Ink and Steel

“Tom, don’t.” Kit didn’t expect Tom to hear him. Most of Kit’s attention remained on Will, anyway, and the two images layered each other like an oil painting held up against the back of a stained-glass saint. Until Tom stopped, and glanced over his shoulder, as if he’d imagined he’d heard someone call his name. Kit cleared his throat, forgetful in his fear. “Tom, love.” Wide eyes, a whisper barely shaped. “Kit?”

“I’ll take care of him,” he said, and then let the scrying end before he said anything else, turning his attention entirely to Will.

Will, who had drawn his knees up and kept his back to the bed as if it could afford him some protection. Poley moved about the bedroom, lighting candles, and Kit nibbled his lip at Robert’s expression. If only I had been a half step quicker. Or a half a year. No time for recriminations, sir.

The pistol was his worst worry. It wouldn’t take more than a glancing shot to shatter bone, tear flesh, crush limbs, assuming the thing didn’t misfire. Oh, I wish I had Morgan’s magic now. But if I step into the room behind de Parma, Poley only has a dagger. I just have to make enough noise that the Inquisitorwi’ll turn instead of making sure of Will. Good Will. Stay there on the floor, roll under the bed when the fighting starts Thank God Baines is nowhere in sight.

Kit drew his rapier and his main gauche, pulled a single shallow breath through his nose to still the trembling in his hands, and stepped through the Darkling Glass.

O conspiracy,

Shamest thou to show thy dangerous brow by night,

When evils are most free?

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, Julius Caesar

Will could never quite describe what he saw: whether the shuttered window seemed to fall open on a starry night, or whether the shadows of the flickering candles twisted together in some glimmering reminder of the span of black wings. But he gasped, and when he did, Poley turned to follow the line of his vision.

De Parma brought the pistol up and danced a half step back, angling his left foot with perfect balance, a sidestep that would have brought him around, his back to the wall beside the shuttered window if several narrow, blooded inches of Kit Marley’s main gauche hadn’t emerged from his chest as he moved, his own momentum carrying the blade through his body and dragging it out of Kit’s hand. De Parma completed his turn before he realized he was dead, the pistol still rising, finger tightening on the trigger as he staggered back against the wall beside the window.

The scrape and then the roar of the flintlock was so enormous that Will imagined for an instant that he hadn’t actually heard anything, just tasted all the brimstone of Hell in a concussion as if God Himself had boxed Will’s ears. De Parma fell against the wall, the narrow blade leaping a few more inches from his chest, and slid down like a pile of discarded clothing.

Kit was already sidestepping to face Poley.

“Will,” he shouted, loud enough for Will to hear it through ears that would never stop ringing. “Run!”

Will forced himself to his feet, de Parma’s blood already soaking through hisshoes. It shone on the floorboards, glossy, and Will tore his eyes away with a grunt. Kit extended like a dancer, infinitely more graceful than Ben, the totality of his body and his will focused, it seemed, on the firelit silver of his swordpoint. Running wasn’t possible. Will staggered toward the door.

“Marley. God. You re dead, you son of a whore.”

“Oh,” Kit said cheerfully. “God has very little to do with it, and my mother’s virtuous to a fault, I fear. What shall it be, Master Poley? Thy heart?”

But a bulky shadow filled the doorway, and Will skidded to a stop fast enough that he went to one knee in the rushes and the blood.

“How about an eye, and into thy brain, dying instantly? Too good for thee, but time is short and we must make…”

“Kit. do.”

“Good evening, puss,” said Richard Baines, as Kit turned to face him. “I should have known my kitten would never be so uncouth as to die without bidding me one last farewell.”

I am Envy.…… I cannot read and therefore wish all books were burned.

CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE, Faustus

The tip of the blade shimmered, so close, so close. Kit settled himself for the lunge, the perfect motion of body and sword and strength that would carry his blade into Poley’s left eye and carry with it a perfect, a holy revenge.

And then Will’s panicked squeak, and the voice… God. The silken, caressing voice of Richard Baines.

Bile and blood cloyed Kit’s tongue. He stepped back from Poley, unable to turn his blind side on Baines for the second it would take to make sure.