Read Chapter 10: The Price of Faith

The bargeman let them off at a gravel bend where the river shallowed, grumbling about the fare and the cold and the weight of the box, which he’d helped carry ashore with resentful eyes. Roland paid him double and said nothing. Aelis watched the barge slip back into the current, then turned to the road climbing east through scrub and limestone.

“Cahors is two days on foot,” she said. “We could buy mounts in the next village.”

“We could also draw less attention walking.”

She gave him a look that was half amusement, half scorn. “You carry a box that men are dying for, and you worry about attention.”

Roland hoisted the box onto his shoulder. The leather strap bit into his collarbone. It was heavier than it had been in Toulouse—or perhaps his bones were just tired. He said nothing about it. They walked.

The village appeared at dusk, a huddle of stone roofs under a sky the color of old bruises. Roland’s first warning was the silence. No dogs. No children. No hammer from the smithy. Only a bent old woman drawing water from a well, who looked at them with eyes that seemed to have forgotten what hope felt like.

Aelis touched his arm. “We should keep moving.”

“We need food and a place to sleep.”

“We need to not be seen.”

But Roland was already walking toward the woman. He had seen villages like this before, after sieges, after levies. The bones of it were the same—empty baskets, shuttered windows, the smell of nothing cooking.

“What happened here?” he asked.

The woman looked at the box on his shoulder, then at his face. “The king’s men came in the spring. Took the grain, took the cattle, took the boys who could hold a pike. Then the Church’s men came and took what the king’s men left. We are waiting for winter now.” She shrugged, a gesture that had once meant something else. “You are pilgrims?”

“Travelers,” Aelis said quickly. “We won’t stay long.”

Roland reached into his purse and pressed a handful of silver into the woman’s palm. Her fingers closed around it like a trap.

Aelis grabbed his wrist and pulled him away, her voice a hiss once they were out of earshot. “Have you lost your mind? That coin could have bought us horses, food for a week.”

“They have nothing.”

“They have nothing because the king takes it. You give them coin and the king’s men will take that too—or worse, they’ll remember strangers who gave alms and send word down the road.” She released his wrist, anger tightening the corners of her mouth. “You are a soldier of fortune, Roland. You know how this works. Kindness is a banner that draws arrows.”

He said nothing. She was right. That was the worst of it.

The inn stood at the village edge, a long low building of dark timber and crumbling plaster. A fire burned in the hearth—the first warmth Roland had felt in days—and the innkeeper, a thin man with a nervous smile and hands that never stopped moving, set bowls of thin stew before them without being asked.

“Travelers from the river?” the innkeeper said, wiping his hands on a rag that had once been white.

Roland didn’t answer. Aelis said, “What of it?”

“Nothing, nothing. Just—we don’t see many strangers. The levy took our trade. You’ll forgive my curiosity.” He retreated to the bar, but Roland noticed he kept glancing at the box, which Roland had wedged between his stool and the wall.

Roland ate slowly, watching the room. Two other patrons, both men, sat in the far corner nursing cups of something brown. Their clothes were too good for a village this poor. Their boots were clean.

“We should leave,” Aelis said quietly, reading his thoughts.

“We haven’t finished eating.”

“We can eat cold.”

The innkeeper returned with a jug of wine, more full than it should have been for a village that had been stripped bare. He set it down with a smile that showed too many teeth.

“On the house,” he said. “For travelers who bring news.”

Roland didn’t touch the wine. Aelis didn’t either. The innkeeper’s smile thinned. He backed away, and Roland saw his gaze flick to the two men in the corner.

“Now,” Roland said.

They rose together, and the room exploded.

The two men came over the table, chairs scattering, knives drawn from belts. Roland was already moving, shoving the table into their path, buying himself a breath of space. The box was at his feet; he kicked it under the bar as a third man—where had he come from?—lunged through the door behind them.

Aelis caught the newcomer with a jar to the skull that shattered with a sound like a breaking limb. The man went down. Roland turned to find the first two closing on him, and he drew his sword in a motion that had become as natural as breathing.

Steel rang against steel. The first man was fast, but he overextended, and Roland’s blade found the gap between his ribs. He went down with a wheeze. The second man hesitated, and hesitation was death.

Roland left him bleeding on the floorboards and spun toward the bar, but the innkeeper was already running for the back door. Aelis was after him before Roland could shout, and he heard the crash of the door hitting the wall, then a short, wet sound, then silence.

She came back a moment later, wiping a thin knife on her sleeve.

“They’ll send more,” she said. “Someone knew we were coming.”

Roland retrieved the box from under the bar. Its weight settled against his hands, and for a moment he swore it felt heavier. Not by much. But heavier.

He carried it to the dead man he’d killed first and crouched beside him. No sigil, no badge, no letter with a seal. A hired blade with emptied pockets and a face Roland would forget by morning.

“Who paid you?” he said to the corpse.

The corpse, unsurprisingly, said nothing.

Aelis was standing by the window, peering through a crack in the shutter. “Riders. On the road. Coming from the east.”

Roland rose. His shoulder ached. His purse was lighter by a handful of silver he should have kept. And the box was heavy, heavy, heavy—heavier with secrets and blood and the weight of every dead man who had touched it.

He looked at Aelis. Her face was torchlit and unreadable, and for the first time since the barge, he wondered if she was leading him into a snare or out of one. It didn’t matter. They were bound by the same iron thread, and it was strangling them both.

“We can’t ride together,” he said. “Not with the box.”

Aelis’s eyes narrowed. “What are you saying?”

“I’m saying they know two travelers with a heavy box are heading south. We split, they divide their pursuit. I ride hard and loud, draw them off. You take the box and slip through the back roads to Cahors.”

“And if I take the box and disappear?”

“Then you’ll be hunted by whoever sent those men, and you’ll have no one to watch your back.” He held her gaze. “You said the Pope wants to control what’s inside. You can’t do that alone.”

Aelis examined him for a long moment. He could see her calculating, weighing options he couldn’t see. Then she said, “You’d trust me with it?”

“No,” Roland said. “But I trust me to find you again.”

He set the box on the bar and opened his pack, pulling out a waxed cloth. He wrapped the box carefully, then pushed it toward her. She took it without flinching.

Boots hammered on the road outside. Roland didn’t look.

“Cahors,” he said. “The church of Saint-Étienne. Three days. If I’m not there, go on without me.”

Aelis lifted the box and dropped it into a canvas satchel she must have been carrying all along—a satchel made for its weight. She had known. She had always known.

“Three days,” she repeated. And then, quieter, as she slipped out the back door with the satchel over her shoulder: “Try not to die, mercenary.”

Roland smiled without warmth and kicked open the front door. The riders were close now, lanterns bobbing in the dark.

He stepped into the road, drawing his sword, and began to run west toward Limoges—loud and visible, a target in the night.

The riders took the bait.

Behind him, the inn burned. He didn’t look back.