Ink and Steel (39 page)

“People will talk.”

“Let them,” he answered, and licked his palm to push his hair back from his face. Impulsively, he bent and kissed her on the cheek.

She covered the place with her hand, her expression unreadable. “Such haste—”

“I've an obligation,” he said, stamping his boots down, still quite dishevelled. “Anon?”

“Anon,” she answered, and did not rise to see him to the door. But he could hear her laughter chasing him as he fled back to his own room, and—

Someone had been there before him. A single candle burned on the mantel, and propped up beside it was a tall silver blade. Something shimmered before them, half real. A bundle of papers of mismatched size and color, ragged at the edges, so thick it was rolled and tied with a grosgrain ribbon instead of folded and sealed. Kit hesitated in the doorway, his sleeves unbuttoned, head aching and stomach sour, his rich court doublet hanging open over last night's crumpled shirt.
Do you ever feel at the mercy of conspirators, Sir Christofer?

Why, no. Never in my Life.
“ 'Sblood,” he cursed, and kicked the door shut with his heel before he crossed the room. He snatched the letter from the mantel, and brought it across the room to the window and the last light of sunset to read. Sorting the pages rapidly, he recognized sheets of plays and poetry, Will's hand and someone else's, shoving them all aside until he found the thick ten pages of letter.

“Oh, Will.”

Head pounding but no longer spinning, Kit sat on the edge of the bed to read Will's shaky, hasty secretary's hand. When he finished, he set the pages aside and stared for a moment out the window, watching the pale phosphorescence of the twilit sea, hoping it would calm the cold terror in his chest. As if entranced, he stood, buttoned his sleeves and laced his points, buttoned the doublet, adjusted the hang of his sword, and settled a dagger on the right side of his belt. As an afterthought, he slipped a dirk into his boot, and then as he reached for the door he glanced down and laughed at himself, going to war in court silks and pearls.

Act II, scene xx

—WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE,
Macbeth

“A fool and more than a fool,” Will cursed himself under his breath, stepping into the stirrup Tom Walsingham made of his hands. He bent his head close to Tom's ear. “Why am I shinnying in the window?”

“Could you pick me up?”

There was that. He put a hand on Tom's shoulder and gripped his dagger in his teeth, steadying himself against the wall. Tom's strength surprised him—
He's three years older than I am, damn it
. Tom's shoulders moved under Will's soft-soled shoes, his hands bracing Will's thighs, and Will was glad of the growing darkness in the garden, as his face heated at a sudden image of Tom, and Kit—

Will spat the dagger into his hand and slipped its narrow blade between the shutters. On the second try, he caught the bar. On the third try, he lifted it successfully, and held his breath as it clunked rather than clattered to the window ledge between the shutters and the glass. The sash shifted easily, and the space was sufficient for a skinny man to slip through. What lights still burned in the house were under the gables, and Will and Tom had been lurking in an upstairs room of an inn down the street long enough to see Baines set off, alone, a little before dusk. Curfew was nine o'clock, if he bothered to come home before it; they should have an hour at least, and Will expected the sojourn into the house to take less than five minutes.

He looked down, and spoke softly. “Tom, as soon as I'm inside, you leave.”

“Will—”

“No. If . . . If. You've Ben. You keep working.”

He felt Tom's rebellion, knew he had no right or precedence with which to command the other man. And then felt Tom's resignation at the logic of it.
This is what a Queen's Man does.
“All right, Will. Hurry— I'll meet you at the Mermaid.”

False coins shifted against his breast in their soft leather bag. Tom got a hand on each ankle and lifted as Will pulled, and a moment later Will was inside the window and standing in absolute blackness.
And how did you intend to find a place to hide a sack full of counterfeit coins in pitch bLackness, Master Shakespeare?

He crouched, realizing he was silhouetted against the window, and then thought to swing the shutters and the glass closed so a draft wouldn't bring some servant looking for the source. He traced the baseboard with hesitant fingers, following it into the corner of the room.
This was supposed to be a bedroom—ah. And so it is.

