SHERWOOD FOREST
FRIDAY, 17TH DAY OF JANUARY
Three little words that meant everything.
Are you important?
ONE WOULD HAVE THOUGHT, in a kinder world, that the unfortunate tale of the great defecator Lord Asshole was over. Caring about any detail of Lord Brayden of York’s life—including his real name—was a torture all its own. Quill didn’t want to know how he attained his title, or anything about his family. But the odds seemed very likely that the man was dead, and Quillen Peveril was regrettably qualified to identify the body.
It was why the six of them had taken to horse and ridden out of Nottingham, following up on stories of an ornate carriage overthrown off the side of the Sherwood Road. A messenger from York had come inquiring about Lord Brayden, who was still expected at home even though he’d left Nottingham four days earlier. Searching for the man should have been procedural work, but the inborn fool that brought news of the abandoned carriage was also foolish enough to mutter the name Robin Hood.
Those two words escalated the matter to the attention of Lord Beneger de Wendenal, and the team of bounty hunters he’d enlisted to hunt for his son’s murderer.
The Grieving Father of Nottingham, some called him, even though he was from Derby. Lord Death, another had whispered, but Quill found that name a bit melodramatic. Someone cleverer had come up with the rhyme Beneger the Revenger, although not to his face. But his loyal Derbymen—a dozen swordarms who had garrisoned in the middle bailey, openly hostile to anyone who showed them attention—simply called the man Ben.
“Still here, then?” Quill asked of Jacelyn de Lacy, who was riding beside him.
“You too?” she responded, as always.
De Grendon had availed the Black Guard to Beneger’s hunt and recommended Quill specifically for this search, given his familiarity with the victim. It was admittedly a nice break from walking the midnight wall, and Quill was happy to share stories with his stony-faced counterpart.
“I’m only here because Lord Beneger thinks we’re friends,” Jac huffed.
Quill hesitated to ask. “Aren’t we?”
She turned enough that her good eye could squint at him, as if seeing him for the first time. “You’re not the bottom of the list.”
That oddly put him at ease. From Jac, it was practically a love letter.
The three others in their group kept the pace methodically slow. Lord Beneger had recruited the Coward Knight and his two minions onto his hunt party, on account of their supposed experience hunting Robin Hood. Sir Robert FitzOdo was an incompetent ox, granted the ability to speak through some sort of magic. He had joined the Nottingham Guard in the winter, on loan from the Baron of Tickhill Castle, along with his impossibly more useless assistants Derrick and Ronnell. Quill dropped his horse to the rear, just in case their brickheadedness was the result of something contagious.
“Are you important?”
“YOU’VE FACED THESE TRAITORS before,” Lord Beneger said. He had not slowed his horse, but simply motioned for Quillen to hasten and ride beside him.
His words had an oddly accusatory nature. “I did,” Quill answered, “but only once. Jacelyn was there as well, as was FitzOdo.”
“And I’ve spoken with them about it. Now I’m speaking with you. Would you be able to identify Will Scarlet on sight?”
Quill mulled it over. He’d only seen Will Scarlet once, in the mist outside Bernesdale, during the ambush. Panic could do queer things to one’s memories. “Maybe. But if he’s grown a beard out, or his hair, I think he could pass me in the city and I’d never know. But maybe.”
“Very good,” was all Beneger replied, as his eyes sharpened ahead on FitzOdo and his men. Quill could guess what the man was thinking. FitzOdo’s group had been at that fight, too, though most believed they fled as soon as the arrows flew. Since then, they’d been “on the hunt” with literally nothing to show for it. The majority of FitzOdo’s search was probably done in whorehouses and taverns, where they could have crossed paths with Will Scarlet a dozen times and never noticed. “If this mysterious carriage ends up having nothing to do with Robin Hood, I’m not interested in it.”
“Alright.” Quill swallowed. He didn’t know what he was supposed to do with that knowledge.
“And don’t make me fish information out of you. If you see something out of place, anything at all, you let me know.”
