Page 5

I took a moment before I replied, “No."

The word left me quietly, and the room went still around it.

Kings were not refused, and certainly not in front of witnesses. I felt Fitzwalter's attention sharpen on me from across the chamber like a blade being turned toward the light.

The King's face darkened. "The forest belongs to the Crown."

"The forest belongs to England," I replied, keeping my voice level and my eyes steady. "Burn it, and the Crown rules ash. Ten thousand people live off that land, Majesty. And every one of them will remember who set the fire. The Ghost survives on their silence and their love. I will not hand the bandit ten thousand more reasons to give both."

The fire cracked in the hearth while the King weighed my defiance against my results. In the end my results won, as I had known they would.

"Then catch this criminal your way," he said at last. "You have unlimited authority in the shire. Do not make me regret it."

I bowed and withdrew from the King’s chambers. I could feel Fitzwalter's gaze following me the entire length of the room, thoughtful and cold and far too interested in a sheriff who had just told his king no.

What I did not hear, as the doors closed behind me, was the lord setting down his untouched wine and speaking softly into the quiet.

"Watch the sheriff."

3

ROBIN

Morning arrived in the camp the way it always did, with woodsmoke and birds singing their tunes, and the particular chaos of children who had decided that dawn was for everyone whether everyone agreed or not.

I sat on a fallen log near the central fire with my repair kit spread across my knees, working my way through the arrows that had come back from the raid worse for wear. The routine soothed me in ways I never tried to explain to anyone.

My father used to say that a careless archer told on himself through his quiver. So, I checked each shaft for warping and each fletching for damage, trimming and regluing and rebinding with the patience my grandmother had drilled into my hands over a hundred quiet evenings.

The children found me before I finished the third arrow, because the children always found me.

They arrived in twos and threes like sparrows, settling onto the log. Some settled into the grass around my feet, close enough to watch and just far enough to pretend they weren't watching. I had learned not to shoo them away. In their world, the arrows were magic, and the woman who made them was something between an aunt and a story come to life.

I remembered too well what stories had meant to me at their age to take that from them.

A small boy named Tam pushed through the flock with something clutched against his chest, and his face shone with the fierce pride of a craftsman unveiling his masterwork.

"Look!"

He thrust it toward me with both hands.

It was a bow, or at least it intended to be a bow, carved from a branch that still wore patches of bark. He had strung it with what appeared to be braided grass, and bent in a curve that could generously be described as creative.

I set down my repair work and took it from him, turning it over in my hands and sighting along its wandering line while he vibrated in place before me. The other children went silent as a jury.

"Hmm," I said.

I let the pause stretch until Tam's eyes had gone perfectly round.

I spoke again, delivering the news, “Needs another twenty years."

He gasped as if I had pronounced a sentence of doom, and I couldn't hold my face together any longer. The laugh broke out of me, warm and full. I pulled him in and ruffled his hair while the flock of children collapsed into giggles around us.

"It's a fine start, Tam," I told him honestly, because it was. "Keep the bark on for now, and when the wood dries through the winter, come find me and I'll teach you where the curve wants to live. A bow can't be forced into its shape. It has to be asked."

He nodded with the solemnity of a knight receiving a quest. The carried his crooked treasure off through the camp like it was made of gold.

Later that morning I found Old Sefa beneath the healer's canopy. She was surrounded by drying racks and hanging bundles but there was a sort of order to the old woman’s clutter. Safe had been keeping this camp alive a lot longer than I had been feeding.