Once & Future (Once & Future #1)(69)

“Stay…” Ari said, backing up. Kay began to wiggle out of place, and she gave him a stern eye. He sat back down, but continued to create chaos with his tail. “Okay, one more. This is the big one, remember?” Ari eyed Kay, who was already more interested in whatever might be in her pocket than her command. “Play dead!” she called.

Kay grinned, triangular mouth hanging open, tongue hanging out to the side.

“Does Big Mama know you’re playing with her baby again?” Morgana said, appearing out of thin air like an annoying ghostly know-it-all.

“Big Mama is fine as long as I feed them both. Besides, Kay doesn’t like being secluded in the hot, boring desert. Do you, buddy?” Ari rubbed down his hard nose, getting licked on the cheek. “Now, play dead!”

Kay squatted low and playfully. Big Mama’s howl echoed down the street, and the sight of the enormous taneen turned Kay into less of a trained dragon and more of a toddler, wiggling with delight to perform for his mom. He rolled on his back, legs in the air, and lolled his tongue out. Big Mama came scuttling down the street, dwarfing everything in sight, including her baby. She sniffed at Kay’s position and then growled disapprovingly.

“He’s just playing dead, Big Mama.” Ari stuck two fingers in her mouth and whistled. Kay jumped back onto his feet. She pulled out two pieces of lamb jerky, tossing one in Kay’s mouth and the other up to his mom. Big Mama swallowed it whole and turned around, pounding the rice-associates into the sand with her large, clawed feet as she went. Kay slobbered on Ari’s arm for a minute and then scuttled after his mom.

Ari climbed the street sign, unwinding the camera tied to the post. She reviewed the footage they’d made. “There’s some good stuff, I think. Not a complete loss considering it took two weeks to build those dummies.”

“I still can’t understand why you’re doing this,” Morgana said.

“It’s training.” Ari hopped down and swung Excalibur with a loose wrist. “Practice for the real thing.”

“Assuming you ever get off this rock.”

“Optimism, Morgana,” Ari said, even though she was starting to feel the opposite. Two dry seasons had come and gone on Ketch. The next rain season was due any day, and that meant at least a year had gone by on the Old Earth calendar. She moved to the line of dummies she’d made of her friends. Val wore a homemade corset. Merlin, Ari’s mother’s favorite green robe. Lamarack was one-handed and bragged the best mauve thawb she could find. Kay wasn’t there because she had the loutish taneen for when she missed her brother.

The Gwen dummy had been a bit of a disaster. Ari had gone through seriously dark moods while she worked on it, and eventually given up. It didn’t help that Ari could now recite the dozens of Arthur-Lancelot-Gweneviere heartbreaks from the previous cycles, complete with the video-quality memory playbacks Morgana was in the habit of gifting when she didn’t think Ari was taking the matter seriously enough.

Morgana’s training had been nothing if not thorough.

Which had inspired the Jordan dummy—Ari’s favorite opponent. It was covered in pots and pans turned into armor; even though Ari had found a suit of armor, she’d kept the ragtag version instead. It was less formidable, easier to bang against. Ari sent Excalibur singing through the air, danging across Jordan’s breastplate. It wasn’t enough, so she turned, using her full body to throw the sword into the dummy.

The handle wavered in the aftermath—sticking out of Jordan’s head.

“Oh, yes, that reeks of optimism,” Morgana said.

“You said I should vent.”

“I said you should give up on Gweneviere. It’s a poisoned love story. You said you could ‘vent’ your ‘feelings.’”

“I never should have taught you how to use air quotes,” Ari muttered. She went to pull the sword out of the dummy, but Morgana beat her to it. Her ghostly fingers closed around the handle without gaining purchase. “It’s not going to work. Excalibur won’t let you.”

“It let me once. On Urite.” Morgana heaved an annoyed sigh. “But then Merlin’s blood was on it. What I wouldn’t give for just a few vials full of that heavenly liquid.”

“Ugh, no more waxing poetic about Merlin’s magical blood!” Ari hauled the sword free and shoved it into the sheath at her back. “And don’t think that I—”

A simple, glorious tone sounded. As loud as the city was large.

At first, Ari couldn’t move. “That’s the signal beacon. Error is calling me back!” She sprinted for Ras Almal alone, climbing the steps two at a time, used to this workout. Ten flights and her legs barely burned anymore. If this had been her normal training, she would have set a personal best by dozens of seconds.

On the tower balcony, Ari silenced the signal alarm and stared at the blinking com light. From the number, she could tell it was Error calling. Who was calling was still a mystery. What had happened to her friends while she was here? Were they all right? Were some of them dead? Why had it taken so long for them to call her back? She’d run through these thoughts so many times over the last few seasons that her brain short-circuited. This could even be the Administrator bragging about his latest victory over her friends.

Ari answered. “Ari here.”

At first no one spoke on the other line.