Chapter 28: The Bank at Dawn

We found the gold at dawn, on the river stairs, in a boat with a green stripe.

The clerk had named the stairs himself, in the cellar under the council chamber, while the chancellor's secretary wrote it down.

"The viscount's steward moves the bank's coin by water," he had said. "Always before light, always from the same landing."

Alaric's captain put twelve men on the river steps in the dark.

Wynne came with them, because nobody had been able to stop her.

Her arm was still strapped across her chest, and she carried a lantern in the other hand.

"That is the boat," she said, the moment the grey came up. "That's the one he got away in."

"I'd know that stripe in my sleep."

It was low in the water, with eight men at the oars and a pile of oiled canvas amidships.

The captain hailed it, and the oarsmen did what oarsmen do when twelve armed men stand on a landing.

They put in at once.

Under the canvas lay forty iron-bound chests, each one stamped with the Rook bank's mark.

The viscount's steward sat on the nearest, with his hat in his hands.

"Ninety-three thousand," the captain said, after a count. "A little over the loan."

"He meant to run with the army's winter pay," said Alaric.

"He meant to keep it, and call the loan in anyway."

"Then the crown holds what it owed itself," I said.

Wynne looked at the chests and at the steward, and she lifted the lantern and held it near his face.

"That's the man who sent the clerk to the stables," she said. "I saw him that week."

"That's him."

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