Guinevere reached for her pistol as she turned the corner. A light mist shrouded the glow of the lamps, and the damp asphalt was thrown into shadows, but the street was empty.
       The lamp above her flickered out. She squinted at it. The rest followed, plunging the boulevard into darkness. The distinctive click of heels on asphalt reached her, and her hand again drifted to the weapon beneath her jacket.
       A woman emerged from the night, her sharp features illuminated by the blue light of the cell phone in her hand. She was impossibly tall, with dark hair that was roped in thick coils down her back. She wore a black pantsuit that hugged her bony hips and smiled at Guinevere with a red-painted mouth.
       "Haven't been waiting long, love?" she said.
       Guinevere dug through her pocket and held up a bundle of cash.
       The woman smiled again and plucked the money from her hand. "How are you, Gwen, darling?" She flicked through the bills with polished fingers. "I haven't seen you since when? Milan? In '63?"
       "It was '73, Morgan," Guinevere said. "And it was Paris."
       "Oh right, the sixteenth century."
       "Eighteenth."
       Morgan Le Fey's smile stretched. "Well, who's counting anyway? So, how are you? Still working for Merlin?"
       Guinevere glared. "It's a partnership."
       "Of course it is, dear." The sorceress stuffed the bills into the pocket of her jacket. "This all seems to be in order. Lancelot is on the third floor, room thirty-five."
       Guinevere looked at the complex above them. It had three floors, with five windows and five balconies on each level, and was constructed of fine brick and artistically chiseled ledges. "How do I know you're telling the truth?"
       "I don't have any reason to lie." Morgan turned her phone off and her face disappeared in the darkness. "I know what's at stake here, for you and for the rest of us."
       Guinevere dropped her gaze and moved toward the building, ignoring Morgan's stare on her back. She reached up to grab the second-floor balcony and pulled herself over the railing. The sorceress lingered on the curb. "Go before someone sees you!" Guinevere hissed.
       "Good luck," Morgan said. She had stopped smiling. "Don't let your heart get in the way this time, Gwen."
       She started to answer, but the sorceress vanished, leaving nothing behind but a set of shoeprints on the wet concrete.
       Guinevere moved along the balcony's edge and climbed onto the railing of the fifth balcony on the third level. She waited, listening, but there was only silence and darkness behind the foggy glass door. She turned the handle and it opened to a room with plush carpets and a large bed. There were two figures nestled beneath the blankets. She approached them, her hand quivering on her pistol.
       He was different in this life. He had dark skin and hair that curled against his skull. His face was softer, kinder, not the face of the knight she remembered.
       The last time she had seen Lancelot was on a beach. The wind had torn at her habit and he'd carried a helm under his arm. His eyes had been bloodshot and battle weary, and he looked at her as if she were breaking his heart, and not the other way around.
       It was Arthur who had banished her to the convent, but it was Lancelot who came to tell her that her husband was dead. For less than a second, she'd been happy. Here was her freedom, she'd thought. Here was her love to whisk her away from the loneliness. Finally, she would live again.
       But then she'd remembered what he had done, and she'd watched him walk away. Loyalty, he'd called it. Loyalty to a dead king who had made them miserable, who had broken them and lied to them and killed their child. Lancelot had left her for the memory of this man, and now she was staring at a sleeping stranger.
       His eyes opened.
       He sat up slowly, reaching for a pair of glasses on the bedside table. He blinked at her through them, and she realized that his eyes were not the same color anymore.
       "Who are you?" Lancelot said.
       "Don't you recognize me?" she said, though she knew she looked nothing like he would remember. She was shorter and leaner, her hair darker and cut close to her ears, but she saw recognition flicker in his eyes.
       "Guinevere?" He swung his legs over the bed, but she took a step back and pulled the pistol on him. He froze. "How are you here? I thought--"
        "You thought only Arthur and his pathetic knights could remember who they are," Guinevere said. "How typical."
       "What are you doing here?"
       "I came for Excalibur."
       "Why?" he said, but she could tell by the strangled pitch in his voice that he already knew. Excalibur was the only weapon that could end their immortal lives for good. It would send their souls back to wherever souls came from and their reincarnations would end. That was how Merlin had explained it to her.
       "He can't come back, Lancelot," she said. "You saw what his reign did, the wars and destruction. He can't be allowed to return."
       "It was written, Guinevere," he said. "On his grave: The Once and Future King. He was always meant to return."
       She wanted to laugh, but her throat was tight. "You know as well as I do that the wizard wrote that. Now where is it?"
       He pointed behind her. The sword was in a glass case on top of a dresser. It was plain and dull and rusting.
       "You can't have it," he said. "I won't let you."
