Weldon's Arc

Chapter 9 of 9

The hall outside the Queen's study was quiet when Weldon found Sailor Pluto waiting with the lamps already low. She held a compass in her gloved palm, metal arms fanned around a dark glass core. "Sailor Mars is in the courtyard," Pluto said. "She knows you are coming. She does not know why." Weldon kept the small gold statue she had given him tucked in his sleeve. He followed her out. Mars stood by the obelisk that had risen the day Weldon first transformed. She wore her uniform but no gloves, and her hands were red from the cold. She looked at Weldon a long moment before she spoke. "The Queen says you are one of us now." Her voice was even. "I am trying to believe it." Weldon bowed his head. "I helped the woman who hurt your friend," he said. "I will not pretend I didn't." Mars nodded once, slow. "That is why I can stand here. You said it before I had to ask." Pluto stepped between them and set the compass on the flat stone at the obelisk's base. The arms began to turn. They did not point north. They pointed up, then west, then settled on a tilt toward a patch of sky with no bright star in it. "She has been reborn," Pluto said quietly. "Not here. Not on any world the court has named. I am the only one who knows where." Mars went very still. "Mercury," she said. It was not a question. Pluto did not answer. Weldon looked at the compass, then at Pluto. "You want me to go with you." "I want you to choose," Pluto said. "The trail is faint. Two witnesses hold it better than one. You touched her work. The compass will read you." Mars's jaw tightened. "He goes," she said. "If she is out there, he owes her a face she remembers." Weldon thought of his father's hall, of the Queen's exhausted hands above his fields. He thought of the binding still on Saturn, still on Luna Starcrest. "I'll go," he said. Pluto lifted the compass and pressed it into Weldon's palm beside the gold statue. The arms kept their tilt. "Hold it level," she said. "It will not show the planet. It will show the direction. That is all I can give you tonight." From the colonnade behind them a footstep sounded, and Sailor Venus stepped into the lamp light, arms folded. "You weren't going to tell me," she said. Pluto met her eyes. "I was going to tell you after." Venus looked at the compass, then at Mars, then at Weldon. "After is not good enough. I'm in." Mars let out a breath that was almost a laugh, almost not. Pluto closed her hand over Weldon's around the compass. "Then it is four," she said. "We leave at the Gate before dawn. Tell no one else." Weldon nodded. The compass arms held their tilt toward the empty patch of sky, and he understood the search had already begun.