The words were like a wall. The dismissal in them, the amusement, Baines’ quiet confidence and mastery. As if he could not even be bothered to despise Kit. Kit leaned into them, forced himself a step forward. Catesby would break first, he thought, would not permit Baines to shuffle him aside so easily, not to judge by the stallion set of his neck.

“At least I’ve never held down a boy half my size while five grown men forced themselves on him,” Kit answered, trying for something of Baines’ bantering tone. What got out between his teeth was bitterness.

“No, thou hast an easy time finding lords and libertines to make of thee their Ganymede. Thou didst think not thy patrons kept thee for thy poetry.”

“Bastard – ” Kit moved forward, a firm step where his feet wanted to shuffle, and called on the rage and the roiling power stewing in the hollow of his gut.

Baines only laughed. “Going to scratch mine eyes out, puss? Come on, then – ” and came forward to meet him. Catesby moved at the same moment, supporting Baines, two swords pressing as Kit sidled sideways to get his back into the corner by the door.

Kit freed his main gauche before the bigger men got within sword reach, hoping the cramped quarters would cause them to foul each other. Catesby had to come around the bed, at least, and hop over that tumbled stool. Baines advanced straight in; Kit’s right eye showed him something dark and potent twist itself around Baines’ left hand, as if he swung a cape of some black force to supplement the bright blade of his rapier.

Baines never took his eyes off Kit’s face when he spoke, and that unconscious caution made Kit feel suddenly lighter. “Don’t kill him, Robin,” Baines said. “Not until I get a look at him with his shirt off– ”

“As if you could manage my death,” Kit scoffed, and whispered a few words in a pidgin of bastard Greek and the sleek, fluid language that Satan had taught him. He looked Baines in the eye when he said them, but Baines’ left hand moved, that cloak of darkness flickering around his fingers, and it was Robert Catesby who slumped to his knees and fell back upon the floor, his sword blade ringing when it dropped from his fingers, a wide snore drifting from his parted lips.

Kit never looked away from Baines, but Baines looked down at Catesby and then back at Kit with a nod that might have been edged with respect. “Nicely done.”

Kit drew a ragged breath and formed his sleeping spell again. Baines shifted onto the balls of his feet, and for half a drawn breath neither man moved. Then …

Fuck this for a Lark–

It wasn’t the sleeping spell that Kit spat hastily–as Baines lunged – but an older, wilder magic; something Lucifer had shown him but had not bothered to explain. A curse, very simply, simple and uncontrolled, related to the old weird magic the black Prometheans used to call down God’s wrath in plagues and famines and the strange wild storms of winters such as no living man remembered– winters that froze the Thames, and plagues that killed men like Edmund Spenser and Ferdinando Stanley.

Die like Sir Francis,Kit thought, and hoped a subtler magic wouldn’t slip off Baines’ black spell‑cloak like water off oiled silk. The words didn’t slow him: Kit hastened to parry Baines’ gliding serpent of a blade. He stepped to the right, hopped over Catesby’s sprawl, and found himself with his back to the spell‑locked door.

Baines had the reach and the weight and the heavier blade; he came in hard, let Kit parry, and took the stop‑thrust of Kit’s main gauche through the meat of his own left forearm with little more than a grunt and a curse. “Blast – ”

Steel ground on silver; Kit’s head spun with the clean, sharp reek of Baines’ sweat, the cedar from his doublet. Baines shoved Kit’s sword and his right hand hard against the wainscoting with all his oxlike shoulder behind it. A close bind: Kit released his main gauche, still fast in Baines’ arm, and dropped to his knees between Baines and the wall, dragging his rapier free with a sound that should have showered sparks on both their heads. I should have twisted the damned knife. I should have run him through the neck and not the arm.

Dammit, Kit, fight better than this.

You know how to fight better than this–

Too close in to use the rapier. Baines brought his knee up before Kit could dive aside – a great reckoning in a Little room,Kit thought, as the blow under his chin slammed his teeth together, his head knocking a dent in the plaster of the wall. His mouth was full of blood: Baines’ blood, dribbling from the wound in his arm, and Kit’s own blood streaking his teeth and roping down his throat. He gagged on it, rolled aside, and almost got his rapier up in time.

Baines kicked him in the belly, hard, and Kit went down with his head between his knees and the acid burn of vomit chasing the stringy sweetness of blood from his mouth. “Christ,” he whimpered, and Baines kicked the sword out of his hand. It rang like a dropped coin when it struck the wall and fell, blade angled like a broken wing, into the corner. Another kick, one more, center of his chest and Kit felt something flex and twist over his heart, a green buckling noise like a twisted stick.

Christ.

And then, ridiculously, as he doubled up, gagging again: I’m sorry, Will.Something else rang on the floor. Kit’s main gauche, Baines swearing heartily as he yanked it free and cast it aside. “That’s two scars I owe thee, puss.”

Don’t touch me. Don’t touch me.But Baines’ hands were gentle, lifting Kit against the wall, smoothing the wet curls that had escaped his ponytail out of his eyes. Kit spat blood and bile in Baines’ face, slamming the side of his hand down on the dagger wound still weeping blood from the left forearm. Baines grunted, grimaced, and let go of Kit. Kit folded like a corpse, trying to push the sharp words of a witchcraft into his mouth. But whatever he had done–the twist and rill of the curse he’d spat out earlier – seemed to have stripped the power out of Kit, and the words were nothing more than doggerel.

‘Christ, Puss,” Baines said, half irritated and half pleased. Stay where I put thee for once. There’s a pet – ”

Kit slumped, wheezing. Almost got a leg under himself, but Baines’ command held him to the floor like the clink of chains. Something rattled. Something splashed. Tearing cloth and cursing: Baines must have been binding his arm. Kit forced himself to one knee again and again fell, defeated. Surely if he could stand he could reach his sword, a few short feet away, just in the corner by the hearth.

Every breath hurt enough to dizzy him. Baines crouched in front of Kit and washed the blood and vomit from his face with a wine‑soaked rag. “Hush for a moment,” he said, and slapped Kit’s cheek backhanded when Kit–‑weakly–fought him. “Hush, puss. This wouldn’t happen if you didn’t fight me so.” His fingers probed.

Kit winced and swore, squirming back against the wall, not liking the strange, concerned gleam in Baines’ eye.

“Oh, thou’rt not bad hurt. A cracked rib is all.” And then he doubled both hands in the lawn of Kit’s collar and shredded the shirt as if ripping up rags, tearing it down to the lacings of the jerkin that Kit wore on top.

“Come, puss. Give us a kiss.”

He leaned forward. Kit slammed himself against the wall, harder than Baines had managed, feeling the strain in his neck as he twisted his face aside. Kill me and get it over with,Kit thought, shivering.

Instead Baines grunted in satisfaction, mock‑loving fingers outlining the scar on Kit’s breast, and let him go. “Good. That saves us time. Now get out, Marlowe. Before Catesby wakes.’

Kit blinked, focus eluding him. He got a hand and a knee on the floor; the effort made the walls spin. “Get out?”

Baines had turned his back on Kit and was wiping the blood from his hands. “I can’t keep thee in a bird cage until I have use for thee. And thou’rt no good to me dead: surely even a poet could have deduced that by now. I’ll be back for thee when I need thee, never fear.”