Read Chapter 20: The Aftermath

The morning light through the window of Cecil's townhouse was the colour of old parchment, thin and yellow. Thomas sat on the edge of a chair that smelled of beeswax and dust, his forearm bound in clean linen that still showed a slow bloom of rust where the knife had caught him. His clothes had been replaced with a sober doublet of dark wool, borrowed from Cecil's steward, a size too wide at the shoulder.

Cecil stood at his desk, reading the letter Thomas had recovered from Geoffrey's floor. He turned the page, then turned it back, as if the words might rearrange themselves into a more convenient meaning. Finally he set it down and pinched the bridge of his nose.

"Geoffrey is arrested," Cecil said, his voice worn thin. "He is in the Marshalsea, not the Tower. I thought it prudent to keep him where his friends at court cannot reach him easily. He is being questioned, but he has said nothing of value. He swears the letter is a forgery."

"It is not," Thomas said.

"No," Cecil agreed. "I have seen enough of his hand in the account books to know it is his. It is enough to ruin him. Enough to hang him, if I choose to press it." He studied Thomas with eyes that had read too many men for too many years. "But you look like a boy who has already learned that victory is a small meal."

Thomas said nothing. His hand went to the chain at his throat, where his mother's ruby hung warm against his skin. The stone was the only bright thing left in the room.

"I have a position for you," Cecil said, moving around the desk. He did not sit. He stood before Thomas, hands folded behind his back. "The Privy Council has need of men who can read what others cannot. You have proven yourself. You have a gift for patterns, for ciphers, for the spaces between words. I am asking you to work for me, formally, as a cryptographer in my service. A salary. A room. Protection. You will never have to look over your shoulder again the way you have done these past weeks."

Thomas stared at him. The offer was good. It was more than good; it was the kind of offer that a boy from a printer's shop could not have dreamed of a month before. A place in the most powerful man's household. A purpose. Safety.

And it would bury his father for good.

"I thank you, my lord," Thomas said, and his voice was steady, which surprised him. "But I cannot."

Cecil raised a brow. "Cannot, or will not?"

"Both, my lord. My father is still out there. The ledger is still hidden. The cipher who took over Elias Thorne's work is still unknown. And whoever killed Thorne is still alive, and they know my name now." Thomas looked down at his bandaged arm. "I am not the kind of man who can stop with a trail half-warmed."

Cecil was silent for a long moment. Then he did something Thomas had not expected: he sat down in the chair opposite Thomas, close enough that his knees nearly touched the younger man's. Up close, Cecil looked tired; there were creases in his forehead that had not been there when Thomas had first met him, or perhaps Thomas had simply never been close enough to see them.

"Your father saved my life," Cecil said quietly. "Twenty years ago, when I was a clerk nobody, drowning in debt and a bad reputation, he vouched for me. He put his name on a bond for me when no one else would. I paid it back, but I never forgot it. That is why I brought you in. That is why I have kept you alive, when more than once it would have been simpler to let the river take you." He looked down at his hands. "I owe him more than I can say. But I do not know where he is. Geoffrey has said nothing, and I do not think he knows. He was a pawn, Thomas. A vicious one, but a pawn. The men who took your father are not in London."

Thomas felt something shift in his chest. "You knew this before."

"I suspected." Cecil met his eyes. "I did not tell you, because I did not know what you would do with it. You have a habit of walking into traps with your eyes open."

Thomas almost laughed. He had no habit of walking into traps; he had walked into exactly two of them, and he had escaped both, but he supposed that from Cecil's perspective there was little difference.

"What about the letters?" Thomas asked. "The ones that incriminate you. They are still out there."

Cecil waved a hand—a small, tired gesture. "They are letters, Thomas. I have made more enemies than that in a single season at court. Those particular letters, if they surface, will cost me a few sleepless nights. Perhaps a seat on a committee I did not want anyway." He smiled, and it was almost genuine. "You have more pressing problems than my political mortality."

Thomas's hand closed around the ruby again. He had worn it since his mother's death, a token of grief, a link to her. But there was something else. The stone sat heavy in its setting, heavier than a ruby of its size should sit. He had always thought it was merely well-made.

