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Gavan approached slowly. “Who sent you?”

The man smiled faintly despite blood darkening one corner of his mouth. “No one.”

“Wrong answer.”

At Gavan’s signal, one guard searched the satchel quickly. No letters. No clan token. No identifying mark whatsoever. Only a folded scrap of parchment left completely blank. A courier carrying no message.

William stared at the discarded dagger lying near the door.

His expression tightened strangely. “That is not Highland-forged steel.”

Gavan looked towards him sharply.

William swallowed hard. “I saw blades like that among men working merchant caravans south of Inverness. Hired guards. Men paid to keep roads open and mouths closed.” His jaw tightened with visible disgust. “Not clan men. Never clan men.”

The realisation settled coldly through the chamber. Not simple vengeance. Not merely Calder protecting his own standing. Something wealthier. More organised.

“You were sent to silence William,” Gavan said evenly to the prisoner.

The man’s silence confirmed enough.

William sank slowly back onto his bunk. “If I speak tomorrow,” he said quietly, “they will keep coming.”

“Then they are more frightened of what you know than what you forged.”

William looked up sharply at that.

Silence stretched before he finally said, “The letters were never truly about rebellion.”

Gavan said nothing.

William’s fingers curled. “Certain routes were named repeatedly inside the forged correspondence. Certain inspections suggested. Certain trade delays encouraged.” Shame flickered harshly across his face. “I thought I was exposing corruption between clans. Instead, I was helping redirect trade pressure exactly where someone wanted it.”

Gavan felt the shape of the truth sharpening further at last. Still incomplete, but close enough now to glimpse the machinery beneath the chaos.

“Who?” he asked quietly.

William’s eyes shifted briefly towards the shuttered courthouse windows as though afraid the walls themselves might overhear. “I do not know all their names,” he admitted. “Only that merchants stood to gain each time clans turned suspicion upon one another.”

Gavan turned his gaze to the guard who held the assassin. “Lock him below. Separate from the other prisoners. No one speaks to him without me present.”

“Aye, Provost.”

The assassin was hauled from the chamber struggling silently between two guards, his boots scraping harshly against the courthouse stones as they forced him down the corridor. Another guard followed carrying the discarded dagger wrapped in cloth. The sounds of movement gradually faded down the stairs, leaving only silence.

For a long moment, neither Gavan nor William spoke.

William remained seated, though tension held him rigid now. The colour had not fully returned to his face.

His eyes lingered on the doorway where the assassin had vanished. “At least now you believe me,” he said quietly.

Gavan turned back towards William. “I believed someone feared your testimony the moment our storage shed burned.”

William let out a bitter breath. “And now?”

“Now I know how badly.” Gavan crossed slowly towards the door, the pain in his shoulder pulling faintly with each movement. “Tomorrow changes things,” he said at last. “No half-truths. No protecting men who would gladly bury you to protect themselves.”

William remained still. “You think I still know enough to matter.”