Read Chapter 7: The Road to Toulouse

The morning came grey and cold, the mill's broken wheel dripping a mournful rhythm into the weed-choked sluice. Roland gathered what remained of his belongings—the box wrapped in oiled cloth, his sword, a half-empty waterskin, and nothing else worth stealing. Marguerite sat against the far wall, knees drawn to her chin, watching him with eyes that had learned too much in too few years.

He said nothing to her as he readied himself. There was nothing to say that would not be a lie. He had spared her because killing children, even treacherous ones, was a line he had not yet crossed. But trust was a different matter entirely.

"You'll go to Toulouse," she said. It was not a question.

Roland paused at the door. "And if I do?"

"The merchants there. They remember the Temple. Some of them still keep its secrets." She picked at a thread on her tattered sleeve. "If I wanted to hurt you, I would not give you advice that helps you."

"Unless the advice is a trap and you want me walking into it willingly."

Marguerite's mouth tightened. "Perhaps. But you are going anyway."

He left her there in the ruin, with the dead men growing stiff in the next room, and took the road north through the low hills.

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The way to Toulouse was two days of hard walking, and Roland made it in one and a half. He kept the box strapped across his back beneath his cloak, the weight of it a constant reminder of every corpse it had already bought. The arm wound throbbed where the cloth had soaked through, but pain was an old companion. He did not waste breath on it.

The feeling of being watched came on him within the first hour. Not the sharp prickle of immediate danger—that he knew well—but something softer, more patient. Eyes that did not want to be close enough to strike, only to observe. He changed his pace, doubled back twice, cut through a copse of oaks to catch a glimpse of the road behind.

Whoever followed was good. He saw nothing. He heard nothing. But the feeling persisted, crawling along his spine like a fly that would not be swatted.

By the time the walls of Toulouse rose before him, dark and hulking against the evening sky, Roland had decided he did not care. Let them watch. Let them report to whichever master paid their coin. He would be in and out of the city before they could move against him, and if they tried, the alleys of Toulouse would swallow him whole.

The city gates were still open, though the guards at the checkpoint looked tired and ready to be elsewhere. They waved Roland through with barely a glance, too occupied with a cart of salted fish and a merchant arguing about tolls. He slipped into the press of bodies and was gone.

Toulouse was different from Carcassonne. Where Carcassonne was stone and memory, stern and fortified, Toulouse was commerce in its rawest form. Carts clattered over cobbles, vendors shouted from stalls crammed beneath the awnings of half-timbered houses, and the smell of bread and wine and unwashed humanity hung thick in the air. Roland moved through it like a fish through water, letting the crowd carry him deeper into the warren of streets.

Finding a Templar contact was not as simple as asking for a name. The order had been dissolved, its leaders burned, its treasures scattered. What remained were old loyalties and quiet sympathies, men who kept their mouths shut and their memories long. Roland had a name, given to him years ago by a brother who had died in a cell in Paris. A merchant named Jacques, who traded in cloth and kept a warehouse near the river.

The address led him to a narrow building wedged between a cooper's shop and a tavern, the wooden sign above the door creaking in the wind. The door was opened by a man of perhaps fifty, with a face like cracked leather and eyes that had seen every trick the world had to offer.

"Jacques?" Roland said.

The man studied him. "Who's asking?"

"An old friend of the Temple. I need shelter for the night, and a place to keep something safe."

Jacques's gaze dropped to the box beneath Roland's cloak, and something flickered in his eyes—recognition, or fear, or both. He stepped aside. "Come in. Quickly."

The interior was dim and cluttered, bolts of wool and linen stacked to the rafters, the air thick with dust and the faint sharpness of dye. Jacques led him to a back room where a small fire burned low, and gestured to a stool.

"Sit. Eat." He pushed a heel of bread and a wedge of cheese across the table. "You look like you've been walked over by a horse and then kicked for good measure."

Roland sat. He ate. The bread was stale, the cheese hard, but it was the first food he had taken in two days, and his body remembered what hunger felt like. Jacques watched him with the patience of a man who had learned that questions often answered themselves.

