“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.”
He was speaking to their backs. Murchaud’s silver rapier gleamed when the torchlight touched it, made itself a brand of darkness in between. The Elf‑knight slipped forward, half invisible in the shadows, and Ben and Tom flanked him. Will watched, fascinated, as Ben came up behind the lone man tending the braziers and broke his neck.
Kit, standing like a statue between the pillars, did not move. But Lucifer did, leaning close to Kit with a heated iron held negligently in his hand. He had not even time to turn to face Murchaud as the Elf‑knight’s advance metamorphosed fluidly into a tackle. “S’wounds,” Will muttered, limping forward, his knife concealed in the fall of his sleeve. “This is a fool’s errand if ever I’ve seen one.”
It’s no sin to deceive a Christian;
For they themselves hold it a principle,
Faith is not to be held with heretic…
–Christopher Marlowe, The Jew of Malta,Act II, scene iii
In a moment, the heat would touch him. Kit braced himself for the pain, tilting his chin down to his chest and imagining that his weight flowed like water through his pelvis and down his legs, anchoring him to the floor. He closed his eyes–a blessing anyway, as they tended to fall on the heap of mutilated ravens at the foot of the steps–and drew deep, heavy breaths. Mehiel stirred, so close to the surface that he could feel the muscles under his skin that would move the giant wings. He heard the rustle of feathers, smelled their warmth.
We’ve done this before,Kit assured the trembling angel. It’s only the fire.
One breath and then another, and then again. The air filling his lungs was thick and sweet, invigorating, full of the scent of fresh blood and hot metal. Very similar scents, some part of his brain mused, looking for a fresh conceit. Anything to distract himself upon. Mehiel. What are we going to do?
«Endure.» the angel answered.
«Be strong, my love.» Lucifer whispered in his ear.
Kit readied himself as best he could, gritting his teeth as if sheer willpower could keep him silent against what was to come. The fine hairs on his back melted under the nearness of the iron. The Morningstar’s long fingers tangled in his hair.
Something that Kit did not see struck Lucifer from the side, knocking him away, and the iron rang on the stones and then sizzled. The blow thrust Kit forward against his restraints, shoulders wrenched as his feet came out from under him. He yelped, a startled sound, and struggled back upright, twisting in futile desperation to seek the source of sounds of swordplay and a struggle. He couldn’t turn his head far enough to see anything of use.
But a moment later a hand was on his shoulder, and that he could crane his neck to see, and gasped in shock at the worry in blue eyes and a tight, hopeful smile. “Kit, can you hear me?”
“Will ! ” Kit glanced around wildly, glimpsed shadowy combat through blurred vision. Recognized Murchaud’s dark hair and nimble grace circling a laughing Prince of Hell, saw Ben Jonson brandishing a red‑tipped iron poker he must have snatched up from a brazier, and shook his head in wonder. “Will, they’ll be slaughtered – ”
The playmaker shook his head. “Your Prince assures me he can handle this, here, now. How badly are you hurt?”
Not at all,” Kit answered, and then saw where Will’s eyes rested. “‘Tis not my blood.” He pointed with his chin, while Will produced a dagger from his belt and sawed at tautstretched silk. Something about the wasted slaughter of all those birds made his breath catch in his throat, and he choked on it, refusing to cry now that he could almost taste safety. “They slaughtered all the ravens.”