King's Warrior (Renegade Lords)

“The money won’t be in your book, merchant,” Tadhg told him softly.

Edwin’s face washed entirely pale. “No, it won’t,” he agreed in a weak voice. “Well, truth to tell,” he wiped his hand across his forehead and dragged his panicked gaze to Maggie’s. “Truth to tell, mistress, I…I don’t have it.”

“I presumed,” she said mildly. Tadhg stared. Edwin sweated.

Without looking away from Edwin, Tadhg said to Maggie, “How’d you want me to handle him? Take him out back?”

Edwin made a little strangled sound and wobbled on his stool.

“I do not think ‘out back’ will serve,” she said. Crossing one arm across her belly and resting her other bent elbow atop it, Magdalena considered Edwin as she paced the front of his shop. “After all, what would ‘out back’ get us but a few broken bones?”

A whistling sound started coming out of Edwin as his breathing both accelerated and thinned.

“No,” Magdalena went on. “I believe he speaks the truth. Master Regrator has not pocketed my money, he’s simply not been paid for it himself.”

Edwin nodded vigorously. “Yes, not paid at all. Nobles. I always say you can only trust them so far as you can—”

Tadhg moved very slightly and he stopped talking. Maggie went on.

“And as Edwin has earned a very hearty sum off other work I have done for him, having resold it for ten to twenty times what I charged him”— more nodding, silently this time— “he is surely aware I could go to another regrator for my commissions, and take those profits elsewhere.” He started shaking his head. “So perhaps we have all learned in a valuable lesson today?”

He nodded even more emphatically. “Yes, indeed, very valuable.”

“And yet, I still do not have my coin for the hosen order.”

He started whistling again. “But what can I do?” he exclaimed, wringing his hands together as his eyes flicked to Tadhg’s much larger, more calloused hands, one still splayed stop his ledger, the other dangling near the hilt of his sword. “If they do not pay me, how can I pay you?” It was a plaintive wail accompanied by emphatic hand gestures.

“It would be difficult,” she agreed. “Perhaps you would be able to settle your debt in some other manner.”

He paused almost eloquently. “Other manner, mistress?” His voice was pitched in the high, pleasant tones of innocent confusion.

Magdalena smiled at him. “Yes. Your other trade.”

“I confess myself baffled. Entirely baff—”

“Writs of safe passage.”

Master Edwin’s jaw fell, then a bright red color suffused his face from the chin up. “Well I’m sure I don’t know—”

Tadhg leaned sharply forward. “Let the lady finish.”

He choked back the rest of his words. Maggie’s cloak brushed Tadhg’s mailed arm she leaned across the ledger, closer to the merchant.

“Pass portes, Edwin,” she said softly, almost successfully denying how marvelous it felt to, just once, have the power to make the right thing happen. All it had taken was an outlaw. “The writs of safe passage you forge, that allow one to get in and out of towns and cities all along this northern coast, from Brittany to Dieppe.”

“How do you know of this?” he sputtered. Then, realizing he’d just admitted guilt, he shook his head. “What I mean to say is—”

“What you mean to say us how appreciative you are that I have not shared my knowledge with anyone.” He stared, his mouth still open. “In authority,” she added.

He shut his mouth and swallowed hard. He licked his lips. He looked at the ceiling. Then he said, “How many?”

“We shall require two,” she said serenely, folding her arms under her cloak. “For every town west of here.”

Edwin’s eyes narrowed, then drifted ceilingward, as if making computations in his mind. He wiped his chin, then his fleshy thighs, then crossed his arms and squinted at Magdalena. When he finally spoke, his voice had taken on a shrewd tone.

“Well, now, mistress, that is a great many writs. An order on such a large scale would usually cost in the neighborhood of—”

“There are no neighborhoods here, tailor,” Tadhg said softly. “There is only what Mistress Thread wants, and how quickly you deliver it.”