"You carry something heavy," Jacques said finally.

"I carry something dangerous."

"Dangerous to whom?"

Roland set down the bread. "To everyone who knows it exists."

Jacques was quiet for a long moment. Then he nodded slowly, as if Roland had confirmed something he had suspected. "The bishop's men came through here three days ago, asking about travelers with Templar connections. They mentioned a box."

"The bishop's reaching east."

"He's reaching everywhere. Narbonne, Carcassonne, Avignon." Jacques leaned forward, lowering his voice. "There are rumors, friend. Whispers that the Temple left behind a record—names, debts, promises made in blood that were never paid. Some say it would blackmail half the nobility of France. Others say it would start a war."

Roland looked down at the box, wrapped and nondescript, sitting on the floor beside his stool. "Which do you believe?"

"I believe that anything that makes both the Church and the Crown nervous is something I want no part of." Jacques stood, brushing dust from his knees. "But you've come to me for help, and help you shall have. Leave the box here tonight. I have a hiding place the bishop's men will not find. In the morning, you take it and go, and we never speak again."

Roland hesitated. The box had been his responsibility since Lucien died, since the moment he had cradled his friend's body and promised to see the task through. Leaving it, even for a night, felt like a betrayal of that vow.

But he was wounded, exhausted, and the followers on the road had not been shaken. A night of rest, a chance to let the shadows thin, might be exactly what he needed.

"One night," he said. "And if anything happens to it—"

"Nothing will." Jacques knelt and pried up a loose floorboard beneath a stack of bales, revealing a dark cavity below. "I have hidden many things for the Temple, friend. This is not my first box."

Roland watched as Jacques took the box and lowered it into the space, then replaced the board and dragged a heavy bale of wool over it. When he was done, the floor looked as it had before, unremarkable and forgettable.

"You'll sleep here," Jacques said, gesturing to a cot in the corner. "I'll wake you before the bells."

Roland lay down but did not sleep, not truly. His hand rested on the hilt of his sword, and his ears traced every creak and shuffle of the building. But the night passed without incident, and when Jacques shook him awake in the grey before dawn, the box was still where it had been hidden.

"Good," Jacques said, relief in his voice. "Now go, before the city wakes. You have a long road to Paris."

Roland pulled on his boots and gathered his cloak. He reached for the box—and stopped. His hand hovered over the floorboard, the hair on the back of his neck standing on end.

"Jacques," he said slowly. "Where is the bale?"

"The bale?"

"The wool. The one you dragged over the hiding spot. It's gone."

Jacques's face went pale. He stared at the empty space, mouth opening and closing without sound. Roland did not wait for an answer. He tore at the floorboard, splinters digging into his fingers, and threw it aside.

The cavity was empty. The box was gone.

For a moment, neither man spoke. Then Roland was on his feet, blade drawn, searching the room for a sign of entry. The window—a small casement facing the alley—was unlatched. He crossed to it in three strides and looked out. Below, a figure in a dark cloak moved swiftly away, disappearing around a corner.

"Who—" Jacques began.

"Whoever, she's fast." Roland vaulted through the window, landing hard on the packed earth of the alley. He sprinted after the figure, boots pounding against the cobbles as the streets began to lighten.

He caught her at the edge of the river, where a small dock jutted into the grey water of the Garonne. She turned to face him, the box cradled in her arms, and drew a sword that gleamed in the morning light.

"I'll take that back," Roland said.

"You'll try." The voice was a woman's, low and steady. She wore a white surcoat over chainmail, and the emblem on her chest was unmistakable. A cross.

A Hospitaller.

"The box is mine," Roland said.

"The box is not yours. It belongs to the order that serves God and the Holy Sepulchre." She shifted her grip. "And I will die before I let it fall into the hands of a mercenary."

Roland raised his blade, letting his body answer for him. But the woman did not attack. She held his gaze, waiting, measuring.

Then a shout rose from the street behind them, and the sound of running feet. The watchers had finally closed in.