No words, but Baines’ voice and then another, cultured and cultivated, and the rattle of bottle neck on cup. And if thou hadst not been as paralyzed with fear as a maid on her wedding night, thou wouldst have paused to wonder why Baines was sleeping in a coaching inn instead of his own good well‑warmed house. Arrant fool. Arrant. Bloody. Fool.
Damme.
Ah well,he thought, and resigned himself to more murders than one. It profits us not to damn fate nor ourselves, but rather we must trust in Providence.Which almost made him giggle. Not Poley with so cultivated a tone. Nor de Vere. Even now, I would know Edward–
Still. ‘Tis a familiar voice–
The snow fell harder, but, under the gallery roof, Kit was dry. He shook his cloak free of his belt and drew his rapier into his hand, frowning as he leveled himself at the door, which would be barred, without a doubt.
And can I not charm a bar from its pegs?
The tune he whistled under his breath. It didn’t matter: magic had no need to be loud.And then Kit leaned back and kicked with all his might at the door latch.
He felt the wood deflect under the ball of his foot, the door springing back an instant before the wood splintered under the impact and the bar jumped free of its slots. The door had rebounded against the frame by the time Kit’s foot touched the floor; as he started forward it swung open again and he blocked it with his left hand, brandishing the silver rapier in his right as he came into the presence of Richard Baines.
Richard Baines, who stood by the hearth in the bare little room, leaning against the warm stones, handsome and only a little wide‑eyed as he reached for the rapier at his hip. “Kit!” he said, smiling as the cold steel extended his reach. “What a pleasant surprise. What’s happened to thine eye?”
Beside him, rising from the stool he’d been straddling, another man Kit recognized – blond and well‑favored, a broad‑shouldered Adonis with eyes as heavenly as Lucifer’s. Robert Catesby, and Kit made sure his flinch didn’t show on his face. Just a dream.
Catesby’s sword was not at hand; the stool clattered and rolled as he scrambled after it, getting his back into the corner by the bed that was the only other bit of furniture in the room. Neither as cool as Richard Baines, nor as deadly smooth.
Kit stepped through the door and closed it with his heel, sealing plank to frame with a sandpaper‑surfaced word. Baines’ sword‑tip never wavered but Kit saw his head tilt, his brow wrinkle in a genteel manner that had never presaged aught but ill. “Interesting,” he drawled, examining Kit from his dripping hair to the slush‑stained boots and then slowly back up again. “Did he heal all thyscars, my darling?”
The word had left Kit’s throat as raw as a coughing fit. He managed to get his teeth apart enough to speak clearly, but it took courage. “Where’s Robin, Dick?”
Catesby lifted his chin, and his blade did waver, but Baines knew which Robert Kit meant. “Poley’s on errantry,” he said. Some matter, no doubt, of direst import for the Queen. Thou knowest how valuable she finds him.”
“Indispensable. Of course. Master Catesby, my apologies”– Kit didn’t turn his head, but he could see from the blond cavalier’s stance that Catesby knew what end of a sword was which, and it did not comfort him – “I’m afraid your presence here does not bode well for your continued well‑being. I’ve come to kill this man.”
“Arrogant puppy.” There wasn’t any harshness in Baines’ voice; only that controlled, chilling amusement. Catesby moved to put himself between Baines and Kit. Baines stepped forward, blocking him. “Don’t worry, Robin. I can handle this.” Baines drew himself up, smiling rather than sneering down at Kit. “Becoming Lucifer’s leman has made thee bold, I wot. Although whoring should be nothing new to thee – ”
The words were like a wall. The dismissal in them, the amusement, Baines’ quiet confidence and mastery. As if he could not even be bothered to despise Kit. Kit leaned into them, forced himself a step forward. Catesby would break first, he thought, would not permit Baines to shuffle him aside so easily, not to judge by the stallion set of his neck.
“At least I’ve never held down a boy half my size while five grown men forced themselves on him,” Kit answered, trying for something of Baines’ bantering tone. What got out between his teeth was bitterness.
“No, thou hast an easy time finding lords and libertines to make of thee their Ganymede. Thou didst think not thy patrons kept thee for thy poetry.”
