Val came around the corner, stripped of his period costume, wearing an I NEW NEW NEW YORK T-shirt. He looked alarmingly awake and full of functions that Merlin lacked.
“Are the newlyweds sleeping in?” Val asked, nodding at the door Jordan guarded. “Or skipping the sleep bit altogether?”
Merlin made a sound somewhere between a dying cat and a choking dog.
Val frowned at him. He grabbed Merlin’s arm and led him away, whispering, “You’ve been acting like we lived through an apocalypse instead of a fairly tame royal wedding. You should have seen Lionel’s last planet-wide ceremony. The debauchery after Gwen’s coronation went on for weeks. Gwen and I both lost our virginity. To the same boy, actually. Not at the same time.”
Merlin blushed, changing color like a chameleon who had forgotten he was supposed to be blending in. This was probably how chameleons wound up dead.
Val settled into one of Error’s many nooks, this one looking like the skeleton of a kitchen. It had a few small cupboards, a tiny table and chairs, and a water filtration system that hummed like an old friend. Merlin dove for it, putting his face shamelessly under the stream, but most of it ended up on his toes.
“So, Merlin, why is this marriage a cause for mourning?” Val asked sharply.
“It’s my fault,” Merlin blurted, tongue still dry. “If I’d been able to defend Ari against Mercer, or even better, taught her how to defend herself, she wouldn’t need this marriage.” That was step two. Train Ari. And all he’d managed to do was get her to tackle Kay in a courtyard.
“This might be the best possible thing for Ari,” Val said. “And before you object, I’m speaking less as a royal adviser and more as someone who’s known her since she was seven. She likes people who know their own minds. And Gwen’s mind is one of the most well-mapped on any planet. That girl does not leave things unfathomed.”
“Of course she’s smart and beautiful and wondrous,” Merlin said. None of those traits had ever stopped Gweneviere from breaking Arthur’s heart. In fact, her sheer amazingness only multiplied the pain when things came to an inevitable, crashing end. “You don’t understand,” Merlin said. “It’s not your fault that you don’t.”
“Okay,” Val said, leaning forward. “That’s your cue to explain.”
“Ari is the forty-second reincarnation of—”
“She told me that,” Val said, startling Merlin. Ari had talked about being Arthur?
“What did she say?”
Val flashed him a smile so bright Merlin’s headache flared. “All kinds of things while you were dancing with your robe pulled up to your thighs. Nice calves, by the way.”
Merlin groaned.
“But I’m asking about you,” Val said, finding two cups and filling them with water. “You’re the real mystery here.” He held one out and Merlin drank, playing for time. The truth was that he had no idea where he came from. He’d arrived in the first Arthur’s era, old and magical, with a tiny wooden falcon clutched in his hand.
That falcon had given him his name. Merlin.
Remembering before that—or perhaps beyond it—was as impossible as seeing the future of this cycle. “Here’s what you need to know about me,” Merlin said, downing the last of the water. “I keep coming back and back and back, and I can’t seem to make things better. You’ve heard of King Arthur?” Val nodded, curious and wary. “I’m the Merlin who serves Arthur.”
Val cocked his head. “If you’ve been at this since the original Arthur, how old does that make you?”
“Seventeen, apparently,” Merlin muttered.
Val refilled his cup, his slim back to Merlin. He had always dreaded talking about his age, and with every back step toward childhood, that dread doubled. “Is it possible your problem with Gwen and Ari’s marriage is about you? Living that long sounds like a recipe for baggage.”
Oh, good. A topic he liked even less than aging backward. “I sleep through entire centuries, so my burdens are lighter than you might think. And remember, I survived the era of psychology. You can’t pull any tricks on me.”
“I’m just trying to help.” Val turned, his lips beaded with water and demanding all of Merlin’s attention. “I thought I would only see you for a few hours yesterday, and here we are, sailing to Troy together. I’ve decided that’s a sign we should be kissing, at the very least. If you’re interested. But we should get to know each other first.”