“I will.” Again, Quill had no idea what he might notice that would qualify as being out of place. “How will we know? How will we know if it’s the outlaws, or someone else?”
“Don’t call them outlaws,” Beneger said sharply, though not unkindly. Beneath the thin skin of his crow’s-feet, muscles clenched and relaxed. “Outlaw implies they live outside the law, suggesting there’s a place where rules don’t matter. That is an appealing notion to those who endure misfortune. It glorifies the misconception that they have a choice—which they don’t. We have words for people who live without law, words provided to us by the very laws they break. Thieves. Murderers. Widowmakers, Quillen. Anarchists. Their cause is not so attractive once you identify it as treason.”
Quill nodded and made a note to try to change his own vocabulary around Lord Beneger. He looked at the man, and the deep lines of his face—telling the story of his life like the exposed rings of a tree trunk. Quill had only barely known William de Wendenal before he was killed, but he saw much of the son in the father. Not physically, perhaps, but in the quality of their personalities. Driven, and impressive. In Beneger it was tinged with something cold, slightly hollow perhaps—but then again, the man was still mourning his son.
If somehow he could interest Lord Beneger in claiming the Sheriffcy, Nottingham would do well.
Three little words that meant everything. “Are you important?”
THEY ALMOST MISSED THE carriage, only a half hour’s walk into the Sherwood. Two heavy trenches carved off road through the ash, then down a short snowy embankment now littered in splinters. Flattened underbrush led to the carriage, which had been dragged over a shallow ridge. Quill wondered how heavy the thing was, and how many men it must have taken to move it. They walked through its aftermath, through charcoal tree husks that would never grow back.
Someone’s life had ended here. Quill didn’t exactly wish the Lord Asshole Brayden of York to be dead, but if the body was indeed his, then that would not be so terrible a thing.
The bulk of the carriage was mostly intact, although both of its exposed wheels had been removed—by a good deal of hatchetwork, from the look of it. There were chunks of wood all about, torn remnants of colorful fabric and paper scraps. Any ironwork and hinges had already been plied off, giving the impression that its frame would collapse if any of them sneezed.
On its far side Quill noticed something he couldn’t quite place, then realized with a lurch that it was a man’s leg. Still attached to the body, fortunately, but it would be wrong to call it intact. The sole of the foot and the calf both looked half-eaten, showing black pulp and bone.
Quill would have turned away in disgust, but a slight shift of his focus put him in a dead stare with two hairy men, hunched behind a fallen oak a bit farther off.
A sudden memory of arrows cutting through the trees in the mist. Of Captain Gisbourne’s throat, torn open.
Dirty, bearded. Barbaric murderers, perhaps, or terrified travelers. Quill rallied his nerves and raised his hand to get Lord Beneger’s attention, but it startled the two strangers.
One stood, frozen; but the other raised a wooden club and ran at them.
Lord Beneger yelled for FitzOdo’s men to advance, and it was over with very little fanfare. Ronnell swung his sword down onto the attacker, knocking the club from his hand and slicing down into the shoulder, by the base of the neck. The man lumbered, reeled, then ran into the woods, clutching at his injury. FitzOdo and his boys pounded after in pursuit, but the going off trail was tricky, and their horses did not seem much faster than the man running.
Jacelyn de Lacy went only so far as the fallen oak before swinging down from her saddle. She pulled her sword out and commanded the other stranger down to the ground, then bound his hands behind his back and to his feet.
Quill realized exactly how useless he was, standing there motionless behind the carriage while everyone else had sprung to action.
Of course he walked the midnight wall. Three months in the Black Guard, and Quill’s instincts were still to freeze in the face of danger.
“Are you important?” Lord Beneger asked.