“Bastard – ” Kit moved forward, a firm step where his feet wanted to shuffle, and called on the rage and the roiling power stewing in the hollow of his gut.
Baines only laughed. “Going to scratch mine eyes out, puss? Come on, then – ” and came forward to meet him. Catesby moved at the same moment, supporting Baines, two swords pressing as Kit sidled sideways to get his back into the corner by the door.
Kit freed his main gauche before the bigger men got within sword reach, hoping the cramped quarters would cause them to foul each other. Catesby had to come around the bed, at least, and hop over that tumbled stool. Baines advanced straight in; Kit’s right eye showed him something dark and potent twist itself around Baines’ left hand, as if he swung a cape of some black force to supplement the bright blade of his rapier.
Baines never took his eyes off Kit’s face when he spoke, and that unconscious caution made Kit feel suddenly lighter. “Don’t kill him, Robin,” Baines said. “Not until I get a look at him with his shirt off– ”
“As if you could manage my death,” Kit scoffed, and whispered a few words in a pidgin of bastard Greek and the sleek, fluid language that Satan had taught him. He looked Baines in the eye when he said them, but Baines’ left hand moved, that cloak of darkness flickering around his fingers, and it was Robert Catesby who slumped to his knees and fell back upon the floor, his sword blade ringing when it dropped from his fingers, a wide snore drifting from his parted lips.
Kit never looked away from Baines, but Baines looked down at Catesby and then back at Kit with a nod that might have been edged with respect. “Nicely done.”
Kit drew a ragged breath and formed his sleeping spell again. Baines shifted onto the balls of his feet, and for half a drawn breath neither man moved. Then …
Fuck this for a Lark–
It wasn’t the sleeping spell that Kit spat hastily–as Baines lunged – but an older, wilder magic; something Lucifer had shown him but had not bothered to explain. A curse, very simply, simple and uncontrolled, related to the old weird magic the black Prometheans used to call down God’s wrath in plagues and famines and the strange wild storms of winters such as no living man remembered– winters that froze the Thames, and plagues that killed men like Edmund Spenser and Ferdinando Stanley.
Die like Sir Francis,Kit thought, and hoped a subtler magic wouldn’t slip off Baines’ black spell‑cloak like water off oiled silk. The words didn’t slow him: Kit hastened to parry Baines’ gliding serpent of a blade. He stepped to the right, hopped over Catesby’s sprawl, and found himself with his back to the spell‑locked door.
Baines had the reach and the weight and the heavier blade; he came in hard, let Kit parry, and took the stop‑thrust of Kit’s main gauche through the meat of his own left forearm with little more than a grunt and a curse. “Blast – ”
Steel ground on silver; Kit’s head spun with the clean, sharp reek of Baines’ sweat, the cedar from his doublet. Baines shoved Kit’s sword and his right hand hard against the wainscoting with all his oxlike shoulder behind it. A close bind: Kit released his main gauche, still fast in Baines’ arm, and dropped to his knees between Baines and the wall, dragging his rapier free with a sound that should have showered sparks on both their heads. I should have twisted the damned knife. I should have run him through the neck and not the arm.
Dammit, Kit, fight better than this.
You know how to fight better than this–
Too close in to use the rapier. Baines brought his knee up before Kit could dive aside – a great recko
ning in a Little room,Kit thought, as the blow under his chin slammed his teeth together, his head knocking a dent in the plaster of the wall. His mouth was full of blood: Baines’ blood, dribbling from the wound in his arm, and Kit’s own blood streaking his teeth and roping down his throat. He gagged on it, rolled aside, and almost got his rapier up in time.
Baines kicked him in the belly, hard, and Kit went down with his head between his knees and the acid burn of vomit chasing the stringy sweetness of blood from his mouth. “Christ,” he whimpered, and Baines kicked the sword out of his hand. It rang like a dropped coin when it struck the wall and fell, blade angled like a broken wing, into the corner. Another kick, one more, center of his chest and Kit felt something flex and twist over his heart, a green buckling noise like a twisted stick.
Christ.
And then, ridiculously, as he doubled up, gagging again: I’m sorry, Will.Something else rang on the floor. Kit’s main gauche, Baines swearing heartily as he yanked it free and cast it aside. “That’s two scars I owe thee, puss.”