The combination of Val’s matter-of-fact tone and the word kissing swirled together, making Merlin faintish. “What could you possibly want to know?”
Val sat on one of the tiny chairs, and when Merlin rushed to join him, their knees knocked. Merlin’s pulse answered in kind. “Start with the good stuff,” Val said, leaning forward with a smirk that could have killed Merlin, if Merlin was killable. “If you’ve been around that long, you must have fallen in love.”
Merlin had held back the truth for too long, and it rushed out. “Once.” It felt good to admit that—until it felt awful.
“What was this person’s name?”
Merlin winced. “Art.”
“Art?” Val said, with a deliberate blink. “You fell in love with one of your Arthurs?” He put a hand to his face, a grin shining between his fingers. “Oh, that is scandalous.”
Merlin talked fast to cover the fact that he was shaking under his robes. “He wasn’t the best of the Arthurs. He wasn’t the bravest or the most heroic. He was clever, though. And he said the most bluntly ridiculous things.”
So much about the cycles blurred, but Merlin could remember Art perfectly—a dark-haired man with melting brown eyes. They had kissed in the forest, under trees that seemed to hide them from an unfriendly sky. They had loved each other in a time when people pretended such things weren’t happening. Weren’t possible. And under the cover of that chosen ignorance, they had given each other words and promises and reasons to gasp.
“And then what?” Val asked, his much darker brown eyes wide and waiting.
“He died,” Merlin said. But that wasn’t true. Or at least, it was only half true. “I age backward, slowly. His death was all that could come to pass. So I… ended things between us.”
Val shifted back and looked at Merlin from a distance. “You forced yourself not to care about someone because you thought it wouldn’t end well? You really are old, aren’t you?”
A dry sound of disapproval rose from Merlin’s throat. “That’s like saying you’re eight years old because you used to be eight. I used to be an old man, but I’m not anymore. I’m aging, much the same as all of you are. I just happen to be the only one going in the opposite direction. And Ari is the last chance I have to stop getting younger,” Merlin said, his voice cracking, and this time not because of blaring hormones. “I tried to train her on Lionel, but she was barely interested. And now…” Now she was stuck in Kay’s bedroom, with Gweneviere of all people.
Merlin looked down again—at some point during this conversation Val’s hand had taken up residence on his arm. “What kind of training?”
Merlin described the game he’d created for Ari with half of his mind, while the other half told him, over and over, about Val’s hand touching the spot near his elbow, as if he didn’t already know. Merlin shifted his entire body closer. The metal chair screeched under him.
“You say you’ve seen a lot of Arthurs,” Val said, “but I’ve seen a lot of Ari. We’ve been friends since we were young enough to get into the mermaids’ grove on Lionel for free.”
“Mermaids?” Merlin asked, tempted to launch into a mini-lecture on historical accuracy.
Val rubbed his hand up and down Merlin’s arm, and the lecture vanished. “If you want her to train, you have to give her something real to do. Games are fake to her, and Ari doesn’t do fake. That’s why she objected at top volume to knight camp.”
“Hmmm,” Merlin grumbled.
And then he started, gently, to float.
He wasn’t the only one—Val was floating, as well as their
cups and a few beads of water. “What’s this?” Merlin asked, as Val propelled himself out of the tiny kitchen to investigate.
In the main cabin, Lam seemed to have woken up mid-float. Jordan’s armor lifted away from her body. Excalibur had started spinning. “Oh, excellent,” Merlin said. “A naked sword in free float.”
“Dude,” Lam said, their dreads floating above their face as they giggled. “Naked sword.”
“What is happening on this cursed ship?” Jordan cried.
Kay clomped in on locking magboots, pointing toward the far door. “I turned off the gravity so my sister can’t do anything in my bedroom.”
“You mean, anything else,” Lam said.
“You’re going out the airlock,” Kay promised, with a sharply pointed finger. “I had the weirdest drunk dream that Ari cut her hair, and she would not stop making out with Gwen.” He glared at Merlin. “And you wouldn’t stop hugging me.”
