As if the words called them up, I saw movement at the edge of the trees—an arm, then a whole man, lean and hard as a skinned rabbit. He watched us with flat eyes, a knife in each hand.
Sully set his jaw. “Stay behind me,” he said, and I did.
Declan raised a palm, peace-offering style. “We mean no harm, friend.”
The stranger stepped out of the shadows, eyes flicking from Sully to me to the priest. He was maybe thirty, or maybe the kind of young that had been battered old by years of bad living. His nose was broken, set crooked, and a long scar chased his left cheekbone to the hinge of his jaw.
He spoke, and his voice was hoarse. “What are you doing out here?”
“Looking for a way in,” Sully said. “You?”
The man grinned, and it was not nice. “Same.”
Declan limped forward, not slow. “Scar?” he said, squinting. “Scar Delaney, is that you?”
The first thing Scar did was pull a knife on us. Not a long knife, but the kind you could fit under a tongue or drive through cartilage in a pinch. It was black at the edge, notched from years of finding bone. He held it up against the last orange of the sky and said, “One of you steps wrong, I bleed the girl first.”
I almost laughed. The idea of me as a hostage—maybe once, but not now, not after the world had taken its shot and missed. I took half a step forward anyway, Sully’s arm barring my way before my foot hit the dirt.
Scar’s eyes flicked over Sully, quick and mean, and then to me. I didn’t blink. His face was all planes and shadow, the mouth slashed tight as a scar itself. There was something dead in his eyes, but also a fever, the kind you see in men who’ve made their peace with being monsters. He wore the look of someone who never forgot a slight.
Father Declan spoke, voice low and steady. “We’re not here for trouble, Scar. We’re here to make a deal.”
Scar turned the blade in his hand, point dancing between us. “What kind of deal?”
Declan looked at him, hard. “You want in the castle. So do we. We’ll need your help. We have coin. And a cause.”
Scar eyed us, weighing it. “A cause?” He made a spitting sound. “You think I give a rat’s dick about causes?”
Declan smiled, a slow, cold thing. “No. But you care about getting paid. And you care about sticking it to the English. This is your chance.”
Scar’s mouth twisted. “Who’s the big one?” He jabbed the knife at Sully, who had gone stone still.
“My friend,” I said, before Sully could speak.
Scar laughed, and the knife dropped a hair lower. “He doesn’t talk much.”
Sully’s jaw flexed. “Enough when I need to.” He made the words sound like a threat.
“Good,” Scar said, tucking the knife into a slit at his belt. “Talkers get dead. Especially inside those walls.”
The woods pressed in close, every branch a finger poking at our backs. I could hear water gurgling somewhere below, and the wind had gone slack, as if even the weather didn’t want to see what we were about to do.
Declan unrolled the map leaf and spread it on the stump between us. Scar bent close, nose almost touching the charcoal lines.
“We take the chute?” Scar said.
Sully shook his head. “It’s watched. We go for the dead drop. But we need rope. And we need to time it with the guard change.”
Scar grunted, the kind of noise men make when they don’t trust a plan but have decided to see how it plays out. “There’s a trick,” he said, tapping the edge of the map. “The guards take a piss here, just before sundown. The German ones. They drink more than they can hold. If you time it right, you can catch both of them on the wall. Kill them fast, dump them in the river.”
Sully nodded, and for the first time, I saw respect in Scar’s eyes.
Declan looked at me. “Catherine, you stay here with the horse. If we’re not back by dawn, ride east. Don’t look back.”
“No,” I said, too quick. “I’m coming with you.”
Scar rolled his eyes. “No offense, but you’d slow us down.”
