And his poetry sizzled into ashes in the fire.

• • •

The morning brought my mummery of a fall—so well acted, in fact, that I knocked my head and was half a day dazed, aching, and bruised. That it had been done not only in front of servants and Romeo, but before my august uncle and aunt, was a great benefit. I was much fussed over, my aching ankle wrapped tight, and told very sternly to rest and allow it to heal. Content in the knowledge that my fall would be the talk of the day at the market, I hobbled back to bed, where I stayed for another two days until the dog bite had mended, and the aches and pains faded. I wore the bruise on my forehead as a badge of honor.

The next morning I rose, and Romeo and I strolled slowly through the market square, talking with the high and the low, bargaining for a list of things my mother had given, trailed by retainers and would-be friends. Without much warning, we spotted a familiar face in the crowd: Mercutio. Romeo saw him first, and gripped me tight by the arm—by happenstance, his thumb closed hard on a bruise, and I was for a moment silent as I resisted the urge to curse him roundly.

“Look you,” he said, and pointed. “Our hound has left his doghouse. And much changed he seems.”

He did. Mercutio seemed to stand taller, walk with a more confident and aggressive stride, though instead of the vibrant colors he had so recently affected, he wore black—a deep shade of night, slashed through with thin lines of orange. It suited him, and yet I felt a misgiving on seeing him. There was a certain bleakness to him, but also a sharper edge, like a knife whetted to its breaking point.

Yet, upon seeing us, his old familiar smile burst into glorious warmth, and he rushed upon us to throw arms around us both. “You familiar devils! How could you still live without me, fair-weather friends?” He shoved Romeo, and playfully batted at me, and we scuffled like happy schoolboys, laughing.

Romeo ruined it by blurting, “Marriage seems to agree with you, Mercutio!”

I saw it all in a blinding flash, sudden as a lightning strike: Mercutio’s eyes widened and darkened, and there was violence in him, hatred, fury, self-loathing . . . there, and then immediately gone, vanished beneath a smiling facade. If he shoved Romeo too hard then, if his smile was a bit too wild and harsh, well, then, who but me would know? Not Romeo, who had seen only what he wished.

“You should try it yourself, to settle your wild spirits,” Mercutio said. “Or are you still writing poor phrases to that coldhearted bitch?”

I put a hand on Romeo’s shoulder to prevent him from spitting out a reply; it was surprising to me how violent my own reaction was to hear such fury from my own friend. I did understand it. The anger, the pain, the self-loathing, all that I could grasp; he felt he had betrayed not just his dead lover, but his own true self. And he blamed Rosaline for it all.

“He’s well quit of his affliction,” I said, and Romeo—wiser than I’d feared—kept his silence, though anger smoldered in the tense lines of his face and shoulders. “We’re well pleased to see you out about the town, my friend. We have missed your cutting wit.”

It was a prime opportunity for him to respond with a play on words, a jest that would have made a brothelkeeper blush, but he only smiled that slightly unsettling smile, regarding me with eyes I could not easily read.

“Well, then,” he said, and put his arms around our shoulders, “the first thing we must do is to drown your wits in wine to make mine seem all the more clever. Especially yours, Benvolio. You’ve a thirsty look to you. Come, a cup of wine and tell me your troubles, then, for I’m a married and respectable gentleman now, and my wisdom has of course increased tenfold.”

The words held a mocking edge that discomforted me, but I went, and Romeo went, where Mercutio bade us—which was to an unsavory and ill-smelling hole of a tavern known to harbor the roughest of criminals. I pulled away as he turned us toward the door. “No,” I said, and tried to make it a joke. “Your wisdom may have increased tenfold, but my courage has not; let’s find someplace more congenial, my friend; this is only seeking a needless quarrel—”

“What?” Mercutio turned with a grandly opulent gesture, cape swirling like black fog, and fixed that strange smile upon me. “I’m the one dragged to the altar, and everyone knows marriage cools the blood. Yours should be hot still, and thirsty for Capulet swords.”

This was not a wholly new Mercutio, but it was my friend in his worst and blackest moods, and it worried me that instead of creeping out slyly in private, his distemper burst out of him in defiant daylight, while half the street gazed on it.

But still, I tried. “Mercutio, surely a Capulet loyalist lurks in that sinkhole. Kill a Capulet, and it’s our lives forfeited, and for what?”

“Worse,” Romeo said gloomily, retreating to stand next to me. “We might lose.”

“Then you’d be dead,” Mercutio said. “And beyond any shame.”

“You’ve met our grandmother,” said Romeo. “She’d pursue us well beyond the grave, that one.”

