Read Chapter 29: The Rope's Edge

The wet dawn lay over the crossroads like a shroud. Claude crouched behind the tumbled stones of an old wayshrine, watching the Compiègne road through a gap in the hedge. His breath fogged the air in short, controlled plumes. Behind him, thirty men—farmers, smiths, and two grizzled veterans Rolin had grudgingly released from the Dijon garrison—knelt in the frozen ditches, waiting.

“You’re certain he takes this road?” whispered Jean, the eldest veteran, his scarred face creased with doubt.

Claude touched the silver token in his pouch. “The message I carried was bait. But the noble who set the trap needs to know it worked. He rides to Compiègne to report to his master. This is his only road.”

Jean spat. “A clerk’s guess.”

“A clerk’s pattern,” Claude corrected. “Every dispatch I copied for five years crossed these fields. Nobles fear the woods. They take the open road when they want speed and secrecy. Secrecy for them, speed for us.”

The sound came then—hooves, many of them, and the creak of wagon wheels. Claude raised his fist. The men went still as carved saints.

The convoy emerged from the mist: eight horsemen in French colors, a covered wagon, and at its center, a rider in a deep blue cloak trimmed with ermine. His banner bore the falcon-and-key device that matched the seal on the forged letter.

Claude’s hand tightened on his sword. The maker of the lie was within reach.

He let the wagon pass the wayshrine, let the noble’s horse draw level with the gap in the hedge. Then he stood and screamed the signal.

The ambush erupted from both ditches. Ropes whipped across the road, catching the lead horses at the knees. They went down screaming, and the wagon skewed violently, its driver thrown into the mud. Crossbows sang from the hedgerow, and three French riders toppled before they could draw steel.

Claude ran forward, blade drawn, shouting for the noble to yield. The blue-cloaked man reined his horse in a tight circle, shock twisting his face. He had expected a messenger, not an army.

“D’Argent!” the noble spat, recognizing him. “You’re supposed to be dead in Troyes!”

“The reports of my death were as false as your letters.” Claude slashed at the horse’s reins, and the noble tumbled to the ground, scrambling for his sword.

Steel rang. The noble was good—better than Claude—but he fought in panic while Claude fought in certainty. The demands of dueling gave way to the chaos of the melee around them. A French sergeant lunged at Claude’s flank, and Claude twisted, taking the blow on his vambrace, the shock jarring up his arm.

And then he saw her.

Marguerite. His sister. A dozen years of absence collapsed into a single heartbeat. She wore French mail over a leather jerkin, her dark hair cropped short like a soldier’s, and she was cutting through Claude’s men with terrible efficiency, her sword moving in strokes he recognized from their father’s lessons.

Their eyes met through the press of bodies. Her face went pale, then hard.

“Traitor!” she screamed. “You side with Burgundy against your own blood?”

“Marguerite, wait—our father—”

But she was already retreating, dragging a wounded French knight toward the treeline. Her horse stood tethered at the wood’s edge. She swung into the saddle without breaking stride.

Claude had the noble pinned beneath him, one hand at the man’s throat, the other still holding his sword. The road was his. The trap had closed. Thirty feet away, his sister was disappearing into the trees, and with her, every answer he had ever sought.

“Leave her!” Jean shouted, grabbing Claude’s shoulder. “The noble! The noble is the prize!”

Claude’s chest heaved. The blue-cloaked man gasped beneath him, eyes wide with terror and calculation. One sword stroke could end him. One release could find her.

He stared into the trees. Marguerite paused at the edge, looking back. Her expression was not hatred. It was grief, sharp and unhealed, as if she were looking at a ghost of her own.

She kicked her horse and vanished.

Claude drove his knee harder into the noble’s chest and hauled him upright. “You will pay for every lie you have written about my family,” he hissed. “And you will tell me who commanded you.”

The noble laughed through his broken lip. “You’ve caught a falcon, boy. But the falconer is still on the perch.”

Claude struck him across the mouth. The noble spat blood and went silent.

Wind swept the road, carrying the last sounds of retreating hoofbeats. Claude’s men gathered the prisoners, bound the wounded, and searched the wagon for documents. He stood at the edge of the wood where his sister had vanished, the rope still coiled in his hand.

He had chosen the noble. He had chosen duty.

But he had lost the last thread that tied him to his father. And he did not know if the choice would ever stop tasting like iron.