Read Chapter 26: Web of Lies

The wine rack shifted under Claude’s hand with a whisper of stone on stone. Not a rack at all, but a door disguised, its bottles painted on wood so cleverly he had nearly walked past it. The hidden stair Brother Anselm had claimed led nowhere now yawned before him, narrow and damp, descending into a darkness that swallowed his torchlight after ten paces.

He descended.

The air changed. The dungeon’s rot gave way to something drier—dust, old paper, the acrid ghost of sealing wax. The stair opened into a chamber no larger than a monk’s cell, but the walls wore their secrets like tapestry. Shelves crammed with rolled parchments, their ends marked with colored ribbons. A writing desk. An iron strongbox, hanging open.

Claude stepped forward, heart hammering. He pulled the nearest roll free. The script was cramped, efficient—a clerk’s hand, listing names, routes, payments. *Gilles du Lac—reliable, paid monthly, use no written orders.* Beneath it, another name. Another. He scrolled through a dozen entries and recognized none.

Then he saw the iron-bound chest.

Within lay not coin but a sheaf of individual dossiers, each wrapped in oiled linen. The top one wore a red ribbon. Claude’s fingers shook as he broke the seal.

*Marguerite D’Argent.*

He read in silence, the torch crackling.

The words refused to cohere, then struck like a mace. *Agent sworn to the English Crown. Recruited at Rouen, 1428. Has served as double within the French network for three years. Her loyalty to the Dauphin is feigned. She reports regularly to the Earl of Warwick’s household.*

Claude’s knees found the floor without his consent.

His sister. His sister, who had vanished into a convent, who had become Spider, who had twisted monks and brokers into her web—she was English. The entire Burgundian court had hunted her as a French spy, and all the while she was playing both sides for the third.

No. He shook his head, denial clawing. This could be deception. Another layer. Everything in this world was layers.

He rifled deeper into the chest. More names, more ribbons, a catalog of souls bought and sold. Near the bottom, wrapped in black linen, a single letter. Old. The paper brittle, the ink faded to the shade of dried blood.

Claude did not need to see the signature to know it. The hand was his father’s.

He knew it from years of watching him sign household accounts at the long oaken table, the blade-cut slant of his *D*, the impatient flourish of his *t*. The letter was dated 1419, and it was addressed to an English captain named Buckton.

*The gate at Auxerre will be unguarded the night of October’s third moon. Should your master require a gesture of good faith, the town’s treasury is richer than rumor suggests. I expect the sum agreed upon to be delivered to my man at Dijon.*

Claude’s breath stopped. His father—the loyal Burgundian, the pensioned knight who had raised him on tales of honor and service—had sold Auxerre.

His mind spun through the date. 1419. The year Auxerre had fallen to the English. The year his father had been knighted for valor in its defense.

Rage kindled, hot and bright. He would find whoever held this, whoever had built this web, and he would make them eat it. Then doubt pricked through the fury.

The letter was too well preserved. Too convenient. A neat confession from beyond the grave, sealed in the same chest that named his sister an English agent—the same sister who, every instinct screamed, had been fighting for France. For the lost Dauphin’s cause.

He lifted the letter to the torch, squinting at the edge of the parchment.

The fibers were even. Too even. And the ink—authentically faded, yes, but the *D* of his father’s signature lacked the tremor the man had developed in his last years, the slight hesitation Claude remembered from the will he’d signed mere weeks before his death. This was a young man’s hand, played old.

Forged.

Claude let the letter drop to the floor. His father had been innocent. His sister—what she was remained a question that now had three answers, none trustworthy. The monk’s confession, the French captain’s trap, the whisper of a paid debt, the key-and-blade on the token coin—all of it shifted and slid beneath his feet like sand on a dune.

Someone had built this. Someone had crafted not a network but a mirror maze of accusations and alibis, forging betrayals, seeding doubts, turning every path back upon itself to confuse the hunter.

Claude stared at the open strongbox, at the neat stack of poisoned words, and understood the deepest truth of his mission.

There was no Spider to catch. No Conspirator to unmask.

There was only a web of lies with no spider at all—or one who had never once touched the threads. And he knew, with a quiet and chilling certainty, that he had been standing inside it since the moment he left Dijon.