Ink and Steel

“Will lay in darkness, listening to Kit’s slow breathing, hugging his nightshirt close to his sides. How can he sleep like that, as if nothing transpired? Sleep is what you should be doing as well,he reminded himself, and closed his eyes resolutely on the faintly moonlit swells and valleys of the canopy overhead.

Will nibbled his thumbnail, stopped quickly at the subtle reminder of the pressure of lips on lips. He turned on his side, careful not to shift the coverlet, and buried his face in a tightly clutched pillow as if the greater darkness could silence the voice in his heart.

What if I had shown him those poems? He knows. He must know. Or was he just being Kit? He shocked all Faerie with that song of old Harry’s. Did he want to shock me too? Did I want him to know?

Kit never stirred. Will cursed him his complacency, the even rhythm of his breath, the relaxation in his shoulders under the whiteness of his nightshirt when Will turned to look at him in the moonlight. Wondered what would happen if he, Will, put out his right hand and took Kit by the shoulder and turned him to the center of the bed, and stole another kiss. It would be more than a kiss now, and that, thou knowest.He sighed, and rolled back to his own side of the bed. O let my books be then the eloquence, And dumb presagers of my speaking breast. And what if I told him that? Would he kiss me like that again? What else would he do? Would I want him to?

An unanswerable question, for all Will would have known the answer short hours before. The night passed in discomfort, until the last grayness before the first gold of morning, when Kit’s muttered whimpers and bedding-snarled struggles drew Will upright.

“Kit?” No answer, but a low, tangled moan. Kit’s hand reached out, as if to grasp something, or ward it away, and Will impulsively caught his wrist with both hands. “Kit.”

Who blinked, and drew the hand back, self-consciously, rubbing at his scar. Who looked strange in the half-light, divested of the eyepatch.

Will still hadn’t quite accepted; Will wanted to reach out and touch that long whitescar, the drooping eyelid, the bland, pallid orb underneath. He tucked his hands below the covers.

“Dream,” Kit said softly, turning aside as if Will’s gaze discomfited him. “Damn me to Hell, Robert said they were supposed to get better after I made the cloak”

“What sort of a dream?” Will drew back among the pillows, propped against thebedpost. “Nightmares?”

“Robert said they were prophecy, and indeed I had one of you in Baines clutches. Twas what drove me to your rescue. But stitching that cloak was meant to bring their power under control. Prophetic dreams are all very handy, I’m sure, but if I cannot sleep at night, any night, I’ll be of no use to anyone.”

“You slept a little,” Will said.

“I had …” Kit stopped, his hands fretting the bedclothes. “Just drifted off a moment ago.”

“Oh.” Wariness, and then a cold sort of delight. Not so cool as he pretends, Master Shakespeare. It will not behoove you to be cruel.

“The cloak,” Will said; anything to break the fraught, gray silence. “What if you spread it over the bed? There’s herbs that keep dreams off if placed under your pillow. Perhaps it holds the same sort of virtue.”

Kit lifted his chin and slid his legs out of the bed. He’d pulled the cloak off its foot the night before and folded it neatly over the back of thechair; now he shook it open and laid it over the coverlet. The fabrics dark and bright, rich and plain, were hypnotic; Will reached out and stroked a rose-colored trapezoid of brocade. “Why a patchwork?”

“Kit smiled. Morgan and Cairbre say it signifies all the hearts a bard has pleased with his music; it represents protection, for the good will of all those listeners and lovers interlinks to a garment that keeps ill magic and ill fate away like ill weather. A very old kind of sympathy.”

“So not a fool’s motley, then?”

“They both represent something sacrosanct.” Kit clambered back into bed, making a show of pushing his pillow around, and lay down with his back to Will again. “A tatterdemalion sort of magic, but there you are.”

“Which patch is from your Prince?”

“He hasn’t given one.” A hesitation. “The green-figured velvet embroidered with the unicorn, though. That was from Morgan, and oddly formal for a thing that’s meant to be made of scraps and ragged leavings.”