King's Justice: The Knights of Breton Court, Volume 2 by Maurice Broaddus Page B

their bond. "Can I get your advice on something?"
      "Most people don't want advice, only agreement."
      "I want your honest opinion."
      "I know nothing but half-truths and veiled interpretations, but I'll do my best."
      "What do you think of Lady G?"
      Merle tapped his lip with his sooty forefinger. "If I should tell you she was a poor choice, young, foolish, and empty-headed, would you believe me?"
      "She's not even close to that." King's pulse quickened, as if his heart reared at a threat to be confronted. Something about Lady G stirred an over-protectiveness within him, as if he couldn't stand even the thought of anyone speaking ill of her. "That's not the woman I know."
      "A grown man fixed by a girl." Merle etched his finger into the table, drawing pictures only his mind envisioned. "What if the girl was not a girl?"
      "A monster? An enchantment?" King's mind raced with possibilities. Anything to explain the… hesitation he felt with her.
      "No. A plug."
      "What?"
      "She stops up the hole in you." Merle adjusted the fit of his cap as if tuning in the proper signal. "Somewhere between birth and burial, people learned to twist the simple longings in their hearts – rest, belonging, affection, validation, peace – and tried to fill them with other things. Food. Drugs. Sex. Yet try as they might, the hole remained."
      "Try again."
      "I see that's too much for you to get your mind around, O Hesistant Spirit. Let's try this more practically then. What if I was to say she would betray you for another, perhaps one of your closest; would you believe me?"
      "I'd say you were way off. She's not that type of girl, Merle."
      Merle threw his head back and began to sing. " When a man loves a woman…"
      "I haven't said anything about love."
      "Here's the thing about love," Merle continued, ignoring him. "It goes against the laws governing the universe. Laws of probability. Laws of nature. Laws of common sense. None of them need apply. Love trumps all."
      "It all comes down to the right girl."
      "The future is like love: something we don't have the luxury to believe in," Merle sniffed. "I need to attend to the others."
     
    Little more than a fallen museum, a curator preserving theologies no longer relevant to the community it served, a layer of dust settled upon the church like a burial shroud. Three chairs presided on a raised platform behind a toppled altar. Promises of health and wealth reverberated in the empty anteroom, echoing only along the cobwebs strung between the chairs. The choir loft cracked under its own weight, a broken bow on the ship of the church stage; an abandoned stage whose dwindling audience found better speakers, better empty promises, or greener pastures to lose themselves in.
      His steps pronounced and precise, a boy entered with the solemnity of a wedding's ring-bearer. Except instead of a ring, he carried a white gun – with a pearl handle grip and white shaft – rested atop a purple pillow. With each footfall, flames erupted from candle stands. Two boys, both with the scrawny physique of angry twigs, trailed him, each holding candelabras with five candles.
      Last in the processional was a young girl, short and curvy with engorged breasts. Her arms outstretched before her as she held a cup. Pure gold inlaid with precious stones, the cup produced its own luminescence. The hall filled with a suffuse light, dimming the lights produced by the candles. The girl turned and presented the cup to Percy.
      "What do you think it means?" Percy asked, his voice held the slightest hitch of a restrained stammer.
      "Means you dream of being a pimp," Merle said.
      "Really?" Percy sat up, surprised at himself.
      "Simple Percy, pure and true. Simple Percy, purehearted fool."
      "I'm not stupid." Percy's eyes turned downward, stung by the words of someone he wanted to be his friend. Merle put his hand on the boy's beefy shoulder.
      "No, no