Part 33 (2/2)
”Not at all,” she said. ”Mmm-master Marlowe. It is I who must beg a favor of you.” Her lips pressed tight; he saw her willing him to understand.
”Madam, as I owe you the very breath in my body-Mayhap there is a way I can repay that same?”
She frowned and shut the door behind herself. The latch clicked; his heart raced; she was not young, but he was not certain he understood what young meant to these people. And she was lovely. And unmarried, by her hair- What sort of a maiden would bar herself into a strange man's bedchamber without so much as a chaperone? Has she no care at all for her reputation?
And then he sighed and stepped away, to lean against the windowledge. One who knows the man in question is not capable as a man. Or-a stranger thought, one supported by his long night's reading-or the world has changed more than I could dream.
”I need your help,” she said, and leaned back against the door. ”I need to tell the world what you are.”
He s.h.i.+vered at the urgency in her tone, her cool reserve, the tight squint of her eyes. She'll do what she'll do and thou hast no power over her. ”Why speak to me of this at all? Publish your pamphlet, then, and have done-”
She shook her head, lips working on some emotion. ”It is not a pamphlet. It's-” She shook her head again. ”Master Marlowe, when I say the world I mean the world.”
Wonder filled him. If I said no, she would abide it. ”You ask for no less a gift than the life I have made, madam.”
She came forward. He watched: bird stalked by a strange silver cat. ”People won't judge. You can live as you choose-”
”As you judged me not?”
Oh, a touch. She flinched. He wasn't proud of that, either. ”-and not have to lie, to dissemble, to hide. You can even become a man. Truly, in the flesh-”
Wonder. ” Become one?”
”Yes.” Her moving hands fell to her sides. ”If it is what you want.” Something in her voice, a sort of breathless yearning he didn't dare believe.
”What means this to you? To tell your world that what lies between my legs is quaint and not crowing, that is-what benefits it you? Who can have an interest, if your society is so broad of spirit as you import?”
He saw her thinking for a true answer and not a facile one. She came closer. ”It is my scholars.h.i.+p.” Her voice rose on the last word, clung to it. Kit bit his lip, turning away.
No. His lips shaped the word: his breath wouldn't voice it. Scholars.h.i.+p.
d.a.m.n her to h.e.l.l. Scholars.h.i.+p.
She said the word the way Keats said poetry.
”Do-” He saw her flinch; his voice died in his throat. He swallowed. ”Do what you must, then.” He gestured to the beautiful book on his bed, his breath catching in his throat at the mere memory of those glorious words. ”It seems gentle William knew well enough what I was, and he forgave me of it better than I could have expected. How can I extend less to a lady who has offered me such kindness, and been so fair in asking leave?”
Satyavati rested her chin on her hand, cupping the other one around a steaming cup of tea. Tony, at her right hand, poked idly at the bones of his tandoori chicken. Further down the table, Sienna Haverson and Bernard Ling were bent in intense conversation, and Keats seemed absorbed in tea and mango ice cream. Marlowe, still clumsy with a fork, proved extremely adept at navigating the intricacies of curry and naan as fingerfood and was still chasing stray tidbits of lamb vindaloo around his plate. She enjoyed watching her-him, she corrected herself, annoyed-eat; the weight he'd gained in the past months made him look less like a strong wind might blow him away.
Most of the English Department was still on a quiet manhunt for whomever might have introduced the man to the limerick.
She lifted her tea; before she had it to her mouth, Tony caught her elbow, and Marlowe, looking up before she could flinch away, hastily wiped his hand and picked up a b.u.t.terknife. He tapped his gla.s.s as Keats grinned across the table. Marlowe cleared his throat, and Haverson and Ling looked up, reaching for their cups when it became evident that a toast was in the offing.
”To Professor Brahmaputra,” Marlowe said, smiling, in his still-strong accent. ”Congratulations-”
She set her teacup down, a flush warming her cheeks as gla.s.ses clicked and he continued.
”-on her appointment to tenure. In whose honor I have composed a little poem-”
Which was, predictably, sly, imagistic, and inventively dirty. Satyavati imagined even her complexion blazed quite red by the time he was done with her. Keats' laughter alone would have been enough to send her under the table, if it hadn't been for Tony's unsettling deathgrip on her right knee. ”Kit!”
He paused. ”Have I scandalized my lady?”
