All Night Awake (38 page)

What was this? It looked to him as though the knots of Marlowe’s life had all come to a tying point here, all entwining and enmeshing with each other. “Who are these people?”

“You’d have me believe you don’t know who we are? You, who conspire with Marlowe?” the blond man asked.

“Oh, good Will Shakelance, permit me to introduce the two men besides you. The one on the right is Skeres, the one on the left is Frizer. And the other gentleman is Poley, sweet, treacherous Robin Poley, who sends men to the gallows with a smile.” Kit’s voice had a mad echo of his old, amused drawl. “They are secret operatives. Spies. Spooks.”

He could talk, yet he remained immobile, Will thought. Immobile and strained, every muscle working at remaining still.

Suddenly, the expression on Kit’s face made sense—the poet looked exactly like Will’s seven-year-old son, Hamnet, when he tried to stop breathing, for a tantrum.

He looked like a man controlling the uncontrollable.

Sweat sprang from Will’s every pore.

Only Marlowe’s willpower stood between them and the unleashed might of the wolf—the might of a supernatural being in full rampage.

“Treason, foul treason,” the Queen yelled. She’d brought her sword down, but she glared at each of them in turn. “If these men be spies, they be not mine. I know naught of what they do. No one tells the truth to me, a fragile woman, and yet I am Queen and King enough for this kingdom.” She stomped her foot.

Kit’s eyes looked wild and he seemed just like Hamnet when he couldn’t stop himself from breathing anymore and must suck in living air.

“Kill me,” he yelled. “For mercy’s sake, Will, if you’re my friend, kill me.”

Skeres and Frizer and Poley, himself, stared at Kit as though he’d lost his mind.

Will unsheathed his cheap dagger, which he’d never used for more than eating his meat in taverns. Will had never with his own hand killed man or beast, save only a deer once, when he’d been practicing archery. And that he’d regretted enough.

Could he kill Kit? Could he actually plunge the dagger into the beating heart of the greatest poet who’d ever lived?

Faith, Will did not know.

But aye, he would try to kill the wolf.

Even if he must die trying.

Scene 43

The room as before, but seen through Kit’s eyes. He stands behind Poley, facing the bewildered-looking Queen and, beyond her, Will and Frizer and Skeres.

“Y
ou do not want to die,” the elf whispered through Kit’s lips. “You do not want to die, Kit Marlowe.”

And while Frizer, Skeres, and Poley stared, wide-eyed, the elf went on, speaking persuasively through Kit’s mouth, trying to convince Kit’s ears.

“Look, look at all you’ll have.”

Behind Kit’s eyes, like an awakening dream, images of food passed, and images of young bodies, young people, female and male, ready to obey his every whim, and images of Kit, crowned, upon a throne.

“If it’s the child you lament,” the elf said, “you can sire many.”

Those words broke the spell. The images disappeared from Kit’s eyes, leaving only the image of Imp. Imp, dead in that alley.

Nothing—no one—could ever replace Imp.

How could this creature, this being, so lack feeling and love that it did not even know that one child was not another, that a child could not be replaced?

And such an elf, such a creature, would rule the world?

The arms that had started turning pliable, the legs that Kit had almost yielded control of onto the elf, suddenly became rigid again and locked, with all of Kit’s strength, against the elf’s desire.

Kit had not wanted to die before. No, God’s death, he’d wanted to avenge himself on the elf, he’d been willing to endure torture for that, but in faith, he’d not wanted to die.

He still didn’t
want
to die. The elf knew the truth about Kit. Kit loved the world and its joys too much to wish to depart it at twenty-nine.

Yet he would die, he thought. He would die to take out the wolf with him.

He saw Will Shakespeare draw his dagger, a dagger cheap enough that it probably wouldn’t pierce a good suit, and Kit wished it would pierce a suit and more, wished it would plunge into his own treacherous heart.

Will jumped straight at Kit.

Skeres and Frizer moved too late.

Kit still remained immobile, holding the elf at bay, but just barely. Like two men, locked in arm wrestling, each just as strong as the other, they each kept the other from moving but could do no more.

And Kit wished that Will would kill him.

But Will stopped, the dagger poised, in front of Kit as though his courage failed him.

“I cannot kill you, Kit, I cannot,” Will yelled.

Within Kit the wolf roared, “Nonsense. All this is nonsense.”

He raised a hand so suddenly that Kit didn’t anticipate it or stop it.

Force flowed through the hand, magical force, the strange tingling sensation that Kit had felt before.

Was the creature sending the Queen to Never Land? Could humans be sent there?

But instead, the wolf seized Kit’s mouth and spoke through it, once more. “All of you,” he said as energy flowed through his hand. “Kill her.”

Poley, Skeres, and Frizer unsheathed their daggers.

Will looked confused.

Kit gathered all his strength. He’d die trying this, but he must shield the Queen with his own body.