       "Why?" she swung back to face him. "Why do you fight for him? After what he did to Britain?" Her voice broke. "After what he did to us?"
       "What we did could have torn this country apart."
       She was silent for a long moment. "He murdered our child."
       "He was trying to protect the kingdom."
       His voice didn't even shake. He stared her down, and he was solid and firm while everything in her trembled.
       She raised the gun. "Give it to me."
        "I have a family now, Gwen. Don't."
       "You had one before!" she hissed.
       Lancelot looked down at his bare feet nestled in the thick carpet.
       It made her nauseous to think that she had ever loved him. "Stay out of my way." She swung her weapon and fired at the glass case. It shattered across the room in an explosion of shards. The woman in the bed shot up screaming as Guinevere lifted the sword from its mounting and swung it across her back. The weight of it dragged her down.
       She went back to the balcony and dropped to the second floor, and then to the ground. Lights flickered on around her as the street woke in panic from the sound of her shot.

       The tips of Guinevere's fingers were black with gun fouling as she ran a brush through the pistol barrel. She could hear the muffled shouting of the drunks at the bar downstairs--it was later than she'd thought, or very early. She never was sure of the time anymore.
       The floor creaked. Merlin stood in the doorway of her bedroom. He had lived more years than all of her lives put together. She could see it in the way his eyes blinked too much, in the twitch of his fingers against Excalibur's hilt. He smiled at her with lips so dry and cracked that they bled.
       "You found it," he said, and his hands tightened on the sword. "Now, we are ready to kill a king."
       "If we can find him," Guinevere said without looking up from her work. "That could take lifetimes. It has before."
       The wizard sat on the edge of her bed, twisting the blade so that it reflected the light of the bedside lamp. His eyes were too wide, as if he were drinking in a sight that someone was going to take away.
       "We'll find him," he said. "Even if it takes generations."
       Guinevere locked the pistol's last piece into place and stood. Merlin didn't take his eyes off Excalibur.
       "If it's really going to take that long then I can start looking for her now."
       His stare snapped up to meet hers. "That wasn't our deal, Guinevere."
       "You just have to tell me where to start."
       "What about your promise?"
       "I kept my promise," Guinevere fought to keep her voice even. "What about yours?"
       Merlin stood. Excalibur crashed to the ground. He took her by the shoulder, his thumb pressing hard into the space above her collarbone.
       "I swore I'd tell you how to find your daughter's soul after you brought me Arthur's destruction," the wizard said. His breath was stale and hot on her neck.
       "I brought you Excalibur," she said. He pressed harder, but she refused to flinch.
       "The sword is not the end of it," he said. "I gave Arthur his immortality, and I cannot be the one to take it back. That's why I have you, that's why I gave you this power to remember."
       Guinevere tore her shoulder out of his grip. His nail cut into her flesh as she moved away. "I didn't accept this life for you. I did it for her."
       Merlin smiled again with his bloody lips. "He would kill her again if he knew her soul lived on."
       She kicked Excalibur beneath the bed and flung the door open.

       Downstairs the bar was full of drunks. Guinevere wished she could live like them. They did not have the burden of a thousand years on their shoulders. They did not have the touch of a thousand kisses on their lips or the break of a thousand hearts. They would live, and die, and forget.
       She would never forget her. No matter how many years Guinevere had, she would never forget the ones she had lost with her child. She could remember the curl of her infant hands around Guinevere's finger and the dimples at the corner of her lips when she smiled. The way her arm had hung limply from her blankets after a jealous Arthur had killed her in his rage. The way Lancelot had done nothing.
       Guinevere sat at the bar and pulled a half-drunk glass of beer toward her. No matter how many times she killed Arthur, he always came back, but she couldn't look for her child until he was gone. That was the deal she had struck while she was dying at the convent. Merlin had cast a spell that would allow her to remember who she was when her soul returned for its next life, the same spell he had put on Arthur and his knights as they were dying. A spell, he had said to her then, that he regretted. No king should rule for eternity.
       "Kill Arthur," he had begged her. "And I will ensure your daughter always remembers who you are."
       Kill the king and get your world back. It had sounded so easy then, but it was millennia later and Arthur still lived.
       "That's mine, I think." Morgan le Fey reached across Guinevere and pulled the glass of beer back. She was wearing a red pantsuit now and had black lips.
       Guinevere rested her chin on her hand. "What are you doing here?"
       "Reaping my rewards." She flashed the bundle of bills Guinevere had given her. "And I have more news."
       "I don't have any more money."
       "This one I'll do for free."
       Guinevere turned to her. "You don't do anything for free."
       The sorceress smiled. "This one's worth it."

