Read Chapter 14: The Debt's Owner

The ledger pages lay spread across Pettie’s narrow cot in the warden’s spare room, their columns of figures swimming in the candlelight. Thomas pressed his finger to the final entry—a sum so large it made his throat tighten—and followed the trail of annotations backward through the cramped script.

It took him three passes to believe it.

Sir Geoffrey Cecil owed twelve hundred pounds to a man named only “D.” in the margin. The debt had been accrued over eighteen months, each loan recorded with the precision of a man who knew ledgers would one day be examined. Interest compounded at a rate that would have made a Lombard banker blush. And written beside the final installment, in Geoffrey’s own hand: *For the fleet. Payment upon completion.*

Thomas looked up at Pettie, who stood guard by the door, one ear tilted toward the corridor. “He’s financing a rebellion.”

“A rebellion against whom?”

“The Queen.” Thomas’s voice came out hoarse. “Geoffrey owes money to a French agent. Twelve hundred pounds to hire ships, men—God knows what else. He’s been skimming from the Mint to pay it back, and the ledgers he’s forged would make the Crown’s accounts look so corrupt that no one would question where the money went.”

Pettie’s face went pale beneath his beard. “You’re certain?”

“I decoded enough of the letters to know the scheme. But this—” Thomas tapped the ledger page, “—this is the proof. Names, amounts, dates. Even the port where the fleet is meant to assemble.” He squinted at the final line. “Dover. Three weeks hence.”

The room fell quiet save for the distant clank of the Tower’s night watch changing shifts. Thomas could hear dogs barking somewhere beyond the walls—Still searching for him, he knew. Geoffrey’s men would not stop until they had him cornered.

“I need to get this to Cecil,” Thomas said. “He’s the only one who can act on it.”

“You can’t walk out of here,” Pettie said. “The gates are watched. Geoffrey told the guard captain you’re a traitor carrying forged documents—he’s got men on every road out of London, I’d wager.”

“Then I don’t leave by the road.”

Thomas swept the ledger pages into a stack and bound them with a strip of leather. From his satchel he produced a second packet—the four pages he’d copied earlier, crude forgeries of the originals that would hold up only at a distance. He’d made them from habit, the same instinct that had taught him to double-check every sum in his master’s shop.

“What’s that?” Pettie asked.

“Bait.” Thomas shoved the copied pages into his coat, leaving the genuine ledger carefully wrapped and tucked beneath the loose floorboard where Pettie kept his spare wages. “If Geoffrey’s accomplice comes looking for the evidence, he’ll find me instead. And I’ll lead him away from the truth.”

Pettie shook his head slowly. “You’re going to use yourself as the target.”

“I’ve been a target since I broke into the Mint.” Thomas forced a grim smile. “At least now I get to choose where I run.”

He moved to the window. Below, the Tower’s inner ward stretched toward the Lanthorn Tower, its crenellations black against the pre-dawn sky. A single guard patrolled the wall walk, torch flickering. Beyond the outer ramparts, the Thames glinted silver under a sliver of moon.

“There’s a postern gate near the Jewel House,” Pettie said quietly. “It opens onto the wharf. The guard there owes me a favour—he’ll look the other way if I signal from the parapet.”

“And after that?”

“The wharf runs east, past the customs house. You can lose yourself in the stews along Thames Street before dawn.” Pettie met his eyes. “But you’ll need a story. You can’t just wander out wearing a tower guard’s coat and no purpose.”

Thomas thought for a moment. “I’m a messenger. Geoffrey’s man—I’ve seen him carrying letters between Whitehall and the Tower. If I say I’m delivering news to his agent, no one will question me.”

Pettie frowned. “You don’t know who his agent is.”

“No.” Thomas picked up the copied pages and tapped them against his palm. “But I’m about to make myself very easy to find.”

---

The stews along Thames Street were a warren of sagging timber houses and reeking gutters, the kind of place where a man could vanish for a month and no one would think to look. Thomas moved through them with his coat collar pulled high, the forged pages pressed against his chest like a second skin.

He stopped at a tavern whose sign rusted in the salt air—the Jolly Wherry, an establishment low enough that the night watch did not trouble it and the patrons did not trouble the watch. He ordered ale he had no intention of drinking and sat near the fire, letting the pages peep from his coat like a coin purse left carelessly open.

It took less than an hour.

The man who slid onto the bench across from him was thin, with the sallow complexion of a clerk who spent his days indoors and his nights counting other men’s money. He wore a livery badge that Thomas did not recognise—a stag’s head, gold on green.

“You’ve something for me,” the man said. Not a question.

“That depends.” Thomas kept his voice low. “Are you the one collecting for Sir Geoffrey?”

The man’s eyes flickered to the pages. “Why would a mint clerk be carrying Sir Geoffrey’s accounts?”

“Because Sir Geoffrey’s accounts are missing from the Tower.” Thomas leaned forward. “And I found them. Before the guards did.” He let the edge of the counterfeit page show—the one with Geoffrey’s debt written in careful columns. “I’m not a fool. I know what this is worth. The question is whether Sir Geoffrey knows I have it.”

The man’s hand moved beneath the table. Thomas tensed, ready to bolt—but the man merely set a leather purse on the boards between them. It clinked. “Name your price.”

Thomas forced himself to look disappointed. “That’s not what I’m selling.” He rose, pocketing the purse anyway—a man who refused money drew suspicion—and moved toward the door. “Tell Sir Geoffrey I’ll meet him at the priory of St. Katherine’s by the Tower. Noon tomorrow. If he wants the evidence, he’ll come with the rest of what I’m owed.”

He was halfway to the door when the man called out. “What name should I give him?”

“Finch.” Thomas said it without thinking—the gesture of a boy who had learned to trust his father’s name, even when it damned him. “Tell him I’m the one who killed his accomplice at the print shop. He’ll know.”

The man’s expression shifted—recognition, then calculation. He nodded once and vanished into the crowd.

Thomas stepped into the street, the cold air hitting his face, and let himself breathe for the first time since he’d left Pettie’s garret. The bait was set. By noon tomorrow, either Geoffrey would come—and Thomas would lead him on a chase away from the Tower’s genuine ledger—or Geoffrey’s man would come hunting with a blade.

Either way, Thomas would be running. But now he knew the shape of what he was running toward: a French agent named D., a fleet assembling at Dover, and a traitor who had murdered his father to keep it secret.

He pressed the pendant beneath his shirt and began walking east, toward the postern gate, toward the dawn.