BOTH THE LEG AND its body belonged to Lord Brayden of York, but Quill took no joy in it. The stench was ungodly, such that Quill’s stomach rose into his throat and he turned away to keep from retching. Lord Brayden’s eyes were bloody-black holes, chewed out. Half his face was torn to gore—eaten, most likely—and maggots now infested the exposed meat. His clothes had been shredded, revealing great fissures in his belly that leaked pink and yellow clumps of fat. The flesh was rent away, leaving a black discharge that assaulted the sense of sight and smell alike.
And next to him, a second body. A woman’s. A week ago, Quill would have made any number of terrible insults about whatever type of woman would choose to spend her time with Lord Brayden. But nobody deserved to end up like this. Her body was thin—a young woman, probably; she lay on her back with her bodice ripped apart, half her chest devoured by animals. Her face was no better than Lord Brayden’s. She was entirely naked below the waist, her legs spread profanely wide, her pelvis pushed halfway into the earth.
Quill vomited.
She had no name, and no face, and when he vomited again tears came to his eyes.
He looked away, wiping bile from his lips, his guts twisting. He had not thought it would be so horrible. He’d wanted to see Lord Brayden with a stupid look on his asshole face and a sword in his heart. But this … this he wouldn’t wish upon anyone.
“Can you identify them?” Lord Beneger asked. He was still on horseback, as if he could not be troubled to stay any longer than necessary. FitzOdo’s men had not yet returned with the fled assailant, and Jacelyn kept her foot on her bound prisoner, cooing commands at him to stay down. Quill stared at the two carcasses, ignoring the woman and focusing on the man’s face.
There was no doubt.
Lord Beneger simply nodded. “Any sign this was done by Robin Hood or his gang?”
“Why don’t we ask him?” Quillen asked, pointing to Jac’s captive.
Beneger dismissed it. “He’s just a looter. We’ll see what they know when FitzOdo returns with the other one. Any insight, Peveril?”
He could only sigh. “I don’t know that I’d be able to tell. It isn’t as if they left a note telling us who was here.”
“Who is to say? Perhaps we don’t know what to look for.” Beneger pulled his collar up to cover his nose and dismounted to inspect the bodies, eyes wide and poring over their wounds. “I’d say they were stabbed, both of them, in the chest, multiple times. With a wide blade.”
He pulled on the remnants of the woman’s arms and hoisted her to a sitting position, though her body made a series of horrific cracks at the movement.
“Nothing went out her back. So either a knife, or a swordsman with incredible restraint. And see where the blood has run.” He pointed to her naked body as if it had never been a person at all. “Or rather, where it has not. Nothing dried on her front nor her back. The blood all ran down. So she was killed while standing, or sitting perhaps, and was moved prone after she stopped bleeding.”
Jacelyn coldly presumed she’d been raped, to which Lord Beneger agreed—with the addition that it likely happened well after she was dead.
“There’s no bruising around her thighs,” he pointed out. “If her blood was still pumping when she’d been taken, you’d see the bruises.”
Quill retched again, though there was nothing left in him to expel. His stomach muscles seized, and he thought he might choke to death, until at last he forced himself to relax.
“Would you say this is consistent with Robin’s gang, or not?”
“Consistent?” Quill asked. If seeing sights such as this was a consistency in the Nottingham Guard, he would have returned home to Derby long ago. “No. They normally don’t kill anyone.”
Jacelyn hissed in a sharp breath. “Are you fucking serious? My uncle, and Lord Beneger’s son … these are the people they haven’t killed?”
“God, I’m sorry,” Quill stammered. “I didn’t mean—”
“No.” Beneger held out his hand, pointed in earnest at Quill. “You had a point, go on and say it. Don’t be shamed for thinking what you think.”
It felt like a trap, but Quill said what he could. “Yes, they’ve obviously killed before. But that’s not what I meant. When they rob people out here in the woods, they normally don’t kill them. In fact, they normally don’t hurt them at all. They just take what they can and disappear. This … no, it doesn’t seem consistent.”
Lord Beneger nodded, neither in agreement nor against. His face had once been kind, Quill thought, but had turned hard as the years whittled away at him. Even the stubble of whiskers on his cheeks seemed thicker and harder than a normal man’s. “Thank you.”