“You two are being ridiculous yet again,” Val said, crossing his arms as the rest of him drifted. “Gwen would never move so fast with a consort. This is a political marriage, first and foremost. If she and Ari do end up together in a romantic sense, it will happen in its own time.”
Merlin’s hope perked. “You think they might not be…?”
A sound spread from Kay’s room.
An unmistakable, moaning, gasping sound.
“Sounds like the zero-grav just gave them a new challenge,” Lam said. “Get it, girls!”
“No! Absolutely not!” Kay stomped for the ship’s controls, and everything tumbled down. Merlin fell, chin first, on the hard metal floor, giving him a perfect view of Excalibur. The sword stopped spinning, the blade penetrating the round table with a slick sheening sound that left the entire spaceship in postcoital silence.
While the rest of Ari’s knights snickered, Merlin groaned. “I loathe that sword’s sense of humor.”
When Ari and Gwen emerged from Kay’s room, hours later, they looked a mess, and they acted like strangers. Gwen’s long hair had been freed from its braids, rippling over one of Ari’s old T-shirts, nearly reaching her tiny shorts. Somehow she looked even more regal—like a queen in the marketplace, trying to pass for a commoner. Ari edged around her, nervous.
Jordan greeted Gwen with a little feast on a tray. “You didn’t need to do this,” Gwen said sweetly as she seized a piece of toast and held it out to Ari.
Lancelot.
Jordan’s name was wrong, but that happened—the cycle couldn’t always give Merlin a 100 percent match, especially when cultural differences came into play. It wasn’t reasonable to expect an Arthur and Percival and Lancelot in feudal Japan or Renaissance Italy. It was character that truly defined someone’s role in the cycle. Lam had the undying loyalty of their predecessors; this Lamarack wasn’t the first to lose a hand in the service of King Arthur. Val was the descendant of the driven, clever knight who had found the Holy Grail, though he’d never been quite this compellingly gorgeous. Jordan possessed the shining excellence, unbridled chivalry, and love for Gweneviere that added up to Ari’s annihilation.
Gwen and Ari brought their breakfast to the tiny round table, a nearby window providing a scenic view of the Mercer ships. Soon they were all watching the fleet like it was a terrible TV show.
“What happens when we get to Troy?” Ari asked, eyes hard on the white vessels.
“They’ll march us to the galactic state department like criminals,” Gwen said. “Not my preferred way to make an entrance.”
Merlin thought of what Val had said about giving Ari something real for her training—something that mattered. “Unless they can’t get out of their ships,” Merlin said. Everyone looked at him. “What if we sealed them inside of their vessels? Then you would arrive on Troy without their shadows looming over you.”
“That’s not going to change Mercer’s game,” Lam said.
Merlin had to prepare Ari for an inevitable standoff with Mercer. He might have failed to keep her safe from Gwen, but that made it all the more important to train her for this. “When you want to become a dragon slayer, you don’t charge straight into the nest, swords swinging,” Merlin said. “You sneak in and steal a few coins from his hoard first.”
“What if the dragon worked hard for that money?” Lam asked. “You don’t know his life. And how do you even know the dragon’s a…”
“He’s a boy dragon!” Merlin roared.
“Sure thing, old man,” Kay said, slapping his arm.
“What?” Merlin asked. “Val, did you tell all of them that I age backward?”
Val shrugged. “It came up naturally.”
“How does something like that come up naturally?”
“Ari knows dragons. Don’t they have dragons on Ketch?” Lam asked.
“Taneens are really, really big lizards,” Ari said. “I wouldn’t call them dragons.”
“They’re totally dragons,” Kay faux-whispered from behind his hand.
“I’m sorry, are we discussing dragons or Merlin’s idea to fuck with Mercer?” Val asked, smiling at Merlin as if he’d found a way to be helpful. The group turned to Merlin—except Ari. She seemed to be considering his idea.
“It’ll be safer to slip through Troy without a Mercer escort.”
“Plus arriving under guard will undermine our marriage claim, which is definitely their goal,” Gwen added.
