Tomas was a merciful man.
He remembered the old days fondly. His job had been easier, once, when his ranks were filled with sorcerers who could stare into water and crystal and tell him not only what Camelot's enemies were planning now but what they would be planning two days from now.
The other nations had magic too, of course, counterspells and charms of their own, but only the Catha could really compete with Camelot on magic. Magic had made his people's craft safer, and it had offered him more options when dealing with enemies. It was easier to be merciful when treaties were magically binding.
Then magic itself had become the enemy, and mercy wasn't quite so easy anymore.
Nevertheless, Tomas was a merciful man. When Uther asked for a list of the magic users amongst his operatives, he had turned over only an incomplete list. He would save those he could.
(He stood in the courtyard behind his king while a man who had served him faithfully for years burned at the stake. The length of time he managed to hold back screams was a credit to his training.
Tomas made sure the man's family wasn't executed until he was gone. The man had been a faithful worker. He shouldn't have to watch.
Tomas was a merciful man.)
When he received orders to begin searching magic out, he began with the elders. They'd had more time to gather magical knowledge and were far more dangerous, and besides, their time was almost up anyway. It was better that way.
(The grandmother had been caught hiding twenty gifted children with spells of concealment. Tomas sent the knights in and warned them to take no prisoners.
The grandmother desperately tried to throw up a shield, but her magic was too weak. The knights rode her down, and then moved on to other, smaller forms -
They would not live to be drowned. Tomas was a merciful man.)
In time, of course, he couldn't trust even the operatives he had saved from the pyre. Loyalty only went so far in times like these. Something would have to be done.
(He needed them if he was to have any chance at warding off magical threats, and they had stuck by him this far. Take Raina for instance. She had stayed by him for twenty years, was as good as a daughter to him, and had lost two fingers saving him from an assassin's attack. She was the best scryer he had left. He couldn't turn her over to the pyre.
He had artifacts taken from the ruins of the Isle of Avalon: magical collars that bound obedience, rings that directed the wearer's magic to another's will, brands in the shape of runes that impressed one person's will on another's.
He did not kill them. Tomas was a merciful man.)
He hunted down the dragonlords, one by one.
("Tell me where they are," he told the prisoner. "Tell me where to find your brothers, and I will spare any women we find with them."
The dragonlord spat blood at him on the first day, and the second, and the third, and the -
But Tomas was patient, and his words were the truth. "If the king finds them first, he will not be so merciful. Come, Gareth. You can trust me. Why should I hurt them? They have no gift."
Tomas did his best to keep his word. He had no choice but to kill Lynette, unfortunately; her lack of magical gifts had not stopped her from learning how to use her husband's sword, but he spared the daughters.
He regretted that, later, when they learned how to make their knives dance, and they went after his men. Then, of course, he had to hunt them down.
He spared Lyonesse, though. She, alone among the others, had settled down quietly, so there was no reason for him to touch her. He was, after all, a merciful man.)
(It should have occurred to him sooner that there was a reason the dragons had never bonded with a woman, and it had nothing to do with dragons having human ideas about women's place. But that thought only came when one of his men had killed Morgan's son, and she had flown at him with no weapon but her teeth. Tomas stared at the man's corpse and decided that perhaps the dragons had enough bloodthirstiness of their own without adding a mother to the mix.
It might have occurred to him eventually that just because a baby was wrapped in a pink blanket and called Mary by a relative didn't mean they were a girl, and it would have, if it had been a woman saying it, but it hadn't occurred to him that a screaming six year-old would have the presence of mind to change her brother's name mid-scream.
It never occurred to him that just because the daughters of dragonlords had no powers didn't mean they had no gifts. Morgan's husband had been a dragonlord, so he knew to kill her son, but it never occurred to him that Lyonesse's daughters would grow up to have sons that could call down fire from the sky.)
Tomas's dreams ran red with blood, and he no longer trusted the men and women who worked for him, but he remained a merciful man. He did what he had to, nothing more.
He was a merciful man, not a young one, and the strain of living with the stress he had was intense.
A week after a new serving boy he was keeping a very close eye on entered Camelot, his heart finally gave out.
Or at least, that's what they say.
. . .
Matthias was a young man and new to the job. He didn't know all the tricks of the trade quite yet. Tomas had never trusted him with everything.
He would have to do things his own way, of course, and make his own mistakes.
("I fear my predecessor dabbled in magic, my lord," he told the king. "I will dismantle it, of course, but I fear it will hurt level of intelligence we have access to."
"Do it," the king ordered. "We must not be soft on this corruption."
Matthias was a young man, so it was understandable if he naively loosed the sorcerers from their collars instead of taking more permanent steps. How was he to know that the collars weren't just magic in and of themselves, they were built to control it in others?)
He got very good at finding assassins from Lot's kingdom and discovering Bayard's battle plans. Magic, however, continued to elude him.
(Yet somehow things always got taken care of in the end. He was a young man. It was understandable if he assumed some arm of Tomas's network was still working independently until he found a way to contact them.)
Then Arthur was king, and priorities shifted. Barons that had given Uther trouble paused to consider what they would gain and lose from this new king. Uther's old supporters began to balk at Arthur's somewhat laxer stance on magic.
(Matthias was a young man. He'd never gotten to know Agravaine all that well. It was understandable if he focused his attention on making sure the man didn't gather support at court. It was understandable if his man in the guard reported that someone followed Agravaine at night, and he decided to assume his people had shown initiative rather than look into the matter further. He was, after all, such a very young man.)
And his scouts helped them all survive Camlann, so who was going to complain?
("How did you never find out?" Merlin asked.
"When I took this position, I was a young man - "
"You started ten years ago, and you're sixty now. You were not a young man," Merlin said incredulously.
Matthias grinned a little sharply. "By the standards of dragons, we're all young, really.")
He was a young man (by some standards) and new to the job (because it was ever changing), so really, what did anyone expect?
(If they couldn't read between the lines and see behind the lies they all told themselves, they had no place in this business.)
