Sword in the Stars

by Cori McCarthy

  Ari grabbed his hand and rushed him through.

  The surface of Old Earth’s moon was a true wreck. Pieces of the dome clung to the frame high above them. The litter of Mercer’s medieval abomination was floating into space. The surviving tourists were streaming into Amal’s docking hangar in a series of escape pods. Error sat in the middle of the post-battle scene like the most misfit victor in the history of humankind.

  Merlin resealed them both in magical space suits, pulled the chalice out of his robes and knelt by the puddle he’d created, which was now a small skating rink of black-hard ice.

  “So this is why Arthur wanted us to go back in time for a cup,” Ari said. “To access her water anywhere.”

  “I told you he grew into a wise and helpful ruler.” Merlin tipped the chalice, and a bit of Nin’s lake water poured out—and kept pouring. He closed his eyes and sang the song of the spheres, a strange collection of notes that represented the movement of the planets and stars in the heavens. Ari hadn’t heard it since she was a child.

  Merlin’s fingers coaxed every atom from wherever they hid in the water stores throughout the known galaxies. He didn’t stop when the bubble was as big as his body this time. From all throughout the universe, the waters of Nin’s lake gathered. They rained down through the dome, filling up the crater of the abandoned theme park, smoothing over CamelotTM until it was one more bad memory to add to Ari’s store.

  Ari watched for Nin. She found the blue sword called Kairos and cleaned off her own blood on her pant leg. When she finished, she found Merlin on his knees. The lake stretched out before him. The cold of space had already frozen it solid.

  “Every single atom present,” Merlin said, breathing hard.

  “And how do we destroy it?”

  Merlin huffed. “Now what do you think I made that sword for if not destroying closed temporal loops?”

  Ari blinked hard, but she didn’t need to be told twice. Together they walked onto the slippery, mercury-silver surface. When they reached the very center, the ruined dome above gave an unfettered view of the stars. Ari held up Kairos, the sword catching the light and turning into a wonder of glittering blue.

  Ari stabbed the sword into the lake at the same time that Merlin sang a note so high and clear that it seemed to turn into pure energy, shattering the surface into millions of shining pieces. The waters of time lifted around them—gently floating, finally freed. They sublimated somehow, turning from shards of seconds into the wisps between heartbeats.

  And then they were gone.

  Merlin slumped to the lunar surface, legs folded beneath his robes. His magic was fading with exhaustion, and Ari felt the flicker of the bubble that kept the air in and the cold out.

  Ari was still radiating with adrenaline from the first-aid pill, and she shoved the sword in her belt and scooped Merlin up in her arms. “My gods, you’re a lot heavier than you were a few weeks ago.”

  “No ‘you were a baby just yesterday’ jokes.” Merlin rested his head on her shoulder, and Ari didn’t care if he was twenty times the size he’d been the last time she cradled him; this was their Kai. But he was also her Merlin and connecting those dots stung in the best way. “Ari, you were fatally injured moments ago. How are you carrying me?”

  “It’s either this or punching everything in sight.” Ari took slow, long steps toward Error. She locked eyes with Jordan through the cockpit and moved toward the airlock entrance to the ship, waiting for it to open.

  “I can stand,” Merlin said. Ari hesitated, and he added, “I’d like to be standing on my own when I see him again.”

  Ari put Merlin down on unsteady feet. The outer door opened, and they wedged themselves into the tiny space designed to be a sort of waiting room between outer space and inner home. “Last time we were in here together we were fucking with those Mercer ships, on our way to Troy. Remember?”

  Merlin nodded, his reddish-gray hair falling in his eyes. “I got loose. I thought I was going to be lost to the cosmos forever and you grabbed me and hauled me back in.”

  Ari squeezed him, hoping that the airlock took extra seconds to fill with air. “That’s what moms are for, Merlin.”

  Merlin locked bright eyes with Ari in the tight, small space. He didn’t have to say it.

  “I know, old man. Me, too.” She wrestled him into a hug, and when the inner door swung open, they blinked through tears at Jordan, Val, and Gwen.

