Edmund let his grin broaden until it stretched his cheeks. He took a swallow of his ale and waited for silence, then fixed Will with a steady gaze. “Edward de Vere is dead.”

Edmund’s timing was precise, and Will sprayed ale across the table. “Oxford?” he spluttered, reaching for his handkerchief.

“Aye.”

“How?”

“Plague.”

Of course.Will dabbed his chin and the table dry, and picked up his ale again. When one outlived one’s usefulness to the dark Prometheans, they are not shy about making it plain.Will hefted his tankard thoughtfully and clinked it against Edmund’s.

“To the former Earl of Oxford,” Edmund said. “And not a moment too soon. They say he died very nearly in penury: he’s had to sell all his properties, and left almost nothing to his son.” His eyebrows went up; he looked to Will. And Will sucked his own lower lip, thinking that those who played politics danced with a snake that swallowed itself.

“I didn’t know you were acquainted with the Earl, ” Fletcher said, as the landlord brought their supper to the board.

“Aye,” Will said. “Unpleasantly so.” He wished he found the news more comforting: the end of an old enemy. But all it confirmed was what he had suspected. The Prometheans were moving–again–and Will hadn’t the slightest idea what about, or how to stop them.

This was easier when I had someone to tell me what to do,he thought, and picked up his bread and his spoon. And laid them down once more, hands shaking with the realization that it wasn’t necessarily the Prometheans who were responsible for the death of Edward de Vere, now that the Earl was utterly without the royal protection that had kept him alive so long.

Kit would have told me if he were contemplating cold‑blooded murder.

Wouldn’t he?

Act V, scene iii

As for myself, I walk abroad o ‘ nights

And kill sick people groaning under walls:

Sometimes I go about and poison wells.

– Christopher Marlowe, The Jew of Malta,Act II, scene iii

Edward de Vere, Kit thought with a certain cool satisfaction, did not look well at all. But he didn’t think the man was sick with plague, as had been put about. Rather Oxford looked … shrunken, against the rich brocades of his sweet‑smelling bed. He seemed as if he dozed, a book open on his lap, and he did not look up when Kit stepped through the Darkling Glass and into the shadows at the corner of the room.

Kit cleared his throat, right hand across his waist and resting on the hilt of his rapier. “How does it feel to be ending your life on charity, my lord?”

The Earl of Oxford awoke with a start, the book snapping shut as his body twitched. He blinked and struggled to push himself upright against the pillows as Kit came out into the sunlight, but his arms seemed to fail him and his face contorted in pain. “Kit Merlin,” he said in wonder, his voice unsteady. “Of all the faces I did not look for–”

And even be cannot recall my name.

“I wasn’t looking for thee either,” Kit admitted, lounging against the bedpost. He let his hand fall away from his hilt. The carved wood wore into his shoulder, a reassuring discomfort. He pressed himself against it, parting the bed curtains, and with his right eye saw the light of strength draining from a man he used to fancy was his lover. “The Darkling Glass sent me here.”

“Sent thee?”

Kit took pity on the struggling Earl and moved forward, propping the pillows behind thin shoulders. It was like touching a poppet, a bundle of kindling wrapped in a silk nightgown. “Aye.” Grudging. “I was looking for Richard Baines. It showed me thee.”

Oxford nodded weakly. “He’s warded against thee–”

“He’s warded in general.” Something stirred in Kit’s breast. He closed his eyes, leaning heavily on the head of the bed as a wave of dizziness exhausted him. “Edward, how dost thou bear the weight of thine own skin?”

“My skin, or my sin?” It was a weak chuckle, barely an effort. From his right eye, Kit could see how the darkness within Oxford seemed fit to devour the fragile, flickering candle flame that was his life. “It matters not. Baines is consuming me.”

“I see that.” Kit tugged Oxford’s covers higher, then wiped his own hands fastidiously on his breeches. “Thou wert never better than an adequate poet, Edward. What made thee think thou couldst turn thy back on Prometheus, and live?”

“Kit,” Oxford said, and held forth a knotty hand. Kit took it, oily paper over bone. “Why thinkst thou I meant to live?”

An excellent question. Kit sat himself down on the edge of the bed and laced his fingers around his knee. “I loved thee, thou bastard,” he said in what was not meant to be a whisper.

“Pity, that.”

“Thou’lt never know how great a one. I hope thou knowest what thou spurned, my Edward.”

Oxford’s mouth twisted; Kit thought it was pain. “A bit of a poet and a catamite?” de Vere asked, and Kit flinched.

“Christofer Marley,” he said. Naming himself as if the name meant something. “A name to conjure with, or so I am assured.”

“Why didst thou come here? To mock me on my deathbed?”

Kit bit his lower lip savagely. This is not going well.“To discover why thou didst appear in my glass when I sought Richard Baines.”

Oxford laughed. It might have been a cough. “Because I can tell thee something about the Prometheans.”

“Aye?”

“Aye,” de Vere said. “What is Prometheus but knowledge?” He coughed, and had not the strength to cover his mouth with his hands. “What is God but mercy?”

“Is God that?” But the light in his breast flared into savagery, and–unwitting–Kit laid a hand on Oxford’s shoulder. It was not his own hand, quite: he could see the glare and the power gleaming behind the fingernails. Mehiel. God’s pity, at least. Does Oxford deserve that?

“When we need him to be.” Oxford smiled, his teeth white as whittled pegs behind liver‑colored lips. “Those that steal from the gods, those that defy God, they are punished. How couldst thou, with the divine fire of thy words, expect to escape?”

Kit thought of Lucifer’s exquisite suffering, and nodded. “Aye. Punished.”

Oxford smiled, and Kit still knew him well enough to read the pleasure in his eyes. The pleasure of a chess player who has successfully anticipated his opponent. Kit blinked. “You summoned me.”

“Did I?”

“Aye.”

“Aye–” Oxford’s cough racked Kit as well, and both of them pressed their fingers to their mouths. “I summoned thee. I cry thee mercy, Kitten.”

“I owe thee nothing.”

“Except revenge?”

“It’s no longer worth it to me.” Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord.“Thou’rt dying.”

“I never said,” Oxford answered, his gaze perfectly level on Kit’s, “that thou shouldst seek vengeance on me. But there are other purposes my death might serve.”

“Baines is consuming me.”

Kit nodded, understanding. Then gasped as Mehiel answered Oxford’s words from within, a flare of panicked strength that Kit thought might stream from his fingertips, halo his head like the inverse of Lucifer’s shadowy crown. The angel–was afraid. And moved to pity, both. Don’t you remember bow this man used us, Mehiel? How he plotted to have us slain?“Thy death might serve my purposes quite well, Edward.”

“Didst ever ask thyself what Prometheus might want?”

“Other than a new liver?”

“Thy wit has always been thine undoing,” Oxford said tiredly. “Kit, mock me not when I have the will to aid thee, this one last time. Baines has used me as much as he has thee–”

“How fast they run to banish him I love, ”Kit said, just to see Oxford wince. “What, Edward? What does Prometheus want?”