“You want me to revive it with magic!” Merlin shouted, hoping he could still save the day, even though he was the one who’d put them in so much danger in the first place.
“We need you to save your strength. Besides, the ship has to fly on its own if we’re to have any real chance.” Gwen’s eyes skipped over him, to Kay. “Let’s have the only person in this company who’s lived in a spaceship since birth take a look at the machinery.”
“What?” Kay asked. “No.” Gwen’s brown-eyed stare was weighty, a weapon that bludgeoned Kay better than any words. “I can’t fly your castle!” he insisted.
“Sounds like a personal problem,” Val muttered.
“You three,” Gwen said, her gaze picking out Val, Merlin, and Kay. “Come.”
Jordan frowned openly at Gwen’s choices. “My queen, I could help—”
“I need you to lead our people to safety. We have precious little time. Mercer will have to drain the mercury moat before they invade, but that still only gives us minutes,” Gwen said, cutting off the knight with a hand to the back of her neck. She set her forehead against Jordan’s. “Today is the death of our dream, old friend. We can’t let everyone die with it. Get our people to the evacuation points.”
Jordan gave a deep nod and rushed away.
Gwen pulled open the hidden metal door, revealing a set of stairs. The rest of the party descended into a set of close chambers that Gwen navigated with quick, nervous steps, the light of her candle throwing shadows on the metal walls, while the cannon fire above grew apocalyptic. Gwen finally stopped and shoved a box of tools in Kay’s hands. The hope on her face was the most aching thing Merlin had seen since Ari’s death. “Please,” she said.
“I can’t promise anything, spaceship-wise,” Kay said carefully. “Error is the biggest thing I’ve ever flown. And I’m not going to say a word against her, but… she’s no castle.”
“More like a flying broom closet,” Val said.
Gwen pointed Kay in the direction of the main console. It looked like all of the computers Merlin had seen over the course of a very long lifetime had been melted together. “The principles are the same,” Gwen promised.
“Yeah,” Kay said. “But doom is in the details.”
Twenty minutes later, Kay was swearing at a wall of metal. Gwen and Val had disappeared to check on the castle attendants and get a progress report.
“I’ve gone through the motions, and she won’t start.” Kay punched a few buttons with a sudden ferocious energy.
“Is it really so different from Error?” Merlin asked.
“My baby,” Kay said longingly. Then he swallowed with the grim determination of a man about to embrace his last resort. “Whenever Error gets fussy, I, uh, sweet-talk her a bit. Could you maybe turn around?”
Merlin spun in a half-circle before he fully understood what he’d agreed to.
“Hey there,” Kay said. “I know we don’t know each other so well, but we’re in this together so… let’s make it happen. Okay?” He paused, and Merlin could only imagine that he was pressing buttons. Or caressing them. “Yeah. That’s a good place to start, you pretty castle.”
Merlin’s cheeks flared with the kind of heat that would kill a lesser mortal. This felt like a fitting punishment for shutting off the barrier and refusing to kiss Val… listening to Kay sweet-talk a spaceship was the kind of mortification he deserved.
“All right, that’s good,” Kay said. “Yeah. Now we’re getting somewhere.”
Merlin thought he would faint from relief at the sight of Gwen and Val running down the stairs with several attendants in tunics and leggings and soft leather boots. His reprieve was short-lived, however.
“Mercer drained the moat,” Val said. “We have about two minutes before the whole castle is crawling with associates.”
Kay coughed.
Merlin stepped forward, somehow becoming the ambassador for the most embarrassing mission ever. It had gone from an absurd possibility to their only shot at escape. “We have a bit of an issue,” Merlin said. “The ship is in need of… encouragement.”
“Did you hear me say two minutes?” Val asked.
Kay let out the sigh of a condemned man. He turned back to the consoles. “Hey, sweet thing. Heyyyy. Don’t be jumpy like that. You’re doing fine. Just tell me what you need.”
Shock pried Gwen’s mouth open.
Kay pressed a string of buttons. “Okay, so I think I’ve got you configured, and since your main system generates its own power, you just need a spark, baby.” He looked to Merlin.
Merlin fired up his fingers, hummed a slow jam to fit the mood, and hit the spot Kay was pointing to with a weak, sickly bolt.
The room fell silent—the cannons had stopped firing. Merlin cast a look around at Gwen and Kay and Val, trying to memorize their faces so he would remember them as well as he remembered Ari when they were dead two minutes from now.
Then the consoles gave off a dusty-hot breath. The spaceship lifted from the surrounding rock with a catastrophic crash, and everyone was tossed to the side. Merlin grabbed a hard metallic corner, wishing it were softer and Val-shaped.
“You’re going to be the first castle in space, baby,” Kay said, patting the nearest panel. “That’s pretty hot.”
There were five meeting points outside the city, each one holding a well-concealed pocket of a hundred or more Lionelians. In the distance, they watched the Mercer forces overrun their city, burning the marketplace, shelling the tournament ring.
At the final meeting point, Error waited, a dark speck against the honeyed sunset. This place was so beautiful, and Mercer had just ripped out its beating heart so that its loyal customers could have luxury condos on stolen worlds.
“Should one of us stay with the evacuees?” Val asked as the castle doors swung closed, everyone safely inside and the controls handed over to Gwen’s most trusted tactical adviser.
“We’ll lead them from Error,” Gwen said darkly. Merlin could tell that she was worried about the Administrator’s next moves. Gwen might still be marked, even though they’d taken Lionel. She was keeping her people safe by keeping her distance, and it stung her as acutely as losing the entire planet, he could tell.
Error soared through the clear skies. Apparently, Mercer didn’t care about chasing them down as long as they won and took what was wrongfully theirs. Gwen sat in a tight ball, her knees meeting her chest. This was the other part of choosing to be on a small, private ship. She didn’t want to show her people her grief.
“I’m sorry,” Merlin said, laying his failure at her feet. “My magic shouldn’t have faltered.”
Gwen shook her head bitterly, and he thought she was so mad she couldn’t speak, but then she looked up, her eyes devastated and yet filled with fire. “Our little planet lasted against Mercer for a year because of you. We gave everyone in the universe hope that it could be done. We never folded. And we got out alive.” She sighed. “That’s what resistance looks like, Merlin. It’s not one glorious, shining victory. It’s a torch that you keep burning, no matter what.”
It was a beautiful speech—and by the end of it, Gwen was crying.
As soon as they were out of Lionel’s orbit, Kay called Jordan into the cockpit to take over for him. He went to Gwen, wrapped his arms around her and led her toward the little kitchen for a drink of water. This was what Gwen and Kay did best together ever since Ari died. They pooled their grief, swimming freely in it. Merlin wondered if they would go to the cargo bay and stare at Ari’s sealed coffin together.
Val sat at the round table in the center of the cabin, looking for someplace to take them all now that Lionel belonged to Mercer. Not even an hour after he’d lost his home, Val was already deep in thought, doing the necessary work, saving everyone in a hundred small ways.
That was his magic.
Val’s long fingers worried the edges of a star chart. He tapped endless coordinates into his watch and sighed. They would be facing another doom tomorrow, with nowhere to go and supplies so low, and Merlin finally understood the math.
He needed to kiss Val before that happened.
He needed to kiss Val now.