Granted, an open courtyard in the heart of Mercer country wasn’t the best place for a magic battle, but he was making do. He would not let Morgana get to Ari. He would exhaust her cruel, cold magic on himself, if he had to. That was the plan. It was a terrible plan.
Merlin stumbled to one knee, shaking. He braced his head with his palm and closed his eyes… falling back to earlier that day, when he’d promised Ari he would keep her friends safe. He’d watched her walk away, striding after Gweneviere, as he filled with foolish hope that things would be different this time. That he truly was one of this band.
The hope was faraway now, a hazy thing he could no longer touch.
How had he gotten here? Leveled by Morgana… on purpose?
After parting from Ari, Merlin had followed the boys and Lam deep into Troy and found Mercer’s influence smeared across the planet-wide city like white blood. The associates who wore bleached suits and blank features were the least of it. Every store was overstocked with Mercer products. Merlin wondered how anyone could breathe, and yet he also remembered the start of this. By the last cycle, heaps of goods and sundries had been considered necessary to life in almost every nation on Earth. Merlin had drawn the line at loofahs. They were puffy yet abrasive. No matter how many centuries he’d strolled through, he couldn’t quite understand the appeal of needing to own everything.
“How are so many people shopping in the middle of the day?” Merlin asked. “Don’t they have work? Families to tend to?” The people in the lines looked edgy, nervous, as they studied the contents of their carts and baskets.
“The government on Troy gives everyone shopping breaks,” Val said in a gruff voice that Merlin was not acquainted with.
“That’s… thoughtful?” Merlin tried.
Val shook his head and whispered in a way that tugged Merlin closer. “They put a quota on how much a person needs to buy from Mercer every day if they want to stay on Troy. Anyone who doesn’t meet the quota gets shipped to a much less livable planet. Anyone who runs out of money gets kicked off, too. It didn’t used to be this bad, but when the Ketchans disappeared behind the barrier and took the last of the resistance with them, Mercer took it as their cue to ramp things up.”
Merlin noticed someone at the front of a line whose basket must have been too skimpy. They were escorted away by Mercer associates, as everyone around them rushed from the scene. “Why isn’t anyone speaking up? Stopping this?” Merlin asked, piping and reedy in a way that would have been mortifying if he wasn’t so outraged.
“They’d get sent away for being agitators, of course,” Val said, hooking his arm through Merlin’s to keep them together in the pushing, hard-breathing crowd. “Did I mention that Mercer assigns a lifetime’s worth of debt when they ship you off-planet? Transportation fees.”
Merlin’s magic prickled inside his hands, as if each finger was tipped with a stinger. He hummed a tuneless song—no time for pretty melodies—and blasted the Mercer associates holding the shopper. They flew backward, landing in a fountain with an impressive splash as the shopper ran off.
Would Ari be proud of him for doing that, or upset that he’d put her friends in danger by possibly drawing attention to them? Wheeling away, Merlin did his best to look like an innocent Trojan instead of an agitator. But oh, how he wanted to agitate.
Merlin went back to the promise of the cycle. Ari was in the galactic state department right now, being officially declared Gwen’s consort. That was as close to a king as Merlin had gotten in a dozen cycles. There had been a civil rights leader, a president, a rock star—all kings in their own way. Soon Ari would be cosmic royalty, which meant the next step was coming, head-on.
Defeat the greatest evil in the universe.
Mercer.
“Hey, guys!” Lam cried, as they passed a food stall that emitted a sweet warm smell like melted heaven. “They have a Honeybun.”
Merlin was starving, and his feet hooked him around to the end of the line with very little input from his brain. Two maple cream donuts later, he had slightly revised his stance on Troy. People did need to eat more than dehydrated packets of space food, after all. Could he still think Mercer’s influence was corrupt and oppressive while licking sugar off of his fingers?
Yes. Yes, he could.
“I can’t believe you eat this stuff,” Val said, tugging at Merlin, who had already gotten in line for another dozen to bring back to the ship. “It was Lam’s favorite on Pluto, and we didn’t have much of anything there, but still.”
Merlin’s curiosity prickled. Val had asked so many questions about Merlin back on Error, and now he wanted to pose as many in return. What had his childhood been like? Pluto sounded like a hardscrabble planet, although Val had a sense of beauty and refinement Merlin found rare in any time and place. Val also had a way of rubbing at the back of his shaved head when he was worked up over something, showing off the lines of his neck where it shaded into his slim but strong shoulders, and then…
A sickly, electric rush flowed through Merlin’s body.
Not hormones this time.
He had walked straight through Morgana.
“You really don’t notice what is right in front of your face,” she said with a low laugh that hit Merlin’s spine like a crackle of static. She looked out of place in the daylight, but no one else seemed to notice the ancient enchantress on their commutes. People flowed around her as if she wasn’t there at all.
Merlin sighed. “It was only a matter of time before you found me.”
Morgana’s forehead might not have been covered in real skin, but it could still knot with disappointment. “That’s what lazy people say. Time heals all wounds. These things take time. It’s only a matter of… time. You and I have been here long enough to know that’s not true. Wounds fester, and time changes nothing.”
Merlin would never admit it to Morgana, but she was right. Troy, for instance, might look and taste and feel like the future, but this was just a new kind of Dark Age. The path humans took through time was less the mythical arrow of progress, and more of a squiggle that doubled back on itself, curling and looping. A roller coaster designed by a drunkard.
If things truly got better, Morgana couldn’t have given him a head full of the terrible happenings since the last Arthur. His brain served them up in king-size portions. Rampant fire. Choking floods. Clouds that smeared the sky with toxins. People trampling over each other to leave Earth, and then scattering so far and wide they could no longer help each other without a company like Mercer sliding in to fill the void.
This was why people needed Arthur.
“Are you two old friends?” Lam asked, stepping forward with interest.
She gave them a smile she had honed to a blade over the centuries. “I hate Merlin with the venom of an adder, the rage of a forest fire, and the vigor of a woman making love.”
“So… no,” Lam said. They stepped back, tugging Val and Kay.
“Go,” Merlin said, flinging a hand to send the knights toward Ari, and safety. “Leave Morgana to me.”
“I’d rather have them stay,” Morgana said, and the words were like concrete pouring around the ankles of Val and Lam and Kay, sticking them in place.
“What the hell?” Kay asked.
“It’s mind magic,” Merlin barked.
“Really? It feels pretty damn physical to me.”
“Don’t worry, meaty little mortal. You have your own will,” Morgana said, advancing toward Kay one step at a time. “It’s what I’m using against you. Brute force will only get a person—a government, a company—so far. Dig an inch below the surface, and you discover what someone wants, which can be used to nudge them.”