  Gwen rained her hands over their faces, kissing both of their cheeks and adding her own tears to the party. Her hands found the bloodied slice in her shirt, and she swore until Ari wrapped her up in her arms.

  “I’m okay, lady. I’m okay.” Ari pulled away.

  “I’m never going to forgive you.”

  “Really? I thought this one was pretty good payback for the time you kidnapped yourself. Get it? I knew I had to die so I set my own parameters. You inspired me.”

  Gwen’s eyes flared. “You didn’t know I had that pill.”

  “True,” Ari said, kissing her. “But I knew both of you would save me. Sorry, I don’t want to miss this.” Merlin and Val were meeting each other all over again, and Ari turned Gwen’s chin with a soft knuckle so that she could watch, too.

  Merlin held both of Val’s hands. He was trying to find words and failing miserably. Odd nouns were just popping out. Val leaned in to kiss Merlin, and Merlin leaned back a little. “I have to tell you something! It might change your mind about… me.”

  “If this is about you being the magical time baby, and the fact that your moms are my best friends, I’ve already come to grips with it,” Val said, leaning in even closer.

  “You have?” Merlin’s eyes were huge. “I mean, you know?”

  “Someone had to do the parenting math on all this nonsense. The second Gwen gave birth to a glowing baby, I was pretty damn sure.” Val tossed a look at Ari, who had definitely not figured it out and felt a fair amount of parental shame on the subject. “Of course, you can’t just tell someone their lost baby found their way home a long time ago.”

  “Next time,” Gwen growled, “try, Percival.”

  Val’s scowl turned to a laugh, and Merlin caught his lips in a kiss. Ari’s whole body hummed with happiness at the sight of the two of them.

  “What is the status on the evil time lake?” Jordan asked, as if the effort of holding back had been a serious trial. Her shoulder was bound, but she still had a ready weapon in each hand.

  Merlin took offense. “Evil? Time cannot be evil. But it can hold on to the pain of its past. We’ve put an end to all that. We’ve set it free.”

  “Merlin took care of Nin,” Ari said. “And then we broke the lake apart. Now we only have to worry about Mercer.”

  “Hardly,” Jordan scoffed. Everyone stared until she elaborated. “You both pulled the Sword in the Stars. Technically you two are now the Administrators of the Mercer Company.”

  The sudden silence was a small explosion.

  “I abdicate,” Ari said automatically. “Gwen’s got this one.”

  Gwen wove her fingers with Ari’s in agreement. She turned back to Merlin. “What about the pieces of time lake? Can they ever rejoin?”

  “They will go everywhere,” Merlin said. “Not bent to the needs of one story, but naturally flowing into new legends.”

  “Your magic is entirely too sexy,” Val breathed, and Merlin blushed as red as his hair. He smiled at his friends, just as a bright spark of magic shot out of him, firing around the small spaceship.

  While everyone ducked, Jordan clapped her hands around the light. She held her cupped palms out, and they gathered around. When she opened her fingers, the magic stayed put, lighting up the center of their family like a brand-new star.

  Several moons of time—and literal moons—later, Ari checked her watch. Gwen was supposed to have met her an hour ago. Her shuttle from Troy was late. Ari waited on the balcony of the little nightclub on Tanaka, the vivid view of a neon-green water planet before them.

&nbs
p; She fussed with her outfit for the hundredth time, and Val put a light hand on her wrist. “You look epic. She’ll be here. Relax.”

  “Easy for you to say,” Ari said, eyeing the way Merlin was attached to Val, arms around his waist, his chin resting on Val’s shoulder. “You two already have your happily ever after.”

  “It’s got to be Mercer BS that’s holding her up,” Merlin said. “This is the cost of putting her in charge of the universe.”

  “She’s only interim Administrator. She’s setting up something she calls an ‘elective congress’ to oversee the first age of the Mercer Trading Company.”

  Merlin made a terrible face. “Sorry, just got a bad historical taste in my mouth.”

  “What?”

  “Remind me to talk Gwen through the better examples of democracy… as well as the ones where fascism leaked in and trumped everything else.”

