Ink and Steel pa-3

by Elizabeth Bear

  Act II, scene xiii

  She wore no gloves, for neither sun nor wind

  Would burn or parch her hands, but to her mind,

  Or warm or cool them: for they took delight

  To play upon those hands, they were so white.

  CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE, Hero and leander

  Kit and Amaranth strolled together through the airy corridors of the Mebd’s palace, her coils dragging behind like the train of a queen. He walked with a flute in his hands, practicing the fingerings, keeping the lamia on his left side where he could see her hair writhing.

  “You should make a start on your cloak, she said. I would help you sew the patches.” He wondered how she spoke so clearly, when her forked tongue flickered with every breath. Magic and more magic.

  “Cairbre says I must stitch them myself. Tis part ofthe protection.”

  “Then I will teach you to sew.” Lightly scaled fingers demonstrated a minnowlike dart. Kit frowned, not looking up. “I am,” he said with asperity, “a cobbler’s son. I can handle a needle very well indeed.”

  “So I’ve heard rumored.” She laughed when he shook his head. “Tell me of this protection. I haven’t heard the tale.”

  “The Queen’s Bard wants me for an apprentice, I think. A true one, and not a hanger-on. It seems to involve rather a lot of memorizing antique ballads. They were great memorizers of all things, the Druids. They would have gotten along well with my latin tutor. I wonder if the Druids also believed in the recollective power of birchings.” He slid the flute into its case on his hip opposite the rapier, and stretched his fingers one against the other. “I am restless, lady Amaranth.”

  “You have seemed less anguished of late, Sir Poet.”

  “I have. I am busy playing the student again, and making poems to please the Mebd. Morgan leaves me alone, more or less. Is pleasant when I report to her, and gives me no hint to what use she puts mine information, or if it is of use at all. Will not answer my questions about Murchaud, and neither will the Queen. And there is no news from England.”

  “leave it, Christofer. England is done with thee, and thee with she. How is it that writing for royals is not so rewarding as the bloody rush of the common stage?”

  “I should be writing,” he said, aware as he spoke that Amaranth’s last few comments had fallen into silence unanswered, and he could not recall them.

  “Ah,” she said. Something in her cool, melodious voice caught him; he turned to study her eyes.

  “Such a lovely man,” she said, stroking his cheek. Her fingers felt like cool leather, the scales catching his rough-shaven cheek. “Pity about your scars.”

  “There’s nothing to be done for it,” he said. “Many a man’s survived worse than half a blinding, and to more sorrow.”

  “What would you do for your sight returned?” she asked, as if idly.

  “Can you do such a thing?” She shook her head. “There might be those that could. It’s in the songs: If I had known, Tamlin, that for a lady you would leave, I would have taken your eyes and put in dew from a tree.”

  “I do not know that song. Cairbre has not taught it me.”

  “We do not sing it here.” She smiled, a curve of bloodless lips.

  His footsteps padded beside the rustle of her belly sliding on stone. “It has not been written yet. And what would you write, if you were writing?”

  “A play. Something of Greek descent, perhaps. Has ever a playmaker had such a cast as here, that could play satyrs and centaurs convincing?”

  “A tragedy?”

  “Tis what I’m good for. Tragedy and black farce.” He ran the fingertips of his right hand along the wall, feeling slight dimples between the cool stones. “You know much of my history, lady Amaranth. And I know little of yours.”

  “I have no history.”

  As they turned the corner, the way opened wide. Cushioned benches lined the windows on the west wall; on the east were glass doors made of a thousand diamond-shaped panes as small as Kit’s palm. Beyond them, sunlight lay on autumn gardens, begging comparisons to Elysium.

  “Shall we wander?”

  “I know why you are overset, Sir Christofer.”

  “I never said I was unhappy.” But he held the door for her, waiting until the last slender inches of her massive tail whipped past, and stepped out onto the balcony behind. Amaranth rose like a charmed cobra, the power of her lower body lifting her human torso fifteen feet into the air. She draped her coils over the thick stone banister and stretched down it, scorning the steps Kit descended. He enjoyed watching her move; she didn’t slither side to side, like a garden snake. Rather, her scaled belly pulsed in ripples like waves rebounding in a fountain, pushing her forward, leaving not so much as a depression in the gravel path to mark where she had gone.