Don’t touch me. Don’t touch me.But Baines’ hands were gentle, lifting Kit against the wall, smoothing the wet curls that had escaped his ponytail out of his eyes. Kit spat blood and bile in Baines’ face, slamming the side of his hand down on the dagger wound still weeping blood from the left forearm. Baines grunted, grimaced, and let go of Kit. Kit folded like a corpse, trying to push the sharp words of a witchcraft into his mouth. But whatever he had done–the twist and rill of the curse he’d spat out earlier – seemed to have stripped the power out of Kit, and the words were nothing more than doggerel.
‘Christ, Puss,” Baines said, half irritated and half pleased. Stay where I put thee for once. There’s a pet – ”
Kit slumped, wheezing. Almost got a leg under himself, but Baines’ command held him to the floor like the clink of chains. Something rattled. Something splashed. Tearing cloth and cursing: Baines must have been binding his arm. Kit forced himself to one knee again and again fell, defeated. Surely if he could stand he could reach his sword, a few short feet away, just in the corner by the hearth.
Every breath hurt enough to dizzy him. Baines crouched in front of Kit and washed the blood and vomit from his face with a wine‑soaked rag. “Hush for a moment,” he said, and slapped Kit’s cheek backhanded when Kit–‑weakly–fought him. “Hush, puss. This wouldn’t happen if you didn’t fight me so.” His fingers probed.
Kit winced and swore, squirming back against the wall, not liking the strange, concerned gleam in Baines’ eye.
“Oh, thou’rt not bad hurt. A cracked rib is all.” And then he doubled both hands in the lawn of Kit’s collar and shredded the shirt as if ripping up rags, tearing it down to the lacings of the jerkin that Kit wore on top.
“Come, puss. Give us a kiss.”
He leaned forward. Kit slammed himself against the wall, harder than Baines had managed, feeling the strain in his neck as he twisted his face aside. Kill me and get it over with,Kit thought, shivering.
Instead Baines grunted in satisfaction, mock‑loving fingers outlining the scar on Kit’s breast, and let him go. “Good. That saves us time. Now get out, Marlowe. Before Catesby wakes.’
Kit blinked, focus eluding him. He got a hand and a knee on the floor; the effort made the walls spin. “Get out?”
Baines had turned his back on Kit and was wiping the blood from his hands. “I can’t keep thee in a bird cage until I have use for thee. And thou’rt no good to me dead: surely even a poet could have deduced that by now. I’ll be back for thee when I need thee, never fear.”
Back for thee when I need thee.Kit made it to a crouch, steadying himself on the wall. Stood, and staggered to the corner to retrieve his sword. Bending over was a trick; he managed it with one hand braced on the wainscoting, trying not to hear Baines whistling merrily as he washed and rebandaged his wound. Kit staggered for the door.
Baines’ voice arrested him. “Don’t try this trick again, or I’ll see thy friend Shakespeare on the rack. Dost hear me?”
“Aye,” Kit said, and somehow released his own spell on the door and tumbled through it onto the gallery and into the cold. At least,he told himself–trying not to giggle– at least from here thou canst leave by the interior stairs, and out through the front door. Because thouwouldst dash thy brains out if thou hadst to climb down now by the way thou camest.
Past the house‑cleaning landlord, it turned out, who raised a questioning eyebrow as Kit came across the common room to the barred front door. “Master Catesby’s guest,” he said, tugging his cloak tight and hoping the shadows would conceal the ruin of his clothes.
“‘Tis past curfew.” Friendly enough. “Stay the night.”
“My mistress expects me. I’ll mind the watch – ”
“See that you do,” the man said, and came around the bar to lock the door after him.
The cold cleared his head. He staggered into an alleyway and leaned against the wall, under the overhang. Damme. I won’t make that mistake again. Next time, it’s a shadowy alley and a bullet in the back of the head, you son of a whore.
He wants me alive. He’s wanted me alive all along, except when I made it too difficult to keep me that way.Kit pressed his back against the timber and plaster, tasting acid and bitterness, remembering Rheims, remembering the taste of blood and gentle hands holding his hair back while he vomited, again and again.