Scene 44

The same scene as before, but through Will’s eyes. Will stares in horror as the two men beside him advance toward the Queen, daggers unsheathed. Marlowe steps forward, toward the Queen, in a slow walk, like an ill-controlled puppet.

F
or the oddest moment, for no more than a breath, Will wished to kill the Queen.

It was the voice of the elf, and whatever magical compulsion he’d thrown from his lifted hand.

But Will had been bespelled before, and had endured the spells and lived through them.

Will was a Sunday child, who saw the hidden and felt what no other man could feel. That gave him power for magic perceived is magic halved.

He shook the spell from his back, like a dog shaking water from his fur.

“You may come all, curs,” the Queen yelled. “I’ll see you all hanging high.” She twirled her rusty, edgeless sword with amazing agility, smacking Skeres’s, Frizer’s, and Poley’s daggers from their hand. “I will see you all hanging. I knew what villainy was passing. I knew Cecil hid things from me.”

In her triumph she didn’t see Frizer snatching Kit’s dagger from its sheath and speeding it toward her heart.

It all took the space of a breath.

Thoughts seared through Will’s brain like a dream. He couldn’t let the Queen die. The whole world depended on her, old and insane though she might be. Order must be preserved. Hamnet must be allowed to grow up. The wolf must be defeated.

As the thoughts flashed, already Will was airborne, leaping.

He jumped in front of the Queen at the same time that Kit, in his lumbering walk, had got close to her.

Not sure if Kit was himself or Sylvanus-controlled, Will gave Kit a shove, seeking to get him out of the way.

In that moment, Frizer lurched forward, and Kit, tripping, fell toward Frizer.

The dagger Frizer held, Kit’s own dagger, plunged into Kit’s eye.

Blood jetted forth.

Kit dropped to the floor, writhing.

Horrified, blood-spattered, Will stepped back. He thought that he heard Kit’s voice whisper “Thank you,” but he had to be dead before he even touched the floor, and from his dead lips the wolf screamed.

“Oh, curse the luck and the world and all of you. I will not die alone.”

Kit’s dead hand rose, and from Kit’s still-twitching fingers, magical sparks flew.

Will felt as if a roaring wind sucked him through unbelievable ice and unbearable cold.

Scene 45

Never Land, where Quicksilver and Ariel stand. Of a sudden, in an explosion of light, Kit Marlowe materializes, a dagger through his eye, bleeding profusely—from a certain transparent greyness, it’s clear he’s a ghost. And Will materializes after Kit, looking bewildered.

W
here was Will?

At first Will thought he’d emerged onto a foggy shore, with the roar of the ocean in the distance, and sand swirling in the whistling wind.

Then he blinked and he realized that he stood in a vast forest, the trees towering overhead.

He blinked again, and saw himself in a city, with tall, baublelike, half-transparent palaces rising in all directions.

And through these half-perceived, half-seen structures, Will saw Kit—or was it Kit’s ghost?—a pale and wan Ariel and a Quicksilver so transparent, so weak, that he might well be a ghost himself.

“Never Land,”
Will whispered to himself, remembering the place where Quicksilver had been sent. “I am in
Never Land
.” But saying didn’t help his bewildered senses to understand the place.

He stepped, half-dazed, toward Quicksilver while Marlowe, smiling softly despite his horrible, bleeding wound and the blood fast congealing on his blue suit, walked toward Will, his mincing step a fair imitation of his stroll at St. Paul’s.

“Friend Will,” he said. “I must thank you—”

“Will,” Quicksilver said. His voice was very faint, very cold, little more than the whisper of the icy wind. “And Kit. What happened to Kit? What woe is here?”

And Ariel said, “Milord, do not speak. Save your energy.”

Never Land,
Will thought. Which meant that Quicksilver was nearly dead as the sun would now be setting in the mortal world.

A flash of light shone behind them, and the wolf materialized. Transparent, but not so much as Quicksilver, not even so much as Marlowe, it looked dark—dark and massive.

“You are my soul’s abhorrence,” the wolf growled. Though in canine form, he spoke with human words, words were shaped and built of growls and malice.

The landscape which, for the moment, had settled to gigantic trees with blowing sheets of moss hanging from them, seemed to become darker, whatever light there was being concentrated, caught by the wolf’s dark form, his dark core.

“You”—it turned to Kit—“have cost me my body, so hard-earned.”

“And you”—the baleful eyes of the beast turned to Will—“it’s the second time you cross me, and it shall be the last.” The wolf’s fur ruffled and his eyes seemed to flash with cold light as his fangs glinted by the pale light of an evanescent palace. “And you . . .” He turned to Quicksilver. “You, traitor spawn of a lowly woodland spirit, you who call yourself my brother, you and your half-changeling woman also shall die. All of you shall die here. All of you at my mercy. For I have more energy than any of you here, and here I shall ensure that you all die.”

Will felt as though fear froze him, terror gripped him, panic stopped his breath.

He’d never see Nan again. He’d die here in this land of half-reality and no one would even know where he had gone.

Or why.

Scene 46