His fingers found the featherbed, straw ticking, the twine binding the edge. He bit through a knot with his teeth and tugged edges open, heartbeat pulsing in his throat as he shoved the bag arm-deep in rustling straw and tugged the mattress' edges together, knotting the cord as best he could in the dark.

And very nearly wet himself when the door swung open, and a darkly clad figure held a single flickering candle high in his left hand. “You must be Shakespeare,” he said, and set the candle on a table by the door. The brass and wood fittings of a pistol gleamed in his other hand; Will recognized the black-red color of his hair, the thin, aristocratic line of his nose.

“Fray Xalbador de Parma. I am delighted to make your acquaintance, sir.” Amazed at how steady his voice stayed, although his eyes betrayed him with a flicker at the window. Will started to stand.

De Parma cleared his throat and gestured slightly with the pistol. Will sat back against the bed.

De Parma crossed the room, staying enough away that Will wouldn't risk a grab for the snaphaunce flintlock in his hand.
That's right, Tom. Just head on home. I'll be aLong shortly.

A miscalculation compounded as another figure stepped into the room: slender, blond, with a mischievous twist to his lips. “Fray Xalbador, ” Robert Poley said, slouching on his left shoulder against the door frame. “I thought I'd heard a mouse scratching up here.”

“Poley—”

The blond man clucked and shook his head. “After all that fuss killing Spencer,” he said, “you should have known we'd be expecting your visit.”

“Yes,” Will answered. “I should have known.”

Kit pressed fingertips to the cold, black glass and hesitated, his right hand going to the hilt of his sword. The other Prometheans were warded from the gaze of the glass. But Will was not, and so Kit saw Poley turn, saw clearly the half-inch bore of the weapon pointed unwaveringly at Will's midsection. Saw, as if he floated overhead like a one-eyed angel, Tom's occasional guilty glances over his shoulder as—against his better judgment—he followed Will's instructions and paused by the warmth of the well-lit tavern. Until he cursed, stopped, and turned to retrace his steps.

“Tom, don't.”

Kit didn't expect Tom to hear him. Most of Kit's attention remained on Will, anyway, and the two images layered each other like an oil painting held up against the back of a stained-glass saint. Until Tom stopped, and glanced over his shoulder, as if he'd imagined he'd heard someone call his name.

Kit cleared his throat, forgetful in his fear. “Tom, love.”

Wide eyes, a whisper barely shaped. “Kit?”

“I'll take care of him,” he said, and then let the scrying end before he said anything else, turning his attention entirely to Will. Will, who had drawn his knees up and kept his back to the bed as if it could afford him some protection. Poley moved about the bedroom, lighting candles, and Kit nibbled his lip at Robert's expression.
If onLy I had been a half step quicker—

The pistol was his worst worry. It wouldn't take more than a glancing shot to shatter bone, tear flesh, crush limbs—assuming the thing didn't misfire.
Oh, I wish I had Morgan's magic now. But—if I step into the room behind de Parma, PoLey onLy has a dagger. I just have to make enough noise that the Inquisitor wiLL turn instead of making sure of Will.

Kit drew his rapier and his main gauche, pulled a single shallow breath through his nose to still the trembling in his hands, and stepped through the Darkling Glass.

Will could never quite describe what he saw: whether the shuttered window seemed to fall open on a starry night, or whether the shadows of the flickering candles twisted together in some glimmering reminder of the span of black wings. But he gasped, and when he did, Poley turned to follow the line of his vision. De Parma brought the pistol up and danced a half step back, angling his left foot with perfect balance, a sidestep that would have brought him around, his back to the wall beside the shuttered window—

—if several narrow, blooded inches of Kit Marley's main gauche hadn't emerged from his chest as he moved, his own momentum carrying the blade through his body and dragging it out of Kit's hand. De Parma completed his turn before he realized he was dead, the pistol still rising, finger tightening on the trigger as he staggered back against the wall beside the window. The scrape and then the roar of the flintlock was so enormous that Will imagined for an instant that he hadn't actually
heard
anything, just tasted all the brimstone of Hell in a concussion as if God Himself had boxed Will's ears.