Kay crossed his arms. “So, you’re going to use your magic to seal their doors, right?”
“I believe I should save my magic for Troy, if this planet is half as horrific as everyone thinks,” Merlin said.
“Yes,” Jordan tutted. “You should save your ‘magic.’”
Merlin felt his face screw up tightly like a small, affronted child. He had to turn her into a newt. He had no choice. He raised one hand, and Ari clamped it down to his side.
“Leave Merlin be. He proves his magic best when he waits for the right moment.”
“I’ve seen his magic,” Lam put in.
“Me, too,” Kay grumbled.
“I’d love to see it,” Val purred, causing Merlin to tingle and forget completely about Jordan.
“So a spacewalk,” Lam said, bringing them back to the plan. “A dangerous one.”
“I’ve been stuck in this ship too long,” Ari said, standing with a grand flourish of a smile. “A walk outside sounds good.”
“Ari…” Gwen said. Ari looked at her like she was waiting for Gwen’s argument. An intense spark passed between them, until Gwen snuffed it out. “Seal those bastards in tight.”
Through the window, Ari studied the Mercer ships attached to Error by a network of docking cables. They were caught like a fly in the center of a shimmering, metallic spiderweb.
“We’ll use the cables,” she said, making it sound easy.
“No one’s going out there while we’re moving,” Kay said. “That’d be an ugly death.”
Ari turned to her brother, and Merlin could almost see her brain scheming. “Can you break Error?”
“What?”
“Just a little,” Ari said. “She has to be actually broken, though, so the Mercer ships will stop. Then you can fix her. After the doors are sealed.”
“I would need someone on the ship’s controls while I was in the engine,” Kay said, putting a protective hand on the nearest part of Error.
“I can do it,” Jordan said, standing at the ready.
Kay blinked. “You… fly, too?”
Merlin indulged in his first true teenage eye-roll.
“You think a ship like this is a challenge?” Jordan asked.
“It took me six years to learn her, inside and out,” Kay shot back.
“Give me six minutes,” Jordan said, shattering Kay’s pride and flicking away the pieces. She strode toward the cockpit with her wide gait, armor clanking. Kay watched her go with renewed fire, as if somehow this exchange had only made her hotter.
“Ugh, boys,” Val said.
“I believe the phrase you’
re looking for is straight boys,” Merlin corrected.
“What is straight?” Lam asked, furrowing their brow.
“Oh, goodness,” Merlin said. “Well, it’s when a person has attractions to people who are on the other binary end of the… ummm…”
“They’re messing with you, Merlin,” Ari said, unable to keep the truth back, or maybe she didn’t like watching him wriggle like a trout on the line. Merlin felt fairly sure he had just outed himself to everyone on the ship, something he had never done in all the cycles.
And it felt strangely, shockingly, fine.
“Gwen,” Ari continued. “I want you in the cockpit with Jordan, ready to talk to the associates.”
Merlin yelped, wanting to keep Gwen and Jordan apart at all costs. “I can stay in the cockpit and talk to Mercer. I’m well versed in villains.” He thought about Morgana, his own personal, evil shadow.
“They’ll be nicer to a queen than a fictional magician,” Ari said. Before Merlin had the chance to bridle at the description, she’d moved on. “Besides, I already know what everyone is doing. Val and Lam, you’ll work Error’s airlock.”
Ari’s leadership was emerging, as simply and powerfully as Excalibur being drawn from a sheath. Merlin watched delightedly as she proved that she could ace her training. Ari wasn’t relying solely on impulse. She wasn’t attempting to do it all on her own. She was planning, orchestrating—bringing people together to accomplish more than they could by themselves. It was a large part of what made an Arthur great. The first King Arthur’s round table was the greatest legend he’d left behind, and all because he’d brought knights together like this. It had seemed improbable at first. A smile crept onto Merlin’s face as he remembered the piping, runty boy who’d become the first Arthur.
Ari was curvier, and her voice actually a bit lower, but she had the same bright look on her face as she turned to Merlin. “You and I have the best job of all.”
Once & Future Page 9
