Read Chapter 21: The Loom's Shadow Again

The voice came from behind him, low and unhurried, like a man discussing the price of wool.

“You walk like a man who has lost something heavier than coin.”

Claude’s hand went to the knife at his belt before he turned. The speaker stood in the shadow of a shuttered tailor’s shop, arms crossed, face half-hidden beneath a broad-brimmed hat stained with road dust. Middle-aged, lean, with the calloused hands of someone who had gripped a sword more than a plow. His eyes flicked to Claude’s empty purse strap, then to the ring on his finger.

“I have nothing worth stealing,” Claude said.

“No,” the stranger agreed. “You have nothing at all. That is precisely why I am here.”

Claude’s grip tightened on the knife. The southern gate of Dijon was a hundred paces behind him, the city walls still visible in the gray dawn light. He had been walking for an hour, directionless, his mind still churning with his father’s letter and the ghost of Marguerite’s confession. He had not noticed this man following him.

“I do not know you,” Claude said.

“No. But I know you. Claude D’Argent, clerk of the Burgundian chancery, brother of a traitor, and a man who should be standing in a courtroom at terce instead of walking south with nothing but a dead father’s ring.”

Claude’s blood went cold. He drew the knife fully.

The stranger raised both hands, palms open. “Easy. If I wanted the Duke’s silver for your capture, I would have brought men. I came alone, and I came to give you something.”

“Why would you give a condemned man anything?”

“Because the condemned man is not the one the Duke should fear.” The stranger glanced over his shoulder at the empty road, then stepped closer. His voice dropped to a murmur. “The Spider is not your sister.”

Claude’s mind stuttered. “What?”

“Marguerite D’Argent runs messages. She is a courier, a useful one, but she is not the architect. The woman who built the Spider network has been at this work for fifteen years. She saw the English burn her village, watched her family die in the siege of Orléans, and decided the Valois crown was the only hammer that could break the Burgundian alliance.” The stranger’s eyes held Claude’s. “She is going to Reims.”

“Reims is behind the French lines.”

“Yes. And it is where she will be, within the week, to meet with the men who will crown Charles.” The stranger paused. “Why do you think your father sold a promise there, and not in Paris or Bourges?”

Claude’s chest tightened. The ledger. The debt that was not a debt. His father’s letter, telling him to trust the ring and the blood it bound.

“Who are you?” he demanded.

“A man who served your father once, before the debts and the disgrace. I owe him a debt I cannot repay to his grave.” The stranger reached into his coat and pulled out a scrap of parchment, folded small. He pressed it into Claude’s hand. “The Spider’s name is written there. Read it when you are far from here, and burn it before you reach Reims. If the wrong people know you carry it, you will not live to see the cathedral.”

Claude stared at the parchment in his palm. It was lighter than a feather and heavier than the Duke’s warrant.

“Why should I trust you?”

“You should not. But your father did.” The stranger turned, pulling his hat lower. “The ring has a purpose, Clerk. It is not a keepsake. It is a key. Find the lock in Reims, and you will understand what he was trying to hide.”

Then he was gone, swallowed by the mist that clung to the roadside ditches. Claude stood motionless for a long moment, the parchment burning against his skin.

He opened it, despite the warning. Just a few words in a tight, unfamiliar hand:

*The Spider nest is in Reims. She calls herself the Widow Blanchard. She knows your father’s name.*

He read it twice, then crumpled it into his purse.

Widow Blanchard. The name meant nothing to him. But the fact that this stranger knew his father—knew the debts, the promise, the ring—meant the web was larger than he had ever imagined. Marguerite was a thread. The archivist was a thread. He was a thread, and somewhere in Reims sat the weaver.

The road stretched south, empty and muddy. He had no horse, no coin, no allies. He would starve before he reached the border, let alone Reims.

He looked down at his father’s ring. Gold, worn thin at the edges, the engraving of two crossed keys nearly faded. Simon had offered him nothing but contempt. Mallory had closed his door. The Duke had stripped his name. All that remained was this circle of metal his father had worn for thirty years.

He pulled it off.

The ring felt heavier in his palm than it had on his finger. He turned it over, tracing the worn engraving, remembering the weight of his father’s hand on his shoulder as a boy, the day he had first shown him the seal of their house.

*Trust only the ring,* the letter had said.

But trust would not buy a horse. Trust would not feed him through a week of travel through hostile country. Trust would not get him to Reims before the Spider spun her web around Charles’s coronation.

He shoved the ring into his purse and walked until he found a pawnbroker’s shop at the edge of the next village, a squat stone building with iron bars over the windows. The broker, a man with rheumy eyes and fingers like chicken bones, squinted at the ring, then at Claude.

“This is a good piece,” the broker said grudgingly. “Old work. But I’ll need to know where it came from.”

“Inheritance,” Claude said. “My father is dead.”

The broker studied him a moment longer, then named a price. Enough for a horse, a sword, and perhaps a week of food if he was careful. Claude took the coins without bargaining, eager to be gone.

But as he walked out of the shop, the ring’s absence felt like a missing finger. His father’s letter had told him to trust it. And he had just traded it for a saddle and a blade.

He stopped in the middle of the street, guilt roiling in his ribs. What if the stranger was right? What if the ring was a key? What had he just thrown away?

He almost turned back. His hand even raised to push the shop door open again. But the coins in his purse clinked, and he lowered his arm.

The ring was gone. He had chosen the road over the relic. There was no taking it back now.

He bought a small, tired gelding from a farmer outside the village, along with a worn sword and a leather jerkin that did not fit properly. He smeared mud across his face, tied a frayed scarf around his throat, and practiced slouching in the saddle until he looked less like a clerk and more like a man who had known a hundred campfires.

By midday he was riding south, his father’s name fading behind him with every hoofbeat.

The stranger’s words echoed in his head.

*She knows your father’s name.*

What had his father been to this Widow Blanchard? An enemy? An ally? A man who owed a promise so old it had become a debt of honor?

The sun climbed higher, and the road carried him deeper into hostile land.

He had no ring, no name, no papers. He was just another mercenary heading toward the war, hoping to find wages and trying to stay alive.