“Fair face of a witch you are,” he answered with a stab at good humor. “Without herbs or simples better than brandy to dull a man’s pain.”

She paused on the landing above the place where the stair began to sweep down and made a show of fussing right-handed with her skirts. He leaned on the rail and on her other arm while the pale gold-veined stairs reeled. “I’d dull your pain,” she answered, glancing at him before ducking her head to flick the soft moir one last time. “And thick your tongue, and set you rhead to reeling. Which canst ill afford when you go before the Mebd, Sir Poet.”

Her hair moved against the back of her neck, a few strands escaping the braid. He stopped his hand before it could brush them aside. A blade of guilt dissected him at the impulse, and he embraced the pain, gnawed at it. He had nothing left to be unfaithful to, save Elizabeth, now that his sweet Tom had discarded him. Kit welcomed the cold, the distance that came with the thought. Nothing like ice for an ache. She’s very like Elizabeth would be, had she leave to be a woman and not a King. “Queen Mab?”

“The Mebd,” Morgan corrected, steadying his arm again. Below, faces turned up like flowers opening to the sun. “Queen of the Daoine Sidhe.” She pronounced the name maeve, the kingdom theeneh shee. “She has a wit about her Ah! Sir Kit. Come and meet my son.”

“Mordred?” Kit asked, putting the smile he couldn’t quite force onto his lips into his voice.

“Dead at Camlann,” Morgan answered. “He was fair. Fair as thou art, ashen of hair and red of beard. A handsome alliance. Come and meet Murchaud the Black, my younger.”

Something in her tone made him expect a lad of thirteen, fifteen years. But the man who met them at the foot of the stairs, a pair of delicate goblets in his hand, was taller than Kit by handspans, his curled black hair oiled into a tail adorned with a crimson ribbon, his beard clipped tighter and neater than the London style against the porcelain skin of his face. Kit’s palms tickled with sweat as he met the man’s almost colorless eyes, saw how the broad span of his neck sloped, thick with muscle, into wide shoulders. It was a different thing from the inexplicable warmth he felt for Morgan. More raw, and less unsettling. He’d like to see those black curls ruffled.

“Mother,” the lovely man said, extending a crimson glass of wine. His voice was smooth, at odds with the power in his frame.

She unwound her hand from Kit’s elbow, but let her fingers trail down his arm before she stepped away. Her son pressed the second goblet into his hand, taking a moment to curl Kit’s fingers about the delicate stem. The touch lingered, and Kit almost forgot his pain.

“Your reputation precedes you, Master Poet.”

“Sir Poet, Morgan corrected. I knighted him while no one was looking.”

“You did? Mother, bravely done!”

She laid a possessive hand on his shoulder. Kit looked after her in confusion, and she gave him only a smile.

“Things are different in Faerie, she told him,” and dusted his cheek, below the bandage, with a kiss. “Now drink your wine and go ye through those doors and court and win a Queen.”

“You’re not coming with me?”

“Kit. Show them strength, not a cripple leaning on a woman’s arm.”

He met her loden eyes, then nodded, tossed back the wine, and set aside the glass. Rolling his shoulders under the too-tight doublet, he stepped into the rivulet of courtiers threading toward what must be the Presence Chamber. Frank stares prickled Kit’s skin as he followed the crowd, conscious of the antlers and fox-heads, the huge luminescent eyes and the moss-dripping armor of those who moved around him.

Masques, he told himself, and didn’t permit himself at first to return the curious glances. Hooves clattered on the floor on his blind side: he flinched and turned to look, and a naked satyr caught his eye and bowed from the waist. Kit blushed and stepped back, looking at the floor.

As if I had an idea of precedence here.The rose-and-green tiled floor rolled under his boots like the rising, falling deck of a ship. He hesitated and put a hand on the paneled wall. A woman brushed his arm, elegantly human except that the diaphanous robes which stroked her swaying hips and breasts seemed to grow from her shoulders like drooping iris petals.

Then his attention was drawn by an antlered stag, richly robed in velvet green as glass, resting one cloven hoof on the jeweled hilt of a rapier and walking upright like a man. Kit’s pulse drummed in his temples and throat.

Adrift, he thought, and raised his right hand and touched the silk handkerchief binding his bandage. The fingertips of his other hand curled into detail carved upon the wainscoting. I don’t know what to do. A novelty. I wot a knife in the eye does change one or two things.

“Follow me.” A sharp voice dripping wryness. Kit looked down, putting it to a wizened man who seemed all elbows and legs like a grasshopper. He came to Kit’s belt; his long ears waggled under a fool’s cap. “Before Her Majesty waxes vexed.”

“Waxes vexed, and wanes kind?” Kit pushed against the wall. “Dizziness, Master Fool. You know me?”

“Your plays have a wide circulation.” The little man grimaced: it crinkled his face so oddly that Kit at first did not recognize a smile. “Art Marley, and I’m Goodfellow, but mayst call me Robin if I may call thee Kit. We’re fools both, after all, and of an estate.”

“I’ll not dispute it.” Kit pressed the heel of his hand to his injured eye, as if the pressure could ease the throbbing that filled his brain. “I’ve the belly to make a go of it if you’ll steady me, Master Fool. One fool hand in hand with another. A Puck for a puck.”

“You’ve the belly for many things, I hear.”

“I’m notorious.” The banter was tonic to a flagging confidence.

A tall man with four horns and the notched ears of a bull swept past, wearing a breastplate of beaten gold and trailing a cloak of burned blue velvet and vair. A circlet crossed the man’s fair brow, just under the horns, and Kit returned his stare.

“I am notorious.”

The bull-horned man turned his head, maintaining the eye contact, and almost stumbled over a side table. Kit wished he had a rapier to rest his hand on; a heady rush he liked better than wounded dizziness filling his breast. As if air filled his lungs again after a blow to the gut.

I’m Kit Marley. I’m Kit Marley.He curled his lips into a grin and stiffened his shoulders, put a cocky sparkle in his eye. Flickering torchlight picked out the river of

Fae, limned them like the demons of Faustus, and the heat of it stroked Kit’s cheek. The bull-horned man turned suddenly to watch his feet.

Marley the poet. Christofer Marley the playmaker. Marley the duelist. Marley the player, the lover, the intelligencer. I’ve the honeyed tongue to seduce wives from husbands and husbands from wives, secrets from seditionists and plots from traitors. I’m Christofer Marley, by Christ! I can do this thing.He tasted a breath, and then another one. For Good Queen Bess. For Elizabeth. I can do this thing and any other.

“Lead on, Merry Robin,” he said without letting the grin slide down his face, though it tugged his stitches and filled his mouth with musky blood. “And show me your merry men.”

“Tis not the men that need concern you. Tis the maid stands at their head.” Twiglike fingers encircled Kit’s wrist and the elf tugged him forward, creeping on many-jointed toes.

Kit had a brief, swirling impression of heavy paneled doors worked in bas-relief with masterful artistry, designs more Celtic than Roman. The throne room was longer than it was broad, the floor tiled in patterned marble of rose and green, the dark windows hung with rippling silk and open to the night. The Fae moved freely, clumping in knots of whispered conversation, calling witticisms across the table set with glasses and wine.