“We?” Roger lifted an eyebrow. “You are under the mistaken impression that you and I are in the same boat.”

Arnold swallowed. “My apologies. That is … I can fix this.”

“Not before you die.”

Arnold started making noises, some of them quite entertaining.

“Oh settle down, I’m not threatening you,” Roger said. “I’m simply predicting the future. I will have to return everything that Gisbourne has collected. Every coin, every straw. The Sheriff’s Guard will be a mockery, the people will be outraged, and I doubt you have the stamina to survive the ensuing riots.”

“Riots?” Arnold’s head was probably filling with better nightmares than Roger could possibly describe.

“This is a mistake of catastrophic proportions. The moment anybody else hears about this, we’re all done. All of us. Those that aren’t stabbed in the streets will die there nonetheless, alone, once the Chancellor has his way. You and your damned numbers, Arnold. They’ve destroyed us. You’ve destroyed us.”

He tried to leave an opening for Arnold to suggest the obvious, but the old man wasn’t there yet. Roger flirted with giving it away. “I certainly don’t have much choice in the matter, I have to take this to Gisbourne immediately before the raids are over.”

Still nothing. Roger stooped to feeding him his line. “Unless…”

Arnold was, at this point, exactly as useful as a parrot. “Unless what?”

“You can’t be serious?” Roger recoiled theatrically. “We could never hide something this important! Why, you’re holding the evidence in your hands! It only takes one person to look inside that book, and see the same thing I saw.”

The old man’s eyes were moving now. Finally, self-preservation sparked to life somewhere in his brain and throttled his propriety into submission. “Then nobody must ever see this book.”

Voila.

Fifteen minutes later, they burned tome after tome together. Arnold believed it was his idea. Every record of debt owed in Nottinghamshire, every name and number cracked and blackened in a metal pot.

“Hide it,” Roger whispered as the embers fluttered in the air. “Move your numbers around, Arnold. Use your magic. The list may be gone, but it’s up to you to balance the rest of it. Get creative. I’ll do everything I can to protect you. I’ll even take the fall if I must. But for God’s sake, if anything happens to me, you must take this secret to your grave.”

One fell swoop, and Nottinghamshire’s villages were free from the fear of being evicted and arrested. Everyone could start anew. He could not undo the damage he’d done already by letting Gisbourne’s raids go forward, but this would put a stop to them going any farther.

One down, three to go.