  Val and Ari watched Merlin shiver away whatever he was remembering. “I don’t actually envy how much you know about humanity and all of time in general.” Val’s arms were looped around Merlin’s shoulders.

  “This is what I get for not going with her,” Ari said, typing a quick message to ask if Gwen was all right. “The lovebirds in action.”

  “Time away from each other does build up the missing,” Merlin said, nuzzling Val’s neck.

  “If you take even one portal away from me before I’m ready, you’ll be sorry, mage. Very sorry.” Val wore a solidly no-nonsense look.

  “Wouldn’t dream of it,” Merlin said, placing a light kiss on the back of Val’s hand.

  Ari groaned and turned away, glancing out the picture window on the balcony. “You’d better get that out of your system before she arrives. I might not go full mama bear on you two, but she’s likely to punt the PDA out of the nightclub.”

  Ari’s watch buzzed, and she warmed throughout at the short message on the small screen. ETA five minutes. Ready for me, baby girl?

  Ari looked up and found Merlin and Val in the sort of hands-everywhere kiss that no parent cared to witness. Most of the time, when she looked at Merlin, she saw her best friend. The person she’d crawled through history and across space with, surviving side by side. This time, however, when she looked at him she was seeing entirely too much tongue.

  “That’s it. Out! Go dance. She’s almost here.”

  Val looked back at Ari, dark eyes gleaming while Merlin breathed heavily, the collar of his shirt opened up, no doubt by Val’s teeth. They led each other with a double set of locked, entwined hands, off the balcony and through the curtains that led to the thrumming bass of the club.

  Ari sighed and fussed with her short hair. She stared out into the endless black nothing, the stars twinkling through like the kind of hope that had always been, and would always be, too expansive to be snuffed out. Not by any evil company, or disgusting Administrator, or uncaring time enchantress, or even grief.

  Ari felt Gwen before she saw her. Arms circled her waist, and Gwen’s cheek rested on her shoulder. “Missed you,” Ari managed, feelings swelling into each word. “Too much.”

  “We’re in recess for a few weeks. Long enough to go home with you for a spell.”

  “You’re going back to Ketch with me?” Ari turned around in Gwen’s arms, leaning against the glass and pulling her tight. She wasn’t ready for how Gwen looked. Short shorts, dancing flats, a goldenrod tank top that slipped off one of her shoulders like a silky bedsheet. But that was nothing compared to her powerful, certain eyes rimmed with determination and the kind of charcoal liner that Lam seemed to be born wearing.

  Ari drew light fingers down her cheek. “Nice eyes.”

  “Lam taught me. Forever ago.” She tugged at Ari’s cuffed sleeves and biceps. “This is a nice look. Val?”

  “I am his living doll. You’ll know I’m back in control of my wardrobe when—”

  “You wear the same sword and ripped-up pants for two weeks straight?”

  Ari smiled dreamily. “I loved those pants. Although, I come to this date unarmed.” She showed off her waist, belted but unsheathed. Gwen’s hands moved fast, stealing Ari’s hips and pulling them toward her. The hunger in her eyes was momentarily stunning.

  “We could go back to my ship,” Ari whispered. “Like right this second.”

  “You promised dancing.” Gwen tugged Ari by the hand, pulling her toward the dance floor. Ari watched as Gwen’s gaze skimmed the crowded space until she found Val and Merlin. Val danced with his thin, toned arms in the air, closely shaved head thrown back. Merlin danced like he had yet to be introduced to his lower half, like—

  “Oh my gods!” Gwen placed her hands over her face. “He dances like Kay.”

  “I see it,” Ari said, laughing as they began to move with a strong beat. “Kinda wish I could un-see it.”

  “I know I promised I wouldn’t overly mother him, but someone has got to teach that boy how to dance.”

  “We’ll bring it up carefully, but yes, this is a solemn duty we should not avoid.” Ari watched as Val grabbed Merlin’s fist-pumping arm and locked it down. “I have a feeling Val will be all for it.”

  A new song started, a slower one, and Ari hooked Gwen’s arms around her neck and pressed her lips to Gwen’s ear to speak over the music. “Is it too weird? Seeing him and knowing he was—is—the same little person we fell in love with on Old Earth?”

