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I kept my expression neutral, although my thoughts immediately turned to Eleanor of Locksley. Robin's grandmother.

She'd helped Robin escape through the kitchens on the night soldiers arrived at Locksley. Robin was sixteen then, frightened and grieving, with little more than the clothes she wore.

Eleanor had placed something in her granddaughter's hands before they fled. Two winters later, she'd died in a borrowed bed in a village that had sheltered them.

Robin had told me about that night.

She'd even shown me what her grandmother gave her. I'd held it myself in the hunting cabin, studying it in the gray morning light.

I stopped myself from looking toward the window.

Fitzwalter stood only a few feet away, and the last thing I needed was for him to notice that I'd recognized something.

"You'll write to her," he said.

"No."

"You haven't heard my terms."

"I don't need to."

"Your title, your commission, your rooms, your income, and your freedom. All restored. I'll even close the inquiry and call this entire matter an unfortunate misunderstanding between gentlemen."

He spread his hands.

"All you need to do is write to Robin of Locksley and instruct her to surrender herself, along with every document belonging to her father, directly into my custody."

"And Robin?"

"She'll receive whatever consideration her cooperation deserves."

"Meaning you'll hang her as soon as you have the papers."

Fitzwalter smiled. "You've grown remarkably sentimental, Sheriff."

"Perhaps, but I'm not stupid."

I pushed away from the wall. "Think about what you're proposing, my lord. You're going to arrest the King's own sheriff, inside the King's castle, while he's investigating the disappearance of more than seven thousand marks from a royal war levy. Whatever charge you bring against me, someone on that council will eventually want to know what I discovered."

"They'll be far more interested in the fact that you've mated a condemned outlaw."

He turned toward the guards. "Treason and the aiding of a declared criminal. Take him to the dungeon."

I considered fighting. For a moment, I was sorely tempted. Then I counted the two men standing in the doorway and the four waiting behind them in the corridor.

Six armed soldiers against one injured man.

My knife wound was healing, but I wasn't foolish enough to believe I could fight my way down several flights of stairs without tearing it open.

I held out my wrists.

The guards shackled me and led me from my chambers. I spent the descent memorizing everything I saw.

Four turns. Thirty-one steps from the courtyard door. One guard stationed at the head of the stairs.

At the bottom stood a second door with damaged hinges. It hung slightly crooked because nobody had bothered to pay a smith to repair it.

I made a note of that too.