Elena kept her mouth closed. She had felt excitement, too, but John had a heavy point.

“We’ve got to keep some of it at least,” Alan pouted. “What’s the difference? They were never going to get any of it back without us.”

“What’s the difference indeed,” John responded, but it answered a different question. If some poor villager had his tools stolen, what was the difference to him if they ended up in the Guard’s hands or Elena’s? When she looked around the room again, it seemed less like a treasure trove and more like a graveyard. Every item had a price tag written in guilt.

“We keep nothing of what we get here. Now get to work.” John sighed. “We’ll barely scratch the amount of wrong that’s been done today. We’ll take what we can, but this doesn’t mean we won none. It only means we lost a little bit less.”

Alan’s smile faded to a guilty frown, but once John turned away he slunk close to Elena. “If we can at least find a sack of onion seed,” he whispered, “I’ll never complain about rabbit stew again.”

John disappeared out the front to begin the slow display of unloading the empty crates and barrels they’d brought along. They had positioned the wagon at the side of the storehouse, that they could unload it from the front and load it up again from the back unseen. Arthur and Alan started dragging sacks of seed and crates of trowels.

“Take anything large and flat first,” Arthur said when he saw Alan pointing in wonder at a plow yoke. “We can stack them high, and throw anything else on top.”

They moved quickly and quietly. In seven or eight passes, John sat down the last empty barrel they had brought for show.

“That’s it for the front. Still nobody giving as much as two looks this way.”

The friar twisted his beard in his hands. “You know, I think the building to the right is where they were storing the wine…”

“Don’t get greedy,” John said, with a paw on Tuck’s shoulder.

Will smiled. “Pretty sure there’s a quote or two about that somewhere in that book of yours.”

“Greed?” Tuck played dumb. “Can’t say it rings any bells, actually.”

John cleared his throat. “A greedy man brings trouble to his family.”

“Oh, I see the confusion.” Tuck grinned as he lingered at the front door. “Trouble’s in the building on the left. I’m going to the building on the right. A greedy man brings wine to his family. Wine, you see?”

He opened the door, in love with himself, and only once he was gone did John crack a smile.