”Master Marlowe, you have scandalized the very walls. I trust that one won't see print just yet!” Too much time with Marlowe and Keats: she was noticing a tendency in herself to slip into an archaic idiom that owed something to both.
”Not until next year at the earliest,” he answered with a grin, but she saw the flash of discomfort that followed.
After dinner, he came up beside her as she was shrugging on her cooling-coat and gallantly a.s.sisted.
”Kit,” she said softly, bending close so no one else would overhear. He smelled of patchouli and curry. ”You are unhappy.”
”Madam.” A low voice as level as her own. ”Not unhappy.”
”Then what?”
”Lonely.” Marlowe sighed, turning away ”Several of the Emeritus Poets have married,” she said carefully. Keats eyed her over Marlowe's shoulder, but the red-haired poet didn't intervene.
”I imagine it's unlikely at best that I will find anyone willing to marry something neither fish nor fowl-” A shrug.
She swallowed, her throat uncomfortably dry. ”There's surgery now, as we discussed-”
”Aye. 'Tis-” She read the word he wouldn't say. Repulsive.
Keats had turned away and drawn Tony and Sienna into a quiet conversation with Professor Ling at the other end of the table. Satyavati looked after them longingly for a moment and chewed her lower lip. She laid a hand on Kit's shoulder and drew him toward the rest. ”You are what you are,” she offered hopelessly, and on some fabulous impulse ducked her head and kissed him on the cheek, startled when her dry lips tingled at the contact. ”Someone will have to appreciate that.”
The door slides aside. He steps through the opening, following the strange glorious lady with the silver-fairy hair. The dusty scent of curry surrounds him as he walks into the broad spread of a balmy evening roofed with broken clouds.
Christopher Marlowe leans back on his heels and raises his eyes to the sky, the desert scorching his face in a benediction. Hotter than h.e.l.l. He draws a single deep breath and smiles at the mountains crouched at the edge of the world, tawny behind a veil of summer haze, gold and orange sunset pale behind them. Low trees crouch, hunched under the potent heat. He can see forever across this hot, flat, tempestuous place.
The horizon seems a thousand miles away.
Ice The stallion was gnawed and b.l.o.o.d.y, but he was not dead.
Snow fell between us, gentling the contours of the battlefield where my brethren had died with their backs to a raging ocean, but I could see him sprawled in the gathering drifts among the gaunt bodies of a half-dozen of Loki's vile-wolves. A final abomination still panted nearby, a tar-colored monster struggling to rise as I approached. It had the strength neither to attack nor flee.
I took a deep breath of the crystalline air, and with it came a realization: So the vile-wolves can be killed. And then I wondered, Why didn't the valraven just fly up and escape them?
An old wound, garnered fleeing, stung my thigh, and a hesitant step carried me toward him. I had lost my helmet somewhere; I shoved dirty-blonde braids long as my arms out of the way. Far below us, the ocean foamed against boulders and ice at the foot of the seacliffs. The stallion raised one of his twin heads, and thrashed his shattered wings. His brown eyes shone white-rimmed and wide with fear beneath the horns. His other head, the antlered one, flopped on a broken neck, tongue lolling between fanged teeth. Under the tattered velvet of his hide, his lungs heaved; the blood that frothed from his nostrils was painfully bright. His wings - which should have been improbably white as unicorns - were streaked and daubed with blood and filth, while his struggles had churned earth and snow and gore into a horrible mire. I am ashamed to say I hesitated.
Oh, Muire, I thought, woman, for pity's sake. So I went to him, kneeling down beside him in the ice and the mud and the blood. I reached out an uncertain hand for his porcelain muzzle, and I let what Light remained s.h.i.+ne out of my eyes, feeling as if it faded already. I had never touched one of the valraven before: the angelic destriers were for better warriors than I.
He grew quiet at my touch, and I almost wept at the terrible extent of his wounds. He sighed and pushed his face against me, as a horse might with a friend. That act, somehow, struck me with more pity and horror than any other thing that I had seen on all that cruel and terrible day. How many fallen? How many failures? And not the least of them mine. I struck the tear from my eye: I was not deserving of pity, even my own.
The day had gone poorly for the Othinn's children. Far greater of my brethren than I fell that day. I had seen Strifbjorn dragged down by the trickster's hungry wolves; seen Menglad Brightwing die on a kiss, her will and being snuffed out like a candleflame; seen Arngeir thrown down and savaged by the tarnished.
To my eternal shame and sorrow, I fled the field and lived, while my brethren fell like tears.
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