“When she passes – ” Kit chewed his lower lip. He glanced down at his hands, and latched the shutters again. “It will have repercussions in Faerie. We’ll deal with it when we must. Needs must move faster than we have, in any case – ”

“Sir Robert won’t like it.”

Kit grinned. “Sir Thomas will. And your side of beef, Jonson, or I miss my guess.”

Will snorted. “Jonson is ever eager. Now that he knows you live, I may as well tell Burbage too. Wilt meet with us at Tom’s house, and we can start our Bible? If you have the book – ”

“Aye, I have the book.” Kit’s fingers drummed on the window ledge.

The pattern was erratic, a touch too quick, and ragged. It made Will’s heart feel as if it beat irregularly, in counterpoint. He kicked his heel against the wall, waiting for Kit to continue.

“Did Sir Robert say the Queen was dying? Dying now?”

“He insinuated she had not a year left in her.”

“Damme,” Kit said. “We need more strength, Will. If things go the way I think they will in Faerie, I may very well provoke a war. What that means for England I am not sure, but Morgan and Murchaud and others all have told me that there will be battle when Elizabeth dies. And I suspect Elizabeth’s passing may not go easy on the Queen of Faerie, either: the two are story‑linked. We’re weak, our faction. Damned weak – ”

Will exhaled. “There’s the witchcraft you got in Hell.”

“Aye, and if I’m clever I may make Baines regret his alliances. I mean to go there from here, and try my hand at the evil work of an evil eye. But there’s Oxford and Essex and our old friend Southampton – ” He shook his head.

“We can’t trust Sir Robert either, ” Will said, at last putting a name to the conviction the evening’s meeting had left in him. He’s already searching for the place he’ll put his feet when the Queen is gone. He’s not his father’s vision – ”

“Nor his father’s shortcomings, I hope,” Kit answered bitterly. “So it’s thee and me and Tom and Jonson and Dick Burbage against half the peerage and two of England’s greatest intelligencers.” His lips pursed as if it pained him to admit as much of Baines and Poley. “We need to take control back: we’ve lost the initiative utterly. Thy Lady Day play. Whatever Jonson’s working on. Has anyone talked to George?”

“Can we trust George?”

“Can we fail to?” Kit slumped, forehead to the shutters, taking his weight on locked elbows, his hair parting in ringlets at the nape of his neck. “He may already know more than we suspect. Tom was George’s patron before he was mine.”

“I’ll tell Richard,” Will said. He turned his cup over on the window ledge by Kit’s hand, and fumbled in his pocket for the silver coin so he wouldn’t reach out to tidy Kit’s hair. “I’ll ask Tom about George – ”

“Feel George out.” Kit pushed himself upright and turned to the chair by the fire, sliding his jerkin off the back and testing the dampness of the leather with curious fingertips.

“I will.”

“Who else have we?”

Will stopped and closed his eyes. “Edmund.” He pressed his fingertips to his eyelids and bowed his head.

“Edmund? Spenser? Will–”

“No,” Will said. “Edmund my brother. He’s playing at the Curtain now, Kit.”

“And thou wouldst risk him?”

Will laughed, slicking both hands back over his ever‑rising brow, and met Kit’s gaze more squarely than he felt the need to. “He’d be furious with me if I kept him from participating in any justice meted to Hamnet’s murderers. He had more to do with my son’s raising than I did myself– ”

He let the sentence hang, and Kit left it there long enough that Will filled the silence. “And thee?”

Kit shrugged the jerkin on, and found a bit of rawhide in a pocket to twist his unruly curls into a tail. “I’m going to try to kill Richard Baines.”

Act IV, scene vi

Behold and venge this Traitor’s perjury!

Thou, Christ, that art esteem’d omnipotent,

If thou wilt prove thyself a perfect God,

Worthy the worship of all faithful hearts,

Be now reveng’d upon this Traitor’s soul,

And make the power I have left behind

(Too little to defend our guiltless lives)

Sufficient to discomfit and confound

The trustless force of those false Christians!–

–Christopher Marlowe, Tamburlaine the Great,Part II, Act II, scene ii

The January rain drew cold fingers through Kit’s hair and down the back of his neck. The only lover’s touch you’re like to feel again.He shivered and tugged his cloak higher, settling the weight of his rapier at his hip as he made the turn from Muggle Street onto Silver. His fingers brushed the red velvet of Hamnet’s ribbon, tied to the hilt, and he laughed to himself at the irony. So Will raises Poley’s son– who might be Kit’s son, rather–and Edmund raises Will’s son.

And what dost thou contribute to the equation?

Blood. Blood and more blood.

That is all.

Kit left his hood down. The streets were deserted with the early winter curfew, leaving him without company except the odd stray dog and the odder feral pig, and the shadows he called would conceal his passage from most casual eyes. He pursed his lips and whistled an air, summoning a swarm of greeny‑gold glowing midges out from darkened alleys. They swirled like a minuscule waterspout over his open palm; he blew his breath and his music across it and they flocked like swallows and schooled like fish.

There was one useful thing in the marks Baines had branded into his flesh. They were a palpable trace of the man, and Kit could use their resonance to find him. “Richardum Baines mei invenite,” he commanded. The motes rose and sparkled, darted and flitted, arrowed in a general easterly direction and then jigged back and forth like a dog leading its master to the gate, impatient for supper. As Kit followed the guiding will‑o’‑the‑wisp through London’s slick, dark streets, the night grew colder. Water froze in his hair.

White flakes superceded the icy rain, turning the footing slushy and treacherous. Snow whispered on the reddish roofs as Kit’s guides led him to the theatre inns near Bishopsgate, each one closed for the night, narrow doors barred for curfew, and then through the twelve‑foot archway into the innyard of the Green Dragon.

Some candlelight still glowed through shutters on the second and third floors. Kit leaned back, shading the snow from his eyes with a hand held flat, and contemplated the diamond‑patterned railings on the galleries. Despite his better intentions he found himself glancing about the innyard; he’d lodged here when he first came to London, and seen several of his own plays performed to audiences that crowded those very galleries and the pavement upon which he now stood.

His witchlights twinkled along the railing by one shuttered window, a handful of emeralds set out in the sun. The second gallery, of course, and he wondered why it was that he never needed to scale a trellis in dry sunshine and gentle warmth.

I wish I’d brought a pistol.Aye, ‘Marlowe,’ ” he muttered. “If a sword and black magic won’t suffice, perhaps thou shouldst ensure thou hast a firearm so thou canst blow thine own clumsy fingers off when the damned thing misfires. How am I going to get up that gallery with the front door closed and no doubt barred?”

Add burglar to thine accomplishments.

He huddled under shadows in the innyard, watching the soft green jewels of his will‑o’‑the‑wisps shifting like sleepy doves on the railing, glowing dimly through the downy fall of snow. The chill on his skin, the numbness of his hands and tongue, couldhave been the cold. Aye, and thou hast lied to thyself so many times before.