“Gweneviere,” Val said. “Queen Gweneviere.”
“That’s right up your game, huh, magician?” Kay asked, delighted. He turned to Val. “Is she in the market for a consort? I’ll bet marrying Gwen would get Mercer off our back.”
Val laughed heartily. “Oh, yes, Kay, do place yourself in the running. The sign-up for consideration is right over there.” He pointed to the tournament ring. “All you’ll have to do is defeat the queen’s champion—who has destroyed a hundred and seventeen contenders to date—but I bet you’re up for it. Tell me, how did you get that black eye?” Val winked in Ari’s direction, as if he knew her handiwork a mile away.
Trumpets bayed, and a uniformed person announced that the tournament would begin in three hours’ time.
“Three hours?” Kay cried. “We can’t wait around that long. Mercer will eventually catch up to us. What are we going to do? Challenge them to a duel?”
“That’ll be short enough,” Ari said breezily. “You and Lam failed knight camp, what, four summers in a row?”
Merlin’s hopes scattered like a cone of perfectly roasted nuts in the mud. “They failed?”
“Who needs to be a knight when you can be an outlaw?” Lam asked with a rueful laugh, spinning back to Val. “I know this is not your preferred life path, but you need to come with us. Mercer is not kidding.” No one mentioned Lam’s hand; no one had to.
As much as Merlin wanted to stay on Lionel, he didn’t want Ari facing Mercer until she was ready.
That was how his Arthurs died.
Val sighed. “Come to the tournament. Mercer isn’t invited, and if they do crash the party, Gwen will knock them out of the sky. After, I’ll think about going with you. But only if my queen agrees. She might have given Ari a run for her money, and tossed handkerchiefs at Kay,” he shuddered, “but she’s the best damn sovereign Lionel’s ever had. She needs me.”
Ari clenched with determination. Merlin couldn’t help thinking she’d need very different weapons to face this Gweneviere. He could see only one thing to be done: prevent them from interacting. Merlin could do that, couldn’t he? He was a magician, after all. And Gweneviere breaking Arthur’s heart was a repetition Merlin was most keen on avoiding. This cycle was already so different. This could be different, too.
No devastating heartbreak. No finding this Arthur on all fours, weeping so hard that not even one of Merlin’s famous indoor downpours could conceal it. He imagined Ari’s predecessors in that broken position; updating it with her image made him sick.
Of course, there had been one Arthur who had no interest in Gweneviere.
And Merlin had made him weep the hardest.
Merlin mustered his most mature voice. “We should avoid this queen’s business.”
“Agreed.” Val looked them over one by one. “Another thing. If you want to stick around, you need to change. Plenty of shops here sell appropriate garb.”
“Garb?” Kay asked, as if the word was making him as uncomfortable as the clothes inevitably would.
“Your fiery-haired friend can keep his robes,” Val added. It took Merlin a quick beat to realize Val meant him. He kept forgetting his hair was red instead of gray. That bother aside, he felt more than a little proud that Val had singled him out—or at the very least, his attire.
“He’s the only one with good clothes?” Kay asked, pointing at Merlin. “Him?”
“The rest of you look so… future-y,” Val said in a distinctly pained way. “Come find me at the tournament ring when you can blend in.”
Merlin waited in a small courtyard as everyone else got dressed in the public restrooms. The result was a buffet of Old Earth costumes. Kay wore highly anachronistic cargo shorts that would have made him look like any white American teenage boy of the late twentieth century if they hadn’t been paired with a billowing linen blouse and bracers on his wrists. Lamarack looked slightly better in dark-blue leggings and a tunic that showed off how broad they were in the shoulders. Ari had picked a shirt with a crosshatch of leather cords at the chest, and a shiny leather pauldron.
“Hey, that thing on your arm looks cool,” Kay said. “Let me wear it.”
She dodged Kay’s unsubtle grab. Merlin had never seen a Kay-and-Arthur pair act so much like true siblings. It was… refreshing, really. Ari patted the fitted and oiled scales of the pauldron, then drew Excalibur from the sheath on her back—another gift of the Lionel market. “At least she fits in,” Ari said, staring at the sword with the sort of approval Merlin wished she would point at him.
“Yes,” Kay said. “That’s what I’m worried about. How your sword feels.” He stomped around, facing Merlin. “It’s new-face time.”
“Pardon?” Merlin asked.
“We have new clothes,” Kay said, slowing his explanation to an insulting trot. “Now give us new faces so Mercer won’t be able to pick us out of the crowds.”
“My magic isn’t boundless,” Merlin said.
“What exactly can it do?” Ari asked, sitting down on the stone wall of the courtyard, one knee up, casual in a way that made it clear she cared far too much about the answer.
Merlin put on his best all-knowing voice, dry and authoritative as the pages of an old tome. “I have the ability to warp existing physical realities. My magic can be drained, of course. Which means that after flying from Earth to moon, creating a lightning bolt, and making extra Kays, I’m a tad exhausted.” He hummed again, and a small pink lizard appeared in his palm.
“Aw, cute,” Lam said, patting the lizard with a finger.
Merlin’s lips pinched. “I was trying to make a dragon.” He shook his head, the lizard disappearing in a puff as Lam drew back. “That’s the other bit. My magic is temporal, which means that anything I create has to be sustained by me.”
“Sorry, Kay,” Ari said, slapping him in the blouse. “No permanent face replacements.”
Lam winked at Ari. “We shouldn’t have gotten his hopes up for trading that one in.”
“We’ll just have to fight off Mercer the old-fashioned way.” She leaped to standing on the stone wall and took a few practice stabs at the air. Light streamed along Excalibur’s blade and her long hair, which she’d freed from its ties. Even if she hadn’t been covered in golden rays, she would have looked heroic to Merlin. Arthur always looked most like a storybook hero before he had to face the true darkness of the cycle.
“Let’s begin our training,” he said nervously, trumpets lighting the air. It took him a moment to realize that the trumpets were not just in his head but thundering across the village grounds.
“Two hours to the tournament,” Lam said, interpreting the horns.
“Hours, truly? I’ve even heard you mention years,” Merlin noted. “Are these not time constructs of Earth?”
“Old Earth calendar,” Kay said, fighting with the laces on his period-appropriate boots. “It’s the standard on most planets and in space.”
“And you all speak English,” Merlin said. “Mighty interesting surprise there.” Ari pointed her sword at Merlin and spouted a string of words he didn’t quite catch, in a language he was only somewhat familiar with. “And you speak Arabic, apparently.”
“I speak Ketchan,” Ari corrected.
“We’re speaking Mercer, dude,” Lam said.
“Beg your pardon?”
“This language is called Mercer.”
Merlin leveled his British shoulders. “It is not. Or at least it was not.”
“Ketch is the only planet that’s been able to hold on to their culture. We speak Mercer because that’s the only language Mercer lets us access,” Lam said, darkly. “Which is supposedly unifying.”
“What a business, this Mercer. To co-opt cultures like a fish swallowing smaller fish…” Merlin shivered. “I don’t like it.” He glanced up at the spot where Ari had been sitting a moment ago. “Where did Ari go?”