“No hounds such as these, ” she said. “Master Shakespeare, come forward.”

Kit clutched Will’s cold gloved fingers, but Will tugged them loose and moved three steps away. Gin shied and sidestepped away from the pressure of Kit’s knee when he would have gone after, and he could only watch skinny, shiny‑headed Will limp up to clasp the stirrup of the Queen. “Will – ”

“Your Highness,” Will said, quite ignoring Kit. The Mebd nodded to him silently and lifted her chin to stare Kit down.

He lasted perhaps a minute and a half. “Why these hounds?”

“They are hounds that have a certain link to thee which will help them find the sorcerer who used thee so badly, Sir Kit,” she said, and smiled. Kit heard Tom’s sudden indrawn breath, the creak of leather as he swung from the saddle of his own Faerie mount. Kit turned to fix him with a withering stare, but it was as if Kit had grown as invisible as Mehiel. The red hound craned her neck up to nose Kit’s stirrup once.

“Your Highness,” Tom said, raking both hands through his graying auburn hair. “If I understand you correctly, I would serve in this capacity as well.” He looked at Will, as if for permission. Will tilted his head, smiling, and shrugged, and finally both men turned to look at Kit. Who looked down promptly, away from Ben Jonson’s startled cough.

Kit turned to fix Ben with a glare, but the wry bemusement on the young poet’s face turned a searing glance into a sideways shrug. One that made Ben cough again, and then burst out laughing, both hands over his face.

The Mebd laid her hands on Will’s head, and Tom’s, and flinched. “You have iron on ye,” she said, leaning back in the saddle. The spare Faerie horses withdrew as she spoke, milling in back of the rest, docile as if led.

Kit watched as Tom divested himself of various things – boots and dagger and what else came to hand that might have so much as a flake of iron in it. Will did the same, but when he searched his pockets he paused and turned back to Kit. “Hold this for me,” he said. “Safekeeping.” And pressed a silk pouch containing a bit of iron into Kit’s palm.

“Oh, Will,” Kit said, words forced past a wall of emotion.

Will just shook his head. And a moment later a tall, wire‑coated gray hound and a blue‑brindled one stood beside the red one and the black.

“Christ,” Kit said, not caring that the Queen made a moue of distaste and the Puck clapped his hands over his lolling ears. “What sort of hounds are those?”

“Faerie hounds, Sir Poet,” Puck answered, patting Kit’s boot as he hung the little silk pouch around his neck. “With yawning mouths, sharp teeth, and wet lolling tongues. Fleet of limb, compact of foot, and tireless in the hunt.”

The dogs circled, casting for a scent. Kit watched, slowly shaking his head, and bit his lip when the red bitch belled in a voice he would have known anywhere. A moment later and all four hounds gave throat, and Cairbre and the Mebd wheeled their steeds around.

“Come on,” Puck cried to Kit and Ben, giving his heels to his shaggy pony. “Come on! We hunt!”

If the trail took them through London, Kit never knew it. He crouched low over the gelding’s blond mane and watched the running hounds–their half‑pricked ears, their wiry coats, their long muzzles and longer legs stretched out in flight. The gray limped, he thought, but it still outran the blue‑brindle. Kit could not force himself to give them names. Will. Tom.

The horses’ hooves might have flailed air, for all the sound they made, and Kit thought they ran through walls and buildings as easily as if they coursed along roads. The whole world went to shadows, rosy with the dawn and gray with winter, and all around was the silent rhythm of horses running like ghosts, their breaths and those of their riders trailing back in plumes of white, the pulse of air through their lungs, the creak of leather, the bell of hounds the only sound. Ben’s big bay surged along on Kit’s left; on his right side the Mebd’s leggy black outran the rest. Beyond her Kit glimpsed Cairbre’s mount steady at her flank, nose even with the post of her sidesaddle, and when he ducked his head to glance under his arm, he saw Puck’s strange little pony striving gamely in their wake, almost lost amidst the Mebd’s flock of courtiers.

Kit pulled his eyes away, rocking with the motion of the horse, wincing when his weight hit his injured foot in the stirrup and fresh blood oiled the inside of the dead man’s boot, wetness soap‑slick on the glassy surface of sweat‑cured leather.

The hounds ran on, and the horses ran behind them, and the sun rose from behind the ghosts of houses and trees. Glimmerings moved among the city’s landmarks: Gin ran through the shadow of a girl who stood one moment golden‑haired and garbed in blue, laughing – and the next sodden and dark, clad for mourning. It was a dream of London, Mehiel told Kit. A dream of England: not quite Faerie, but a place that was neither quite Faerie nor real. So this is how Baines hides himself so well.Except… how did he come here? How did he know of this place? What is it, a shadow world, world of the half‑told stories?Kit glanced sideways to catch Ben’s face over the lofting mane of his bay, saw the wonder and the bitten lip and the big hands steady in concentration on the reins.

Five hounds now, not four, Kit saw, and the fifth one white as starlight on snowdrifts, running strongly alongside the others, close as if teamed. The fifth dog was larger and more beautiful than the others, like an idealized alabaster statue rather than any real hound, even a transformed one, Kit felt Mehiel’s wings flutter, cup air almost strongly enough to tear him from the saddle, more real here in this place of half dreams than elsewhere. A caution, my friend.

Kit’s scars flared with pain, subsided. «He hunts with us,» Mehiel said, wondering. «Can the Devil serve two masters?»

And Kit blinked, and raised his head to look at the red dawn spilling over the shifting landscape they ran through, sure‑footed fey horses clearing withy hurdles that were jumbled stone‑crowded stream courses when they landed beyond, charging up hills that turned into houses, and he understood. Of course.

«Kit, I do not understand.»

Mehiel would not. For Mehiel was a creature of service, a creature under will, made to obey: a moral imperative made flesh. He could have no doubt, no hesitation, no regret, no hope. Except. Except he had stayed his hand when he could have struck Lucifer down. When Lucifer, mocking, had spread his arms wide and offered himself like a sacrifice. Like Kit. When Lucifer had come at the summons of those who had held Kit, who had treated them as a lord with servants, had sworn–

Had promised them everything they had asked him for.

And then … led Kit’s rescuers among his own servants, interrupted the ritual that would remake God in the image they desired? It made no sense, and Kit worried at it, shredding it like a falcon shreds a rabbit haunch. Because, because, because.

Because Lucifer was a legend too. A legend like any other, a construct, a fable, a myth.

And Morgan had had hair as golden as straw once, and she had been a goddess then.

«A11 stories are true,» Mehiel said, comprehending. «He can be both things at once.»

Not if Lucifer can help it,Kit answered, and crouched back in the saddle as Gin collected himself to scramble down a slope that was gravel, was slick mud, was traprock, and scree. The five hounds ran before them; the fey steeds strove beneath. The light shifted gold for crimson as the sun broke free of the horizon, and Kit leaned closer to Gin’s neck and held on for dear life. Mehiel, my brother, I dare say the one thou lovest doth care for thee, as well.