Ink and Steel

Still our grip held steady, & I felt it safe to return to A

   Act II, scene xiii

She wore no gloves, for neither sun nor wind

Would burn or parch her hands, but to her mind,

Or warm or cool them: for they took delight

To play upon those hands, they were so white.

CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE, Hero and leander

Kit and Amaranth strolled together through the airy corridors of the Mebd’s palace, her coils dragging behind like the train of a queen. He walked with a flute in his hands, practicing the fingerings, keeping the lamia on his left side where he could see her hair writhing.

“You should make a start on your cloak, she said. I would help you sew the patches.” He wondered how she spoke so clearly, when her forked tongue flickered with every breath. Magic and more magic.

“Cairbre says I must stitch them myself. Tis part ofthe protection.”

“Then I will teach you to sew.” Lightly scaled fingers demonstrated a mi

“So I’ve heard rumored.” She laughed when he shook his head. “Tell me of this protection. I haven’t heard the tale.”

“The Queen’s Bard wants me for an apprentice, I think. A true one, and not a hanger-on. It seems to involve rather a lot of memorizing antique ballads. They were great memorizers of all things, the Druids. They would have gotten along well with my latin tutor. I wonder if the Druids also believed in the recollective power of birchings.” He slid the flute into its case on his hip opposite the rapier, and stretched his fingers one against the other. “I am restless, lady Amaranth.”

“You have seemed less anguished of late, Sir Poet.”

“I have. I am busy playing the student again, and making poems to please the Mebd. Morgan leaves me alone, more or less. Is pleasant when I report to her, and gives me no hint to what use she puts mine information, or if it is of use at all. Will not answer my questions about Murchaud, and neither will the Queen. And there is no news from England.”

“leave it, Christofer. England is done with thee, and thee with she. How is it that writing for royals is not so rewarding as the bloody rush of the common stage?”

“I should be writing,” he said, aware as he spoke that Amaranth’s last few comments had fallen into silence unanswered, and he could not recall them.

“Ah,” she said. Something in her cool, melodious voice caught him; he turned to study her eyes.

“Such a lovely man,” she said, stroking his cheek. Her fingers felt like cool leather, the scales catching his rough-shaven cheek. “Pity about your scars.”

“There’s nothing to be done for it,” he said. “Many a man’s survived worse than half a blinding, and to more sorrow.”

“What would you do for your sight returned?” she asked, as if idly.

“Can you do such a thing?” She shook her head. “There might be those that could. It’s in the songs: If I had known, Tamlin, that for a lady you would leave, I would have taken your eyes and put in dew from a tree.”

“I do not know that song. Cairbre has not taught it me.”

“We do not sing it here.” She smiled, a curve of bloodless lips.

His footsteps padded beside the rustle of her belly sliding on stone. “It has not been written yet. And what would you write, if you were writing?”