“My kingdom for a good iron blade, ” Tom answered. Will grinned at the sideways flattery despite the tension in the air.

“Don’t say that where the Fae can hear you,” Will answered. “They’ve been known to take men up on bargains like that.” He didn’t take his eyes off Kit and Morgan, listening to the long silence stretch between them, wondering when it would break. He smiled to himself, and thought, and now is the time to brace Salisbury, while he’s still considering blackmail and England.

Silently, controlling his limp as best he could, Will disengaged himself from Murchaud and went toward the thunder‑browed Secretary of State.

Fie on that love that hatcheth death and hate!

–Christopher Marlowe, Edward II,Act IV, scene v

Morgan met Kit’s gaze calmly, her eyes dark and mysterious as emeralds in the weird, cold light. Over her shoulder, the Queen of Faerie looked on. Beyond her, not even turning his head to the scene, Cairbre the Bard sat his saddle like a statue, a ruby gleaming in the tip of his pointed ear where it parted the black strands of his hair.

The sorrel’s hooves were steady on the rimed cobblestones; nearby, Will and Tom and Murchaud and that damned self‑satisfied Ben Jonson stood side by each, bloody and ragged and ready for more. Kit’s breast filled up with a warrior’s pity and indignation, that men so tired should be made to fight endlessly on–

Wrath held him silent long enough for the corner of Morgan’s mouth to twitch with discomfort. Kit cleared his throat. “You lied to me.”

“Sir Christofer?”

Such patent innocence, her hand raised to her throat. Kit turned his head and spat, the sorrel dancing a sidled step. A fragment of motion caught his eye: the flip of Puck’s ear, where Puck sat his pony. “Such pretty nonsense you all told me–and chief among the liars, you, Morgan. Poets and rades and battles of song and powers and portents–”

“Dost see a rade before thee?” Morgan’s gesture swept the gathered Fae, touched Murchaud and his mortal companions, swept up and dismissed Salisbury and his men.

Kit raised an eyebrow when he spotted Will, moving between the groups. The laugh he could not contain sliced like a fish bone at his throat. “Thou hadst no care for me, my Queen–”

“Not so‑”

“–I was only the vessel. The container. The prison for the being thou didst truly wish to touch, to win–”

“–not so,” she said again, even softer. The tone in her voice was too much.

He flinched, and stopped, the gelding shaking his mane as Kit’s grip tightened on the bloodred reins. His nervousness affected the horse; he could see white traces of foam against the crimson neck, where the reins rubbed the animal’s cold sweat into lather.

“We’re here for thee,” Morgan said, lifting her head on her long white neck. “We would not have permitted thee to be sacrificed–”

“No,” Kit continued, finding his voice again. He shivered no longer, Mehiel’s power warming his shoulders like a feathered cloak. “You did not come to fight a war, but to twist another sorcerer’s magic to your uses. Baines would not have completed his ritual, had thou thy choice of events. But thou wouldst have waited until he had the opportunity to fill me up with his power and his plans, as if I were no more than a talisman, a crystal to be cut into a lens–”

“We could have used the power, ” Cairbre said quietly.

“I imagine you could,” Kit answered.

“It does not mean that we have no fondness for you–”

“No, teacher.” Kit’s outrage and fury were failing him. The warm horse breathed between his legs, the ears swiveled one forward, one back, switching with every nervous ripple of the gelding’s tail. “No, I know the Fae and their fondnesses. Fondness would not stop you from spilling my blood.” He gave his attention back to Morgan. “What did they offer thee for thine assistance, my Queen?”

He didn’t need her answer. He saw her eyes flick to the raven, and to Will. Murchaud stepped forward, away from Ben and Tom. “Mother,” he said. “You should have trusted me.”

A ripple of power, the sound of wings inside his mind. Kit forced his hand open, forced himself to stroke the sorrel’s rough mane rather than knotting his fingers in it as he would have liked to as Murchaud walked calmly to his mother’s stirrup and drew her down by her sleeve to whisper in her ear. The gelding turned his head slightly, enough to roll his eye at Kit. Could you move this along, please? ‘Tis tiresome, Sir Poet, standing here in the cold on rough cobbles.

Kit bit his cheek on tired laughter, all his irritation draining away. Perhaps I’ve just been used too much to care any more,he thought. And also, I’m keeping this horse.

“Trusted thee?” Kit asked the Prince, when Morgan did not comment. He wondered at the speaking look Murchaud gave him, and hesitated. Twisted the reins around his fingers until they cut his skin. Nausea twisted likewise in his belly; he caught himself looking after Will, bent in whispered argument with Salisbury, and away from Morgan and Murchaud.

‘Tis time to pick a side.He touched the trusted sorrel’s mane again. “I wish I knew your name.”

“Gin,” Puck said, having come up silently on his pony.

“Gin?” The sorrel’s ears flicked back. “For Ginger?”

“‘Cause he’s a rum one,” Puck answered. His laugh smelled of juniper and loam, and Kit’s confused expression showed; it made the little elf laugh the harder. “What will you do, Sir Poet?”

You, not thou. It stung, and Kit could not deny he deserved it. “What do you think the Prometheans’ ritual, their capture of Mehiel, will mean over time, Master Goodfellow?”

Puck shifted on his shaggy pony’s saddle. The barrel‑bodied animal shook itself, its wiry upright mane rippling with the motion. “If the angels are clever, it means an end to miracles.”

“And an end to martyrs?”

The little Fae’s wide mouth twitched. “There will always be martyrs. You did not answer me.”

“No,” Kit said. “I did not. First we deal with Baines.”

“And then?”

“This will never end,” Kit answered, “as long as I live, and Mehiel lives in me.’

“Aye. Shall I ask you a third time, Sir Poet?”

Kit lifted his reins. Murchaud stepped back from Morgan’s saddle and moved away. He caught Kit’s eye under the arch of her horse’s neck and mouthed something–two words. Trust me.

Ah, my Prince. If only.Kit’s gaze slid off Murchaud’s, and found the back of Will’s head as Will laid his hand quite boldly on Salisbury’s sleeve, demanding the Secretary of State’s attention. Kit sighed. “Will is for England,” he said with a tired shrug. “And I am for Will.”

The devil knew not what he did when he made man politic; he crossed himself by ‘t: and I cannot think but in the end the villainies of man will set him clear. How fairly this lord strives to appear foul! takes virtuous copies to be wicked, like those that under hot ardent zeal would set whole realms on fire.

–William Shakespeare, Timon of Athens,Act III, scene iii

Salisbury looked up, still scowling, as Will closed the distance between them until he was close enough to the Earl that Salisbury visibly resisted stepping back. Will gathered himself, drawing on a player’s dignity as he framed himself against the Tower wall and the Faerie lights behind. He waited a moment, until he was certain of Salisbury’s full attention, and deepened his voice when he spoke. “I think I know what you want, Mr. Secretary. And I think I can give it to you.”

Cecil paused, his head angling sideways on his short, wry neck. “What I want, Master Shakespeare?”

An attempt at coolness, and Will saw through it. For all his political savoir‑faire, Salisbury was no player. “You wish English security,” Will offered, smiling and holding tight to the sleeve of Salisbury’s warm woolen robe when the Secretary might have pulled away. Will’s hand trembled only a little. He leaned forward to make the nodding of his chin seem chosen rather than uncontrolled. His breath steamed in the air between them; he was grateful for the drama of the effect. “You wish the power of the Romish and Puritan factions lessened, the Prometheans brought to heel” – a gentle cough – “and your own, shall we call it, future assured.”