“Well, fuck me,” Roger said. “But I feel rather a bit like Robin Hood.”

“Thank you, Roger.” Wendenal hadn’t called him by his given name before. Arable found her way under Wendenal’s arm, and he touched his nose to hers. “Important people are depending on you.” With a heavy look they left, closing the door behind them.

“Ah, the young and ambitious,” Roger told the portrait of himself on the wall. “They just stole your happy retirement.”

The portrait, rather predictably, scowled back, unamused. He still had two visits to make this night.

He wondered if Margery would be asleep by the time he was done with Lord Oughtibridge, and sat to craft the letter that was pivotal in his ruse. The lord and his wife, quartered two floors below, intended on leaving in the morning. Roger would see that they did so under quite different circumstances than they expected.

Halfway through the letter, the door opened behind him. Roger turned to see the two Guardsmen who had been waiting outside enter cautiously.

“My apologies! I need you to fetch something for me.” He felt poorly asking them to carry the fetid chest, which had been taken to the stables but never emptied. But before he could direct them, they closed the door and slid the heavy iron barrel through its breach hinges.

Something was happening outside.

“What is it?” he asked. In his head, a thousand scenarios played out too quickly. Gisbourne’s raids had gone horribly wrong, and there was rioting outside the walls. Or perhaps one of the Guardsmen recruited from the prisons had indeed snapped and was on a murdering rampage through the castle.

Or worse, he had overlooked something. Someone else knew … and Gisbourne was marching to take his throne. Whatever it was, Roger was suddenly thankful for the two guards he had with him, no matter how small or untrained they were.

They pulled their hoods back from their faces. The first was so young, and he looked downright terrified.

The second was a girl.

“Baron Roger de Lacy,” the first could barely speak.

“The Sheriff of Nottingham,” the girl finished.

“What is it?” Roger asked again.

“That was an interesting thing you said earlier,” the girl’s voice wavered, “about being to blame for everything that has happened lately.”

“What is going on outside?” Roger insisted, but it was the wrong question. There’s nothing going on outside. “Who are you?”

The boy’s face turned to steel. “You wouldn’t know if we told you.”

“You’re from the prisons, aren’t you?” Roger looked them over, but neither responded. “I don’t know what you think you know, but at this moment I am—”

“What we know,” the boy said, as his face was fighting tears, “is that a child was murdered by your actions today.”

“What?”

“And I promised that the man responsible,” the girl took a step closer, “would pay with his life.”