Free Ink and Steel by Elizabeth Bear

come and go at regulated intervals. As the sun set and the moon rose, Will gathered up his courage and took a single deep breath.
    He spindled his poems lengthwise preparatory to tucking them back inside his doublet. That accomplished, he was making his way to the landlady to purchase ale for himself and wine for Poley when he saw a face he did recognize, and froze.
    Richard Baines. A tall, fair man with a saddler’s forearms, a cleric’s smile, and a poison pen. Blessing his dull brown doublet and the darkness of his hair, Will stepped back into the shadows beside the bar, watching as Poley rose to meet his newest guest—which Will had not seen him do before—until the two heads leaned together, fair and fair. They embraced, and Will saw the glitter of a band on Baines’ thumb, a gold circle surrounding an inset of some darker metal, like the one Oxford wore. The flash of it drew Will’s eye to an odd-shaped scar on the base of the thumb, a string of pale knots like pearls.
    Baines, Will knew through Kit and Thomas Kyd, and Baines would recognize him. But the men weren’t looking, so Will turned as if watching the landlady go shutter the windows, ducked to swing his hair across his profile, and started for the door.
    Why is Robert Poley, who stood by when a knife went in Kit’s eye, talking to Richard Baines, who puts a knife to his reputation now that the man is dead? For it was Baines who had written a note to the Privy Council that might have seen Kit hanged for heresy.
    Salty sourness filled Will’s mouth, and he hesitated a moment and stole one final glance, thinking it safe enough with Baines’ back to the room. But he found himself staring directly into Poley’s eyes, as if the man had been tracking his motion across the room.
    Will froze like a doe at the crack of a twig as Poley’s hand went out to rest on Baines’ thick forearm. Baines turned, and both men began to stand, and Will took one more hasty step toward the door before Baines’ mocking baritone arrested his motion like a bullwhip flicked at his nose.
    â€œWell, well.” The big man swung a leg over his bench as he turned and stood. “William Shake-scene. Come sniffing after better company now that your fancy-boy’s dead?”
    Will stepped diagonally toward the door. “I was after supper,” he said, wishing himself better armed than with a handspan beltknife. “And I’ve had it. Good even to you, Master Baines, and I’ll thank you not to idly insult me.” Some impulse made him step forward and add, “Or slander my friends, sirrah.”
    Benches scraped on planks as the Sergeant’s custom recognized a brewing fight.
    â€œFriends,” Baines answered with a sneer. “That’s not what they call it that I ever heard. What will you do for a living now, you poor excuse of a playmaker? Without that drunken sodomite Marley to doctor your work and bugger—”
    Will opened his mouth to interrupt, but a determined, feminine voice overrode the first rumble of his retort. “Master Poley.” The landlady stepped between Will and Baines, ample hands on her ample hips, and tilted her head to glare around Baines’ broad shoulder at Poley. “You will control your friend. I’ll not have any man driving off custom.”
    â€œMistress Mathews,” Poley said, and he laid a hand on Baines’ arm. “As you wish it.” But his eyes met Will’s quite plainly, and the glare that followed Will to the door said, And don’t come back.
    Well, Will thought later, barring the door of his own room behind him before tossing his much-battered sheaf of sonnets on the table, that could have ended much worse.

Act I, scene vi
    Bernardine: “Thou hast committed—”
Barabas : “—Fornication.
But that was in another country,
And besides, the wench is dead.”
    â€”CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE, The Jew of Malta
    A