He wasn’t sure if the salt and iron he tasted was blood and the bridle, or Mehiel’s tears.

Or his own.

But the pain wassmaller.

*  *  *

Kit crouched in darkness, stronger for the bread and ale he’d forced over his iron‑numbed tongue, his trembling hands pressed to the iron bands across his cheeks, below his eyes. I can do this.

We can do this.

Mehiel, coiled in a tight, black‑barred ball of misery, shivered and did not answer.

We can endure this. We endure. We live. We cooperate if we must. And then we find our vengeance.

«Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord.»

As thou wishest it. We willlive, Mehiel.

“Froggy frogs,” someone whispered. Kit startled, felt about him. He tore the bridle from his head again; it rolled and rattled in darkness, a heavy iron jangle, but his hands brushed nothing that felt like flesh, slick or otherwise. Losing my mind. And who could wonder?

“Master Troll?”

“Froggy frogs. Froggy frogs. Froggy frogs – ” Faint as an echo up a drain pipe.

“Master Troll ! There’s a way out, sir?”

“Hurm.And harm.”Something that luminesced faintly squeezeditself from a narrow space in the floor, expanding like a rose from a stem, and loomed over Kit.

“Sir Poet,” the troll said, a green‑mottled pattern of dim light against the darkness of the cell. “There’s no way out but through,” he answered, and reached a long hand through the darkness. Spatulate fingers rasped against Kit’s filthy hair, found his earlobe, and tugged.

“What? Ow!”A wincing pain to add to all the greater pains, and suddenly the sensation of a small thing burrowing out of Kit’s intestines ceased.

“A gift,” the troll said, sounding inordinately pleased with himself, and sat down beside Kit with his back to the wall, still glowing faintly.

“And now we escape?” Kit said hopefully, raising his fingers to touch the heavy warm circle throbbing in the lobe of his left ear.

“And now we wait,” the troll answered complacently. “Tell me a story, frog‑and‑prince.”

Act V, scene xiv

I durst, my lord, to wager she is honest,

Lay down my soul at stake: if you think other,

Remove your thought; it doth abuse your bosom.

If any wretch have put this in your head,

Let heaven requite it with the serpent’s curse!

–William Shakespeare, Othello,Act IV, scene ii

Amaranth was easy to find. Her long green‑and‑silver body lay like a jeweled ribbon dropped on the dust‑colored winter grass near that strange white tree; her woman’s torso rose among the ice‑covered branches, her hands upraised like a supplicating sinner’s.

Will glanced over his shoulder at Murchaud as they came up the hill. “Shall we interrupt?”

“Go thou on,” Murchaud answered. “She likes thee better. I’ll stay for thee here.”

Will dug his toes in to climb the slick bank, leaning on a birch limb he’d liberated from the wood –a temporary walking stick – as he climbed. Amaranth heard him coming, of course, or perhaps felt the vibration of his footsteps through the ground. She turned from the waist, the flakes of ice she had been brushing from the tree’s pale branches dusting her arms and shoulders and the complaining mass of her hair. Thread‑fine snakes coiled tight against the warmth of her skull in the Novembery chill.

“Good afternoon, my lady,” Will said. A silvery tone came to him on the same cold breeze that snapped the brave green and violet banners on the Mebd’s shining turrets: the cry of a fey trumpet, climbing the rise.

“Hello, William, “she said. The trumpet sounded again, burying her words under a landslide of music. “The Prince is going to be late for the rade if he lingers here.”

“Rade?”

“The Faeries ride on London,” she said. “Time’s slipped past thee while thou wert in the wood, I fear.”

“What day is it?” Thickening worry, as his hand rose to his naked ear. I could have lost a lifetime in the time it took to walk back from the troll’s bridge. And think you not that the Prometheans will kill Kit out of hand, should they find the Faerie court tromping through London?

In the mortal realm?” She dusted ice from her hands. It fell like snow through still air, sparkling on her scales where it landed. Looking up, Will could see that she’d cleaned half the boughs already. “It is Hallow’s Eve.”

Damme,” he said. Almost a month gone.The knowledge made him reconsider his fear for Kit, as well. And if Kit be not dead already, so long out of Faerie, it is only that so the thing is protecting him.Will would have swallowed, but his throat was too tight. . He would not bury Kit before he saw the body. Not a second time. “Thy help, Amaranth–”

“All thou needest ever do is ask,” she answered, lowering her human torso so that he looked her directly in the eyes. Something flickered across their opaque surfaces, a blue so bright he thought first it was the reflection of the unreal sky of Faerie. “Although”–a tongue‑flicker of a pause–“I will not vouch that the answer will be always yes.”

He laughed despite the worry gnawing in the pit of his belly. “Why art thou so willing to help a poor poet?”

Dead grass hissed against her scales as she shifted, swaying. “A snake never shares what she knows unless it serves her own purposes. Thou shouldst comprehend such things by now.

“Aye,” he said. “I should. And she never shares her reasons, either.”

“Perhaps because we have friends in common, thee and me.

“… perhaps. How is thine eye for a riddle, Amaranth?”

“If ‘tis a riddle with an answer–”

Will sighed. “I asked a troll where to find Kit, who is held captive by the Prometheans. Wilt help me for his sake?”

“Aye,” she said, “and thine own sake as well. Tell me thy riddle.”

Will closed his eyes, blessing a memory drilled into sharpness by grammar school and years of playing thirty scripts in repertory. “Look down wells and look in the dark wet places, he repeated. “Look in forgetful places, and for forgotten things‑Ask those that know the secrets whispered under earth and between stones.” And then he peeked through half‑closed lashes, hoping to see some sign of enlightenment cross her face, and half afraid that he would not.

“A snake should know such things,” she said, and seemed to consider. “An oubliette,” she said at last. “Forgetful places and forgotten things. An oubliette that used to be a well, perhaps? Is there such a thing in London?”

Will’s held breath rushed out of him with the words. “There is indeed, and a famous one,” he gasped. “Lady, if it would not kill me, I should kiss thee.”

“If it should not kill you,” Amaranth replied, “I would like that. And now?”

“And now,” Will said, “I must discern how I may invade the Tower of London, from which I have myself only recently escaped. And I must convince Murchaud to stay his mother’s ride until we have safely recovered Sir Christopher.”

Act V, scene xv

What is beauty, saith my sufferings then?

If all the pens that ever poets held,

Had fed the feeling of their masters’ thoughts,

And every sweetness that inspir’d their hearts,

Their minds, and muses on admired themes;

If all the heavenly Quintessence they still

From their immortal flowers of Poesy,

Wherein as in a mirror we perceive

The highest reaches of a human wit;

If these had made one Poem’s period

And all combin’d in Beauty’s worthiness,