Kit permitted his head to tip back onto his shoulders, and let his lashes shield his eyes from the dripping water, and the cloth hold his body up. He was too tired to fight further.
Outmaneuvered,he thought, listening to footsteps approach. Lucifer stood beside him, then, and Kit could imagine the rustle of wind from his wings. He pictured the slightly crooked, narrow‑bridged nose, the golden skin and hair, the strong line of Lucifer’s jaw. «Thou didst give thy consent, Sir Poet.»
“Because I thought it would thwart thee,” Kit answered aloud, refusing to look into those still, blue eyes. He didn’t want to encourage the false intimacy of Lucifer reading his thoughts. There would be enough false intimacy soon.
«I am rarely thwarted long. Dost thou never lose thy power to intrigue?»
“Get it over with,” Kit said. Not an answer but a command.
«Master Baines,» Lucifer continued, as if Kit’s answer meant nothing to him. «Do see about removing those rings.»
“The rings keep his power in check, my lord Prometheus.”
«His power is mine.» Lucifer answered, and that was all. Baines obeyed, the rings that Kit could not budge sliding smoothly into his captor’s hands. Kit kept his eyes tight shut, unsurprised when they cut his remaining clothes away. He could smell the coke, the tang of the hot irons, and knew he would soon smell his own cooking flesh.
The thought troubled him surprisingly little.
Not nearly as much as the soft touches of a paint‑brush on his skin, marking his body with intricate warm symbols. He did glance down then, and saw Baines crouched beside his feet, delineating sigils in a medium Kit knew by its sharp coppery smell was blood. The blood, he realized, of the first of the three dozen birds that fluttered in Poley’s long cage. The brush Baines used was a carefully pared raven’s quill.
“You’re killing the Tower ravens,” Kit said foolishly.
Baines glanced up at him and smiled. “Very clever, puss. Would you care to tell me why?”
“England will fall.”
“Leaving one less faith in Europe,” he said, dipping his brush. The blood had clotted, and he set the basin aside as Poley brought him the death of another sacred bird in a little white stoneware cup, a fresh trimmed quill balanced across the top. “Before you know it, everyone shall believe as Prometheus’ children will them to.”
You were halfway kind to me,Kit thought, with a sidelong glance at Lucifer. “Was my consent so important to you?”
«No man can be damned without consent.» the Prince of Lies answered. «Nor saved neither.»
That will teach me to say yes to anything.
“That doesn’t explain your kindness. Or that you promised me the power to deal with mine enemies.”
«All stories are true.» If Lucifer had been wearing his wings, they would have flicked tight shut just then. Kit found the fallen angel somehow–diminished–without them. Iron jingled in his hand. «Where are thy rings now? Where is thy cloak? Where are thy boots and thy blade? Where is thy name?»
You have them,Kit answered.
Lucifer laughed, and let the rings fall like drops of frozen blood, to ring on wet stone. «No power left but thine own, and that of my beautiful brother. All thy hoardings and borrowings stripped away. And yet though thy power will not be enough for thy purposes, it will suffice for mine.»
“How can you be so certain you can use my strength?” If I cannot outwill Baines, can I be certain I can outwill Lucifer?Somehow, the dripping water did not carve runnels in the patterns Baines painted over every inch of his body. Kit mourned the ravens, surprising himself, gritting his teeth as Poley brought Baines a third bowl of blood.
“Because my story is truer than thine,” Lucifer answered, “and because thou didst give thy consent.” Kit hissed in shock; the voice shook his body like a hard‑carilloned bell. Then he hissed again when Lucifer bent down and kissed his open mouth, and Kit felt the rustle of wings within.
Kit was bloody to the hollow under his chin. Cold water dripped from his hair, beads trickling between the bumps of gooseflesh.
He watched the conspirators move about the chapel, seeing plainly in the darkness again now that the barbed rings were off his hands. The cessation of that pain alone was such a relief that he could not stop flexing his fingers against the silk, leaving smears of color upon it. He didn’t look at Baines, even as Baines leaned close enough to him that Kit felt his breath hot on his skin.
Instead, Kit looked out into the darkness, wincing as Poley drew the very last raven from the cage, mastering its struggles as easily as Baines – time and again –had mastered Kit’s. He wrung the black bird’s neck and it fell limp in his hands, relaxed. Kit winced in grief.
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.”