The prisoner tried to say something, but Jacelyn simply reached down and twisted the inside of the man’s elbow until he gasped. “You’ll get your turn,” she promised.
“Until then,” Quill added, “I guarantee you’re better off pretending to be a rock or something. Be a rock, friend. Be a rock.”
Lord Beneger went on a bit longer, walking around the corpses, scrutinizing things that Quill would never have imagined would be of any interest. It wasn’t until Beneger stated, “You haven’t been around many bodies,” that Quill even realized he’d been staring into Lord Brayden’s hollowed face for quite some time.
“No.” He turned away, shaking the sensation off.
“What did I say about making me fish for information?”
Quill huffed, but he didn’t know what else to say. “I’m not suited for this. The Guard isn’t exactly the right place for me. I’m better suited as an advisor, but Ferrers wouldn’t have me.” He gestured limply at the horror of the scene. “Clearly not your first body, though.”
Beneger frowned. “No. But I’m still disgusted by it.”
“You don’t look it.”
“Not the body, no. But the injustice.”
“Exactly. Nobody deserves—”
“No,” Lord Beneger cut him off. “We don’t know what this man deserved. Lord Brayden of York probably deserved to die, most people do. Most people have wronged someone else in an unforgivable way, and should be made to pay for it. But he didn’t die for that. He died because some strangers wanted his coin. Someone out there, someone who wanted to see this man dead for very legitimate reasons … that person will never get what they want.”
Quill could only open his eyes wide and hope he never saw the world in such a stark way.
“That’s how it is with revenge, that’s why you have to seek it out yourself and take it. Before someone steals it from you.”
Beneger the Revenger stared at the bodies as if they had personally done him wrong. Quill wondered if Lord Beneger’s stone heart was what drew him toward revenge, or if it was the natural result of pursuing it.
He might have said something more, to suggest that Lord Beneger might make a good Sheriff. But he didn’t.
Three little words that meant everything. “Are you important?” Lord Beneger asked.
DERRICK RETURNED ON HORSE, with the injured looter walking in front of him. His right arm crossed over his chest and clutched the bloody wound of his neck. Derrick instructed him to move left, or right, and smiled at his prisoner’s obedience. The poor man’s eyes were empty, his face was pale, and most of his life was already soaked into his tunic. The other looter, who had done a good job of remaining rocklike under Jacelyn’s boot, broke out in sudden grief at the sight of his battered companion. FitzOdo and Ronnell were shortly behind, wandering back from the trees as if they had all day for this one task.
At Derrick’s command, the injured man finally lowered himself to the ground. His breathing was too heavy, and Quill could tell he was struggling to stay conscious.
“What’s your name, friend?” FitzOdo asked the healthier man. He had to ask it twice more before receiving an answer.
“Han … Hanry. Hanry, my lord. That there is Munday.”
“This is your friend?” Quill clarified. “His name is Munday?”
“Yes, m’lord.”
“Your friend Munday isn’t going to make it,” Jacelyn told him. “Do you know why he’s going to die? He attacked us, which was a very poor decision.”
“He didn’t know what he was doing.” Hanry bit back tears. “He wouldn’t have been a threat.”
“We didn’t know that.” Quill knelt, hoping to help in this, at least. “You understand that, right? A man comes at us with a weapon, we have no way of knowing if he’s a halfwit or a knight. And with you two hiding next to all this,” he pointed toward Lord Brayden’s body, “we have to protect ourselves before we protect you. You see that, right?”
Hanry shook his head as if to argue, but he didn’t. He kept staring at Munday’s face, which was growing paler and more distant.
“Did you kill those two people?”
“No. Just found ’em.”
“Do you know who did it?” Quill asked.
But Hanry didn’t answer. He just stared at his dying friend.
“Was it Will Scarlet?”
The man’s muscles contorted farther, a silent scream.
