Merlin stumbled forward, then turned. “How does that work in this temperature?”
“Ahhh, that’s the trick, isn’t it?” the guard said.
As the doors closed behind them, the guard aimed his gun toward the disappearing view of the frigid expanse and fired. Literally. What came out was not a stream of bullets but a blast of white-hearted, molten heat.
“An impressive death toy,” Merlin muttered.
The doors shut with a hollow boom, restoring order.
Pre-dead inside. Properly dead outside.
The guard marched Merlin away from the doors. The interior of the prison was not far off from what Merlin expected. The cell they shoved him into reminded him of one he’d inhabited when Arthur 18 was alive, and Merlin was put on trial for witchcraft. He remembered giving his accusers an earful. “Witches prefer candles and spells and herbs. I detest herbs.” But the Inquisition didn’t seem to care about such distinctions.
Once he was inside the cell, Merlin noticed that another person was in there, a human-ish lump facing the wall. He’d never had a cellmate before. Maybe he could recruit this person to help on his quest.
A new guard appeared with a small packet of fabric. “Undress.”
“What?” Merlin asked, already cold at the thought.
“Those are going in the incinerator,” the guard said, pointing at everything Merlin was wearing.
Merlin looked down at his robes. He’d insisted on wearing them even though Val had argued that they were unique, too Merlinesque. But that was why he’d needed them so badly. They kept him anchored in who he was. In what he was—a great magician. He touched the stitching of crescent moons, the worried cuffs. They’d started to fall apart after a dozen cycles, and he’d been mending them ever since.
“Now,” the guard said.
“No.” The word flew out, small and stupid and stubborn.
“What?” the guard asked.
Merlin couldn’t explain it. No one but Ari would understand. She didn’t have many pieces of her past left, either. “They’re mine.”
The guard raised the butt of his heat gun and cracked Merlin across the back of the shoulders. He fell to all fours. The man struck him again, as if every second he didn’t comply was a new crime against Mercer.
Merlin’s back erupted with pain. Bruising ran down to his bones. His hands gave out, and he landed facedown on the floor, the man’s boot stamped into his back. The pain shaded into numbness as his body decided he could no longer handle reality. Magic didn’t matter. He couldn’t stop this.
What was he going to do? Take on the entire prison? The entire planet?
His breath came in short, shameful pants. His mind created a new set of steps. Find Ari’s parents. Make a plan. Get back to Ari.
Nowhere in there did it say, Keep your robes at all costs.
“Fine,” he said, rolling away from the gun and getting up.
He shrugged out of the sleeves, then ducked out of the neck. As he pulled them over his head, he realized that this was the last of him—the final vestige of the Merlin from the old stories.
He was a naked, shivering teenager.
The guard checked his watch, confirmed something, and said, “We’ll be back for you soon enough. Don’t go anywhere.”
A short laugh rose from the lump known as Merlin’s cellmate. The guard left them, sliding a panel of ice into place, a clear one that Merlin could see through like window glass. He pulled on the uniform that had been left behind. It was warm enough to keep him alive, but not nearly warm enough to give him that sparkle of comfort he’d started to feel on Error.
“My name’s Hex,” Merlin’s cellmate said, swinging around to greet him. This person looked barely twenty—which seemed young until Merlin remembered he was seventeen. “What did they pick you up for?”
“Disturbing the thing that passes for peace,” Merlin spat. “And yourself?”
“I stole seventy-two piñatas,” Hex said, deadpan.
Merlin’s lips pinched with fresh puzzlement. “Why did you need seventy-two piñatas?”
“I didn’t,” Hex said. “I just needed to do… something, you know? Stealing Mercer goods was what my hands decided on. And a dozen of the piñatas were done up to look like the Administrator, so my friends got a good crack at him before we got caught.”
“You would fit in well with my new friends!” Merlin said.
He wanted to explain about Ari, and how she was going to save them all from Mercer. But there was no time to waste—if plague had come to Urite, the contagion would move faster than Merlin ever could.