Read Chapter 24: The Token

The road to Reims had been a purgatory of cold rain and empty bellies, and Claude's horse—a swaybacked gelding with a limp he'd grown to know intimately—was nearly spent. Brother Anselm rode behind him in silence, his cowl pulled low against the weather. The monk had not spoken since they'd left the monastery, except to murmur prayers Claude did not share.

Reims rose from the mist like a stone prayer, its cathedral spires clawing at a pewter sky. They entered through the Porte de Vesle, passing a line of wagons freighted with wool and salt. No one challenged them. A mercenary and a monk made for odd company, but in these times, stranger bedfellows were commonplace.

"Where is the broker?" Claude asked, keeping his voice low.

Anselm shifted in his saddle. "The coin will find him. It always does."

"Helpful."

The monk's lips twitched. "That was her way. Marguerite never gave more than she must."

The name struck Claude like a slap of cold water. He had not heard his sister's name spoken aloud by another in weeks. He forced his jaw to unclench.

They dismounted near a tavern called the Lamb and Thistle, its sign creaking in the wind. Anselm led him through a narrow alley behind the tavern, then to a door with no handle—only a small iron slot shaped like a keyhole. On impulse, Claude pressed the silver token into the groove.

The coin clicked. The door swung inward.

They descended into a cellar lit by tallow candles, where a dozen figures sat around a rough-hewn table. Men in merchants' cloaks. Women in widows' weeds. A priest with a scarred face. All heads turned toward Claude as he entered, the coin still glinting in his palm.

"He's Burgundian," said a woman at the far end, her voice carrying the flat accent of the Île-de-France. Her face was half-hidden by a dark veil, but her eyes were sharp as cut glass.

Claude's hand drifted toward his sword hilt. "I am a man who was told this coin would open doors, not conversations about my birthplace."

The priest laughed—a dry, rattling sound. "The token did not lie. But you carry it like a man who found it in a ditch."

Anselm stepped forward, drawing himself to his full height. The monk who had cowered in the monastery now spoke with the authority of a bishop. "He is under the protection of Sister Marguerite. The token is his by right of blood."

The woman behind the veil studied Claude for a long moment. "Sister Marguerite is beyond protection now. She has been called south."

"To Troyes," Claude said, not a question.

The silence that followed told him he had guessed correctly. He felt a stirring of vindication—the first real lead he'd had since Dijon.

The veiled woman rose. She was taller than Claude had expected, and when she moved, the others shifted aside with the practiced deference of those accustomed to obedience. She approached him, stopping close enough that he could smell the lavender oil in her hair.

"You will do," she said. "We have a message that must reach Troyes by the Feast of Saint Mark. The roads are watched, and our usual couriers are known to the Burgundian patrols."

Claude's pulse quickened. His cover as a mercenary had been thin; the chance to travel under the network's own authority was better than he'd hoped. "And if I refuse?"

The veiled woman smiled. It did not reach her eyes. "Then you will leave this cellar, and the next time you seek shelter from the rain, you will find it in a Burgundian gaol. Your choice, friend of Sister Marguerite."

Claude glanced at Anselm. The monk gave the smallest nod.

"I accept," Claude said.

The message was delivered without ceremony—a thin waxed tube, sealed with black wax stamped with a web. The woman pressed it into his palm. "You will present this to the man called Charpentier, at the sign of the Green Goose in Troyes. He will know what to do with it."

"And what is in it?"

Her smile thinned. "That is not your concern."

But Claude had seen enough of intrigue to recognize the shape of a spider's web. He tucked the tube into his tunic, feeling the weight of it against his heart. His father's ring had borne crossed keys. The coin bore a web. And now this message—sealed with the same web—would carry him straight into the arms of the Conspirator himself.

As he turned to leave, a voice called out from the shadows at the back of the cellar. A man's voice, old and cracked, yet carrying an unmistakable authority.

"When you see her, tell her the debt is paid."

Claude froze. He turned, searching the dark for the speaker, but saw only a shape—a man in a heavy cloak, face obscured by the candlelight's uncertain reach.

"What debt?" Claude asked.

The voice did not answer. Instead, the silence was broken by the scrape of a chair, and the man rose and vanished through a curtain at the back of the cellar. The veiled woman watched Claude with unveiled curiosity.

"I would not chase him, if I were you. He has not left that corner in seven years, and I doubt he will start for a stranger's benefit."

Claude's mind raced. *The stranger in Dijon who knew his father. The token. The message. The voice that spoke of a debt.* The threads were tangling around him, drawing him deeper into a web he had thought was narrower.

He climbed the stairs back into the cold afternoon air, Brother Anselm at his heels. The monk said nothing as they mounted, but as they rode toward the southern gate, Anselm finally spoke.

"The Conspirator," he said quietly, "is not one person. The web has too many strands for a single spider."

Claude considered this. Marguerite had been three weeks ahead, moving toward Troyes and the French lines. He had thought to catch her. But if she was only a piece of something larger—if the Conspirator were orchestrating not just her movements, but his—

His grip tightened on the reins. "Then we follow the message. And we catch whoever is at the other end."

But even as he said it, he felt the ghost of his father's ring against his empty finger, and the memory of its crossed keys burning like a brand.

*The debt is paid,* the voice had said. Whose debt? And to whom?

The road to Troyes stretched before him, muddy and uncertain, and for the first time in weeks, Claude did not know whether he was the hunter or the bait.