Ink and Steel by Elizabeth Bear

into a tail adorned with a crimson ribbon, his beard clipped tighter and neater than the London style against the porcelain skin of his face. Kit’s palms tickled with sweat as he met the man’s almost colorless eyes, saw how the broad span of his neck sloped, thick with muscle, into wide shoulders. It was a different thing from the inexplicable warmth he felt for Morgan. More raw, and less unsettling. He’d like to see those black curls ruffled.
    â€œMother,” the lovely man said, extending a crimson glass of wine. His voice was smooth, at odds with the power in his frame.
    She unwound her hand from Kit’s elbow, but let her fingers trail down his arm before she stepped away. Her son pressed the second goblet into his hand, taking a moment to curl Kit’s fingers about the delicate stem. The touch lingered, and Kit almost forgot his pain. “Your reputation precedes you, Master Poet.”
    â€œSir Poet,” Morgan corrected. “I knighted him while no one was looking.”
    â€œYou did? Mother, bravely done!”
    She laid a possessive hand on his shoulder. Kit looked after her in confusion, and she gave him only a smile. “Things are different in Faerie,” she told him, and dusted his cheek, below the bandage, with a kiss. “Now drink your wine and go ye through those doors—and court and win a Queen.”
    â€œYou’re not coming with me?”
    â€œKit. Show them strength, not a cripple leaning on a woman’s arm.”
    He met her loden eyes, then nodded, tossed back the wine, and set aside the glass. Rolling his shoulders under the too-tight doublet, he stepped into the rivulet of courtiers threading toward what must be the Presence Chamber.
    Frank stares prickled Kit’s skin as he followed the crowd, conscious of the antlers and fox-heads, the huge luminescent eyes and the moss-dripping armor of those who moved around him. Masques, he told himself, and didn’t permit himself at first to return the curious glances. Hooves clattered on the floor on his blind side: he flinched and turned to look, and a naked satyr caught his eye and bowed from the waist.
    Kit blushed and stepped back, looking at the floor. As if I had an idea of precedence here. The rose-and-green tiled floor rolled under his boots like the rising, falling deck of a ship. He hesitated and put a hand on the paneled wall. A woman brushed his arm, elegantly human except that the diaphanous robes which stroked her swaying hips and breasts seemed to grow from her shoulders like drooping iris petals. Then his attention was drawn by an antlered stag, richly robed in velvet green as glass, resting one cloven hoof on the jeweled hilt of a rapier and walking upright like a man.
    Kit’s pulse drummed in his temples and throat. Adrift, he thought, and raised his right hand and touched the silk handkerchief binding his bandage. The fingertips of his other hand curled into detail carved upon the wainscoting. “I don’t know what to do.” A novelty. I wot a knife in the eye does change one or two things.
    â€œFollow me.” A sharp voice dripping wryness. Kit looked down, putting it to a wizened man who seemed all elbows and legs like a grasshopper. He came to Kit’s belt; his long ears waggled under a fool’s cap. “Before Her Majesty waxes vexed.”
    â€œWaxes vexed, and wanes kind?” Kit pushed against the wall. “Dizziness, Master Fool. You know me?”
    â€œYour plays have a wide circulation.” The little man grimaced: it crinkled his face so oddly that Kit at first did not recognize a smile. “Art Marley, and I’m Goodfellow, but mayst call me Robin if I may call thee Kit. We’re fools both, after all, and of an estate.”
    â€œI’ll not dispute it.” Kit pressed the heel of his hand to his injured eye, as if the pressure could ease the throbbing that filled his brain. “I’ve the belly to make a go of it