Ink and Steel

“Come live with me and be my love, hurm, And we will all the pleasures prove, harm, That valleys, groves, hills, and fields, hurm…”

Three or ten hours later, he was forced to admit he was lost. Or, if not lost for he had never left the bridle trail, or what-you-may-call-it, and thought he glimpsed the spires of the palace once or twice, when the trees grew thin at the top of a rise at the very least he was sorely misplaced. He sat on a mossy trunk and drank water and inhaled the clean musty scent of the forest. The troll’s scrap he spread on his knee to finish drying, and he considered it as he considered his options. With the water wrung out, the brocade was as satiny red as rose petals, woven of some fiber Kit couldn’t identify.

He rested his chin on his hand and scratched idly under his eyepatch, watching the light. What filtered through the widely spaced pewter boles of the beech trees was growing golden, although the breeze was still balmy. He didn’t think he’d find Morgan’s cabin before sunset, and if he slept here, he’d have the fallen trunk and the hollow under it to break the wind. A hungry night, but … crunch …

Kit’s head came up, and otherwise he froze motionless against the trunk. A footfall, perhaps something as simple as a wild pig or a stag. Another crunch, and then a third. Hooves, he decided, the sound too crisp for a booted foot. He held his breath, hoping to see a stag or a hind and not wishing to disconcert a boar, if that was what minced toward him through last year’s leaves.

Well. Not a stag, exactly, but the stag-headed adventurer whose poise and casual grip on his sword had so arrested Kit’s attention on his very first night in Faerie. He dressed richly, an animal’s smooth throat rising from the collar of his doublet, some Gyptian god made English. The stag drew up, a brief rustle accompanying his cessation of motion. His finely etched head went back as if he considered flight, warm sunlight gilding the velvet of new antlers.

“Sir Christofer,” he said, and just as Kit was about to swing to his feet and remark on the unlikelihood of such an encounter, the stag pawed the earth and snorted. “I’ve been seeking you.”

“Seeking me?”

“Aye, Sir Christofer. Who else would be in the forest at this hour, save bogeys and creeping things?”

“I,” Kit peeled the damp scrap of brocade from his breeches and tucked it into a sleeve, “am embarrassed to say.”

The stag tossed his horns. “And I am Geoffrey.”

“A pleasure to make your more formal acquaintance. Geoffrey.” Kit stood and stretched his shoulders. “Seeking me to what end?”

“Conversation. Were you bound for Queen Morgan’s cottage?”

“Yes.”

“And you found the way obscured. Unsurprising.” Geoffrey strode along the bridle path, and Kit fell into step beside him, crunching through leaves in the half-light.

“There’s a glamourie on it: you cannot find the way unless you know the way.”

“Ah.”

“Fret not,” Geoffrey continued, tilting his antlers. “I will show you.”

“Thank you. To what do I owe this kindness?”

“My desire for a moment to talk.” Long practice kept Kit from checking his step. “At last.”

“Surely a conversation could be had at less price”

“Tis no price at all.”

Strange and stranger, to see a man’s words fall from the lips of a hart.

“A token of friendship.”

“Friendship? Oh, aye. Follow me.” The stag left the path, leapt down a bank and pushed through a stand of laurel, Kit on his heels only stumbling once among the litter and sticks.

“Never step off the path,” Geoffrey said. “Never look back,” he glanced over his shoulder at Kit, long neck twisting like a ribbon “and never trust the guardian. A toss of his head back, westerly, toward the palace and the troll’s bridge.

“Unless you want to accomplish something. In which case you must risk, and intrigue, and sneak.”

“And betray?”

“Betrayals are a tricky thing in Faerie. You don’t wear Morgan’s mark of shame any longer. Does that mean you’re free?”

“The heartsease?” Half consciously, Kit brushed the breast of his jerkin with his left hand, feeling cool, supple leather. “Why should I be ashamed of it?”

Geoffrey stopped so suddenly that Kit almost slid into him. “Because of what it signifies.”

“Curse it to Hell and beyond!” Kit stepped back stubbornly, folding his arms. “Somebody is going to tell me what it signifies, or there is going to be blood.”

“Blood.” Geoffrey said the word tastingly. Of course. Mortal man. We re all fools.”

“Fools?”

“Has been so long since a true mortal walked among us. Tis changelings and half-Fae, and, well. It makes me wonder what the Mebd saw in advance of us, to steal a mortal away. Your obvious talents aside, no offense intended, etcetera.”

Kit, amused: “Of course.”

“And why Morgan would so lightly set you aside.”

He gestured Kit to follow with one expansive hoof. The beeches thinned, and yellow strands of grass began to thread between the leaves and roots.

“Why would a mortal man be important to the Fae?”