Ink and Steel

“As careful as a man may be, where he owes his life.”

“Aye, there’s the rub.”

“Tis not the rub that concerns us so much as the result.” Will chuckled, dabbling his hands in the fountain. He leaned back, rested against the edge, remembering the paleness of Kit’s scars. The man’s entitled to nightmares,he thought. He’s also entitled to the truth of what Morgan said of him: as well she knows I won’t be used against my friend.

“She hinted at things that troubled me, my friend.”

“Sorcery and subtlety.” Kit snorted, turning to sit on the marble edge, shoulder to shoulder with Will and on his left. “Did she tell you it was she who ensorceled me, when first I came to Faerie?”

“No. And yet she released you?”

“After a fashion. Or I won my way free. I am still bound here, though.”

Will raised his left hand to brush his earring.

Kit nodded. “I envy you that, a bit. It seems I can be gone from Faerie three days, perhaps four, before my body begins to fail. An unkind sentence. I comfort myself that at least I left no family, save that in Canterbury.”

What dost thou then think I am, Kit? And the Toms, and Mary and Robin, and Ned Alleyn?But he nodded, and bumped Kit’s shoulder with his own. “She also hinted and wisely said she would not say more, as I might run direct to thee with the tidings,” a deprecating laugh, “that thou wert bound, somehow, still. She suggested that there was a power in thee, something trapped and broken.” He moved to see Kit’s profile. Kit had put his blind side to Will, Will realized with a rush of affection.

“She has a gift for manipulation,” Kit said. “But she does not understand, always, mortal men.”

“I see.”

“What did she say, exactly?”

Will drew a breath, watching Amaranth rise up on the tower of her tail, her scales catching the light that rippled from the fountains until it seemed she shone.

“She said that I was free to go because of being more use in the mortal world than here, and that you have that in you which she needs, and might bargain with, and may find to be a weapon. And that you were too deeply wounded to be told this secret, because it would damage you further to know.”

“I see,” Kit said. “Tis so satisfying to have the trust and good faith of one’s patrons.”

Will held back a laugh at Kit’s dry, weary tone. “Wilt beard her on this?”

“Morgan le Fey? Might as easily draw the claws from a lion’s paw as secrets from that one. She’s fair as thorn in bloom, and twice as daggery. No. I’ll pursue where I can.” Kit folded his arms across his chest, the angle of his chin telling Will that he watched the Puck cavorting about the shoulders of Hercules. He sighed. “Sweet William. How did we ever get from there to here?”

Will shrugged. “Where? London? Where is here, then?”

“Sorcery, intrigue, intelligencing, Faerie.”

“Poetry.”

“Poetry is how we got here? Who would have thought poetry so dangerous?” Kit kicked one heel up, resting it against the base of the statue. “My father made shoes. Yours made gloves. There’s a certain symmetry there, and to ending up here.”

“The Cobbler’s Boy, the Glover’s lad, and the Queen of Faerie. I hope this isn’t an ending.”

“I was hoping for happily ever after in wealth and contentment.”

“It should be a ballad.”

If I know Cairbre, it will be. A facile comment, but Will thought there was more behind it. Kit hummed a familiar melody, and sang under the rise and fall of the flutes and the viola: ‘ALL hail the mighty Queen of Heaven!’

“Oh, no, True Thomas, that name does not belong to me.”

“Old songs?”

“Old songs, old poems. Old poets.”

“Getting older.” Silence for a minute, as they listened to the melody of the instruments and the falling water. “I think I know, then, what’s bound in me that they mean to use as a weapon.”

“You do?”

“I can guess.” The arms unfolded. Kit leaned back, his hands flat on the edge of the fountain. Will imitated the gesture, cool marble smooth and damp under his hands.

“What then?”

“At a guess? Something to do with the spells we build with our poetry. It would go a deal toward explaining why thou hast been unable to break the drought, if they’ve … Baines,” and Will felt Kit’s shiver, “said the bridle, the stopping of a poet’s voice, was the symbol that drove the spell.”

“Spell?” Will turned again, and laid a hand on Kit’s shoulder, watching him swallow and continue to stare straight ahead at the musicians. “Spell?”

“You re too easy to talk to, Will.

As it may be. Spell. You said nothing.”

“What happened in Rheims,” Kit said, “was some sort of black magic. Promethean magic. Baines called me …” a deadly levelness, the tone of a boy reciting latin verbs vessel.

“Christ, Kit.”

Kit didn’t turn, but a casual gesture dismissed Will’s fury. “So, logically, if that’s what’s bottled up in me, and how they did it …”

“Canst prove it?”