was their King.
And I would not allow any harm to befall them.