She said, “Because thou art of more use to Faerie in the mortal realm than thou art here, and Sir Christofer has that in him which we need, and can bargain with, and can use as a weapon. And thus we keep him here.”

“Has that in him, his magic? His poetry?”

“No, though we have our ways of making profit on that.”

“Does he know this?”

“He knows we have uses for him. He knows what some of them entail: his poetry, his plays. We use him as your own Gloriana did and there is more to it, of course.”

“And you have not told him.”

“Because,” she said, pressing the back of her hand to her eye, “he is not ready to know. Thy Kit Marley is a deeply broken thing, gentle William, and I do not think he could bear the knowledge of what use he has been put to.”

Will’s hands tightened on the cup. He lifted it to his mouth and tasted the sweetness of honey, the sharpness of ginger, infused with a silvery aftertaste. Her candor left him nauseated: the ginger helped. “What use is that, Your Highness?”

“No,” she said, after a considering stare. “I do not believe thou couldst keep it from him long, even an thou understood why it must be kept. Suffice it to say he is safer with us, and kept distracted with small tasks.”

“He’s not a man for small tasks, Your Highness.”

This smile sparkled, parting her lips for a low, sugared laugh. “Perhaps not,” she answered, setting her cup on the mantel and strolling toward the door. She opened it and paused within its frame, turning back for a parting smile. “But then, neither art thou, I consider.”

Will paused in the doorway to the conservatory, blinking in the light as its occupants turned to face him, and then blinking again to bring the splendor of the enormous room into focus. Music surrounded him, an eldritch sort of a reel on two flutes and viola; he gazed about in wonder as he paused atop the broad, time-hollowed marble steps. Some vining plant a type of fig, he realized, for the fruit that hung in purple-black profusion along its stem ascended a trellis, contorted branches a latticework against the crystal of the ceiling. A wisteria’s waterfall blossoms dangled among the fig’s glossy leaves, and all about the glass-domed marble space were fountains and benches and statuary, a profusion of half-private niches and mossy grottoes.

A small group of people both nearly human and quite outlandish gathered by the splashing fountains: Kit and the bard Cairbre in their gaily colored patchworks, and beside them the snake-tailed Amaranth. There was a foppishly dressed gallant with a stag’s head on his shoulders, shiny above the ears where he must have shed his antlers, and Robin Goodfellow perched on the head of a statue, reed flute raised to pursed lips and his ears waggling in time.

Will did feel better for Morgan’s herbwifery, he realized; the ache across his shoulders ebbed, and his hands shook less as he took the banister to descend, hushing his footsteps so as not to disturb the musicians. Kit caught his eye over the restless motion of the bow, offering a smile that brought with it a frisson that Will could almost convince himself was aversion. Or should that word be fascination, Will?

He paused outside the circle until Kit, Cairbre, and the Puck lowered their instruments, then joined the polite applause. Kit, that smile still intact, handed his viola and the bow to Amaranth, who settled it under her chin amidst much inconvenienced hissing from her hair.

“Well played,” Will said. Kit shrugged it off. He laid a hand on Will’s shoulder and drew him gently aside, where the sound of the fountain and the flurry of music would cover their speech. “I’ve not much to do but practice and play the Prince’s favorite. How went your interview with my mistress?”

“She is most gracious,” Will answered. “And most mysterious.”

“I hope you have been careful what she has asked of you,” Kit.

“As careful as a man may be, where he owes his life.”

“Aye, there’s the rub.”

“Tis not the rub that concerns us so much as the result.” Will chuckled, dabbling his hands in the fountain. He leaned back, rested against the edge, remembering the paleness of Kit’s scars. The man’s entitled to nightmares,he thought. He’s also entitled to the truth of what Morgan said of him: as well she knows I won’t be used against my friend.

“She hinted at things that troubled me, my friend.”

“Sorcery and subtlety.” Kit snorted, turning to sit on the marble edge, shoulder to shoulder with Will and on his left. “Did she tell you it was she who ensorceled me, when first I came to Faerie?”

“No. And yet she released you?”

“After a fashion. Or I won my way free. I am still bound here, though.”

Will raised his left hand to brush his earring.

Kit nodded. “I envy you that, a bit. It seems I can be gone from Faerie three days, perhaps four, before my body begins to fail. An unkind sentence. I comfort myself that at least I left no family, save that in Canterbury.”

What dost thou then think I am, Kit? And the Toms, and Mary and Robin, and Ned Alleyn?But he nodded, and bumped Kit’s shoulder with his own. “She also hinted and wisely said she would not say more, as I might run direct to thee with the tidings,” a deprecating laugh, “that thou wert bound, somehow, still. She suggested that there was a power in thee, something trapped and broken.” He moved to see Kit’s profile. Kit had put his blind side to Will, Will realized with a rush of affection.

“She has a gift for manipulation,” Kit said. “But she does not understand, always, mortal men.”

“I see.”

“What did she say, exactly?”

Will drew a breath, watching Amaranth rise up on the tower of her tail, her scales catching the light that rippled from the fountains until it seemed she shone.

“She said that I was free to go because of being more use in the mortal world than here, and that you have that in you which she needs, and might bargain with, and may find to be a weapon. And that you were too deeply wounded to be told this secret, because it would damage you further to know.”

“I see,” Kit said. “Tis so satisfying to have the trust and good faith of one’s patrons.”

Will held back a laugh at Kit’s dry, weary tone. “Wilt beard her on this?”

“Morgan le Fey? Might as easily draw the claws from a lion’s paw as secrets from that one. She’s fair as thorn in bloom, and twice as daggery. No. I’ll pursue where I can.” Kit folded his arms across his chest, the angle of his chin telling Will that he watched the Puck cavorting about the shoulders of Hercules. He sighed. “Sweet William. How did we ever get from there to here?”

Will shrugged. “Where? London? Where is here, then?”

“Sorcery, intrigue, intelligencing, Faerie.”

“Poetry.”

“Poetry is how we got here? Who would have thought poetry so dangerous?” Kit kicked one heel up, resting it against the base of the statue. “My father made shoes. Yours made gloves. There’s a certain symmetry there, and to ending up here.”

“The Cobbler’s Boy, the Glover’s lad, and the Queen of Faerie. I hope this isn’t an ending.”

“I was hoping for happily ever after in wealth and contentment.”

“It should be a ballad.”

If I know Cairbre, it will be. A facile comment, but Will thought there was more behind it. Kit hummed a familiar melody, and sang under the rise and fall of the flutes and the viola: ‘ALL hail the mighty Queen of Heaven!’

“Oh, no, True Thomas, that name does not belong to me.”

“Old songs?”

“Old songs, old poems. Old poets.”

“Getting older.” Silence for a minute, as they listened to the melody of the instruments and the falling water. “I think I know, then, what’s bound in me that they mean to use as a weapon.”

“You do?”

“I can guess.” The arms unfolded. Kit leaned back, his hands flat on the edge of the fountain. Will imitated the gesture, cool marble smooth and damp under his hands.