“He’s in a lot of pain,” Jacelyn offered. “We can end it for him, if you like.”
But still, Hanry gave no response.
Quill didn’t want to watch Munday’s final moments, but Hanry’s face was almost worse. Everything was clenched and turned red, there was no telling where his eyes were, it was all just tortured flesh.
Eventually Munday was dead. A shiver rushed through Quill’s body like a regret. It was the oddest sensation for a death to happen while so many people were calm. Nothing at all had changed, and yet somehow there were now fewer people there.
“Let’s talk about what you’re doing here,” Jac was saying.
“We weren’t doing nothing,” Hanry answered, a bit too quickly. “We had just come across this when you arrived. We didn’t kill them, and we didn’t steal nothing none neither.”
“You knew to come here, didn’t you?” Jac added, her voice offering the man no concession. “The same reason we knew to come here. Something this bloody, left out for everyone to see … that gets people talking. So why don’t you tell us where you heard about this, and we’ll take it from there.”
Lord Beneger was back atop his horse. “Out with it. Was it Robin Hood?”
Hanry just seemed confused.
“What are people saying?” Quill took his attention back. “Who is laying claim to this? Are people saying that Robin Hood did it?”
“No.” Hanry shook his head. “No no, nobody thinks that…”
Lord Beneger did not even bother to reply, he simply bid his horse to turn away. “That’s all we needed. Deal with him quickly, Peveril, and we’ll make our return.”
“Wait!” Quill yelled, feeling like a pathetic child. He had no clue how to deal with all these bodies. Whether he was supposed to bury them, or ride back to Nottingham to tell Captain de Grendon. Surely someone would have to notify Lord Brayden’s estate, but would they even want to receive what remained of their lord and his lady? “How do we … deal with him?”
“He was stealing. He’s a thief,” Beneger said, with a naked sort of finality. “Stealing amongst the poorfolk is usually punished by taking fingers. Stealing from a lord, even one who’s already dead … I would take his hand.”
Quill’s arm started twitching. He looked to Jacelyn for support, but she only shrugged in general approval. “That’s fair,” she admitted. “I would think we’ve seen enough severed hands lately, but fair is fair.”
“It isn’t about being fair.” Beneger squinted. “It’s the law. Make haste.”
Quill pulled out of himself, he floated up and away and watched his own body draw his sword from the frog at his belt. He heard the dull scrape of its steel against the iron ring, though he couldn’t feel its weight in his hand. His eyes, yes, his eyes were locked with Hanry’s, but even so he wasn’t really looking anywhere. He knew he had to do this thing or else the others would leave without him, and he was more scared of that than of doing the thing.
“Put your hand against the log,” someone said, and it sounded very much like his voice. Perhaps he’d simply never heard himself speak before.
Hanry, this person, kept his hand clutched against his chest. He didn’t understand—he needed to put it on the log. The sooner he put it out, the faster this would be over, and everyone wanted this to be over. The man begged, “No no no,” just kept guarding his hand and huddling down into it, but Quill couldn’t hear him.
“Take your punishment,” Lord Beneger commanded, cutting through the haze. “If you pull it back, or try to run, then it will be far worse for you.”
Despite his coldness, there was no cruelty in his voice. He was simply offering facts, as if he were stating that there would be rain later, or what sort of soup he preferred at dinner.
Somehow, Hanry put his arm out, quivering, until it touched the bark of the rotted log and then he leaned away. Suddenly he gasped and swapped hands, plunging his left hand there instead, relieved that he’d made the wiser choice in time. It made Quill feel a bit better but still he was nauseous as he raised the sword up over his head.
“Please.” Hanry’s eyes were small and wet and red. He was saying other things too, lots of things really, but the words blurred together and hung like a fog.
“I’m sorry,” Quill said. “I surely wish Robin Hood had been here after all.”
He pulled up, hard, quickly—
“What if he had?” Hanry blurted out, his beady eyes widening in horror.
