Read Chapter 26: The Liberation

The dungeon door crashed open and the prisoners spilled out behind Thomas like water through a breached dam. The apothecary's daughter—Marta, she'd said her name was—pressed close at his back, her knuckles white around a rusted iron bar she'd wrenched from her cell.

"Stay low," Thomas said. "Stay together."

They emerged into the manor's servants' corridor to find chaos already blooming. The rebellion had reached the main hall—Thomas could hear it, the splintering of wood and the roar of voices, the clash of steel against whatever the villagers had managed to arm themselves with. Pitchforks. Scythes. A few rusted swords taken from fallen guards.

A guard rounded the corner ahead, sword drawn. Thomas saw the man's eyes go wide, saw his mouth open to shout the alarm. Marta moved before Thomas could. She swung the iron bar in a short, vicious arc. It connected with the guard's temple with a wet crack, and he collapsed without a sound.

Thomas stared at her. She stared back, breathing hard.

"They took my father," she said, as if that explained everything. It did.

They pushed forward. The corridor opened into the great hall, and Thomas saw the battle raging there. Sir Richard's men—a dozen or more, armored and disciplined—had formed a ring around the dais, holding back a tide of villagers that seemed to swell from every doorway. Widow Mercer stood at the front, her face alight with fury, a meat cleaver in one hand. Beside her, the smith swung a hammer the size of a child's head.

But the villagers were breaking. Thomas saw it in the falter of their advance, in the way the first ranks hesitated before the line of steel.

"Now!" Thomas shouted, and the prisoners surged past him.

They hit the guards' flank like a wave. Men and women who had been starved and beaten for weeks, who had watched their neighbors sold into darkness, threw themselves at the armored line with a fury that armor could not answer. The guards broke. They broke and ran, scattering toward the side passages, toward the crypt stairs.

Sir Richard stood on the dais alone now, watching his men flee. His face was not afraid. It was cold, calculating, the face of a man already planning his next move.

The widow pointed her cleaver at him. "You're finished, Richard."

Sir Richard smiled. It was a thin, terrible smile. Then he turned and vanished through a door behind the dais—the private stair that led down to the crypt.

"The records," Thomas muttered. He looked at Marta. "He's going to burn the evidence."

She nodded, already moving. "The crypt has only one entrance from the manor. If I can bar it from the outside—"

"You'd trap him inside."

"With his fire." Her jaw tightened. "He watched them take my father. I'll watch him burn."

Thomas didn't argue. He sprinted for the stair, taking the steps three at a time, following the flicker of torchlight below. The crypt air hit him cold and damp and thick with the smell of tallow and old bone. He emerged into the vaulted stone chamber to find Sir Richard already at the far wall, where a massive ledger sat open on a wooden lectern.

Oil. Thomas smelled it before he saw it—the sharp, acrid stench of lamp oil soaking into the paper, dripping down the lectern's legs to pool on the flagstones.

Sir Richard held a lit taper above the sodden pages. He looked up as Thomas entered.

"Blackwood," he said. "I heard you were dead."

"You heard wrong."

"Pity." Sir Richard glanced at the taper, then back at Thomas. "You've cost me a great deal, physician. The ship sails tonight, with or without the merchandise. But this—" he gestured at the ledger, at the walls lined with shelves of similar books, "—this records everything. Every village, every payment, every lord who looked the other way. And you thought I'd let you have it."

"You're trapped," Thomas said. "The villagers have your manor. Your men have fled. There's nowhere to go."

Sir Richard's smile widened. "There's always the tunnel."

He dropped the taper.

The oil caught instantly, a sheet of flame that roared up the lectern and raced along the shelves. The crypt filled with light and heat and the crackling of ancient paper turning to ash. Sir Richard turned and ran for the tunnel mouth, the same tunnel Thomas had crept through an hour before.

Thomas started after him, then stopped. The flames were spreading too fast. If he chased Sir Richard through the tunnel, the fire would overtake them both. But if he stayed—

The apothecary's daughter appeared at the top of the crypt stairs, silhouetted against the torchlight from above. She saw the flames. She saw Sir Richard disappearing into the tunnel. And she saw the heavy oak door that sealed the crypt from the manor above—the door that, once barred, would cut off all escape from the crypt for anyone who remained below.

She looked at Thomas. Thomas looked at her.

Sir Richard was already thirty feet down the tunnel, running for the grate that opened into the village's old burial ground. He would reach it in seconds. He would climb out, slip through the chaos, and vanish into the night with everything he knew.

Marta stepped behind the door and lifted the iron bar.

Thomas met her eyes. She didn't blink. The bar dropped into its cradle with a clang that echoed through the stone.