“A play. Something of Greek descent, perhaps. Has ever a playmaker had such a cast as here, that could play satyrs and centaurs convincing?”

“A tragedy?”

“Tis what I’m good for. Tragedy and black farce.” He ran the fingertips of his right hand along the wall, feeling slight dimples between the cool stones. “You know much of my history, lady Amaranth. And I know little of yours.”

“I have no history.”

As they turned the corner, the way opened wide. Cushioned benches lined the windows on the west wall; on the east were glass doors made of a thousand diamond-shaped panes as small as Kit’s palm. Beyond them, sunlight lay on autumn gardens, begging comparisons to Elysium.

“Shall we wander?”

“I know why you are overset, Sir Christofer.”

“I never said I was unhappy.” But he held the door for her, waiting until the last slender inches of her massive tail whipped past, and stepped out onto the balcony behind. Amaranth rose like a charmed cobra, the power of her lower body lifting her human torso fifteen feet into the air. She draped her coils over the thick stone banister and stretched down it, scorning the steps Kit descended. He enjoyed watching her move; she didn’t slither side to side, like a garden snake. Rather, her scaled belly pulsed in ripples like waves rebounding in a fountain, pushing her forward, leaving not so much as a depression in the gravel path to mark where she had gone.

“Neither did you say you were not,” she replied, stretching her arms to the sun. The snakes of her hair yawned wider than cats and twisted sleepily in the warmth of a St.-Martin’s-summer day, tiny fangs glittering white.

“Clever Amaranth. Snakes are a symbol of wisdom.”

She turned to him, winked one of her expressionless eyes.

“If you’re so wise, then what is it troubles my well-known, imperturbable calm?”

Her laughter was a hiss. “The Prince-consort, of course.”

“I have not seen him” … Kit paused. “Time in Faerie, ah. I cannot say how long it’s been. Years.”

“Then you have not been informed. Curious.”

Without inflection, as she sank her face into the enormous, late-blooming starburst of a peony. Kit turned so fast that he tripped, his throat closing in fear. Some detached, intelligencer’s fragment of his mind observed his sudden panic wryly.

“So. It was not all enchantment, was it, Sir Christofer?”

“Been informed of what?”

She cupped the blossom in her hand as she rose like a pillar to face him, so its crimson petals shredded and scattered through her fingers.

“He has returned.”

“No. No, I had not known. When, lady Amaranth?”

“Two days gone. He’s been closeted with his mother, and then his wife.”

“But I would have thought”…

Kit rubbed his eyepatch. “So would I,” he said, cold between his shoulders. “I would have thought, as well.”

He hadn’t a key, but locks as ancient and massive as the one on Murchaud’s chamber door were a formality, a politeness more than a measure of security. He almost could have flipped the pins from the tumblers with his finger; a shorn quill and the shank of a heavy brooch sufficed. Kit sprang the lock and glanced over his shoulder to see if anyone had noted his unorthodox entry. It seemed unlikely. He slipped inside and let the latch click tight behind. Twilight filled the bedchamber. Such decadence, in Faerie; even servants slept in their own beds. The first time in his life that Kit had had a bed and a room to himself was at Chislehurst, and that was a function of Tom Walsingham’s great house understaffed and underoccupied.

Kit walked to the window and threw the panes open, leaning out over the broad carpeted ledge on his elbows and breathing deep of the sweet air of Faerie. The sun had slid under the horizon, and mackerel clouds banded a violet sky. Dying rays stained the misty tops silver as mirrors: their bellies gleamed pewter-dark. A tiny knot had snagged in the carpet. Kit worried it with a thumbnail, as if he could press it back into place among the red- and black- and mustard-colored wool. The evening smelled of rain, but only change-of-weather clouds hung across the sky. Kit at last closed his eye and leaned his forehead on the back of his fingers, thinking about what Amaranth had said. A remembered taste of blood came with the thought of a glittering blade, poised just above his eye He pressed the heel of his hand against his eyepatch. How long can you play invulnerable, Kit?

He drew one last breath and turned from the window. First, Murchaud’s correspondence. And then …

And then whatever follows.

Night was long fallen when the turn of a key in the lock woke Kit propped upright against a bedpost with his naked blade across his knees from a doze. He opened his eye on darkness and rose to his feet, groping his way by the edge of the mattress. No servant had arrived to kindle a fire; perhaps the locked door had been barrier enough. Murchaud entered alone, bearing a flickering lamp. Kit recognized the turn of his head and prayed himself invisible against the bed curtains as Murchaud pulled the key and locked the door behind him. The flutter in his throat was excitement and apprehension, nothing more. The memory of Tom and Audrey companionship, conversation, family unoccluded by sorcery or betrayal, still burned brighter than Murchaud’s presence. Kit swallowed against the feeling that he betrayed them, somehow.

You’ll never see them again. This is Faerie. There is no love here. Use what you have.

Murchaud set the lamp on a stool and unbuttoned his doublet at the collar, turning toward a wardrobe cupboard against the interior wall. Kit moved across the carpets soundlessly and as Murchaud hung his doublet on a peg set the tip of his rapier between Murchaud’s shoulder blades, just a half inch to the left of his spine. Kit remembered the spring of ribs, the curve of muscle under his hand, and pressed forward until the point of the blade slid throughsnow-white silk and a stain the size of a shilling started up.

“If I blotted a pen,” Kit said softly, “why should I not write my displeasure on your skin?”

“No reason,” Murchaud answered, lifting both hands into sight. “As welcomes go, this is more dramatic than most. Might I unhood the lantern, or do you plan to kill me in the dark?”

“Only if you wish to die tonight.” Kit stepped back, sword whispering into its sheath in a snake-tongue flicker.

“What sort of a death are we discussing?” Murchaud’s long fingers darkened the lantern for a moment and then were silhouetted; Kit looked down to avoid sudden brightness. He ran his tongue along the back of his teeth before he answered.

“Thou couldst have told me.”

“Told thee which?” Murchaud came toward him, as if to pull him into an embrace. Kit turned aside, feeling unfaithful still, and not to Murchaud. He went to the window and flung the sash open, leaning out into the night. A cold moon gilded the lawns and gardens below, tossing thoughtfully on the ocean. He did not turn back when he spoke.

“Hell, Murchaud?”

“What dost thou mean?” The voice close behind him, Murchaud’s footsteps soft as a breeze. A hand on his shoulder, fingers brushing his throat.

Kit smiled, and didn’t shiver. “Thou hast been, what, five years in Hell? I know thou didst write to thy mother and thy Queen. Yet not to me.”

“I thought …” Murchaud halted. “My mother worked a particularly vile sorcery on thee.”

Kit snorted and shook the hand from his shoulder. “Thou claimst to be a friend to me? Thy pardon, dear heart, if I mock the claim.”

“Tis true.”

“Tis words. Kit moved away. He leaned against the wall between tapestries and crossed his arms, watching Murchaud spread his hands in conciliation, all the night and the nighttime sea behind him.

“Just words.”

“How didst thou know?”

“Know that it was only words?”