“What these galaxies need is a Mercer Company that isn’t corrupt.” Ari grabbed the chalice off the shelf. “I saw what happened to Arthur when he asked the right question and drank the water. It’s like his eyes were opened to the entire universe. To all kinds of people. To the fight for equality. It didn’t make him see the truth. It made him believe it was possible.”
“You want to trick the new Administrator into drinking from the chalice like Arthur did,” Gwen said, surprise—and approval—taking over her tone. “And how are you going to do that?”
“I’ll be persuasive.”
Amal wasn’t nearly as big as the largest Mercer freighters, but she was still big enough for her docking deck to swallow Error as if the craft were a drop of water.
Once on board, Ari and her friends were escorted to a large, circular amphitheater full of hundreds of Ketchans. The swirl of her native tongue made the room feel dizzying, bright—like a dream. Distinctly colored thawbs marked the thirteen founding families. Even Yaz had pulled on a steely blue abaya over her black leather pants and khanjar knives. She had tossed a second one at Ari before they left Error, and Ari had draped the robelike garment over her clothes, trying not to imagine how much Merlin would like it.
Gwen kept close to Ari, her long curls braided into the same crown Ari had been captivated by that day she crashed Gwen’s tournament. Somehow it hinted at royalty even more than the gold points of the circlet Jordan had saved.
Yasmeen introduced them to a few dozen people. All of whom seemed tentatively hopeful about Ari’s presence, none of whom had known her parents or Ari as a child. No matter how relieved she was that they had returned—that Ketchans weren’t gone from the universe—Ari couldn’t fight the feeling of being an outsider. Maybe because she was.
In the amphitheater, an elder from each of the founding families gathered around a circular table, and a person with a booming voice translated their messages into the Mercer language. They spoke of being in exile for so long, of coming back because of Ara Azar’s public stand against the Administrator.
Ari felt a bit speechless when the room seemed to tilt toward her expectantly, all of the Ketchans waiting to hear her plan. Somehow her chalice idea seemed silly now… or perhaps too hard to explain to anyone who hadn’t seen firsthand what the cup could do.
Yaz elbowed Ari. “They want to know where you’ve been.”
Gwen spoke up. “We’ve been in the past. After Mercer demanded our child, we went back in time, hoping to secure a safe place for the baby to be born and to find a mystical weapon that might be powerful enough to stop Mercer’s cruelty and domination.”
“Excalibur!” someone called out.
“Excalibur is… gone,” Ari said, her voice giving away her lingering grief for the sword. “But we have something else. Something designed to instill truth and understanding.”
“What is it?” one of the elders asked, leaning over the table.
“That’s hard to explain, and we’re going to keep it secret until the time comes to employ it.” Ari and Gwen exchanged glances; this was what they had agreed upon in Kay’s old room. Secrecy could only help their cause. “Mercer mustn’t know what we mean to do before we do it.”
“And what would you need from us to use this weapon?” the same elder asked. “We do not have the kind of numbers we would need to face them in battle.”
“But we’re not helpless, either,” Yasmeen said, calling out toward the entire assembly. “We have a chance to make a difference. Now, before it’s too late.”
Some people cheered; others voiced that this was impossible.
Ari spoke over them. “Yasmeen is right. Mercer is powerful and impressive, but no armor is without its chink. We find Mercer’s weakness, and we use our weapon.” Ari took Gwen’s hand. “The last time we faced Mercer, we were able to exploit the Administrator’s need for a dramatic show, for legitimacy and control. We need to learn what this new Administrator values, and we will know her weakness.”
A new elder stepped forward, wearing a deep-purple thawb and wrinkles that seemed almost familiar to Ari. “Forgive me, but I must know. You stepped into the past and lived there for some time. How did you return to this future without disrupting the time continuum?”
Ari glanced at Val, who cast his eyes downward over the loss of Lam, no doubt. “We were careful. And we had a sort of… map from the future that made it possible. Also, one of us stayed behind to make sure the story remained the same.”
Jordan surprised everyone, speaking in a booming voice. “Of course, some things changed anyway.” All of them spun to face her. “I speak of CamelotTM.”
“Excuse me?” Gwen asked. “What are you talking about?”
“As far as I can tell, the only thing that has changed since we went to the past is Mercer’s theme park on Old Earth’s moon.”
“Mercer’s what?” Val asked.
“Old Earth’s moon is full of weird colonies named after the old vehicular gods,” Ari said.
“Not in this time line,” Jordan said, crossing her arms over her massive chest. “It’s an entertainment facility. They released a new ad just this morning, an aggressive one, too. It pushed through all the pop-up blockers on Error.”
“Run it,” Gwen demanded.
One of the elders drew interesting circles on the round stone table, calling up a hologram advertisement that reached the height of the ceiling and boomed sound throughout the amphitheater. The incandescent blue made them all wince.
Ari beheld the glowing image of a sword half-sheathed in moon rock. “What the—”
“Come one, come all to King Arthur’s court…” an old-timey voice bellowed, “… at CamelotTM! Where all your Old Earth dreams come true!”
Ari swore exquisitely.
The commercial zoomed out, showing off the surface of a familiar gray moon—now cluttered with some abominable hybrid of the actual Camelot, Lionel, and Mercer’s knack