Then I wouldn’t have to do this, Quill answered.
“What does it matter if Robin Hood was here?” Hanry yelled.
“If Robin Hood was here,” Beneger answered from the top of the ridge, “then you’d be talking with me. If he wasn’t, then you lose your hand for theft.”
“What do you want to know?” Hanry asked, shaking his head, begging. “I’ve met him. I’ve met Robin Hood. His real name’s Will Scarlet. I’ve seen his people, he gave us coin before, and food, though not for a long time. What do you want to know? Tell me, please, I’ll tell you anything. They say he’s gone mad. That’s why Munday left them, why we’re on our own. I heard he abandoned all the women and children in his group, it’s just him and his men now. They killed these people, for certain they did. They say that he…” He paused for a moment, eyes fixed on the sword that Quill still held aloft. “They say he went to Nottingham. They say he has a man inside the Nottingham Guard.”
That was chilling news, but a relief that Quill could lower his weapon.
Lord Beneger looked down his nose at the prisoner. “You’ve taken money from this Robin Hood, money that you knew was stolen, food that you knew was stolen. Did you report any of this to the county Guardsmen?”
“Hm?” Hanry’s face twisted. “No. No, of course not.”
“You should have. You’ve seen these murderers, you know their faces, you’ve accepted their payments for secrecy. You say they planted a traitor within our ranks, and you kept that to yourself.” A warm cloud billowed from his nostrils. “You are complicit in their crimes.”
“Complicit? What does that mean?” Hanry looked from face to face, his own shifting from a frown to a smile, unsure if he was being chastised or rewarded. “I told you about them, that’s everything I know. I can’t help you any more than that.”
The poor fool. Quill lowered his head. “You only talked at the edge of a sword. That isn’t help. That’s a confession.”
“You’re not…” Hanry cradled his arm again. “You’re not still going to take my hand, are you?”
Lord Death may have been a proper name for Beneger after all. “You have abetted Robin Hood’s gang in thievery and murder, assassination, and treason. You will be treated as one of them.”
The air left Quill’s chest, and he found himself pleading for the man’s life. “He’s shown some remorse. Ought that earn a man a bit of leniency? His friend is already dead, and we were going to take his hand, we could leave it at that.”
Lord Beneger gave the tiniest shake of his head.
I should have taken his hand, was the last thing Quill would have thought he’d regret when this day began.
“I haven’t done anything!” Hanry gasped, kicking backward, and coming uncomfortably close to Munday’s body. “Please! I haven’t abetted nothing, all we ever did was take some of his coin, and then you came and burnt us out of our own fields! I’ve been lost out here, Munday and I have had to survive on our own. I’ve got a family, somewhere, please!”
“If you can truthfully answer me yes to any of these questions,” Lord Beneger crouched to eye level with the panicked Hanry, “we’ll only take your hand. You’ve admitted to hiding secrets about Robin Hood’s movements from the county Guard. First, do you have any proof that you have not helped Robin Hood beyond this, or that you played no part in the crimes here with this murdered lord and his mistress?”
“Proof?” Hanry gaped and looked for support. He wouldn’t find any. After some amount of babbling, he slumped down in defeat and answered, “No.”
“No. Second,” Beneger continued, “can you provide any proof that you genuinely regret your actions and that you will make efforts to repay the damage you’ve done?”
“I am regretful,” Hanry let out. “So very regretful. I see now that keeping silent was as good as helping them, I see that, I do.”
“No,” Beneger answered for the man. “You cannot provide proof. You show your regret now that you have been caught, but not before. You cannot trade us anything that we can hold in hostage until you repay your debt. You have only your word to give, which you have proven is unfaithful, so you can offer us nothing of real value.”
It was a while before Hanry could agree, and admit it. “No,” he said. “I can’t prove it. But I didn’t do it. And I didn’t mean to help them, I was just trying to survive. Isn’t that enough? What else can I do? What’s the third question?”
Three little words that meant everything. “Are you important?” Lord Beneger asked.