       Guinevere's thudding heart drowned out the shrill screams from the playground across the street. She sat beside Morgan on a park bench, watching the children and their parents enjoy the Saturday morning.
       "You said Arthur would be here," she said.
       Morgan looked up from filing her nails. "He will be," she said. "He comes every Saturday."
       "To a park?"
       Morgan smiled and went back to her nails.
       "If you're lying to me, I'll kill you."
       Morgan snorted. "I've heard that one before."
       "How do you know he'll be here?"
       The sorceress glared. "Just wait."
       The shadows stretched toward them as the sun edged across the sky, and Guinevere kept a close eye on both the park and the woman sitting next to her. It wouldn't be the first time Morgan had lied to her. Guinevere had followed false leads to the end of one life and into another, across decades and continents, but she had to believe Morgan le Fey wasn't lying now, not when she finally had the sword. The sorceress knew what this meant to her.
       Guinevere sat up straighter. "If he's not here in five minutes--"
       "There," Morgan interrupted, pointing across the street. "At the slide."
       "The slide?" Guinevere stepped into the street. There was a boy at the top of the slide, no more than seven. He had dark, curly hair and bright eyes that twinkled with laughter as he slid into the arms of a man who lifted him above his head and spun him in a circle. The man also had curled hair, and he wore glasses over the same bright eyes.
       Guinevere gasped. "Lancelot."
       Morgan came to stand at her side. "Funny how they find each other, isn't it? Sir Lancelot will always protect his great king."
       "Arthur is not his son," Guinevere whispered. "You're wrong."
       "No, you just wish I was," she said, and her shoulders fell. "I do too."
       Guinevere turned away and started down the street. Morgan's heels clipped against the asphalt to catch up.
        "You have to tell Merlin," the sorceress said.
       "I don't have to do anything."
       "You have to tell him," Morgan said, and her voice was suddenly quiet. "He'll find out anyway and that'll be worse."
       Guinevere stopped. The wind was strong, tearing through her light jacket. She wrapped her arms around herself.
       "Well?" Morgan said. "What are you going to do?"
       Guinevere glanced back over her shoulder. The child Arthur was giggling in his father's arms, reaching for the clouds as if he could fly, and Lancelot looked at him as if he knew, without a doubt, that he would.
       "I don't know."

       Merlin was waiting when they returned. He sat at a corner table and watched them approach over the tips of his fingers. He never drank, even in his own bar. He just watched.
       "You have him?" he said.
       "We found him," Morgan said. She looked at Guinevere, who looked at the table. "He's with one of his knights."
       Merlin closed his eyes, resting his forehead against his steepled fingers. "Finally, it will be put right again." He laid a cold, thin hand on Guinevere's arm. "Tomorrow you will end it."
       His hand drifted away as he stood. Morgan was watching her, but Guinevere was staring at the table top.
       He was only a child. He was a baby. She squeezed her eyes shut.
       He was a murderer. He was a king.
       Guinevere hadn't even had the chance to name her daughter before Arthur had torn the infant from her arms. If she let him live he'd hurt someone else. He'd kill someone else's child.
       But he was only a child. Lancelot's child.
       She slumped against the table with her head in her arms. The wood smelt of cheap alcohol. She lay there until the first customers began to arrive. She watched them pass through the doorway, laughing and careless. Free.
       She stood and climbed to the upstairs apartment, slamming the door against the merriment below. She reached beneath the bed and pulled the sword from its scabbard. The blade reflected her face back at her. She wondered how many years it had on her, if it had killed more times than she had, if it had ever killed a child.
       She returned Excalibur to its scabbard and slung it across her shoulders. She descended the stairs and scanned the bar, but Merlin and Morgan were gone.
       Guinevere pushed through the drunken patrons, ignoring their stares and shouts as they pointed at the weapon. She was relieved to step into the cold, silent street.
       She stayed close to the shadows of the buildings. She imagined Merlin's face when he discovered what she was about to do, and she smiled. She thought of Lancelot, but she saw his old self and his old eyes. They had been clear and blue like their daughter's.
       She heard the rush of the water and walked faster. The street lamps were dim by the river, and she walked to the middle of the bridge and swung her legs over the side, dangling them above the murky darkness below. She pulled Excalibur from its sheath.
       No doubt Merlin would find it again, or Lancelot, or maybe Guinevere's lost child would find it. Maybe she would learn who she was, who she could have been, and why her mother had never come to find her. Somehow, Guinevere hoped, she would understand.
       She raised the tip of the blade to her stomach, and closed her eyes. The centuries of her lives flickered like a movie stuck on rewind. She didn't want to watch anymore. She pulled her hands close.
       She never felt the cold of the river.