Ink and Steel by Elizabeth Bear

see you?”
    â€œThey threatened me.”
    â€œAh, no. Will, you have to break with Oxford and Walsingham now. Burbage too—”
    â€œNow that you’re returned, they can do without me. But I am pleased to defend my Queen, and if you teach me what you know, the art of your plays—”
    â€œDon’t choose sides in this.” Kit wanted to take the other man by the shoulders and shake him, but he gave him pleading instead. “Flee. Take your Annie and get away. I’m not returned, man. I’m dead, and you’ll be dead with me if you stay.” He caught himself worrying his eyepatch, and forced his hand down. Put it on Will’s arm, instead, and clutched the broadcloth of his sleeve. “Some one of us is a traitor. Some one of us betrayed me, and will betray you. I trust only Walsingham. You cannot choose sides, Will: they’ll eat you.”
    Will looked at him for a long moment, and then shook his hand off and moved away, close to a broken-backed chair pushed up beside the hearthstone. “Run if they’ve broken you—”
    â€œ Broken me!”
    â€œâ€”I’ll not be called a coward.”
    It stung as much as if Will had spoken the accusation plain, and Kit flinched and looked down.
    In the dark kitchen that was very like the dungeon that Kit had come here to remember, William Shakespeare shook his head. “I mean to choose the side that’s right.”
    Tamora: So should I rob my sweet sons of their fee;
    No, Let them satisfy their Lust on thee.
    â€”WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, Titus Andronicus
    Langley’s kitchen grew hot and close while Will leaned against the arm of a broken chair and listened to embers crack on the grate. It was a long time before Kit answered. “ ’Tis not what side is right. ’Tis what side you’re on .”
    â€œElizabeth and the Protestant Church—”
    â€œThe third or fourth time you’re raped by a priest, you may start to regard the Church’s moral pronouncements with a jaundiced eye.” Kit turned away, still cupping that glass, and ran the other fingers over the scarred wood of the block.
    â€œKit, from you of all people—” Will left the chair, came close enough to lower his voice and murmur through tightness. “Sodomy’s accounted a sin worse than any.”
    â€œWhat? What two men do willing is a sin worse than rape or usury? Than murder? Than denying God? I know Church doctrine—” A deprecating tilt of his head to show how well he knew it.
    Uncomfortable words through a stiff throat. “Equal to witchcraft, they say.”
    â€œThen burn me for a witch and a playmaker. I thought better of you. The unspeakable Christofer Marley, may he rot in Hell, and he got Less worse than he deserved. Say it if you think it! It’s what the Puritans will write. Although—by their own doctrine, and I understand it aright, I’ve as good a chance of ‘election’ to Heaven as any of them, for if all our acts and our salvation are predetermined, how can you condemn any man?”
    Will had no answer. It was different, to know generally enough for coarse laughter what men and boys did in small rooms and shared beds, and to look into the face of his friend and see a rough, kind sort of honesty that begged him to understand it. He moved some steps as if Kit’s sin could taint him.
    Kit picked at the mortar between stones with a fingernail, eyes downcast. “More get at it than you might imagine, Will. Some hypocrites touch and kiss and clip—and never call it what it is. But I am a lover of discourse, good William, and as I have said before, I would liefer lose my life than my liberty of speech.” A pause, and Kit chuckled. “And as I prophesied it, so it has come true.”
    â€œNo. But I would hear you say you’ve never enjoyed the pleasures of a beardless boy, who cries rape now.”
    â€œNever one who took no