  “Neither did you say you were not,” she replied, stretching her arms to the sun. The snakes of her hair yawned wider than cats and twisted sleepily in the warmth of a St.-Martin’s-summer day, tiny fangs glittering white.

  “Clever Amaranth. Snakes are a symbol of wisdom.”

  She turned to him, winked one of her expressionless eyes.

  “If you’re so wise, then what is it troubles my well-known, imperturbable calm?”

  Her laughter was a hiss. “The Prince-consort, of course.”

  “I have not seen him” … Kit paused. “Time in Faerie, ah. I cannot say how long it’s been. Years.”

  “Then you have not been informed. Curious.”

  Without inflection, as she sank her face into the enormous, late-blooming starburst of a peony. Kit turned so fast that he tripped, his throat closing in fear. Some detached, intelligencer’s fragment of his mind observed his sudden panic wryly.

  “So. It was not all enchantment, was it, Sir Christofer?”

  “Been informed of what?”

  She cupped the blossom in her hand as she rose like a pillar to face him, so its crimson petals shredded and scattered through her fingers.

  “He has returned.”

  “No. No, I had not known. When, lady Amaranth?”

  “Two days gone. He’s been closeted with his mother, and then his wife.”

  “But I would have thought”…

  Kit rubbed his eyepatch. “So would I,” he said, cold between his shoulders. “I would have thought, as well.”

  He hadn’t a key, but locks as ancient and massive as the one on Murchaud’s chamber door were a formality, a politeness more than a measure of security. He almost could have flipped the pins from the tumblers with his finger; a shorn quill and the shank of a heavy brooch sufficed. Kit sprang the lock and glanced over his shoulder to see if anyone had noted his unorthodox entry. It seemed unlikely. He slipped inside and let the latch click tight behind. Twilight filled the bedchamber. Such decadence, in Faerie; even servants slept in their own beds. The first time in his life that Kit had had a bed and a room to himself was at Chislehurst, and that was a function of Tom Walsingham’s great house understaffed and underoccupied.

  Kit walked to the window and threw the panes open, leaning out over the broad carpeted ledge on his elbows and breathing deep of the sweet air of Faerie. The sun had slid under the horizon, and mackerel clouds banded a violet sky. Dying rays stained the misty tops silver as mirrors: their bellies gleamed pewter-dark. A tiny knot had snagged in the carpet. Kit worried it with a thumbnail, as if he could press it back into place among the red- and black- and mustard-colored wool. The evening smelled of rain, but only change-of-weather clouds hung across the sky. Kit at last closed his eye and leaned his forehead on the back of his fingers, thinking about what Amaranth had said. A remembered taste of blood came with the thought of a glittering blade, poised just above his eye He pressed the heel of his hand against his eyepatch. How long can you play invulnerable, Kit?

  He drew one last breath and turned from the window. First, Murchaud’s correspondence. And then …

  And then whatever follows.

  Night was long fallen when the tur
n of a key in the lock woke Kit propped upright against a bedpost with his naked blade across his knees from a doze. He opened his eye on darkness and rose to his feet, groping his way by the edge of the mattress. No servant had arrived to kindle a fire; perhaps the locked door had been barrier enough. Murchaud entered alone, bearing a flickering lamp. Kit recognized the turn of his head and prayed himself invisible against the bed curtains as Murchaud pulled the key and locked the door behind him. The flutter in his throat was excitement and apprehension, nothing more. The memory of Tom and Audrey companionship, conversation, family unoccluded by sorcery or betrayal, still burned brighter than Murchaud’s presence. Kit swallowed against the feeling that he betrayed them, somehow.

  You’ll never see them again. This is Faerie. There is no love here. Use what you have.

  Murchaud set the lamp on a stool and unbuttoned his doublet at the collar, turning toward a wardrobe cupboard against the interior wall. Kit moved across the carpets soundlessly and as Murchaud hung his doublet on a peg set the tip of his rapier between Murchaud’s shoulder blades, just a half inch to the left of his spine. Kit remembered the spring of ribs, the curve of muscle under his hand, and pressed forward until the point of the blade slid throughsnow-white silk and a stain the size of a shilling started up.

  “If I blotted a pen,” Kit said softly, “why should I not write my displeasure on your skin?”

  “No reason,” Murchaud answered, lifting both hands into sight. “As welcomes go, this is more dramatic than most. Might I unhood the lantern, or do you plan to kill me in the dark?”

  “Only if you wish to die tonight.” Kit stepped back, sword whispering into its sheath in a snake-tongue flicker.

