Ink and Steel

She stared down her nose. “You will be remembered as a sodomite, a heretic, and a mediocre playmender who died in a cluttered tavern through a tawdry brawl over some free-looking young man’s favors. We pardoned your Ingrim Frazier, and we have buried your name, and we have saved your body and perhaps your immortal soul. Our Spirit’s cousin, the estimable Widow Bull, will be tarred as a feckless tavern wench, and all that will be known of Marley is that he was a shoemaker’s son who came to a sad and ugly end.” And then that smile, and a negligent wave of a jeweled hand. “You may save your thank-yous.” Every word a blow, and yet the logic galled like a spur against his skin.

“Widow Bull is Baron Burghley’s cousin? Your Highness! I did not know that.”

“She is also a distant cousin of the Queen of Faerie’s court musician.” Elizabeth’s smile broadened. “Twas she saved your life, sweet poet.”

Her delight was a schoolgirl’s, and Kit could almost smell stolen flowers when he met her eyes. “Thank you, Your Highness,” he murmured, and she laughed like a very young woman indeed.

“I knew it should come. Now beg your boon. The hour grows late, and old women kept from their beds wax querulous.”

She’d used and discarded him like a street-corner lightskirt, and still he permitted her to charm him. As if permission had anything to do with it.

“Your Highness. If it suits you, would you share what you know of the Mebd, your sister Queen?”

Elizabeth’s eyes widened: her only indication of surprise.

“A fair and clever question, Sir Christofer,” she answered. “And one I cannot answer with the rectitude that it deserves but I will send you as well armed into Faerie as I may, and hope you will remember your old Queen with fondness.” Her smile grew pensive under white lead paint and carmine. Dizziness spun him.

“I have been ever too fond with you greedy, extravagant boys. Our reign reinforces the Mebd’s, and so in subtle ways she supports it. The tricks you wreak with your plays have a greater place there than here, for her land is wove of the stuff of ballads and legendry. A strong Queen in England means a strong Queen of the Bless’d Isle, and she is old enough to know it. Old enough to remember Boudicca and Guenevere. But you have a problem, Sir Christofer.” She paced, pausing at last by the candelabra, and passed her hand through flames as if she caressed a lover sface. “Because it wasn’t the Queen of Faerie who knighted you and bedded you and took you into her service, was it? And when we’release you, it is not to her service you will go. And she is dangerous when thwarted, that one, and ambitious to a fault.”

“Morgan,” he said, understanding, as another spasm wracked him. “Was the soup poisoned? Does she want her sister’s crown?”

Elizabeth shrugged, and her eyes grew dark before she turned away. “Who can say what one Queen wants of another?”

“Who can say, indeed. I will never …” He stopped, and then found his voice again. “Great Queen …”

“Do not flatter me, Christofer. Tis boring.”

“Your Highness. You release me from your service.”

“We do.”

He bowed around the hollowness that filled his throat, though pain grew in his belly like a flame. I must return to Morgan,he thought, realizing the source of the agony suddenly. “Service is what I have borne you, Your Highness, for I have not known you. And now that I bear you no service, I find I do know you. And my Queen, for what a playmaker’s word is worth, I have traded that colder thing for a warmer thing, and with your permission, I will say now that I bear you love.”

“So many masks, Sir Christofer.” She raised one hand to her face. “We have that in common.” Her eyes narrowed as he broke, leaned forward, a cold sweat dewing his forehead.

“Your Highness,” he apologized, and she waved him silent.

“Gone too long from Faerie already, she sniffed. There’s a mirror in my chambers that will serve. Come, then. Lean on mine arm.”

“Your Highness. It is beneath your dignity.” But a bubble of pain silenced him.

Elizabeth jerked her chin, dismissing his protest with a gesture. “I am old and a Queen, and you shall do as you are bid. I will not have your life on my conscience after so much contrivance to preserve it!”

“Your Highness,” Kit answered. And for the last time in a short mortal life, obeyed an order from his Queen. She handed him through the mirror, an old woman’s exquisite fingers steadying him. The glass surface clutched like bread dough, then snapped away before it could tear; he tumbled through, striking his knees and hands on stone. When he pushed himself up he thought the Queen’s long hands had come with him. But no, it was a rasping voice, jingle of bells in flicking ears, a strong small figure propping him up. “Sir Poet?”

Puck. Kit struggled to a crouch, the agony in his gut receding. And didn’t understand why his next words were, “Where is Morgan?” And whence the twist of worry and lust that almost sent him back to his knees a moment after he’d toiled up off them?