“Naturally,” the Administrator said, all humor vanished.
“Recently?” she asked. “How does Troy feel about your side project?” She was bluffing, but a voice inside said, Trust yourself. “After all, there are, what? Hundreds of restrictions involved in a retired planet’s preservation.”
“You can’t blackmail Mercer, my darling Ketchan. What proof could you even have?”
“There’s an entire planet of proof. Or has Mercer grown so overconfident that you’ve forgotten where we all came from?” She scrolled two-fingered down her watch face and projected the video of the leveling machinery consuming half-dead trees.
“That’s plenty, thank you.” The Administrator placed his small hand over her arm, stunting the image, while his nondescript eyes took on a flinty edge. “Lionel can have its water. You can have your little fake marriage. Happy?”
Gwen was looking at Ari like she’d never seen her before. Ari pulled Gwen to her feet, crossing to the exit, but his voice stopped them at the door.
“Ladies, before you go, we have an offer that you will, of course, refuse, and yet it will be such a good offer that neither of you will forget it. For as long as you live in your cinder-block castle on your little medieval bubble land, you’ll wonder what could have been.”
Gwen tugged on Ari’s arm. “Don’t listen.”
“As much water as you can store, whenever you want it,” he called after them. “And you can keep the planet. No Mercer strings attached. You, Ara, can give your adoptive parents back to your brother, unharmed. Well, as unharmed as they’ve managed to remain. Prison is no picnic, after all. You could even fetch them today, if you like. Which would be ideal. I hear there’s some sort of plague going around the cell block on Urite.”
Ari pulled out of Gwen’s hand to face the Administrator. “What price?”
“Just you.” He smiled. “Just you for a whole planet and your only surviving mothers.”
Ari saw through the Administrator’s words. Her first mother—the one he’d started this whole conversation teasing her about—was dead, and he knew how, when, why…
Ari’s mind burst with sudden memories. Explosions. Their spaceship was exploding, and she was alone, locked in a part of the ship far away from everyone she loved…
Where was the rest of that memory? What had happened before?
She grasped into the darkness and came up empty.
Gwen hauled Ari into the glass elevator with its panoramic, sinking view of Troy’s capital city.
Ari was still dazed, trying to process the burst of memory and the Administrator’s terrible offer. “Gwen, what if he’s telling the—”
“No.” Gwen paused the elevator, and they froze midair. “I don’t know about you, but I’d rather not have our first lover’s quarrel be about whether I should trade you in like a set of steak knives.” She took a deep, shaking breath. “I know you’re new to leading people, but you don’t make deals with a company like Mercer. You move to the other side of the galaxy and scratch out a living without them. You’re Ketchan, for crying out loud, Ari. Your people invented giving Mercer the middle finger. And what was that business about Old Earth?”
“Long story,” Ari said. “That was… I was just trying to make him fear the truth.”
“We have to get back to Lionel.” Gwen reached for the button, but Ari caught her hand.
“Gwen, what if there is a plague on Urite? What if my…” only surviving “… parents are about to die? We have to save them.”
“A prison break? Ari! Imagine what they’d do to my planet if I was associated with a prison break.” Her brown eyes were fiery, and if Ari hadn’t been steaming as well, she might have been entranced by how certain her wife always seemed. No matter what. Gwen knew her path. Her home. Ari would give just about anything for an ounce of that certainty.
Gwen’s fire quieted as she looked at Ari’s pained face. “Don’t take this as me condoning anything, but why don’t you talk to Merlin? Isn’t he your go-to man for all things illegal and outrageous? Perhaps he can wiggle his fingers and transport them to a safer place.”
At that moment, across the city, the sky exploded with fireworks.
Ari groaned. “Speak of the devil.”
“He’s shooting fireworks off in the city?” she yelled, hitting the elevator button.
“He can’t help it,” Ari said. “Dramatic soul.”
Once at ground level, they found Jordan and filed out of the state department. A crowd had gathered around Excalibur, the sword still stabbed through the center of the square. They were taking turns tugging on it. Beefy people, kids, old and young. Ari pushed through to the center, elbowing aside a muscled woman who would have given Jordan a run for her money.
Ari lifted Excalibur, drawing the point toward the fake sky easily. She was instantly relieved by the weight of the steel, how strong and eternal and unerringly good this blade felt in her hands. The crowd hushed, fell back. They took her in strangely.
Ari’s heart drilled a ferocious beat. This was the moment she’d feared since her moms had sat her down and explained that she was never to leave Error without them. That she was never to tell anyone she was Ketchan or speak her native language. When little Ari asked why, Captain Mom had seemed close to tears, and Mom answered, “Because too many people believe that difference is the enemy of unity.”
Were they staring now because they knew Ari was Ketchan—or because she was wielding a mythical sword? And why did they look like they wanted her to do something?
Ari tilted her head back as she took in the mammoth statue of the Mercer Company logo’s gold M. They’d stolen that letter, copyrighted it. Made it symbolic for everything and nothing. Hollow and yet harrowing. Like telling a girl that her mother had a determined heart—but that it hadn’t saved her. Like teasing that same girl about how the women who had raised her were probably dying of plague at that very moment.
“Lady, being your wife… does that mean I can commit crimes without being charged?”
“Up to a point, yes,” Gwen said, pinching her lips together. “Why?”
Ari sealed both hands on Excalibur, swinging it over her head and crying out as she brought it around her body and through the giant leg of the M. The statue did nothing at first. But then it groaned. And gave way to its broken side, the metal falling in a way that made Ari grab Gwen and pull her to safety. When it had finally flattened itself and fallen silent in the courtyard, Ari found Jordan’s eyebrow hitched in a surprised and yet approving way.
“Let me know if you ever want to train,” Jordan said with slight awe. “You have a gift.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
Gwen was chewing on a few choice words. She held up an accusing finger, and Ari had the urge to kiss it. “The next time you goad me about being dramatic, I’m going to say, Remember the M? And you’re going to apologize and kiss me like the universe is ending.”
Ari’s arm muscles pulled, a flash of nerves and desire that made it hard to drop Excalibur into the sheath at her back. “And what if the universe is actually ending?”
Then, from across the city, the entire planet started eerily chanting Merlin’s name.
“Merlin. Merlin. Merlin.”
The crowd kept flinging Merlin’s name at him, and not in a nice way. It cut into him, mocked him with a few millennia worth of regrets.
“Stop,” he mumbled. “Please.”
“MER-LIN.”
Morgana smirked, her bony, bluish hands levitating to increase the intensity of the cheer. She twisted her hands, curled her fingers, and closed them, cutting the crowd off like she was strangling air from hundreds of throats. Everyone from small children to Mercer associates in white suits stood rapt, mouths slightly parted.