They hanged Hanry by the carriage.
DURING THE RETURN TO Nottingham, Quill could not escape his own mind, which tumbled about his skull in search of an escape and, finding none, chose to boil.
There was privilege to a name. Lord Beneger would have let that man live if he’d been family to a lord, if he’d held any title beyond looter. Quill, if not for a quirk of birth that put him under the protective title of Peveril, would not have been able to answer yes to any of those questions, either. Everything Quill had was his father’s, or his grandfather’s. Except his cowardice, that was his alone. He thought himself clever for playing games with noblemen and dabbling at policy, but in the real world he was useless. By all standards that mattered, he was exactly as useful as Hanry, dead and hanged.
FitzOdo and his men left to spread word of Hanry’s hanging to any local villages, that they might collect the dead and—more importantly—know why he hung there.
“Staying silent is no less of a crime,” Beneger explained as they walked their horses. “It is fear alone that keeps the people silent. They’re right to fear Robin Hood, but the only sway he holds over them is that fear. Overcoming fear, that is the mark of a man. Succumbing to it, makes a man nothing.”
“Are you alright?” Jacelyn asked Quill a bit later, when Lord Beneger’s horse was far enough ahead to be out of earshot. “You seem shaken.”
“That looter,” Quill admitted. “I feel for him.”
“That’s good.” She reached out, but their horses weren’t close enough to make contact. “That’s the only way we can help them. You think FitzOdo and those two donkeys have any care for the people out here? It’s good to have a heart, don’t lose that. You’re one of the good ones, Quill.”
It was a startling compliment, considering the source. “What about Lord Beneger? Is he one of the good ones?”
“He is. If you find him cold, then he’s the sharpest kind of ice. He knows to surround himself with opposing viewpoints.” She studied his reaction—with her good eye, her soft side. “How many times did he demand that you speak your mind?”
That was true. Beneger had respected Quill’s opinion, even when he hadn’t respected it himself.
“You see things that curs like FitzOdo never will. You feel things. Emotions, you know, and thoughts. I’m not sure FitzOdo has ever tried those out.”
That made Quill laugh, which surprisingly came with a wash of guilt. Four bodies lay behind them off the Sherwood Road, who would never laugh again.
As he thought on the day’s carnage, a stray thought wandered to the front. “What did you mean earlier,” he asked Jac, “when you said you’d seen enough severed hands lately?”
She shrugged it off. “Nothing. We’ve been running down leads on Robin Hood sightings. There’s some old stable in the French Ward where a couple of severed hands were nailed to the wall. Some people claimed it was Robin Hood, cutting off the hands of people who had stolen from him. Damned creepy.”
Severed hands? That sounded like Scarlet, but they’d already decided that he couldn’t be responsible for any Robin Hood sightings inside the city. He was many things, but not a magician.
“What do you think about what that man said?” he asked. “About Will Scarlet having a man inside the Guard?”
“It’s possible. Probably bribe a Common Guard to look the other way now and then. Happens all the time. I doubt it’s anything more than that. Or we’d know.”
The pieces fell into place. “Would we?”
Damned creepy.
Severed hands.
“Staying silent is no less of a crime.”
“They say he has a man inside the Nottingham Guard.”
“Overcoming fear, that is the mark of a man.”
“How do you want to die?”
“Are you important?”
“I THINK HE WAS RIGHT,” Quill told Lord Beneger de Wendenal. “Scarlet has a man inside our ranks, and I think he’s responsible for the Robin Hood sightings in the city.”
He described everything he knew about Gilbert with the White Hand.
His unknown past, his curious late-night activities, his utter lack of friendships. His choice to volunteer for the midnight walk. His perverse interest in hands. How he joined the Nottingham Guard at exactly the same time Robin Hood’s men started killing Sheriffs. His strange familiarity with all the town’s gangs.
“Good man.” Ben lowered his brow. “Now help me prove it.”
Quill had never felt more important in his life.