Cecil noticed his gesture. "Your mother's?"

Thomas nodded. He unclasped the chain, holding it in his palm. The ruby caught the thin light and threw it back in a dark, vinous red. He turned it over. The setting was a simple flower of gold petals, and for the first time he looked at it with the eyes of a man who had spent his apprenticeship learning how things were made. He found the seam.

His fingers were shaking. He did not know why. He pried the stone from its petals, and beneath it, folded tight as a wick, was a scrap of paper so thin it was nearly translucent.

Cecil leaned forward. Thomas unfolded the paper with great care, flattening it on his knee. The writing was his father's hand—he knew it the way a child knows a hymn, learned before he could read it.

*If you are reading this, I am not dead yet. The debt is not what it seems; it is a key, not a chain. Do not trust the Council, not wholly. Do not trust Cecil, not wholly; he carries his own chains. I am in Paris. Come only if you can read this without a candle.*

*Your father.*

Thomas read it twice. He read it a third time, looking for a cipher hidden in the words, but there was none. It was plain, and therefore it was true. His father had written this, hidden it in his mother's jewel, and somehow sent it home before he vanished. It was the last message a man leaves for his son when he cannot say goodbye in person.

"I am in Paris," Thomas said aloud, and the words sounded strange in the quiet room.

Cecil sat back. His face had gone carefully blank. "It could be a trap."

"It could be," Thomas agreed. He folded the note and put it in the pouch at his belt. He did not put the ruby back in its setting; he held it in his hand, feeling the warmth of it, thinking of his mother wearing it to church, to market, to bed. She had known. She must have known it was there. She had never told him, and he understood now why she had not: because she did not know when he would be ready.

"I am going to France," Thomas said.

Cecil was quiet for a long time. Then he nodded slowly. "You will need papers. A reason to be there. France and England are not at war today, but that has never stopped a man from being detained on a whim."

"I was thinking a merchant," Thomas said. "A printer's agent, sent to buy paper from the dealers in Lyon."

"Lyon is a long way from Paris."

"It is a good reason to travel through Paris to get there."

Cecil smiled, and this time it reached his eyes. "You have your father's head for schemes." He stood, smoothing his doublet. "I will give you papers. A seal, a letter of introduction to a merchant I know in Rouen. You will travel as a journeyman printer's representative, buying stock for the shop—a shop you do not own."

"I will rent one."

Cecil paused. "You will what?"

"To make it look true," Thomas said. "A merchant who arrives without a shop behind him is not a merchant. I will find a disused printing shed in the liberties outside the city wall, and I will buy it with whatever silver you can lend me. When I leave, it will still be there, and the story will be round and whole."

Cecil studied him for a long moment. "You are dangerous," he said at last, but there was no accusation in it. "When you come back, if I am still alive and still in the Council, the offer will still stand."

"If you are still alive," Thomas said, "I will consider it."

They shook hands. It was not the handshake of a master and servant, or of a noble and a commoner; it was the handshake of two men who had seen the same fire and learned the same lesson from it.

At the door, Thomas paused. "My lord—Geoffrey's brother. The man he killed. Who was he?"

Cecil's face flickered. "A clerk in the Exchequer. A quiet man, a very honest man. His name was Simon Cray. He worked with your father on the ledgers of the French embassy." He looked at Thomas with something like pity. "I raised the funds for his burial myself. His widow lives in Clerkenwell, if you ever have need of a second pair of eyes."

Thomas nodded. Then he stepped out into the morning light and closed the door behind him.

The streets of London were already busy, full of carts and voices and the smell of bread. He walked through them without seeing them. His fist closed around the ruby in his pocket until the warmth of it matched the warmth of his palm.

Paris. His father was in Paris, or had been three years ago, and the note was not dated. It could be fresh; it could be old. He would find out. He would cross the water as a man with a purpose, and he would not stop until he had the truth in both hands.

Behind him, the Tower rose against the pale sky. Ahead of him, the river ran silver under the morning sun. He walked toward it, and the rhythm of his steps sounded almost like a code—one he was still learning to read.