Last one,” Poley said, after he had drained the blood from the bird and brought the vessel up to Baines. “He looks – interesting. ”
Kit turned his eyes away as Baines patted him on a red‑daubed shoulder. He watched Lucifer poke idly at a coal‑filled brazier, the rod stock in his hand brilliant red at the tip.
I’ve played into his hands. Again.
Gold and black. «I told thee so.»
Kit didn’t think the angel really deserved an answer.
Duke: There rest. Your partner, as I hear, must die to‑morrow,
And I am going with instruction to him.
God’s grace go with you! Benedicite! [Exit.]
Juliet: Must die to‑morrow! O injurious love,
That respites me a life, whose very comfort
Is still a dying horror!
–William Shakespeare, Measure for Measure,Act II, scene iii
“There must be something,” Will said tiredly, leaning back against the dank stone wall. His shaking hands ached with the cold; his feet were numb things at the bottoms of his legs.
“Nothing,” Murchaud answered, both hands raised over his head as he pressed the blank stones of the wall near a trio of identical arches. His sword, still clenched in his fist, caught the light of Tom’s lantern and reflected it back through cold drips of water.
Will tugged the hood of his cloak up and stepped away, back to the edge of the inadequate puddle of light.
“There is a taste of sorcery,” Murchaud said. “But it’s shielded and dark. I don’t know which of these paths to take.”
“I thought you knew where the chapel was. Your Highness.”
“Have you ever stopped to consider what a ridiculous honorific that is, Master Poet?” Murchaud moved slowly along the wall, trailing his hands over the stones nearest the dripping ceiling as if they might whisper something in his ear if properly coaxed. “Your Highness.Higher than what? At least Majestyor Graceare admirable traits to wish on a ruler.” His voice, softly cultured as ever, showed little sign of emotional strain until he dropped his hands to his side and swore. He turned his back to the abutment between two of the archways and leaned back on the dank stones, careless of his silk and velvet, his rapier angled across the front of his legs. “I can’t smell anything but mold and what magic they used to hide their trail.”
“Let me have the lantern, Sir Thomas.” Ben came forward, a hand on Will’s shoulder, and lifted it out of Tom’s hand. He crouched so the light was concentrated on the threshold of the first door. At the second he paused, running a finger over the stones, and at the third he bent very close for long seconds and then shook his head, finding nothing. “There’s a trace of blood through that second doorway, and what looks like a bare footprint on the stone–”
But?” said Tom, coming to retrieve the lantern.
“–but I think ‘tis not the way they walked.”
“Why not?” asked Will quietly, fiddling with the iron nail in his pocket to stop his hands trembling. He hated his hesitant steps for slowing them, hated the querulous nodding of his chin that he could not seem to stop.
Ben looked up, shook his head. “That, I know not.” Broad hands spread wide. “‘Tis but an intuition.”
“We should follow the blood,” Tom said, and Murchaud nodded. “Or we could split into pairs–”
“Aye, and be murdered all the more easily for our troubles,” Ben scoffed, standing.
It was Will, standing a little back from the other three and their conversation, who heard the rustle. “Gentlemen,” he murmured, amused when they all three fell silent. “Tom, a little light over here, an you please.”
Tom turned with the lantern just as Will turned, and a dark shape bigger than a terrier hopped awkwardly across the time‑heaved floor toward Will. He crouched, drawing his cloak tight so it would not flap and frighten the raven, and held out his hand. “How strange,” he said.
It fluttered into the air and landed on his fist, dry feet pinching and the impact as if somebody had smacked his hand with an overhand blow. He cushioned it, bending the elbow to take the weight, then standing with the assistance of his cane.
The bird cocked its head left and right, black eyes glittering in the lanternlight. It opened its beak and cawed once, harshly, with a tone of entreaty, and then stiff pinions brushed his doublet and chest as it lifted again and flew to wait in the third doorway, the one that Ben had hesitated by.
Will knew it by its twisted wing.
“Gentlemen,” he said. “I think we have a guide.”
They hurried.
The raven was impatient, and Will thought at one point that Tom was about to order Ben to carryWill. But somehow, four men and a bird managed to move through the low, tumbledown corridors in almost complete silence until the low murmur of voices and the flicker of torchlight ahead alerted them.
Ben and Murchaud went first while Tom hung back with the hooded lantern, one steadying hand on Will’s shoulder. The playmaker and the soldier moved forward with cat‑footed softness, stopping well inside the mouth of the tunnel. Will saw them silhouetted against the dim moving light beyond, and smiled. The darkness was their friend, the torchlight their ally; it would turn the mouth of this particular tunnel into a well of darkness for anyone in the open space beyond.
Will’s heart dropped into his gut at the expression he read on Murchaud’s face as the Elf‑knight leaned heavily on the wall, visibly restraining himself. Ben turned back to Tom and Will, waving them forward, and Tom left the lantern behind as he came.
The raven was heavy, rustling on his fist. Tom steadied him, but it was Ben’s big hands that almost lifted him up the last rubbled slope to the crumbling entryway, that turned his head with a gentle touch to see –
–Kit.
Naked. Wet. Shivering. A few steps up a raised dais on the far side of the red‑lit space, his feet planted shoulder‑width apart as if he held himself upright out of sheer defiance, his arms spread and bound wide. Shuddering visibly, even from fifty feet away, every time the two figures who stood beside him touched the skin of his face with the quills they held.
Will knew them both, and one of them was anything but a man.
Braziers bristling with the handles of irons stood under an improvised tent at the foot of the dais, and torches guttered here and there, but Kit’s flesh was redder than the firelight should paint it, and it took Will a moment to understand why.
“Holy mother Mary,” Will said. “Is that all his own blood?”
“I think, ” Murchaud answered softly, “that we should make haste to intervene, or our timely arrival will be wasted after all. Leave the Devil to me. Master Poet, if you would see to Kit’s freedom?”
Will lifted the raven off his fist and set it down on a high point of the rubble as Lucifer and Baines turned away from Kit and started toward the braziers. He drew his belt knife into his right hand and nodded, forcing himself not to think of what he was about to do.
“Ben and I will see to the rest of the rabble,” Tom said. ‘Baines is the one to watch. We three will go first and clear your path, Will–”
Don’t underestimate Robert Poley, either,Will thought, but all he said was, “Aye.” He took a single deep breath and nodded, his eyes trained on Baines as Baines and Lucifer separated, Lucifer climbing the stairs again and Baines moving toward a darkened corner of the chapel. “Go if you’re going, gentlemen.”