The heavy beat of wings interrupted Kit. He looked up as the crippled raven rowed heavily through the air and landed on Will’s automatically upraised fist.
Kit blinked. “A raven. Unwounded and alive.”
Will smiled, and Tom Walsingham coughed into his hand. “Just one. But one’s enough, isn’t it? All stories are true stories, or so Will tells me.”
“All stories – ” Will and Kit shared a glance, and it was Will who looked up first. “Kit, should we be asking ourselves what Lucifer wants?”
Kit shook his head. “I wonder if we should be asking ourselves what ‘tis he wants to become.He’s Prometheus, thou knowest. And the serpent Amaranth too.”
“‘Twas Amaranth told me where to find thee, Kit,” Will said. He held out his hand to help the other poet to his feet. “I don’t understand–”
“Surely you don’t think the Father of Lies is limited to one shape only,” Kit said dryly, once his feet were under him. “You know how you said of Salisbury, he plays his game as if there is no other player, only pieces that sometimes move themselves?” His voice was quiet, his gaze hooded, as if he directed his commentary not to Will and Tom and Ben, but someone closer still. “Aye… .” Will glanced at Ben for assistance. Ben looked up from binding his leg.
“Sir Christopher, ” Ben said softly, “are you suggesting that Lucifer is playing both sides of the board?”
“I’m saying that his opponent is refusing to move, and he’s attempting to provoke–something. A commitment. Possibly just a response. We’ve walked into a lovers’ quarrel, gentlemen.”
“Walked, or been dragged?” Will shook his head.
Act V, scene xviii
We are no traitors, therefore threaten not.
–Christopher Marlowe, Edward II,Act I, scene :
It might lack of warmth, comfort, and sartorial splendor, but Kit was happy simply to be clothed. He’d resumed the white breeches–grimy enough now that they would be slightly better suited to skulking in the darkness–and pulled his shirt back on over the bloody sigils that patterned his flesh. He scrubbed the cloth against his skin to smear the marks, and looked up to see Will watching with an inscrutable expression twisting his mouth.
“What happens next? ” Will asked, when Kit would not look down. Will’s fingers idly stroked the rainbow‑dark plumage of the raven that perched on his wrist, and Kit’s fingers itched with the memory of feathers. If he closed his eyes, he was sure he would feel those enormous wings again, lifting him, bearing him up–
He was glad Mehiel hadn’t struck down Lucifer. Glad, and furious. Conflict is the essence of drama.He shrugged and turned to seek Murchaud, but the elf‑Prince was in conversation with Tom. “I’ll find a pair of boots,” Kit answered, and went to pull Poley’s off his dead feet.
They were too soaked with blood to wear, which was a pity, because they would have fit, unlike the too‑large ones Kit liberated from the corpse of the man Ben had killed, which rubbed his feet to blisters as the five of them wound back through the tunnels to the surface, a straggling line lit by two lanterns.
Ben took the lead on the argument that Baines was still ahead of them somewhere, and neither Kit nor Will in any condition to fight. Kit, leaning on a captured poker as he walked, raised an eyebrow at that, but the big man shrugged. “It looked from my vantage as if Lucifer made a point in failing to injure you, Master Marlin.”
“Aye,” Kit said. “I’m untouchable. Pity your charge is not, Will.” He gestured to the raven, who seemed quite content to nestle against the curve of Will’s neck. “I think I recognize that bird.”
“He’s prone to keeping company with the prisoners in the Salt Tower,” Will said, craning his head with amusement to see the witchlights that flitted from Kit’s hands, and Murchaud’s. “We made an acquaintance while I was there.”
“That is no natural raven,” Murchaud said from the rear of the group.
“Aye,” Will answered. “I had come to suspect as much. Some form of Faerie creature?”
“Some such thing, Master Shakespeare.”
Will staggered in exhaustion. Tom put a hand on his shoulder at the same instant that Kit caught his arm. The raven beat its wings heavily, but seemed loath to abandon its perch; Will yelped as its talons pinched. “And the sole thing betwixt England and destruction, if the legends of ravens and the Tower are true. We cannot even bring him away for the danger: he must stay in the Tower precincts.”
“That bird on your shoulder is the reason behind the legends,” Murchaud said.
Kit glanced over his shoulder at the elf‑Prince. Murchaud moved wearily, as if his bones ached, frowning as Kit met his gaze. “Too much iron?” Kit asked.
Murchaud nodded. “London is full of it.”
“The reason behind the legends?” Will’s voice, considering. He leaned heavily on Tom’s arm now, to Kit’s concealed annoyance. “That seems to me a statement that begs an explanation, Your Highness.”
Kit coughed, every breath still carrying the metallic reek of the ravens’ blood crackling and itching on his skin. He stopped with his hand across his mouth, his feet suddenly too heavy to lift, and turned to Murchaud in speechless amazement. His mouth worked once or twice. “But he lies in Faerie,” Kit said. “Thou didst show me his bier.”
“Beg pardon,” said Ben, at the front with the lantern. “But all this talking will make it certain that if Baines isahead of us, he’ll hear us coming.”
“Wait, Ben,” Tom answered. “I have a feeling we’d do well to hear this out. Kit, of whom dost speak?”
Kit didn’t look, didn’t lower his eyes from Murchaud’s. The Elf‑knight shrugged. “Aye. He sleeps in Faerie as well, but–”
“All stories are true,” Kit finished, and craned his neck for a better look at the raven. The bird cocked its head at him, a sideways twist like a girl tossing her hair, and Kit laughed low in his throat. “I’ll be buggered,” he said, and angled his gaze to meet Will’s eyes.
Will shook his head. “Thou’rt insane.”
“Arthur Pendragon,” Kit said, and so saying made his nagging suspicion crystallize with a sound like cracking ice. He turned to face Murchaud, and bit his lip on the smile he wanted to taste. “Turned into a raven when he died. Murchaud–”
“Aye?” The Prince did smile. “It changes nothing. We protect the bird, and we climb.”
“Oh,” Will said, craning his neck to examine the profile of the black bird on his shoulder. “And when we get to the surface?”
“We deal with my mother and my wife,” Murchaud answered. “We save the life of a mortal King. We do not let England or Faerie fall.”
“That’s something I’m not sure I understand,” Will said, still idly caressing the raven’s head. “What is it that they hope to accomplish here tonight, Prince Murchaud? Why are the Fae in London at all?”
Murchaud shrugged; Kit felt the heavy lift and drop of the Prince’s shoulders, the swing of his cloak, and spared a moment wishing for his own patchwork cloak. Baines probably burned it.The imagined loss stung. “It’s an auspicious night for the overthrow of regimes. Baines’ plans are not the only ones coming to fruition on November fifth.”