Read Chapter 28: The Lie Exposed

The city gates of Dijon loomed before Claude like the jaws of a judgment he had spent nine days riding to avoid. Mud caked his boots to the knees, his cloak hung torn at the shoulder where a roadside brigand had tested his steel, and the pouch at his belt contained enough paper to burn his family name to ash.

He had not slept properly since Troyes.

The guards knew him. A nod, a glance at his stained tunic, and they waved him through. Claude D'Argent, loyal clerk of the Burgundian chancellery, returned from his errand. How little they knew of the errand's true fruit.

Chancellor Nicolas Rolin received him in the chancellery's upper chamber, a room of oak and iron and cold fireplace stone. The old man sat behind a desk drowning in parchment, his face a mask of ink and patience. He did not rise when Claude entered.

"You look like a corpse," Rolin said. "The monastery took that much from you?"

"The monastery was a lie." Claude set the leather satchel on the desk and unfastened its clasps with fingers that trembled only slightly. "Everything was a lie. My sister is not a nun. She serves the French. She serves no one. She is a double agent who has been playing both crowns against each other for a decade."

Rolin's eyebrows rose a fraction of an inch, nothing more. "You have proof of this, or only the fever dreams of a brother who cannot accept that his sister chose a different banner?"

Claude withdrew the dossiers. The archive paper was brittle, the ink faded, but the names were sharp enough to cut. He spread them across the desk like a fan of accusation. Marguerite D'Argent. English double agent. Contact unknown. Target: destabilize Burgundian succession.

"She built a network in Brother Anselm's monastery," Claude said, his voice steady despite the grief lodged in his throat. "She used the Church as cover. She blackmailed the monks, corrupted the brothers, and fed false intelligence to anyone who would pay. The French think she serves them. The English believe she is theirs. She has betrayed both and answered only to a figure called the Conspirator."

Rolin picked up one dossier, scanned it, set it down. He repeated the motion with a second, a third. His face betrayed nothing—that was his art, after all. The man had built a career on absorbing secrets and returning only polished stones of policy.

"Your sister," Rolin said at last, "is one thread in a weave I have watched for three years. That she is compromised is not news to me. That you have only now discovered it is." He leaned back in his chair, the wood groaning beneath his weight. "You are blind, Claude. You have always been blind when it comes to her. Blood does that to a man. It softens his eyes and weakens his judgment."

The accusation struck like a lash. Claude felt his jaw tighten, his hands curl into fists at his sides. "I am not here to defend her. I am here to warn you."

"Warn me of what? That the French have spies? That the English buy loyalty with silver? I have known this since before you learned to read."

Claude reached into the satchel again. His fingers found the folded vellum, the one piece of evidence he had almost burned in a moment of despair. He had kept it because it refused to fit the pattern. Because it was the only document in that archive that pointed not to his sister but past her, to a hand that moved behind the curtain.

He placed the letter on the desk, smoothing its creases with his palm.

"That," he said, "is genuine."

Rolin's eyes dropped to the page. The seal was broken—Claude had broken it himself, in the lamplight of the Troyes dungeon, his hands shaking as he read words that turned his stomach cold. The letter bore the mark of a French noble house, one of the oldest and proudest in the realm. Its contents proposed an alliance of assassination: the elimination of both the Duke of Burgundy and the Dauphin's rivals, a double murder designed to ignite a war that would drown France in blood and leave one family to pick the bones.

"A French noble intends to kill both dukes," Claude said. "Philip and Charles alike. He will light a fire that consumes the kingdoms and stand in the ashes as the only one with a crown still on his head. This letter—" he tapped the vellum, "—names him. It is real. I have checked the hand against chancellery records. There is no forgery in this ink."

Rolin was silent for a long time. He read the letter once, then again. Through the window, the sounds of Dijon drifted up—carts rolling over cobblestones, a vendor crying his wares, the distant ring of a smith's hammer. Ordinary sounds of a world that did not know how close it stood to the edge of a blade.

"Where did you find this?" Rolin's voice had changed. The dismissal was gone, replaced by something sharper. Interest.

"A hidden archive beneath the Troyes keep. The same archive that held the dossiers on my sister. The trap that caught me was baited to reveal these documents—someone wanted me to find them. Someone wanted these truths brought to your desk."

"Someone who wishes this noble caught."

"Or someone who wishes a war begun." Claude met the chancellor's gaze. "I do not know which. But the letter is real. I would stake my soul on it."

Rolin stood, moving to the window, his back to Claude. The old man's shoulders were tense beneath his velvet robe, a rare display of the strain that lived beneath his composed surface.

"You have given me a weapon," Rolin said quietly, "or you have given me a noose. If this letter is genuine, and this noble learns we possess it, he will move quickly. The dukes will be in danger within a fortnight. If it is a fabrication—a trick to make us strike at an innocent man—then we will have declared war on a house that could crush us."

"I did not risk my life to bring you a fabrication."

"No." Rolin turned. His eyes were hard, flinty, the eyes of a man who had survived three decades of court politics by trusting no one and verifying everything. "But you risked it to save your sister's name. That is where your blindness lives, Claude. You believe every truth that absolves her and question every truth that condemns her. The letter is real—I believe that. But your reason for carrying it may be as corrupt as the ink is honest."

Claude stood frozen, the accusation cutting deeper than any blade.

"You want redemption?" Rolin asked. "You want to prove that your eyes are clear, that your judgment is sound, that you serve Burgundy before blood?"

"Yes."

"Then you will catch this noble. You will bring him to Dijon in chains, and he will confirm the letter under questioning. When he does, you will be restored. When he does not—" Rolin let the sentence hang. He did not need to finish it.

"How do I find him?"

Rolin returned to his desk and drew a fresh sheet of parchment. His quill scratched quickly, forming a name and a location, then he pushed it toward Claude.

"He travels to Compiègne," Rolin said, "for a secret meeting with agents who believe they move unseen. You will intercept him on the road. You will take whatever force you need from the garrison. And you will bring him back alive."

Claude took the parchment. The name on it sent a chill down his spine—a name he had seen in the forged letter that sought to implicate his father, a name that looped back to the Conspirator like a thread drawing tight.

"I will not fail you," he said.

Rolin's smile was thin and cold. "You already have. This is your chance to un-fail."