  “What sort of a death are we discussing?” Murchaud’s long fingers darkened the lantern for a moment and then were silhouetted; Kit looked down to avoid sudden brightness. He ran his tongue along the back of his teeth before he answered.

  “Thou couldst have told me.”

  “Told thee which?” Murchaud came toward him, as if to pull him into an embrace. Kit turned aside, feeling unfaithful still, and not to Murchaud. He went to the window and flung the sash open, leaning out into the night. A cold moon gilded the lawns and gardens below, tossing thoughtfully on the ocean. He did not turn back when he spoke.

  “Hell, Murchaud?”

  “What dost thou mean?” The voice close behind him, Murchaud’s footsteps soft as a breeze. A hand on his shoulder, fingers brushing his throat.

  Kit smiled, and didn’t shiver. “Thou hast been, what, five years in Hell? I know thou didst write to thy mother and thy Queen. Yet not to me.”

  “I thought …” Murchaud halted. “My mother worked a particularly vile sorcery on thee.”

  Kit snorted and shook the hand from his shoulder. “Thou claimst to be a friend to me? Thy pardon, dear heart, if I mock the claim.”

  “Tis true.”

  “Tis words. Kit moved away. He leaned against the wall between tapestries and crossed his arms, watching Murchaud spread his hands in conciliation, all the night and the nighttime sea behind him.

  “Just words.”

  “How didst thou know?”

  “Know that it was only words?”

  “Know I was in Hell.”

  “A man has ways,” Kit answered. And he was assured that he had set Murchaud’s memorized papers back in order so neatly that no one would know they had been riffled. “Thou didst travel to negotiate the tithe. The seven-year’s teind.”

  “We will need Hell’s protection as much as ever we have when Gloriana passes.”

  “What of thy Queen?”

  “What of her?” Murchaud let his hands fall to his knees. “Marriages are what they are, and politics are what they are.” Surely and the note of pain in his voice was masterful: so little, so bright, and so manfully repressed that Kit could almost believe it.

  “All that love thou didst show me was not merely black magic and bindings?” Almost believe it. “All that love?” Kit smiled, and reached down with his left hand to slip his scabbard from his belt and lean the sword against the wall. He came to Murchaud, and ran his fingers through the other man’s jet-black curls, lips so near to lips that Kit could taste Murchaud’s breath, with a trace of wine on it, and a scent like roses.

  “All the love I have given thee in subjugation is but shadows of the love thou shalt have. We keep nothing, who serve.” And he pressed Murchaud’s head back against the window frame and kissed him as if Kit’s mouth were a branding iron and Murchaud the property it marked.

  Kit did not ask himself to whom his service went. And it was he who rose from the warmth of the bed in the darkest hour of morning, retrieved his sword, and dressed. And turned the key in the lock. And left.

  There were mirrors in Faerie, after a fashion: glass, water in a bowl, wine in the bell of a glass. Morgan had not precisely been truthful in saying there were none. What was true was that they did not reflect. The Darkling Glass drew all reflections to itself: into its embrace, and into its power. All reflections save those in a blade. A silver dagger polished to mirror brightness gleamed on the marble mantel over his fire, which lay as cold and unkindled as the one in Murchaud schamber. Kit stripped to his shirt and washed in cold water from the ewer beside the bed. He rinsed his mouth and spat, combed his hair, and went to throw the window wide so the autumn nighttime could fill his chamber. Which is when the light dancing in the polished blade of that dagger caught his eye. A light he hadn’t seen in …

  How long?

  He left the window open and walked toward the dagger, which glittered as if reflecting the light of a single candleflame. Will, Kit whispered. How long has it been? He lifted his hand toward the thick bundle of papers that lay beside the blade, visible in shadowy outline. A letter, he knew, with his name written on it in Will’s fast-scrawled secretary’s hand. Set on the mantel before a mirror, with a candle lit beside it. News of Robin, perhaps. Mary, Chapman, Sir Francis, Tom. England. The Queen. The papers were insubstantial, glimmering like shadows: a reflection cast on air by the light in the dagger’s bright blade. If Kit’s hand touched them, they would appear in his grip, firm and crumpled. He reached out and willfully tipped the dagger over. The light in the blade died as if snuffed. The bundle of papers flickered like a blown candle andvanished. Kit bit down until he tasted blood, and took himself to bed.