“I mean just that.” Simon scratched the red at his chin, and Roger imitated him. An old trick, to gesture like a person makes them think you’re on the same side. “I never would have trained those men to fight if I hadn’t been ordered to. Men come to the Guard for a lot of reasons, but those that only do it to save their own skin … I don’t trust them one bit.”

“‘If you hadn’t been ordered to?’” Roger feigned confusion. “Gisbourne told me this was your idea.”

“My idea?” Simon’s face turned the color of his beard. “He told me it was your idea!”

“My idea?” Roger spat and gaped, turned and harrumphed, everything that Simon was doing, mirrored back at him.

“That son of a bitch,” Roger offered, and Simon bit it.

“I—son of a bitch!”

“Well,” Roger coughed, “now I understand how my wives felt when they met each other.” Obviously a lie. “It would seem we have something in common. We’ve both been lied to. Gisbourne.” He seethed the word, and it poisoned the air.

“He played us both against each other,” Simon said. “Damn it all, he’s got one of those gerolds in his personal regiment. After everything foul he said about them and you, he took one amongst his closest men.”

Roger didn’t know who Gerold was, but he loved watching the lie solve other mysteries in Simon’s head.

“He must be up to something,” he continued. “Something big.”

“The man has ambitions,” Roger nodded importantly. “Best not let him know we’re on to him.”

Tomorrow, when Gisbourne ascended to sheriff, Simon would see the wheels at work. Without the support of his own master-at-arms, Gisbourne would have a much more difficult time accomplishing his own agenda. It wouldn’t stop him, no, but it might slow him down, and keep healthy opposition and dissent alive. It would keep Gisbourne from ruling as a tyrant.

Two down, two to go.

He’d saved the people from their debt, and hurt Gisbourne’s authority. His next step was to miraculously find a great deal of wealth to send to King Richard. A wicked plan had been uncurling in his mind all night. It involved an outrageous lie, the unwitting participation of the good Lord Oughtibridge, and a very particular coinchest full of shit.

Which, it occurred to him, he could not possibly carry on his own.

“I need two of your men,” he told Simon.

Simon barked out, only to scare those at the periphery of the room. There were few Guardsmen left at the castle, and the two young guards who stepped forward—engulfed in their blue cowls—were hardly intimidating. For a moment Roger doubted himself. Young new recruits such as these two … might Gisbourne retaliate against them for their part of this?