BARON ROGER DE LACY—High Sheriff of Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire, and the Royal Forests—kept his office in the highest level of the highest keep. There was a proper room at the bottom of the tower which every sheriff had used since the first Peveril, but not Roger de Lacy. He preferred the tiny confines of this bird’s nest. Arable had asked him about this once, on a perfect spring morning well over a year ago, when he had invited her to stay and share in the breakfast she had brought. He answered by moving to the window and pulling it open, inviting her to push her face out with him, looking down upon the hills of purple crocuses to the southeast.

“I chose this room,” he’d whispered, conspiratorially, “for the singularly spectacular reason that it is the farthest I can possibly get away from Nottingham.”

Arable had climbed the five sets of stairs to his office a thousand times by now, probably more. Along the way she often wondered about who had first laid the stones together, and if they had been proud of their work. She always lost her breath by the top stair, but she rarely took them any slower, for the same reason de Lacy chose the room. Though he did not often have time to idle with her, she treasured their infrequent conversations and often found herself memorizing his clever retorts. Even when he tired of her, he wouldn’t complain. “I must make for terrible company,” he’d say, “surely there’s some younger man who you’d prefer to give your attention.”

It was one of the few times he was mistaken.

On this morning, Arable climbed those stairs as soon as the sun braved the horizon. Her secret had made a poor bedfellow and she’d barely slept at all, but still she was apparently not early enough. Not only was de Lacy wide awake, he had company. The Captain of the Guard, Guy of Gisbourne, sat with the unmistakable pursed lips of someone on the losing end of a conversation.

“Arable,” Roger de Lacy cleared his throat, his thin face brightening immediately upon seeing her. “Did I call for something?”

“If you did, she didn’t bring it.” Gisbourne squinted at Arable’s obviously empty hands. “Did you call for nothing, perhaps? She has plenty of that.”

“Oh, don’t take it out on her,” de Lacy grumbled. His face was well weathered with deep lines, forged in equal parts from smiling and scowling. Watching them fold upon themselves as he shifted between the two was like opening a wooden puzzlebox. But for Arable his eyes were always kind, the corners of his lips always turned up. “What brings you, then?”