“I don’t do the bidding of an old woman,” Mercutio said. “Come, now, boys, I do not look to fight. I only give the fight the chance to look at me.”

“Why?” I grabbed his arm and held him back from entering, sure that if he did I’d never see him alive again. “Why do you do this?”

His eerie smile faded, and for a moment he regarded me with sober intensity before he said, “Grief cuts deeper than Capulets,” and shook off my restraint. “Go or stay. I care not.”

Then he walked inside the tavern, and Romeo and I were left to stare at each other. Balthasar, greatly daring, leaned forward to whisper, “Sir, for the sake of my children, I beg you, walk on.”

“You have no children, Balthasar.”

“I could have, someday. But not if you bid me stand at your back in there! We’ll all of us end the day facedown in a hasty grave, sir, if you follow him!”

“Are we then to let him die alone?” Romeo responded hotly, and plunged inside, after Mercutio.

“Well.” Balthasar sighed. “I suppose it’s as good a day as any to meet God, sir.”

And he, with Romeo’s retainer and three of our best bravos, followed me into the lion’s den.

• • •

As it happened, the Capulets were not in force within the confines of the tavern at present, though a few of their more ragged followers lurked in the corners; rather, we were presented with a wall of sweat and muscles who had no use for the more refined folk at all, save as a source for ready profit. Seeing the three of us, they must have thought the lambs had walked calmly into the butcher shop, ready to make a fine dinner.

They hadn’t reckoned on Mercutio, who strode in with a catlike grace, gave the room a wild, sharp smile, and bowed most mockingly. “Greetings, you fine fellows,” he said, and kept his hand provocatively on the hilt of his sword as he swaggered to the rough, stained wooden counter that served as a bar. “I’ll have wine for me and my good companions.” He winked and bounced a gold florin from the bar—a hundred times what any foul pressing available in this place was worth. The haggard woman standing behind the plank reflexively snatched the coin from the air, opened her hand, and gaped as if she’d never seen such a thing . . . and likely she hadn’t. Her grubby fist clenched hard around it, and she glared at the rough men staring in her direction to warn them off. They shrugged and turned their attention back toward Mercutio. Surely, if there was one gold florin, there were more.

“We should go,” I said quietly. “Whatever demon has possessed you, this is madness.”

“Love is that demon,” he said. The woman—a nightmare collection of beetled brows, moles, and wildly growing chin hairs—slapped down wine cups that were no cleaner than her hands. “If love be rough with you, be rough with love. . . . It is a disease, and this the very cure of it. Drink, my friends, drink and be merry; fine wine and cheerful company, what could be—”

A massive man, stinking of garlic and wine and wearing a dirty Capulet band on his arm, shoved Mercutio hard into the bar, sending the wine cups tumbling and flooding. The barkeep leaped away from the sudden crimson flow, both hands clutching her precious florin, and took to her heels behind a sagging curtain. She’d not be calling for the watch, that much was certain, and there were ten men between our outnumbered party and the dim door.

Mercutio calmly righted a cup, saving half the wine therein, and quaffed it in a convulsive, thirsty gulp. He then turned belly-to-belly with the man who’d shoved him. “Clumsy churl,” he said. “You owe us drinks.”

I shouted a wordless warning as the man yanked a dagger free from his belt, but it wasn’t needed; Mercutio, still smiling, slammed the chipped pottery cup into the man’s face, and as the mountain stumbled backward, roaring, Mercutio pulled his own dagger and stabbed down cleanly, pinning the man’s wrist to the bar. The man swung at him, still shouting, and Mercutio sank just enough to avoid the blow, came up with a second dagger in his hand and glittering murder in his eyes.

And that smile, oh, that smile, it chilled me even as I pulled my own dagger, and felt Romeo beside me doing the same. Balthasar had already drawn his cudgel and was laying about with it in an attempt to clear space around us. One of his fellows—Romeo’s man—had already fallen. The crowd of men around us churned like a stormy sea of flexed muscles, anger-darkened faces, and then it was just a fight for our lives, no sense to it, no strategy. There was no room for swords, only the sweaty, desperate work of daggers and clubs. If Balthasar had not been at my back, and Romeo at my side, we three would have been immediately overwhelmed, but we acquitted ourselves well enough.

Mercutio fought alone.

I had always known he had a dark, furious side in him, something fey and feckless, and now it had taken him over like a black spirit as he spun, stabbed, dispatched foes with elegant thrusts and clever twists of his body. He looked . . . alive. He looked disquietingly happy.