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"I can't." His jaw tightened. "It was taken out of the archive while I was up the stairs, which is how I learned Fitzwalter had put men in my own castle."

"How convenient."

"Yes," he said. "I thought so too."

Then he stopped talking, and his eyes moved past my shoulder, and everything about his face changed.

"Robin."

I heard the arrow a heartbeat later.

He came at me across the whole distance between us and hit me like a falling tree, and we went down together in the leaf fall as the shaft tore through the air exactly where my chest had been and buried itself in the oak behind me, still humming.

For one ridiculous heartbeat, neither of us moved.

Guy was over me, one forearm planted beside my head, his body covering mine from whatever else might be coming out of those trees. His chest rose hard against mine, and his face was so close that the cedar of him overwhelmed everything else.

His eyes dropped to my mouth.

Mine did the same.

"This," I breathed, "is a very elaborate way to get close to me."

"You told me to come take the seal."

My heart stumbled. "Four days ago."

"I've been busy."

Another arrow struck the tree above us. Guy looked toward it.

"Apparently so have they."

Then Sherwood came apart. They rose out of the brush on three sides, eight that I could count, with no livery and good steel and the unhurried competence of men who are paid rather than sworn. I was on my feet with an arrow nocked before the first of them cleared the ferns, and I put it through his thigh and had the next one drawn before he finished going down.

"You brought them," I snarled.

Guy came up with his sword already out. "If I'd brought them, they wouldn't be shooting at me."

Which, as a defense, was unfortunately airtight.

We ended up back to back without either of us deciding to, and that was the strangest part of the entire morning, because it worked. I went up onto the fallen trunk where I could see over the ferns and kept them off us at range, and he held the ground beneath me and did terrible, efficient things to anyone who closed. He did not swing wide, he did not shout, and he never once moved more than he needed to. Watching him fight was like watching a door shut.

"Three behind you," I called.

He blocked a blade and turned the man's wrist the wrong way. "I see them."

"Then why are they still standing?"

"I'm slightly occupied."

"Excuses."

I caught the fourth man coming up the slope and put him down. Then I turned on the trunk and saw one of them set his feet and bring a crossbow up on Guy's blind side at ten paces.

I shot him through the shoulder before he could loose it.

Guy looked up at me, breathing hard, blood on his sleeve that was not his.