“I have to go,” he said, and leaned down to kiss her bare back. There was no time to spend with her anymore, and even the small guilty pleasures of sharing a bed were a costly distraction now. Every baron and lord in five counties had written Nottingham offering condolences and asking for favors. Some had come to visit personally, still others were on their way. The upcoming funeral would be no solemn commemoration of de Lacy’s life, but a feeding frenzy for those that wished to profit from his death. A thousand bites to pick the sheriffcy to pieces, and William was struggling to track which predators needed to be appeased and which could be tamed.

You can find allies, or you can find enemies.

Some were easy. The men who kept the castle running were important to win over. He’d granted the castellan Hamon Glover appeasements toward construction improvements de Lacy had apparently long denied him. William had given the quartermaster Simon FitzSimon authority to recruit men however he saw fit, reversing de Lacy’s experimental policies. Thanks to Arable’s relationship with Lady Margery d’Oily, the Earl of Warwick now supported William as well—though he had begun to hint for a notable appointment for their visiting son. Lord Oughtibridge had swung his favor, too, though that was likely based on the sole fact that William was not Roger de Lacy. Other lords he had effectively bribed, using the dividends brought in by Gisbourne’s tax raids. In the city, there were merchants who asked for exclusivity, trademasters who cited rules that William could never understand, and an unrelenting list of lords demanding reprieve from taxes that could not even be proven. It was a balancing act full of practiced smiles and rancid flatteries, all in the hopes that William could survive long enough to make a single damned decision on his own, someday long in the future.

He had originally thought he only needed to hold the position for a mere week, just to effect the change he was looking for. But with each new complication, the timeline he needed in Nottingham grew longer and longer.

William had to find his allies, because his enemies were out there, too. Those that sought his seat for themselves, or who questioned his unlikely appointment. Every day William worried that Prince John would send a repeat of his original command to assign the role to Guy of Gisbourne, which was half the reason he was in a hurry to secure his position. He’d even tried to appease Gisbourne—giving him extended leniency to hunt for Robin’s outlaws, and trusting his men with the entirety of the city’s security during the funeral. But Gisbourne’s behavior had become erratic. The time may come soon for a new captain.