As if that, as if anything, could clear the poison and the filth from his body. Remembered pleading for his life, and braced his hands on his knees and vomited again, into a rain‑pocked slushpile this time. In Rheims, Baines had argued for his life. Had told the others that if they spared him, they could use the same vessel.
He never meant to kill me.
No.Kit forced himself to stand, to ignore the ragged ache in his chest. He rinsed his mouth with dirty snow, scrubbed more on his face for the chill and abrasion of the icy granules. His brands ached like blisters. His hands stung with the cold. No. He just means to keep me alive for however long it takes and then what? Rape me again? Something else?
God in heaven.
I don’t want to know.
Kit used the frozen surface of a public basin for his mirror – more Promethean witchery, that, that London grew cold enough to freeze her fountains of a winter–and slipped through it and into Faerie with a sigh that was very much relief, even though the court’s fey night shadows twisted around him and small things scurried in the dark. All it would have taken to make my night complete would be to be caught short out of Faerie, and die in some alleyway.
Still staggering, steadying himself with one hand on the wall, Kit moved at first automatically to Morgan’s room and then stopped himself. Not welcome at court.Hell. But Murchaud’s room was closer anyway, and only one flight of stairs away.
The flagstones whirled under Kit’s boots. He pressed his shoulder to the wall, as if the palace needed his assistance to stand as much as he needed its. They leaned together, shoulder to shoulder, flying buttress and cathedral –
A better image than most, for once.He ran his right hand up the banister, cool stone against his ice‑abraded palm, and pulled his torn shirt collar closed at the hollow of his throat, and forbade himself to weep. A command he managed to obey until Murchaud opened his door in a nightshirt Kit had given him, blinking sleepily. “Kit. Thou’rt hurt – ”
“Not so sorely,” Kit answered, and fell through the door.
Murchaud bound his ribs in linen, tight enough to squeeze like a giant’s fist whenever Kit drew a breath, and ignored Kit’s feeble remonstrations over the undressing and the necessary handling. Murchaud warmed water for him–with his own hands, when Kit wouldn’t permit him to call for servants –and combed Kit’s hair, and dressed him in a nightgown twice as large as it needed to be, and carried him–as he had carried Kit that first night in Faerie –to the big chair by the fire. Murchaud settled him there with his feet up and a cup of warmed wine in his hands. It was a blur of action, w
ith Kit trembling like a trapped fox under the Prince’s care and reminding himself not to bite.
Kit drank half the wine without tasting anything but the alcohol’s sting in his lacerated cheek, and then he raised his chin to look Murchaud in the eye. “Thou’rt alone,” he said, wondering.
Murchaud turned away and squatted to poke the fire higher, turning a smoldering log so the bark would catch alight. “I’d be in the Mebd’s rooms if I weren’t, love. She does not come to visit my chambers.”
No, ‘ Kit said. He covered his discomfort with a sip of wine. “I’d have thought – ”
Murchaud shrugged and looked up from his angle‑kneed crouch, shapely limbs protruding from his nightshirt this way and that. “I’ve all the lovers I want,” he said, and stood, limber as a cat, and went to pull the bedcurtains back. The covers were as disordered as Murchaud’s hair; the prince had struggled out of a sound sleep to answer Kit’s knock, and Kit felt a rush of sudden, hopeless gratitude.
And then a moment of wry self‑exasperation. “Damme – ” Kit set his cup down with a click.
“What?”
“I left Cairbre’s viola in Will’s lodging.” He made to stand; his knees failed him, and he slumped back in the chair. “Thou didst drug the wine, ” he accused, as tiredness pressed the center of his chest like a broad, flat palm. His fingers curled on the textured brocade of the chair cushion, but failed to shift his body.
“I’ll save that trick for when I need it,” Murchaud said. “I rather thought the wine would be enough. Come, let me take thee to bed.”
“Murchaud, I – ”
“Hush. I’ll carry thee to thine own rooms if thou likest. Or thou canst sleep in that chair. But I don’t believe thee when thou sayest thou dost wish to be left alone, this night.”
Kit subsided, his eyelids too rough and heavy to hold up. Liar. He did drug the wine.
It didn’t matter. He hadn’t even the strength to protest the discomfort of the Prince’s touch when Murchaud lifted him and laid him in the bed and drew the feather comforter up to his neck. “Puck,” he said, remembering.
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