  “Not weirder than some of the things we’ve been through,” Gwen said, although her tone tilted sad. “I do miss my baby, though.”

  “Yeah, but I’ve been thinking about this one. Kai turned into Old Merlin. And when Old Merlin got mad at us, he turned a dragon on us. Perhaps it’s not too much of a loss not to raise a super magical, wickedly headstrong child. He could have portaled us anywhere in time and space simply for giving him a time-out.”

  “He could still do that.”

  “Yeah, but now Val would make him undo it.” Ari pushed Gwen’s hair back. “How about we have another one. In like six… teen years?”

  Gwen laughed. “Sixteen years sounds perfect.”

  The song shifted again, tuned to something that seemed to be a particular hit at this club, as everyone screamed and raised their arms. The flicking, whirling colored lights shut off, and a shade over the entire ceiling pulled back, showing off deep outer space. The dancers went wild as the only light in the club came from a thousand silver stars.

  Ari kissed Gwen, tasting the past and the future and the wide, daring universe all at once.

  Six Months Later

  Merlin walked through the bustling market on Ketch, wearing brand-new robes.

  His first, ancient set had been confiscated, and the second pair—the one Ari had gifted him—had gotten wet in the lake of time and never dried right. Besides, they smelled like Nin’s cave.

  These were his I-survived-battling-an-ancient-tragedy-monster-so-I-deserve-nice-things robes. They were a little bit of every color shimmering together, with planets stitched onto the hems. He swirled them around his feet while he moved between the stalls, as he did every morning, watching an entire world come back to life. At first, the silence had seemed too much to fill. Now the blaze of sunrise had to compete with the shouts of the hawkers and the smells of roasted dijal, a bird that was distractingly delicious when you put it on a stick and smeared it with yellow-orange spice.

  Merlin finished up his second breakfast as Gwen and Ari rounded a sharp corner in the market. Ari looked at home here in a way that she never had anywhere else, striding through the market wearing the Ketchan clothing she’d salvaged from her birth family’s home, with the obvious addition of Kairos—the sword, not Merlin—at her hip. Gwen would have looked like her regal self anywhere. She wore a queenly corset over a T-shirt and dark trousers, one thin braided crown wrapped over her head and the rest of her curls hanging loose.

  Every morning that Merlin woke up and ran into them in the market felt like walking straight into the dream that had kept him going for all of those years in Nin’s p
ast.

  Gwen greeted Merlin with the same hug she did every time she saw him, one that always seemed like it was half for him, and half for the baby he used to be.

  “Where’s Val?” she asked.

  “He told me he had to go on a secret mission,” Merlin said dryly.

  “I’d be fine with no more secrets or missions,” Gwen scoffed, though Merlin knew that wasn’t true. Her missions were only beginning. She left Ketch once a moon to travel to Troy and from there, to other worlds where she brokered trades to the broken universe. Merlin loved seeing Gwen the way she was always meant to be, the way Camelot would never fully let her—wielding political power as smoothly and confidently as Ari swung around those magical swords.

  Val, who was never far from Merlin’s side these days, ran over with an armful of glass globes. The returned Ketchans and the Lionelians who now lived here had filled the marketplace with their traditional arts in an effort to keep them from dying out, lost to Mercer’s dark age.

  “What are those for, precisely?” Merlin asked.

  “For the library,” Val said.

  “There is plenty of illumination! The sunlight here does wonders,” he said, trying not to blush at just how much of that last bit was about Val’s glowing muscles, his dark hair that caught the golden light and held it.

  Six months had given them plenty of time to come back together, in the most epic ways.

  “If a library doesn’t have enough lighting, do you know what it starts to look like?” Val asked.

  A cave, Merlin mouthed, as Val shouted the same thing.

  A roar sounded at Merlin’s heels, and he turned with his fingers ready to spark.

  “Merlin, stop!” Ari shouted. “They’re looking for me.”

  Two young taneens were trailing them, one nipping actively at Val’s shoes, the other looking up at Ari with the boundless love of a baby.

  “Are they allowed in the city limits?” Val asked.